Photo of a lighted stage in the dark, with the Rush Roll the Bones art behind

Rush in Phoenix, July 27, 2017

Friends, it’s Friday afternoon espresso time. Join me, won’t you?

The whole family played Untitled Goose Game together yesterday. We wrecked that little village, folks. Wrecked it. 🎮 HONK

PC case with GPU and fans, and a Pearl Amiibo standing in the case

Succombing to my kiddo’s desires for a new way to play video games (secretly my own desire, too), we built this mid-range PC for Christmas. (I’m not telling the Xbox or my MacBook yet) It’s great fun to have access to my whole Steam library, and was really fun to build! 🎮

Photo of a bowl of dark brown broth with noodles, steak and cilantro

I’m calling this New Years Day pho a success! We enjoyed this amid an afternoon and evening of board games with friends.

Hey, I saw Star Wars last night so y’all can talk about it now, thanks for waiting.

Photo of a computer chip on a circuit board, covered in gray dry paste.

I spent a couple hours of New Years Eve taking apart my Xbox One X to clean up and replace this mess of thermal paste that was making the fan sound like an aircraft carrier. It even worked when I put it back together and turned it on.

Photo of an orange and blue sunrise reflected in a car windshield

Happy New Year

New Years Day pho broth production commencing.

Photo of Pink Floyd album Wish You Were Here.

Picked up some good albums at the hometown record shop this week. (Not pictured: New Pornographers’ Brill Bruisers and Neko Case’s Hell On.)

Photo of a cappuccino in a blue mug

Visiting family this year was really great. There’s also nothing like that first cup of coffee in your own kitchen, the early morning after returning home. ❄️☕️

Photo of a red tamale and a fried egg on a light blue plate

Christmastime at Mom and Dad’s means tamales and eggs for breakfast every day.

BRB perpetrating a hoax on my child.

Black dog laying down and looking out a sliding door

Gunnison is pretty preoccupied with the wild turkeys that come in under the bird feeders.

Photo of two-lane highway with light snow on each side and a cloudy sky

Northward in the winter.

The inside of an espresso machine and my hand holding spare parts

It’s super satisfying to open up this espresso machine and replace a couple of parts. This steam assembly wasn’t right, but the steam knob stem was perfect and made a huge, immediate improvement. The utterly precise fit of the components is so impressive.

My son just referred to my bookshelf of CDs as my “old timey music collection” so I’m dead now.

Instagram keeps showing me an ad for a dog camera that I can view through an app. The app can also be used to remotely eject a dog treat for her to eat, and can you imagine how rapidly my dog would demolish that thing when left alone with it?

Oh dear, I’ve reinstalled emacs and org-mode at work again.

Screenshot of Siri suggesting a 3:50am alarm

Siri totally gets my Wednesday morning jam.

a snow-laden tree in front of a set of shop windows

We got downtown yesterday for some shopping and a walk in the wintery weather after our big storm on Friday. 📷

🎮 My kiddo has watched me play a lot of Destiny 2 and this week we decided he was big enough to start up his own Guardians. I have to say it has been pretty fun and special to watch him start his Hunter, work through the first missions and then dive into playing with me.

A bottle of beer next to a tray of cheese

More from Thanksgiving: Pirate Bomb paired wonderfully with our cheese plate. 🍺🧀

Photo of roasted sweet potatoes

These smashed sweet potatoes with chile infused honey butter were more than a little life-changing, friends.

Just snapped a photo of a journal page from last Thanksgiving, saved it to a Day One entry so I could caption it, printed it, cut and taped it into my current journal as a Thanksgiving reflection for this year. So that’s what I’m up to tonight, apparently.