Life is Life-y

November was quite the month. We had adventure, death, illness, new opportunities, rescues, failures, memorials, construction, setbacks, holidays, laughter, games, generosity, anniversaries, surgeries, and recoveries. To borrow a phrase from one of our closest friends and mentors, "life is really life-y right now."

No joke, it's been hard. Really hard. We've been struggling so much just to keep up that my diet, exercise, and overall routine has completely gone out the window. I'm just now—just barely—starting to see a glimmer of "normal" again. So here we are, my weekly newsletter is more of a weekly-ish newsletter... and that's just fine.

I could probably write a small book on the journey that was last month, but for now, I'm going to cut to the fun stuff. There will be more to say about November 2023, but I need a little time to process and make sense of it all before I share more here. In the meantime, thank you for all the love, kindness, and support. <3

Curated

📖 I picked up The Comfort Book the week Bender died and it's been exactly what I needed. Perfect for when you are going through a tough time, in search of hope, or just need a little encouragement.

🚀 I've been using the Raycast mac app for a long time and it just keeps getting better and better. They roll out great new features at a consistent (and fast) clip—the latest being a nifty camera feature for checking your hair before a Zoom call.

🇹🇷 Sabah has been one of my favorite brands—and shoes—for years. They make beautiful handmade leather goods out of Turkey and El Paso, TX. For our anniversary I recently got Miranda a pair of their bronze shearling babas and a travel backgammon board (in Denali green). Both are absolutely stunning.

♥️ Alex Dobrenko's Both Are True is one of my favorite newsletters and his latest piece "i went mostly offline and then all this happened" is one of his best yet. Please go read the whole thing, but here's a preview: "Maybe it isn’t FOMO we’re afraid of but it’s opposite - fear of hanging in (fohi™) - the seemingly unbearable weight of sitting in the mundane truth of the present moment, full of so much nothing that we can’t help but experience the truths of a life: our knees hurt, someone we love is gone, and everyone in the AMC Americana bathroom is being updated in real time on the status of our bowels."

👶 We started watching Classical Baby with Zephyr while he was sick this week and it's a little dated now but still so beautiful and wonderful. Timeless music + great visuals + quality cuddles = exactly what we've needed lately.

💊 I've been following Loyal for a while and was SO excited to see their news this week that they have a promising lead for medication that can extend the lifespan for large dogs. It's never felt fair to me that big dogs don't live as long, and now there's some science to show that 1/ it is indeed not fair and 2/ maybe we can fix this.

🐶 Speaking of dogs, Matt and Kate sent me Dog Songs when Bender passed away (along with crucial advice not to read it all at once). It's hard and sad and beautiful and perfect.

🎓 This thread on academics and college is one of the best takes I've seen on the issue in a long time. He doesn't pull any punches: "[The broken system] will collapse when the degrees are acknowledged to be worthless. The primary consumers of the degrees are just the companies that use them to screen, while the primary funders are families and their children. Subsidizing selection bias at scale."

☕ Every stainless steel coffee mug I've ever had (lately a MiiR Flip Traveler) inevitably develops a gross coffee stain/film/crud that is unreasonably difficult to clean. But recently I took some advice from the internet and bought some Puro Espresso Machine Cleaning Powder. WOW. All it took was a little scoop of this in some hot water + a 30 minute soak and it looks brand new.

🦁 One of Zephyr's new favorite books is this stunning version of The Lion and the Mouse. There are almost no words so every telling of the story is a little different as we narrate the illustrations on each page. They draw him in completely in a way no other book has.

👾 My newest guilty pleasure is GUBBINS... a wildly addictive Scrabble-like word game. Sorry not sorry.

Thanks, sincerely, for reading, listening, and being there for me. And as always, if you have thoughts, reactions, or feedback, please reply—I'd love to hear from you.

Until next week (probably),
Alex