Last updated:
A field of mostly purple crocuses, with some white and yellow; taken February 2023.
The crocuses have started to return. This picture is from Feb 2023.

Writing

Readings coming up!

I was recently invited to become a host for Labyrinth’s weekly (Monday) open mic; my first duties are in April.

After almost two years, I’ve finally started submitting to literary journals again. Even though my process is pretty streamlined, it’s still so tedious & frustrating. And even harder to find outlets that don’t charge submission fees.

Upon revisiting the blog entry that details my localhost setup, I notice that it's very out of date. I now use Jekyll exclusively to generate both my websites & my submission documents. The new setup is pretty close to [the one I predicted](/dreamCommonSub#page-level-variables). Although I symlinked the poems to the repos instead of using Git submodules.

Languages

Current Duolingo streak: 2,083 days (as of )
I'm on a 2000 day language learning streak
My Duolingo streak dating back to June 2018 (no Streak Freezes used)

Daily Spanish lessons on Duolingo. Joining group classes at Taalhuis in April. Planning a trip to the Cervantes Institute in Spain for an intensive course later in 2024.

Other goings on

At some point recently, Font Awesome updated their library, so my include for icons doesn’t work anymore. I don’t think I’ll restructure my blog or replace the old icons.

Sarah & I visited Eindhoven around NYE, mostly to visit Sprout coffee, which we tasted at last year’s Amsterdam Coffee Festival. We were fortunate to walk in as they were doing a cupping for a small group; after they finished, we were invited to taste. We brought several bags home.

As an Xmas gift, Sarah booked us a spot in a mending & sewing class in January. I’ve wanted to learn for years, but couldn’t convince myself to take the time to figure it out, so it was a wonderful gift.

I finally bought my own bicycle! I had been renting a Swapfiets since November 2022 because I was unwilling to pay for a new bike, but also not inclined to travel around the city test riding a bunch of used bikes from Marktplaats or Facebook Marketplace. Then I became aware of a site called cheapassbikes whose business model is to buy unclaimed bikes from the fietsdepot and refurbish them. The refurbishing was a bit half-assed—I had to get the tires untwisted and replace both sets of brakes—but they reimbursed me. So I have a decent 7-speed city bike for a fraction of what it would have cost new. I’m becoming a real Dutch boy.

Recent media diet

Articles Fifteen Years of Free Time, Anders Carlson-Wee
Should Modern Newspapers Publish Poetry?, Ethan Lau
Books & Poems The Apple Trees at Olema, Robert Hass
A Little Book on Form, Robert Hass
Love, An Index, Rebecca Lindenberg
The Word for World is Forest, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Best of It, Kay Ryan
Games n/a
Movies n/a
Music Heartbreak Hits, Theo Katzman
Ingénue, k.d. lang
48 Variations for Two Pianos, John McGuire
KINFOLK: Postcards from Everywhere, Nate Smith
Podcasts n/a
TV The Diplomat
A Murder at the End of the World
Learn about Now pages.
Blog • Links • Now • TGP