There was a power outage while I was gone, and my bedroom air purifier must have automatically turned on when power was restored because it was running when I got home. And given that Detroit looked like this when I landed, I am not mad about the purifier running a bit extra.

Waiting for a flight and the gate agent put on a rock/paper/scissors tournament, with the winner getting s voucher and the rest of the top 4 getting a candy bar and swag bag. Somehow I made it to the final?? I lost, but the candy bar and bag clip were definitely worth the 10 minutes of my time.

For my fellow Shel Silverstein kids out there: I found it.

Went for a run this morning, was a smidge worried about cars on a one block stretch of my route where the road narrows around a curve. But the real problem turned out to be an aggressive dog on the loose. 🫠

Is the cyclospora outbreak actually worse in Michigan or is Michigan just tracking it better? Either way I feel like I should just spend another week in California.

It's July, I'm in California (for a bit longer anyway), and still reading books. Here are some of my beloved California poppies and also what I've been reading. 📚💙

This bitch went to a Dodgers game on her birthday (several days ago) and they won and it was pretty great.

On the train to the beach, we sat across the aisle from a guy in a Mexico jersey on his way to see Canada v S Africa in LA. We asked him who he was cheering for, & he said, "we're all Canadian today."

Just spotted a guy in the crowd of this Panama-Croatia game wearing a Croatia water polo cap. Alright, dude.

Spotted some Tartan Army during my layover. Have fun in Miami, guys!

You know what I needed the day before leaving on a trip? A plumbing issue. Thankfully it's minor, & a thousand blessings on the local plumbing company that squeezed me in when two of their guys finished another job early, who are now here fixing it.

Kinda fighting another bad spell of the blues (I am once again missing my dog so much, plus, you know, the horrors) so of course I am absolutely ripping through King Leopold's Ghost 😬

I went for my stupid little run this morning, and today is the final day of AP exam scoring. Thank heavens.

A new Ishiguro novel? Next year? Truly probably the best news I'll read all day (I immediately texted like five people about this and got a lot of very capslock responses.) 📚💙 lithub.com/kazuo-ishigu...

Bananas. Death to bananas. NO, not even in smoothies, NO, not even banana bread. Just no.

Made garlic scape pesto tonight and you know what? It was DELICIOUS.

My bestie the Toledo Museum of Art is almost entirely shut down for renovations/reinstallations but she's still beautiful. And the one exhibition on curses and magic in the ancient world was cool. (But ughhhhh full reopening is a year away 😩)

This bitch got out on a lake today.

Spotted my first fireflies of the summer on the porch this evening, what bliss.

Netia Jones's pro-AI oped in the Guardian is so bad that AI probably helped write it. Woolly, imprecise, lazy argumentation that handwaved away the ethical issues and only vaguely theorizes a couple of uses, none of which meaningfully counter the problems or meaningful time/effort. Embarrassing.

It's June, the peonies are blooming, and I am still reading books. 📚💙 I was also reading in April & May but too stressed & depressed to post about it. But semester is over, grades are in, and it's outside weather for real, so we're trying.

Cleaned up the porch and behold! porch season has begun.

Dodgers racking up runs with small ball? I sure do love to see it. (Truly I do.)

I am sitting on a plane across the aisle from a man who is watching videos with the sound up and no headphones. And I can hear it through my music (admittedly, acoustic Gillian Welch is pretty quiet), so I finally broke and asked him to turn it down. We live in a society, sir!

Having a great time at my Irish studies conference and then I come back to my hotel room to see Wrobleski is pitching an absolutely unreal game? Five scoreless innings, 7 strikeouts, under 70 pitches? What a night.

My panel at the conference only has three speakers, I have a whole twenty-ish minutes to present! what freedom, what bliss.

At my brother & SIL's place for niece's graduation, & SIL's parents are also here, & apparently they cannot live without the TV on every single moment of the day. Oof. Mom, Dad, & I are actually staying somewhere else, thankfully, so there is peace & quiet to be had.

Because this dumb site was down, I wrote the first 600 words of the conference paper I’m giving in two weeks. (Also we were between thunderstorms and I had power.)

I think that's about the best inning I've seen Roki pitch. Pretty solid command today overall so far. (The baseball is not totally conducive to reading these articles quickly but Sunday deserves to be leisurely.)

I successfully switched mobile carriers while sitting on my couch (and made a phone call and sent some texts to make sure it's all working) and take that, AT&T, I am very done with giving you money.

My friends helped me hang pictures in and outside my new office today, and I'm so pleased this print from @katieaki.bsky.social will be right there outside the door.

"how on earth could a woman hatched from an egg after a swan r*ped her mom be black??" Helen is also such a minor character in the Odyssey. Honestly I don't trust Nolan to make this movie weird *enough* to match the original epic.

idk how I got lucky enough to have a friend who genuinely wants to do all the airport runs, even when my flight times are kinda garbage, but I do! and boy does it save me money on parking.

Love when the Dodgers have a day game in Central or Eastern time because I can watch it while I grade & my sister in Cape Town can watch it after she puts her kids to bed & we can text each other all through it, which hardly ever happens. But it happened today! & Andy Pages hit 3 home runs! Delight.

Went for a run, graded 10 papers, cooked a proper meal, picked up supplies to pot the lilacs tomorrow, and watched The Whole Town's Talking on Criterion. Maybe this week's fog of sadness is lifting a little.

I have done a bunch of stuff today in addition to work, including folding laundry and cooking a real meal (also cleaning up after and running the dishwasher), and in my depression/burnout haze that all feels like a huge accomplishment.

In recent family news, my 7 year old nephew loves Ohtani. He has recently discovered he also loves the song "Feeling Good." But he does NOT like the Bublé version that Ohtani uses for his walk-up song: only Miss Nina Simone will do. He's a child with taste.

The weekend is when I miss Chuck the most, so getting out helps a lot. Indie Bookstore Day gave me the best excuse to get out, & I definitely bought books. (Cheers to New Story Community Books and this is a bookstore.)

AppleTV really does have the worst baseball commentary. If I was actually staying up to watch this Dodgers game I'd mute the TV and put on the radio broadcast on instead.

During baseball season: visit every single MLB park and you know what? hit up the best of the AAA parks while I'm at it. During the off season? learn to bake all the things that I don't attempt because I don't want to do that cleanup during the semester/it's too hot to bake in the summer.

On a lighter note, a colleague at the reception was like "I just finished a novel I loved and then I asked ChatGPT to recommend me another book but I didn't love any of the suggestions. So do you have a suggestion for something to read after Walter Mosley's Devil in a Blue Dress?"

I did not foresee that the hazard of having a dog who becomes a beloved campus figure is that for weeks after she passed, I would still have people earnestly asking about her and then having to break the news, thus constantly bringing down the vibes.

For the first time since Chuck passed, I went on our usual weekend walk with our close friends and their dog. And it was both really good, and really sad. I just miss my girl so much.

Just spending a very fun Tuesday evening lesson prepping with a storm chaser livestream going in the background because we're under a tornado watch until 4 AM 🫠

I went for a run and then did my taxes and I just feel like I should get to go back to bed for the rest of the day. I'm going to get an iced coffee and try to dig myself out of my grading backlog instead.

I was so looking forward to teaching Auden's Horae Canonicae for the first time this term but did not know I'd be doing it against a backdrop of personal sadness and geopolitical insanity that would make it incredibly hard to write a lecture.

Finally overcame inertia and set up the new modem/router (my ISP insisted on giving me a new one and not charging me?), and everything is actually working. And at mom's prodding, two pictures and a mirror have been hung up, and strawberry plants have been planted.

Did not do any Good Friday things yesterday, just went to a botanical garden with my mom and looked at trees and flowers. It was so peaceful and that was definitely what I needed.

Neither of my baseball teams is playing at East Coast friendly times tonight, right when I'm really craving some emotional support baseball.

The vet is coming over tonight and then my sweet girl will be gone, one day shy of her 14th gotcha day. You know how to leave us wanting more, Chuckmuffin.