Stop It, Google

I have used Gmail for many years, but lately they're really pushing the AI crap that I absolutely, 100%, do not want. If a friend and I are emailing casually about yarn, I do not want this:

Or this:

Or this!

No! None of that! I didn't mind so much when it wanted to suggest answers (although, why was it always trying to get me to reply "Indeed, it is the only thing that does"?), but this is a bridge too far.

I tried to figure out how to turn it off, but the setting I changed took away the Important and Unread category at the top of the inbox, so I was getting notifications for every single email that came in. I don't want an alert when CVS sends me a new offer, or The Athletic wants to highlight a story, or the Boston Globe sends a Breaking News Alert (that is about the Patriots ~50% of the time). 

I like the setup the way it is, but of course they can't just leave it that way, can they? And yet, whose email provider doesn't use AI these days?

On Second Thought

Me before today:

Of course I'm not going to buy a jersey from any team except the Bruins! Hey, I don't even buy Bruins jerseys. Why would I buy anyone else's? From another league, in another country? Why would I do that?

Me today:

Oh. 

(That's a screenshot from their video on IG; the colors are even better in motion.)

Now THAT, my friends, is how to make a Pride jersey. I love the aesthetic of rainbows and I love the messaging of support and inclusivity. Even the hat tip to Heated Rivalry with the music choice! The NHL should only hope to do so well. And yes, once it's for sale, I will buy one of those. 

Ready when you are, Guildford Flames.

Weird Spamish Email

In addition to actual spam emails, in recent months I have been getting a noticeable amount of emails that seem to come from legit sources, but nothing that I have signed up: New Jersey Beach Report, or the Alzheimer's Association, which has decided that I need an email from them every few days for no reason that I can tell. 

Today, I got this:

At a glance, at least, it seems to be a real company (and I don't care enough to search for more info about it). But "We Noticed You Stopping By..."? I didn't! I've never heard of them, and I'm certainly not searching on men's skincare. 

What the heck? Is this happening to other people?

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.