§ Caroline and I have been learning how to needle felt. It’s a nice wintery, indoor hobby that can be very meditative. That is, until you accidentally stab your finger with a bundle of tiny, barbed needles, which happens approximately every fifteen minutes. One day I hope to get good enough to make myself a pair of felted slippers.
§ Arriving home after work on Tuesday, I was greeted by a bursted hot water tank that was rapidly filling my basement with water. The tank was nearly 20 years old, so I can’t complain too much, but dang, it’s not like there is ever a good time for a major home appliance to fail.
In hindsight, 2024 was a good year for appliances, particularly compared to 2023 where we replaced our washing machine, fridge, stove, and dishwasher. Let’s all hope this water tank isn’t an omen for the year to come.
While waiting on a plumber to install a new tank I learned just how many giant pots of boiling water it takes to fill up my bath tub.
We got a new (larger!) water tank installed Wednesday afternoon so I can’t complain too much, I guess.
§ Here is how I would rank appliances by how long I would be comfortable being without them, from shortest to longest amount of time:
Fridge > Water heater > Stove > Washing machine > Dryer > Dishwasher
Really none of these appliances either existed or at least were particularly common 100 years ago so I suppose that says something about how well I would have done back then.
§ Over the weekend I tried my hand at baking a loaf of bread again. Past attempts turned out decent but a little flat with a dense crumb. This time I mustered up the patience to let it rise for the entire eighteen hours the recipe recommends. In the end, it didn’t seem to help with the rise much but interior texture was definitely improved with a lot of big, airy bubbles.
§ I realize I’m hopping on a trend here like five years late but also just I started making a sourdough starter.
§ Please excuse a rare, brief journey into meta-blogging territory.
With the extensive help of ChatGPT I created a calendar-type viewer for all of my past weeknotes. This is something that I’ve wanted to do for quite a while but was always more complicated that it seems at first glance. Particularly since I don’t have any metadata associated with each “weeknote” entry—they are just normal blog posts I publish here each Sunday.
The solution I—and by “I” I mean “ChatGPT”—landed on is to parse my sitemap and then use a bunch of date math and regex to extract links to each week’s corresponding note. I mention this mainly to illustrate just how brittle this whole approach probably is. That said, I can confirm it at least works right now so go and check it out.
You’ve gotta love seeing that 110-week streak laid out in a nice little grid.
§ If the first and second episodes of this season of Severance were a bit bogged down setting the stage, things really start to pick up with the third and fourth. I wouldn’t be surprised if the fourth episode—the ORTBO episode—ended up being the standout highlight of the season. It was refreshing to see the characters in a new environment just as the Lumon offices were starting to feel a little stale.
