What I've Been Doing in January: Animorphs and New Stuff

    Now that it’s February, I suppose its high time I share my goals for this year. Obviously, I have some of the regular goals: workout, eat better, get a better job, move out, yada yada yada. But I also established a yearly theme, an idea purported by CGP Grey.

    My yearly theme is this: To fix my relationship with nostalgia. Here’s the thing: During the last 6 months of 2020, not only were the vast majority of books I read rereads, but I don’t think I watched a single new show. No, instead I binged through several shows that I’d seen several times previously.

    Obviously I enjoy revisiting media that I’ve already ingested. I find a great deal of value in it, which is why I do it as often as I do. But I fear that in my perusal of things past, I’m missing out on new things. The 500 unread books that sit on my shelf gathering dust. The cultural touchstones that I’ve ignored.

    I broke up my yearly theme, since it is rather specific for a theme, into four seasonal, or quarterly, themes. The them for the first quarter is New Stuff. Either reading new books (or at the very list cycling books from my tbr shelf to my read shelf), new television shows, new movies, new music.

    In pursuit of that, what I read in January: On the Clock by Emily Guendelsberger; the Return, the Diversion, and the Ultimate, all by K.A. Applegate; Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley; and the Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White.

    To be honest, only two of those books were entirely new to me: On the Clock and the Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein. And only two moved from my tbr shelf to my read shelf: Frankenstein and the Dark Descent. And yes, the Animorphs books maybe should not even count towards my yearly reading goal. And yet, I’m quite satisfied with the ratio. It’s far better than any months’ reading from the latter half of 2020 (mostly dominated by my Animorphs reread; and yes, I do realize how I sound talking about the Animorphs).

    Lets move on to movies: I actually had a secondary goal for this year, to simply watch more movies. Possibly at the cost of watching TV shows, but we’ll work on that particular ratio during another season. I am proud to say, though, that I’m fairly certain I watched more movies in January than I had in the whole of 2020, at six. The movies were Like a Boss (2020), The Hunger Games (2012), Enola Holmes (2020), Kevin Hart’s Guide to Black History (2019), Frank Herbert’s Children of Dune miniseries (2003), and Pieces of a Woman (2020). Four of those movies were new to me! The same four movies were released within the last two years. For someone who is often years behind in media consumption, this is something I’m quite proud of.

    I did also discover some new music via spotify. A standout song is Svrcina’s “Meet Me on the Battlefield”, as well as watch some new TV: I’m slowly but surely working my way through Kim’s Convenience Store, binging a couple of episodes once or twice a week which is nice. I also started watching Wandavision, because I did.

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    Which leads me to my plans for February: I would like to power through the last four Animorphs books, put this reread behind me, so that I can start another reread with some friends I’ve managed to convince to read Animorphs alongside me. I also plan to watch a MCU movie per day in February, which will allow me to catch myself entirely up on the MCU while giving some wiggle room to skip days if I’m particularly busy. This means, however, that the only “new” movies I’m likely to watch in the coming month are the MCU movies I’ve skipped, which will be a far narrower ratio. I’m making my peace with that, though.

An Intimate Look at a Twenty-Somethings Grocery List

There are few things so painfully emblematic of being a mid-twenty something than the grocery list pictured above. So, for the sake of shits and giggles, lets take a minute to examine this list and what it says about me.


Item number 1: Pumpkin Cream Cold Brew. For the slower folks in the audience, it is now obvious that I am a white woman. And do you know what? This drink was delicious, 100% worth the 2.50 I spent on it.


Item number 2: Flirt with the guy in the deli. TBH, this whole list was sort of an excuse to go to the store so that I could DO THIS THING. He wasn’t there.


Item number 3: yogurt. I get these store-brand raspberry flavored yogurts with chocolate chips in the flip-top. They’re really cheap and yummy. Also, *healthier* than ice cream, so you can tell I’ve started tracking my food again.


Item number 4: bolthouse smoothies. Yep, I sure did misspell that when I wrote this list. See above: I’m tracking my food again. The only flavors I like are the daily greens and blueberry goodness, and if I’m short on either veggies or a fruit one day, I’ll just chug one of these and put it into my app.


Item number 5: goldfish. Because I am still a child at heart, I get the colors.


Item number 6: raisins. Not as healthy a choice as you think, because I got the dark-chocolate covered ones to satisfy my daily craving for chocolate.


Item number 7: popcorn. The goldfish and raisins were part of a buy five save five sale (the only reason I let myself by the raisins. They’re 3.49 without the sale!) and I needed two more items to get the sale. So I got the smartfood sea salt flavor popcorn.


Item number 8: parsley. I actually got out to my car and realized I’d forgotten this! It’s for a recipe I wanted to try, so I ran back in to get it.


It just goes to show how much one can learn from a grocery list. What does your grocery list look like? What can you tell about yourself form it, and what could others tell about you from it? How do you think mine will look different a year or five years from now?

Abiogenesis; or, The Beginning of Something New

Abiogenesis bugs me.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, abiogenesis is “the idea that life arose from nonlife”. Sure, okay. Life started here on earth, right? We know this, we’re the living proof. But let’s, for a minute, just break down the word abiogenesis.

The prefix a- means “without” or “not”. It indicates the absence of whatever it is prefacing. ANd then there's “bio” originating from Greek and meaning “relating to life”. And finally, there's genesis, which means a beginning of something.

absence + life + beginning

Roughly, we’re talking about the absence of life beginning life.

I like the word, really I do. I think it’s a great word that indicates its meaning really, really well.

What I don’t like is having no idea or explanation for abiogenesis. At some point in earth’s past, there was not life. And then, there was. Why? What happened? There aren’t even really any theories to explain it. Even if we don’t know for sure (which, to be clear, we rarely do) I want an idea that I can throw my weight behind and say (You know? That sounds right enough? I’ll believe it and my narrative will make sense with it.”

That’s what I want. I want a story.

The thing is, the rocks I collected as a kid aren’t suddenly going to become alive in the box where they sit under my bed. That’s not in the nature of the things. Things that aren’t in motion don’t start moving without causes. That’s just not how it works.

So, I’m starting a new blog. This might be the beginning of a new life. And it might seem to be coming from nowhere to the outside observer. But I can tell you, there are a myriad of things behind the scenes that are causing this. So maybe that’s the point of abiogenesis? A lot of little things added up over a really long time until at some point, inorganic compounds were moved to life.

Oh well, it’ll do for now.