Week Notes 2025-02

Week Notes for January 6 - 12, 2025

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Things this week

This was my first week back to work of the new year, after a full two weeks off. Monday and Tuesday were challenging but in a good way, kind of? Also, I've been in a more "read-only" mode rather than "read & write", choosing to consume more media than to create/write anything. I feel okay about that.
I don't think I mentioned this last week - I started a new bullet journal. I'm no longer a fan of stone paper and I didn't have many pages left so I abandoned it and went to the cheap Leuchtturm I found at a thrift store last month. I'm now free to use whatever pen or pencil I choose; stone paper was terrible for anything but ballpoint.
It's been a while since I've talked about folding and organizing clothes, but I swear by the YouTube channel I mentioned before: Organizing TV. I can't remember which video it's in but he has a method of folding t-shirts that involves first folding a portion of the shirt underneath, then folding the arms to the middle, then in thirds to make a square, and tuck the shirt into that fold you made. Keeps the shirt together, and makes it easy to store and organize. Love it.
My brother got me (and my wife, but I took my friend instead) tickets to see Acclaim Pro Wrestling, a local wrestling show. The event was "New Year's Wrestle-ution 13" - so I guess they've been around 13 years? Anyway it was fun, lots of great characters. We were packed into a Polish veterans legion, it was neat.
We bought a new kitchen cabinet. We've been wanting to improve our storage and functionality and we did it. We went with Ikea's ÖNNERUP and while it is massive and took several hours to put together, it is exactly what we wanted.

Health Notes

I finished the year on a down note: not logging anything in Cronometer after Dec 21. I began 2025 on a stronger note, properly logging things (complete daily log) as of Jan 4th. I'm trying to keep my intake at or below my daily calorie goal. I'm no longer keeping my 'calories' page on Bear Blog updated, it served its purpose.
- THAT SAID, I feel really good. I can see the physical changes (it's easier to see when you take a random look at Facebook's memories feature), and my wife sees it too. My weight is somewhat steady at the moment, which is fine. I have a goal number I want to hit but I don't have a timeline set for that, so I won't be discouraged when I don't hit it. The personal training sessions are fantastic, and I'm looking forward to what another year of training will do for our softball season.
I've had this rash on my ring finger for quite a few months now, exacerbated by the dry winter weather. It makes it irritating to wear my ring on most days. Our rings are due for cleaning & inspection, so maybe that will help. In the meantime I'm using copious amounts of hand cream and taking days without wearing it.

Tech & Blog Stuff

My music podcast domain, https://alternativeairwaves.com, is up for renewal in early February. The wordpress.com subscription expires end of March this year. I face two decisions: let the website and podcast finally die; or renew the domain, and start writing about music again (and possibly move the blog to https://micro.blog - thanks Brandon for your post highlighting it). I have a few weeks to think about it the domain, and a few months for the blog host.
I have quite a few photos from the last three or four weeks that I'd love to post on my photo blog but I haven't even taken them off my camera or phone. I have a day off on Monday, so I think I'm going to spend some time sorting that out.
So far this year I'm continuing my blogging workflow experimentation. I started the year with Notesnook, but it doesn't quite fit my criteria: a cross-platform notes app that has a web editor, and allows me to preserve markdown notation (e.g. I can type **bold text** and it won't convert to bold text, stripping any markdown instructions when I go to paste in Bear Blog or for my week notes). Notesnook does this partially by allowing me to type in a code block, but it's visually distracting as it lacks word wrap. Today I'm writing this in SimpleNote which was my solution until captchcas provided unnecessary friction; but I discovered that logging in with my email instead of WordPress may remove the captchca requirement, so back to SimpleNote again.
I'm experimenting with when I post these week notes - Monday, or Sunday? Today I'm trying Sunday.
I was going to record a podcast for this week but I might end up doing it tomorrow. See above note about spending several hours putting together an Ikea cabinet.

Media

Not a song I would assume would make my "2025" music playlist, but "Pink Pony Club" by Chappell Roan earned its way on there. As I type this I just heard it again, and I love the piano intro.
I finished reading Swing Kings by Jared Diamond. Based on the beginning of the book I thought the author might break down what makes a good swing a little more in-depth but the book isn't quite about the actual process, but the people - which is fine. But I also had some problems with repetition of information in the book, and when I read in the acknowledgements that it was expanded from a Wall Street Journal article I understand why I had these problems. Nevertheless it was an interesting read and I learned some things from it.

srgower dot com

Week Notes 2025-02

Things this week

Health Notes

Tech & Blog Stuff

Media

Things I Made This Week

Links