October 9, 2025

Some Things I Am Enjoying Right Now

Elkay water bottle stations
These always make me feel like I'm at an airport, and like perfect hydration is possible. It doesn't matter if I'm filling a giveaway swag bottle, a reused Dasani lil guy, or my newest dozens-of-dollars purchase that will surely fix all my bad habits around water. Did you know that for a while in my junior year in college, I drank a 1-liter Nalgene each morning in class that was a mix of tonic water and orange juice? What a weird massive mocktail. People always assumed it had alcohol. It never did during class. Except once. 

Hydromassage Chairs
Speaking of self care, I’m re-establishing a gym routine at Planet Fitness, which has always been fine-ISH for me. Recently, though, Kelsey told me there are “Hydromassage” chairs in the Black Card Spa. They are only available for ten minutes at a go, but they hit hard, all over the body. Obviously you should consider getting a Planet Fitness membership and only going for this. Daily free massages. Heck, get two a day, get three, all at different locations. I'm not sure there's actual water in them. 

Handsome
Podcasts! I don’t talk about ‘em much in this newsletter series I don’t think. I’m mostly out of my rotation on most of the ones I normally have listened to in the past few years but this one has come up as a solid driving one with the right mix of friends chatting and an episode format. Tig Notaro, Fortune Feimster, and Mae Martin. Mae was on the first TaskMaster season

Your Friends and Neighbors 
I also don’t talk about TV normally in here, eh? Jon Hamm is a national treasure. That is all. 

Listers
This came to me via Ali Slagle’s newsletter in a similar format to this: maybe my new favorite movie of all time? Profane, birds galore, shot and edited wildly with tons of over-the-top addons. These brothers are high out of their minds sometimes and commenting so savvily on hobby-drama. I don’t think everybody will enjoy it but I sure did.

Docking station 
I should have gotten one of these ages ago. We acquired one for Kelsey's work life but it made its way to my desk for now and I’m experimenting. I haven’t perfected my cables layout and power situations and monitor connection, but it’s nice to relatively just throw my laptop back onto my desk and plug & get going again. There’s a decent chance I’ve over or under-engineered this situation. Tune into a future newsletter that’s just, like, about my office physical and mental chaos. Or, if you’re a big docking station nerd, please advise me on what I should be doing and how. (What is a “watt”? Why is HDMI so finicky? Should I get a desktop? Remember Mac Minis? Should I get a NAS, whatever that is, or more external hard drives?)

Clamshell
My pal Mac let us borrow their rooftop clamshell for summer trips and it was a godsend, especially for beach trips. Chairs and such always feel unwieldy to stick in our car, then throw in a stroller, a travel crib, and so forth, and bam, it’s a whole shebang. The clamshell mostly exists in my friend’s life to support the band Soup Dreams on tour. Give them a listen!

ScreenZen
Did you know I struggle with focus, particularly when I have a digital device in front of me that has a lot of connectivity to the Internet? It’s true! ScreenZen has been helping me recently scroll less Instagram and doodle less Reddit. Customizing my apps & sites has been a fun journey of exploration. Highly recommend if you’re wondering how to spend less time zombified at your stupid stupid stupid smartphone.

On to the categories you open this newsletter for!!!

Reading:
No books, only articles. I continue to wrestle with how and where I read and store articles. Maybe I don’t need to. Kile Smith wrote ages ago about saying “thank you.” Fall means Gilmore Girls means associated songs. Our screens and the lives we have on them lack sensuality. Arby’s is a place for beef and cheddar and texting coming out. Neko Case thinks about grief.

Eating:
I’ve been making lasagna/lasagne once a month for Lasagna Love. Internet sandwich pal Lewie the Foodie wrote wonderfully about this volunteer project. I leverage it into meal prep for ourselves, sometimes using the Baker’s Edge pan. (Bonus recommendation: the Aldi brownie mix in that pan.)  

We had a lot of celebrations with friends in September, including Ethiopian at Abyssinia, hot pot at KPot, a Persian feast at Rumi’s Kitchen in DC. (Marigold loves Persian food, it turns out, and also loves staying up late to do so.) With Kelsey’s parents we gambled on Kinya Ramen in Reading and won. Closer to home, we are trying to sample more neighborhood Mexican spots and really liked La Canasta. I had my first Costco hot dog and rotisserie chicken. In breakfast sandwich news, I enjoyed the offering at Loretta’s with a networking-pal. Not the finest in town but a solid option if you’re in the neighborhood. 

Beating:
A newsletter reminded me it’s always good to listen to Surfing on Sine Waves, one of a bunch of Richard D James albums I come back to. I liked the new Wednesday album and this goofy Beck remix. My music group chat enjoyed this set of ambient albums. I have found absurd joy in a playlist of y2k songs done folkily.

Deleting:
I unloaded six months of back issues of The New Yorker, mostly unread. I went through my dresser and donated a huge bag of clothes to Goodwill. It’s already time again to do these things. 

Retreating:
We tried to hike the Glassboro (NJ) Wildlife Management Area but after a bit of a drive allll the way through it we determined that it’s a better spot for biking or offroad driving, not walking. We found the Scotland Run Park nearby and there are better trails there, though we didn’t get to really enjoy them. A ranger-type recommended that next time we hit the trail heading south from the Nature Center. On a trip to DC, we picnicked at Kenilworth Garden which is out of the way but gorgeous! I enjoyed a solo press trip to Grounds for Sculpture to see the new Salvador Jiménez-Flores installations.

Meeting:
Not my usual kind of thing here, but I was able to focus some time with old friends and some long-overdue networking meetings. If you’re reading this and thinking, “I should have coffee or a tonic with Neil,” let’s. Oh, I do have an in-person performance to plug: I’ll be telling a story at the Kelly Writer’s House on 10/27.

Okay I did it? How’s the formatting of this look? Why is that still a struggle in 2025?

Okay bye bye,
Neil