Weekly recap of my ritual of existence in this liminal space called life. (See here for more info.)
- Weather
It felt like we had typically variable winter-into-spring weather this week, with highs ranging from 55.6°F to 28.4°F, averaging 40.7°F, and lows ranging from 14.2°F to 31.1, averaging 24.3°F. Almost two inches of rain fell this week, the majority of it on Monday but also some on Tues., Fri., Sat., and Sun (and a little light snow as well). Also common this time of year were several windy days. Snow is melting.
- Beginnings/Firsts
First day of Spring on Thursday, with the vernal equinox at 10:46 EDT. 🍃🪻🌱🌷☀️
I saw my first chipmunks of the year this week in our yard, including one that looked like it was wearing vermillion pants.
We had our first deer of the year this week, seen on the motion camera on Saturday.
- Wild Things (Flora, Fauna, Fungi) in addition to others elsewhere in this post
TOP row: fox; blue jay. 2nd row: red-bellied woodpecker; white-breasted nuthatch. 3rd row: downy woodpecker; hairy woodpecker. 4th row: tufted titmouse; fox sparrow. 5th row: both mourning doves. 6th row: red squirrel; male house finch+female purple finch peeking. 7th row: make house finch; Carolina wren. 8th row: female purple finch+goldfinch; American tree sparrow+goldfinch. 9th row: three male purple finches; black-capped chickadee. BOTTOM row: male purple finch, goldfinches, and two pine siskins.
Female purple finch triptych:
- Wandering
I walked outside five days this week, longer walks in town on four days and around the lake on Thursday. I barely drove anywhere.
in town
lake
- Curiosity & Discoveries
I’m amused when I look through the motion camera pics and see photos like this.
- Creating
It’s funny, because I feel like I was creative this week, but I think that’s because my dreams were so wild and imaginative and also because when I was awake some poem lines popped into my head a couple of times, but I didn’t write them down. I’ve also been thinking a lot about how improbable it is for any of us to be alive on this rock, whose surface is 71% water, which is travelling 1.3 million miles per hour through outer space in the midst of a universe that might or might not be infinite, and thinking about this makes my brain feel expansive.
- Repairing and Maintaining the human(s), the cat, and the cars
Human: I worked out four times (4 hours) this week, stretching, dancing, strengthening. I walked more than 11,000 steps on five days, more than 14,000 steps on two, and a high of 15,385 steps on Tuesday. I participated in Dharma Sunday for two+ hours with Lama Liz leading meditation and teaching on “What the Sky Paints – Discovering Life as Innate Expression.” I got my hair cut on Tuesday morning and my husband had his encutment on Friday. We ping-ponged for a total of 2,5 hours this week.
- Nesting
Cleaning/Maintenance: I did a load of clothes laundry on Tuesday, cleaned the shower niche and watered the houseplants on Wed., and swept the kitchen and the family room on Sunday.
Yard: My husband pruned the two peach trees on Saturday.
Financial/Admin: We met with an estate planner on Zoom for a half-hour on Tuesday and later that day picked up a copy of an Advance Directive booklet/form from the hospital so we can update our health proxies.
Supplies: I ordered a pair of Darn Tough socks with free shipping on Thursday, and I bought a shirt at the local consignment store on Tuesday.
Food: We had leftover cacio e pepe with artichoke hearts, roasted asparagus, and shrimp on Monday, along with raw carrots, red bell peppers, and radishes + celeriac dip. Veggie burgers made their biweeklyish appearance on Tuesday, this time with lettuce instead of arugula, plus sautéed local spinach and garlic and Annie’s mac & cheese. Wednesday I made the herbed tortellini with artichoke dish, adding kalamata olives, capers, and cannellini beans to it, and we had it again on Thurs. along with homemade sourdough bread. We ordered takeout from the local Chinese place on Friday (garlic broccoli, shrimp lo mein, egg drop soup, spring rolls) which we had for the rest of the week.
My husband made a sourdough boule on Sunday (to give to someone on Monday) and he also used a rotisserie turkey carcass and bunch of herbs and veggies to make turkey soup that day.
- Sleeping & Dreaming
Not my best week of sleeping, partly because I needed to be up two hours earlier than usual on a few days. Overall I averaged 7 hours 10 mins of sleep per night, about an hour less than I get (and need) most weeks. My sleep scores ranged from 78 to 95, averaging 87.4. REM sleep accounted for 13 hours 5 mins and deep sleep for exactly 7 hours. Extremely dreamy week.
- Reading / Words & Ideas / Listening / Watching
Reading
BOOK
This week I read Sophie Hannah’s The Last Death of the Year (2025), billed as “A New Hercule Poirot Mystery.” But not really, because of course Agatha Christie is dead and Hannah’s Poirot and his sidekick, Inspector Edward Catchpool, who feature in this novel set within a small spiritual community on a Greek island, just don’t feel like Christie’s characters (and Poirot could be anyone). The novel begins promisingly, with a New Year’s Eve party during which Poirot, Catchpool, and the nine Very Good Friends, as the community calls itself, each write a one-sentence resolution for the coming year (1933) and place them in a container which is then found to also contain a short poem announcing a resolution to kill one of the members; and soon that member is indeed murdered. Who among these spiritual folk would have done such a thing, and why would they announce it beforehand? Also, why is the motive, when we come to learn it, so flimsy, so laughable? The plot is slow and stumbling, and, paltry motive aside, it unfortunately involves a multitude of wordy moral arguments concerning forgiveness as well as some silly romantic mismatches. I trudged through hoping for a small reward but it was not to be.
OTHER
The Human Skill That Eludes AI Why can’t language models write well? by Jasmine Sun in The Atlantic, 17 March 2026. (Gifted link.) From which: “In a certain, strange way, generative AI peaked with OpenAI’s GPT-2 seven years ago. Little known to anyone outside of tech circles, GPT-2 excelled at producing unexpected answers. It was creative. “You could be like, ‘Continue this story: The man decided to take a shower,’ and GPT-2 would be like, ‘And in the shower, he was eating his lemon and thinking about his wife,’” Katy Gero, a poet and computer scientist who has been experimenting with language models since 2017, told me. “The models won’t do that anymore.”
Google Has a Secret Reference Desk. Here’s How to Use It by Hana Lee Goldin, in Card Catalog, 24 Feb 2026. “40 Google features to find exactly what you need, the alternative search engines that do things Google won’t, and the reference desk framework underneath all of it.”
Also
and possibly useful?
Watching
This week we watched three Poirots, a House Hunters and a House Hunters International, an I Love Lucy, a Waiting for God, and a Death in Paradise.
Listening
Some things I Shazam’d this week for no particular reason
- Connections & Community
Local Support: I had lunch with friends on Monday at a local restaurant. My husband and I had breakfast the next morning (St. Patrick’s Day) at another local restaurant and we had lunch on Thursday at a local bakery/café. A friend and I had lunch on Friday at the same local bakery/café. And my husband and I ordered takeout from a local Chinese restaurant on Friday night. I bought a shirt from the local consignment store on Tues. I bought tea from the local co-op on Tues. and two cans of cannellini beans and fresh broccolini on Wed. I bought two bags of fresh local spinach and was given a free grape hyacinth plant at the local farmstand on Thursday.
Relationships: My husband and I celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary on Friday. As mentioned above, I had lunch with friends (RL, GV) on Monday and a leisurely lunch on Thursday with RL. We gave friends (E&SD) rides to and from the park-and-ride on Monday morning and Friday night, the first and last legs of their trip to visit family in Austin. While having lunch at the bakery/café on Thurs. we ran into a former neighbour (KE) and chatted with her a bit, and while in the library one day we ran into another neighbour (JA) and chatted briefly. I sent a friend (RVN) a book I thought she’d like on Friday. I ordered birthday flowers (from a florist local to her) for my sister’s good friend STM on Thursday. On Saturday, a good friend died (TD) and I stopped by for 10 minutes to give my condolences to our friend ND and her (adult) kids who had gathered there.
Donations: On Sunday I renewed a local annual membership to an historic house and garden not far from us. On Thursday I lent some more money through Kiva.
- Endings
Our friend TD died at home on Saturday, at age 88, with his family around him, after some years of failing health. We will miss him.
- All This Useless Beauty
the colour, who thinks of these things?
this unit
the light, the luxuriating
anniversary flowers (paper, cat-safe!). These cherry blossoms give me oodles of pleasure, and so do the cards, the bowl, the mug, the jasmine tea in the mug, the coaster, and the heart-shaped ornament and grey rock, and the weather station is useful. “Have nothing in your house on your desk that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” — Williams Morris, slightly edited
Leave a Reply