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Today’s lunchtime reading. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it but decided to dive in anyway. • I have also recently read @rachelhengqp’s funny and piercing debut short story in the New Yorker, “Before the Valley”, and watched the film Brokeback Mountain
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This week’s firsts: discovering Carolina all-spice in a nearby garden (pictured), making ginger lime tofu shrimp by mashing up two different recipes, applying for grants and residencies for the first time in a long while, learning that Hungarian white win
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Shadow portrait with the streetscape near where I live. I believe that flowering tree is a Bradford pear. • After this, there was ice cream in the sun, a walk around Jamaica Pond and the spotting of a rather large mushroom growing between the roots of a r
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Getting up close with magnolias on my friend’s lawn to see if I can smell them fully (I detected something but not the full aroma). More importantly, it was warm enough to sit outside for a couple hours this evening with cold Chardonnay, chips, cheese and
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From two weekends ago: a shadow self-portrait on the cusp of spring slash on the cusp of Aries. One year ago, Boston entered lockdown. This spring feels lighter, brighter—here we go.
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Well, this hasn’t happened in years: I collected this book from the library this morning and finished it in one sitting tonight. Guess it was the right read for the mood I’m in. Nutshell review: haunting, sparse and affecting. • #amreading
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The air is still crisp when it’s sunny, and next week it’s back to temperatures dancing above and below 0°C—but today the birds were chattering pleasantly, I had lunch outdoors with a friend (first time we’ve seen each other maskless in four months!), and
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Mushrooms while hiking with @ashleyelizawilliams on the Robert Frost Trail in Amherst last week.
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Missed a post-vacation post yesterday because life. Feeling a little like this treelet, trying to stand tall in the snow. The trip seems like it was a month ago.
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It was cloudy during most of my cabin stay, but towards the end of the afternoon hike, the sun made a brief appearance.
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Winter hiking near the cabin, with the aid of a hand-drawn map. Not recorded except in memory: the solid, stern taps of a woodpecker doing its thing.
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After work, I grabbed a few essentials before tomorrow’s snowstorm: milk, oats, red wine—and lilies.
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New team member at the bookstore. Sammie enjoys sniffing new people, investigating tangled cords and cables, and trotting over to see what I’ve heated in the microwave for lunch. Snow, not so much (she’s from Puerto Rico).
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When you’re middle-aged and rewatching ET: The Extra Terrestrial and finally get what it was all about.
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Crappy photo from yesterday at work, when we were having fun stress-testing the auto-redacting function on the texting app we use for communicating with customers. We only realised what the app was doing when we entered the title of Lindy West’s book, “Sh
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What a beauty! I hope the exposed heartwood doesn’t mean the tree is at any structural risk. Spotted in Cambridge along Memorial Drive, which was closed to traffic over the Christmas long weekend—perfect for a ramble before sundown.
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I’m not religious, but it seems worthwhile to mark the end of the year in any climate zone. Or maybe I’m just recalling the extended bliss of the six-week year-end school holidays I grew up with in Singapore. • Speaking of which, it’s already lurching tow
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After I started working at the bookstore, I told my boss that I lived close enough that I could make it in even in a snowstorm. Case in point today: Boston got 12.5 inches of snow, and I had no trouble stomping over to work. • We didn’t have any customers
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For @melanderings 💖 • This morning, my friend who lives nearby suggested we make the most of the sunshine before a snowstorm arrives later this week. So I played hooky from emails/paperwork and hit the arboretum with her. Hardly anyone was
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Holiday season = mad days at the bookstore job. Yay for people buying books for their loved ones from indie businesses! • I don’t know how to make an image that conveys the constant task-switching, question-answering, needs-anticipating swirl of activity
