Weekly Bump: Weeks 26/27
With the holiday, and how overwhelmed I have been returning to work during our busiest season, I decided to combine two weeks of updates into a single post. For those in the States, hope you have a great 4th of July weekend.
I've had a pretty great, but stressful, couple of weeks. I continue to be able to do more and more post-surgery, and went to the gym a couple of times this week. I'm mostly still just walking, but am starting to work on my mobility and doing some band and body weight strength stuff. Some really sore days.
Last Saturday, we went to an Atlanta United game (We have season tickets.) for the first time since before my spinal surgery. Unlike pre-surgery, I was able to stand for the whole game. The game ended in a pretty amazing play that's worth watching if you haven't seen it. I've never seen anything like it.
I finished "There Is No Antimemetics Division" by qntm. I found this science fiction book to be quite a mind expander, very inventive, has a certain modern-Lovecraft vibe to it too. Highly recommend. You can find more information on qntm's site. I'm going to be reading everything else by him.
I also finished "Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania" by Erik Larsen, the second book of his I've read in a few weeks. This one was great, a lot about the time period, German U-boats, the beginning of WWI and the US's entrance into the conflict. I really didn't know much about the Lusitania going in, so I soaked up a lot of new information. This won't be the last Erik Larsen book I will be reading this year.
I watched this Salt Hank video about making Anthony Bourdain's favorite sandwich, which led me to make this sandwich, and now it's one of my favorites, too. I've made it a couple of times, and I have to say that it will be a permanent part of my lunch rotation moving forward. I wish I had known to go and try it where he discovered it in São Paulo. I was there two years ago.
We finished watching The Bear: Season Three. I wish there was more that I hadn't watched yet, but that's all there is for now. I couldn't be more enthusiastic about this show. The music selection and how the music is folded into the episodes is just so good. Here's an unofficial Spotify Playlist. Finally, watching episode six, the "Napkins" episode, I was struck by how it is, in part, an homage to Groundhog Day, one of my all time favorite movies. (If you're familiar with Groundhog Day, and you watch this episode, you'll get it.)
It's funny, I have been meaning to do a quick writeup about the Boox Palma here as part of one of these posts, and in the last couple of weeks it feels like its press footprint has just exploded. Bump favorite David Pierce had a nice writeup that referenced the same Craig Mod post that led me to buy one. I purchased mine a couple of weeks before I went in for my surgery, in April. I thought I might want something smaller than a regular Kindle in the hospital and during my recovery, and that's exactly how I started using mine. Since then, I have been carrying mine in my sling bag everywhere I go. It's a great device for the pool, the waiting room, or while waiting in line, and the battery lasts.
Having this device has made me realize how frustrated I am with the lack of any kind of innovation with the Kindles in recent years. I do love my Paperwhite, but there's so much more that Amazon could be doing. More competition in this market is great, and I hope the press that the Palma is getting turns into more readers.