2025-12-11
Two weeks before Christmas is a good time for the second post of the year!
It’s been a bumpy one. But the horse latitudes of 2025 are now mostly behind us and we’re looking toward something brighter. In the new year, Ciel starts a new role better suited to his many talents. Better for brain and body. For me, the plan is to start getting out there with my writing. Pitching to places and entering competitions and all that anxiety-inducing stuff. Good anxiety. Which I’ve been told is a thing.
Last weekend I finished The Mysterious Benedict Society. The writing was the main draw for me. The four kids are smart, anxious in a way I haven’t really seen before, and they are refreshingly treated as capable by the adults around them. It also has a cool Wes Anderson-ish visual style. And there’s also Kristen Schaal, and Tony Hale playing twins. Of course, like all good shows produced for streaming, it’s been cancelled. But at least it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger. It’s on iView here in Australia.
Edit: Bafflingly it’s been scrubbed from Disney+. So watch it wherever you can, I guess.
Just a couple books from the near-toppling TBR pile. Little Women and Little Men by Louisa May Alcott graduated to bookshelf Continuing with the books I somehow haven’t read, this morning I started on Treasure Island. I think it’s about pirates.
There was also this excellent article about a music festival setup to support Native American youth mental health, Heavy Metal Healing On The Blackfeet Nation.
At the start of the year, I thought it would be a good idea to organise and convert my CD collection to mp3. So far, after organising and culling (and donating) and ripping these past months, I’ve done... exactly half. Anyway, I’ve been using the perfectly-named abcde for ripping and Picard for tagging. They are nerdy and work well. Just like me. The first part anyway.
Cat: Very
Writing: Somewhat
Hands: Perhaps