Current me, bringing news of the future to myself in say, the mid ’90s: I have terrible news for you, When you get older, you’ll lose some detail vision. Past me, a sweet summer child: Oh no! Am I going to be blind? Am I going to need huge glasses? Future news: Nah, it’s fine, they’re making thinner lenses all the time. Plus progressives will come out so by the time you need bifocals, you won’t even have a line across your eyes. They can correct almost everything. You’ll be able to read just fine, but you won’t be able to count the fingers in a group photo. Past me: That’s fine. Why would anyo ..read more

What if someday I made a cool indie game, that would be amazing! What if then I finished it and released it, and then I had a game out in the world? What if I did it again and I had multiple games finished and for sale? What if I somehow had a big enough place to store and organize the stock of all my games? What if I had enough local shows to need banners and tablecloths and business cards? And what if I had enough mail orders to need packing and mailing supplies? And what if I got enough sales on Amazon to need special Bezos barcode stickers? What if I spent my whole freaking day organizing ..read more

It’s a typical day at school, where I’m observing a junior teacher and helping her with her ESL lesson plans. I’m giving her some suggestions, some conversation prompts, some easily-modified printables for activities, and other general resources that I happened to have in my GDrive. “Your activities are so interactive!” she said, “They’re like games for English!” “That’s probably because I design card games when I’m not teaching ..read more

When we bought a fixer-upper,  we knew it would require work, and so it was kind of funny when one day in the fall, the closet collapsed and all my clothes fell down. I  packed up everything that I wasn’t actively wearing. Just for a few weeks, you know, until we put up new shelves. But see, the closet looked like a wreck after the shelf was pulled out of the wall, so I took down all the weird bits of shelf, spackled over the holes and repainted the closet. It was boring and stupid. Then I measured the closet and worked out what size closet bar would fit in a weird trapezoidal closet ..read more

Found this in the Little Free Library by the beach near us. Harold: That’s perfect for you! Me: Yeah! Wait… how do you know that? Do you know this Roman mystery series*? Do you know what a Vestal is? Harold: I mean, I know what ancient columns look like. *I’m a dedicated SPQR and Marcus Corvinus fan, but have only read a couple Gordianus books ..read more

Lies and Weddings, by Kevin Kwan, contains the same kind of frothy lifestyle fun as the Crazy Rich Asians trilogy. Basically everyone in this novel is constantly wearing something beautiful and constantly eating something delicious. There’s social climbing, secret relationships, deep love, manipulation, huge financial secrets, and inner discoveries, with nods to classic British novels. It’s a manners novel, and a comedy, and an inheritance drama, all at once. The three adult Gresham siblings are fabulously wealthy and privileged children of an English earl and a Hong Kong ..read more

What You Are Looking for is in the Library, by Michiko Aoyama, and translated by Alison Watts, is a book of sweet and gentle interlocking short stories around a library where the reading recommendations are always just what each reader needed to find. This book has the overall vibe of the gentle healing of Before The Coffee Gets Cold, but with a magical realism hint, instead of full-on time-travel fiction. It has all the quiet warmth and gentle realizations of a good Maeve Binchy novel, too. The basic Hatori Community House offers everyday resources like computer classes and mee ..read more

So we moved to our new apartment in the spring, and it’s constantly weird to me how this has put my life on easy mode. When you rent here, you always need to pay first, last and security deposit, so you have to pay $4500 to move into a $1500 apartment. There can be broker fees, application fees, sometimes there’s a fee for the management company to run a credit check, which is the absolute peak of scammery, paying extra for a credit score ding to prove you have good enough credit to make monthly rent payments that won’t affect your credit score. Now that we own our home, well, we own a percent ..read more

Part 1 A few weeks ago, I strained my back moving furniture, and man, if you ever want to set off a midlife crisis, hurt yourself doing something completely ordinary, so you have to spend the next couple days lying perfectly still on a heating pad and thinking about your own mortality. I’m trying to exercise more to keep this from happening again, but you guys, there is so much garbage weight loss culture in all exercise/fitness activities. The exercise I want is “do this to stay mobile in 30-40 years” and “train over the winter for longer hikes next summer” and I simply DGAF about fitting int ..read more

Jason Rekulak’s The Impossible Fortress is full of fun ’80s game-programming nostalgia, but that’s not the only reason to read it. This world of mix tapes and floppy disks definitely unlocks retro memories, but the overall story is fresh and original, with YA vibes. In the late 1980s, teenage Billy and his two best friends, Alf and Clark, spend time at Billy’s while his mom is out working, the three friends rent movies to re-watch the sexy scenes and having meander debates about who would win in hypothetical fights. I felt like I definitely went to school with these guys. I ..read more