Finished reading: For the Time Being by W. H. Auden 📚
Def rereading next Christmas when I’m not distracted with grief. But even in grief, this hits hard and good.
🎵 Christmas Cookin' - Jimmy Smith - ★★★★☆
Last year, I took this snapshot of Paco while we waited in line for Santa at a farm that does holiday events. It was a moment of peaceful calm for my otherwise very energetic boy.
This year, my wife took the kids to the same event last minute. My oldest had his siblings recreate it for me.
🎥 Trailer for The Oddyssey, with a surprise glimpse that Tom Holland is playing Telemachus.
Arizona in December…
… where it’s sunny, 80 degrees, and the city pool event is Swimming with Santa.
I just picked up frozen burritos at an abandoned Taco Bell. It was a like drug deal, but for crazy good eats.
Hi Professor,
Thanks for an awesome semester, I learned a lot in CEL 200 and you were a great professor! Thank you for helping me understand my voice better as an American.
This is what it’s all about, folks.
🗞️ The Full Text of Marco Rubio’s Directive on State Department Typography, Re-Establishing Times New Roman, Daring Fireball
Good on @gruber@mastodon.social for getting a copy of the memo and introducing me to the word detritus.
Out of the blue, my soon to be five year old (next month) started sobbing about Paco. Man does it hurt that I cannot take this hurt away.
I had my second jiujitsu competition yesterday; I lost both fights but I wasn’t there to win, I was there for Paco.
The bracket with small groups works out that I still got bronze. My friend/mentor from the academy snapped this one for me.
Paco’s been gone nine months, today. Miss that kiddo so, so very much.
I was supposed to give my last final at ASU today… but the student worker accidentally copied every other page. Importantly, I failed to double check the exams when I picked them up. Now I have half a dozen time slots scheduled for students to come in and take their final. (I have to chuckle.)
Last year, Paco got a plunger at the Thanksgiving parade; this year, his sibling made sure they got their own, and so of course they were in our family pic for the year.
Paco loved Thanksgiving. And while we have so much for which to be grateful, there is also a giant hole of love without him. Last year he won that plunger on Thanksgiving and every day after it became his sword, magic wand, scepter.
Today, I’ll have it with me.
My heart hurts today.
Finished reading: The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro 📚
Read this with my graduate students. It was an undertaking! But they did it.
🗞️The Witkoff-Dmitriev Peace Plan Annotated, Lawrence Freedman (Substack)
The irony is that the Trump admin, inter alia, is so hard for any deal they’ll take a shitty one and call it gold—the very thing they rightly criticized the Obama admin of doing vis-a-vis Iran. Sometimes, no deal is better.
🎥 Michael Jackson’s Thriller (1983) - ★★★★★
Introduced the big kid to the Smooth Criminal yesterday, so naturally he asked to see more classic MJ today. Pulled up the GOAT.
