2025-W32: A weekly review

I've always liked reading other people's weekly review posts. I've tried writing them in the past with limited success because it seemed that something always came up. I'm going to give it another shot again given the new-ish state of this blog.

It's been quite the week, starting with this blog.

A set of events at the beginning of the week, along with some emotional overload a couple days prior, all shook me out of a stupor and helped me decide to pull myself out of the emotional hole I had been digging for myself. No more trying to hide while still trying to be online (not the best idea I've had). I'm tired of worrying about what people in tiny, far-flung corners of the Internet think so I'm back at my previous blog address. I've recreated my micro.blog account. I'm back on the Fediverse via Ghost and micro.blog. I'm back on Bluesky. All this to say — my flag is planted, everyone else be damned.

That emotional overload? Yeah that sucked. Hard. A decade of pressure came to a head last Saturday and I wasn't able to push it aside anymore — and it was exactly what was necessary. So while it sucked I'm glad it happened, because I needed it to happen to gain some clarity for the first time in a very long time.

OK enough of the drama.

📺 What I've been watching

I've been watching the latest season of "Drag Race" with my daughter. This show is really something. The talent of the Drag Queens on the show is just phenomenal. I've really, really enjoyed watching this show. Inspired me to donate to the ACLU Drag Defense Fund. You should too.

Season 3 is out now and I'm catching up with the first few episodes. I love this show. It's so well done, and such a similar vibe to the original Star Trek, if you're a Trek fan it's hard not to enjoy this show. I'm planning on writing up something about the last episode I watched called "Wedding Bell Blues" that seems to have a return of a character from the original series.

Season 3 of "Foundation" also started up recently on Apple TV+ and I've got to say that this season is the best so far. The cast has really settled in and the production value is as good as ever. I think the writing is far better this season. Great stuff and highly recommended.

📚 What I've been reading

Not enough book reading this summer 🤣 but I did start reading "Abundance" from Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. This one seems to be causing a bit of a stir in left-wing circles, likely because Klein and Thompson are on to something that stinks about left-wing politics. Hard to look at ourselves in the mirror sometimes.

🇫🇷 I'm a huge fan of all things French. I love the "Bruno: Chief of Police" series. I love Alan Furst's World War II spy novels set in France. I needed something new and came across Mark Pryor's "Hugo Marston" novels. So far the first one is pretty good. Hard to judge against the other authors as I haven't gotten far enough but it's enough that I'm enjoying the first book.

📝 What I posted

A couple of posts this week but mostly just republished stuff I had unpublished prior.

Everything else

I started taking a look at Tana Pro. I was in the beta when Tana was first released to the public and it's not an easy note-taking tool to wrap your head around. They've made a lot of progress since then so I wanted to give it a look. I will definitely be writing up my thoughts on it once my 14-day trial is complete.

Honestly not much else was going on. It's been a long week at work with this having been my week of on-call. We've had a stretch of really nice weather in Chicagoland but that is ending this week with the return of the heat. I'm looking forward to Fall already. 🍃🍂 On that note..."pumpkin spice" has been rolling out in the stores. I expect the Starbucks Fall menu should be out in a few weeks. 🎃🫚☕️ season. 🤣

Lastly, the NFL pre-season starts this week. I've set up a subscription with NFL+ to be able to watch a bunch of the pre-season and the first Bears game is on Sunday. I'm totally stoked. 🏈