Look at the goofball

I don’t know why he airs out his tongue all the time, but he does!

Requiem for a Lap Desk

In the early 90s, I worked in a bookstore for a few years, and one of the purchases I made with my employee discount was a lap desk. You know the sort of thing, a solid surface and then a cushion below, to give yourself a table-like option while sitting on the couch.

Not that many years later, one of my cats* chewed a little hole in the bottom, but some duct tape fixed that right up. You can see it at the bottom, unmoved after all this time.
*Hmm, that was Harold, who I got in 1998, so, yeah, it could have been more than a few years. Time is an illusion.

If you want to point out to me that the 90s is more than a few years ago, I will reluctantly agree with that math. And that is illustrated by how last year, I noticed bits of styrofoam started falling out, and I realized that the fabric was wearing out at the side.

I put packing tape on it, but this month, the same thing started happening in another spot, and I realized that the time had come. I did some comparison shopping online (there are many many options in many sizes and with lots of features), and I ordered this one:

I like the handle!

It's roughly the same size as the other one, but differently shaped at the corners. I'm getting used to it.

So it is time to bid a fond farewell to the old one, and thank it for its many years of good service.

Good Words

The Boston Globe today had the obituary for acclaimed knitter Barbara Walker, who died last month; I'm not sure why the delay, but they picked up the NY Times obit, with a good-sized picture, and kudos to the writer, Joanne Kaufman, for her vocabulary. 

Nice use of "kniterati" in the first paragraph:

And later, both "autodidact," which I had at least heard before, and "perfervid," which I had not. (Fervid, yes; perfervid, no.)

I don't mean to sound too full of myself when I say that I read enough that I don't often come across words I've never even seen before. And I love it when I do!

RIP, Barbara Walker.

OBSESSED

The world continues to be an ever-worsening shitshow, and I have various health issues, and so on and so forth, but at least I have Heated Rivalry. The casting, the acting, the cinematography, the music...it's all _chef's kiss_ perfection.

As I wrote about earlier, I have recently become obsessed about Heated Rivalry, the romance series from Canadian streamer Crave that is available in the US on HBO Max. It's also about gay men and set in the world of pro hockey, but it's a romance before anything else. Per this category on the HBO Max app yesterday:

For a while, almost all of my Instagram feed was related (and much of it still is): clips from the show, reaction videos of people watching the show, collections of online posts about the show.

I have been reading articles (some require subscriptions, and of course spoilers abound):

• In Vanity Fair, about watching in Russia being a rebellious act
• Also in Vanity Fair, an interview with the two main character actors
• In Harper's Bazaar, an interview with Hudson Williams
• In Out Magazine, about the relationship of equals
• In Forbes, about the masterclass in soft power
• In the Athletic, can the show change hockey culture?
• In the Washington Post, what it's meant for the author of the books the show is based on
• Also in WaPo, an interview with the costume designer
• In The Guardian, Women are feral for Heated Rivalry (Pull quote: "The fervent popularity of Heated Rivalry suggests that for many, the real romantasy is not sex and romance with dragons and fairies, but sex and romance without misogyny and gendered hierarchy.")
• Finally, in today's Boston Globe:

And not only in the Globe, but taking a large part of the front page.

As well as being the top of the daily email.

The story notes what I have seen as well: the show is everywhere. Saturday Night Live!

It also has an interesting quote from NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, who said in a massive understatement, "The content for young people in particular may be a little spicy"---Gary! Really? A little, you think?

The show is everywhere, and the two lead actors, Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie, are everywhere as well: the late shows, the morning shows, presenting at the Golden Globes.

And now, they are going to be Olympic torchbearers!

The music woven into the story is integral, and has started changing the lives of some of the musicians* (Wolf Parade, Harrison, Cailin Russo).
*ha, I typed "magicians" first!

I could write a whole separate post about the podcast Empty Netters, which I had never even heard of before (I'm not in a podcast phase of life these days), but they are brothers who are hockey players (beer-league level, not pro) and also screenwriters, so they hear about hockey media. They did separate podcasts for each of the episodes, they livestreamed themselves watching episode 6 (screenshots below of their reactions to a crucial moment near the end), and have now interviewed some of the supporting actors (Robbie GK, Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova).  

They also have an episode for new-to-hockey fans called "Hockey 101: Teaching You The Rules Of The Best Game On Earth" and then a co-podcast with something called The Daily Friday Podcast, for which the episode title is "How Empty Netters Became the #1 Hockey Smut Podcast | Heated Rivalry Recap, S2 Predictions and More" which was fun to watch/listen to ask well.

Back to the livestream of episode 6, if you've watched the show, you can probably guess what just happened:

(Ignore the timestamps: it was supposed to be counting down to the end of the episode, but at least on the HBO Max replay, it isn't lining up.)

I love them, I want them to have more interviews with the cast. I would love them to have the director, Jacob Tierney, on. Anything. Give me more.

OBSESSED.

Oh, FFS (part 1 and part 2)

I can not tell you how absolutely livid I am that it was the right decision to not clear out the little bin of period supplies in the closet.

Yes, I got my fucking period. Again. I am fifty-seven years old! This bullshit should have been over and done years ago! I'm on hormone therapy! Shut this damned system DOWN!

At least, when I was at the grocery store last weekend, I noticed that Ben & Jerry's was buy-one-get-one free, so I have ice cream* in the house. Although, side gripe, I thought I'd try the Coffee Toffee Bar Crunch again, which I stopped getting because it was never as good as Coffee Heath Bar Crunch used to be, and wow I will never get that again. I did finish it, it's still good ice cream, but there was hardly any toffee, and the coffee flavor was there but so wimpy. More like someone with a cup of espresso walked past the ice cream maker while it was running than that it was added to the mix. Deeply unimpressed. I'm going to go to Coldstone Creamery this weekend and get the good stuff.
*We have plenty of other treats in the house, but for some reason ice cream is what I want in this situation. I used to call Ben & Jerry's my three-dollar therapy, if you were wondering how long ago that started.

Anyway, back to the main gripe: fucking period. I feel cruddy and "off" and just generally annoyed. And if the gynecologist wants to do another tissue biopsy, I may get the costly painkillers this time, because that hurt so much I still flinch to think about it. Or if she wants to do something else, I will ask her about the expected pain level relative to that, because that was the absolute limit of what I can take. I am a wimp, or as I like to tell friends, "I am a delicate flower." (One of my friends likes the phrase so much she uses it about herself now.)

In another FFS moment that probably isn't related, I've started to get leg cramps, specifically at night or in the early hours of the morning. I'll turn over in bed and something in one or the other lower leg (or both! once it was both) goes from startled what-was-that twang to really agonizing pain in very short order. Pointing and/or flexing the toes doesn't reliably help; what helps is trying to massage the muscles, though doing that without setting the other leg off isn't always possible. It's been joyful, as you can imagine. What a way to wake up. I understand that potassium can help with that, and the internet tells me bananas and orange juice both have it, so I'm going to try to get back in the daily smoothie habit. Please let it help!

In a final moment of optimism, I will be happy to have Monday off work.

Feeling cruddy wasn't in my plans for the weekend, but hopefully I won't feel this way the whole time.

Do you have a long weekend? Any plans, or just gleeful sloth?

My Reading Trend

At this time of year, a lot of bloggers I read are talking about their reading from last year: numbers, favorites, and all that. I enjoy reading these posts, but haven't really wanted to dig deep on my own. I did get to thinking, though, about how much I read last year, which was a ton, I mean a ton, and decided to chart it to show what I mean. Yes, messing around in Excel is fun for me! 

I started my books read spreadsheet in 2013, and over the years I have added (and removed) different things to track. Of course, date finished, title, and author have remained, but in 2013 I checked off these:

And things were added and removed until in 2025, it looked like this:

The category short/novella is one I added midway in 2024, as I was reading a bunch of shorts that I wanted to add to keep track of, but that felt kind of skimpy to count as a book (I don't track book size, but even so). So in the figure below, the 2024 and 2025 numbers are not counting those, to give a more true comparison.

I'm intentionally not showing the actual numbers, because that isn't my point. The point is, just look at how much life avoidance through reading I did last year! I'm somewhere between appalled/embarrassed and impressed.

I don't know that I want to break things down more than I do, but it's fun to think about what else I could track if I wanted.

* happy ending ✅

* cliffhanger (I could write a whole post about how much I hate them) ❌

* potato-chip read (enjoyable read but promptly forgotten) ✅ or keeper (must own to reread) 🎆🎇

What else do you or might you track?

In Lieu of: Cat Pictures

I've gotten hung up on a couple of things that I want to blog about at greater length, but hey, I'm still here! Things are mostly fine! Except, you know, with the world out there. Which I think has also kept me from trying to get words down on paper.

But cat pictures, that I can do any day. Enjoy.

Trying Something New in the New Year

No, I'm not kicking off any big anything. But I did do one new thing yesterday, which: yay, me? Sort of?

I know some people believe that the way you spend New Year's Eve or the way your life is on New Year's Day sets the tone for the coming year. I don't feel strongly that way, though I will say that if it's true, I'm good with that. I spent NYE reading, was asleep long before midnight in my time zone*, slept in a little, and had a mostly lazy day. 
*Ironically, one night last week I was up until almost midnight, reading.

The new thing I did, amongst all that pleasant sameness, was to sign up for HBO Max in order to watch Heated Rivalry. I am not a consumer of streamed shows, and despite hearing many friends have conversations about have you seen this show, it's on Netflix, or that show, it's on Hulu, etcetera etcetera, I have never signed up for anything that doesn't bring me live hockey games. (I didn't even sign up for Apple TV last spring when they did Murderbot, though that was in part because I know and love the books so much that I was hesitant to watch the series.)

Sidebar: Have you heard about Heated Rivalry? I started to feel like I was reading about it everywhere. Here's what Wikipedia says:

Heated Rivalry is a Canadian sports romance television series created, written, and directed by Jacob Tierney for Crave. Based on Rachel Reid's Game Changers novel series, it follows two rival professional hockey players, Canadian Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Russian Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie), whose on-ice animosity conceals a passionate, secret romance. It also stars François Arnaud, Robbie G.K., Christina Chang, Ksenia Daniela Kharlamova, Sophie Nélisse, and Dylan Walsh.

The first season premiered on Crave on November 28, 2025, and was picked up for streaming on HBO Max in the United States and Australia; Neon in New Zealand; and Movistar Plus+ in Spain. The series received critical acclaim, with praise for the directing, writing, and the lead actors' performances and chemistry. It also achieved strong audience viewership, becoming Crave's most-watched original series to date and HBO Max's top debut for an acquired, non-animated title since the platform's launch in 2019. The series has been described by media outlets as a global sensation and a break-out critical hit. In December 2025, it was renewed for a second season.

(IMDB page here.)

Basically it’s a gay hockey romance relationship show. There, you’re caught up.

So I signed up, watched season one (it's only six episodes), and whoa, so good! This series is NOT for everyone, and I don't mean that not everyone wants to watch a show about hockey, though truthfully it's not about hockey, it's about the relationship. But it's also a show with candid representation of sex on-screen, which isn't everyone's thing whether it's gay or straight. I mean, it's not full frontal, but you see plenty, and can definitely infer what's going on.* Frankly, it's hot as hell, and the people involved, both on screen and behind the scenes, deserve the kudos they are getting.
*Does this bother me? No. But I’m not watching it with my mother, thank you.

Funny thing, I’m sure plenty of people haven’t heard of it, but I was seeing stories about it (even the WaPo had an interview with the costume designer), and once a clip showed up on my Insta feed and I watched it, more and more showed up, and then memes, and now most of my feed is about it and even FB is showing me merch. This one is from a company that seems sketchy as hell, but I would buy the shirt if it was legit.

I even love the color. Oh well.

Since season two has been green-lighted but not started, it may not come out until 2027, so I will cancel the streaming at the end of the month. But until then, I’ll poke around and see what else to watch. And probably watch season one a few more times.

PS In case you thought I was exaggerating about this phenomenon, check this out.

It's the End of the Year

And by now, most if not all of my card recipients should have seen this, so here you are!

Thanks for being here this year. Here's to 2026 being a gentle one.

I'm Not THIS Relaxed, But...

...who is? Other than Newman.

Still, I am pretty relaxed, and I hope you are, too.