"Cover Note," by W.S. Merwin

Hypocrite reader my
variant my almost
family we are so
few now it seems as though
we knew each other as
the words between us keep
assuming that we do
I hope I make sense to
you in the shimmer of
our days while the world we
cling to in common is

burning for I have not
the ancients' confidence
in the survival of
one track of syllables
nor in some ultimate
moment of insight that
supposedly will dawn
once and for all upon
a bright posterity
making clear only to
them what passes between

us now in a silence
on this side of the flames
so that from a distance
beyond appeal only
they of the future will
behold our true meaning
which eludes us as we
breathe reader beside your
timepiece do you believe
any such thing do the
children read what you do

when they read or can you
think the words will rise from
the page saying the same
things when they speak for us
no longer and then who
in the total city
will go on listening
to these syllables that
are ours and be able
still to hear moving through
them the last rustling of

paws in high grass the one
owl hunting along this
spared valley the tongues of
the free trees our uncaught
voices readers I do
not know that anyone
else is waiting for these
words that I hoped might seem
as though they had occurred
to you and you would take
them with you as your own

- W.S. Merwin

in Travels (1993)

___

(Associations: texting a photo of this poem to Erin in February of 2020. Biking to the library to return it in March of 2020, and that being the last thing I did outside before lockdown was announced.)

November bookmarks

Thank goodness, it's finally over

November is by far the busiest month of the year in my industry (because of the dread Thanksgiving). Thank goodness, thank goodness that's over and I can look forward to some time to breathe now. 

To get through the final push of this week, I decompressed with an old favorite book, one that I haven't reread in years and years - Enna Burning, by Shannon Hale. 

In a roundabout way, she is the author who got me blogging. I was part of her ferociously active little fan forum, Little Red Reading Hood (est. 2006), and a number of the girls and young women there had blogs as well whose comment sections became another way of hanging out and chatting.

What about you - do you remember who or what (if applicable) got you started blogging?

Books read in October 2021

1. No One Is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood (2021)

The first half read like a series of sort of absurdist, sort of accurate micro-blog posts about the internet. It captivated me and made me laugh. The second half was a strange dive into a pressingly offline world of familial medical crisis. It didn't carry me all the way with it but it certainly was interesting and did not lack conviction.

2. Escape from Wolfhaven Castle, by Kate Forsyth (2014)

Read as research for niece/nephew birthday present shopping. Charming early middle-grade fantasy. Just enough age-appropriate peril and spooky, and just enough safety. Takes being a good story seriously without taking itself too seriously at it.

3. Happy Endings Are All Alike, by Sandra Scoppettone (1978)

I was impressed by her young adult novel about a teenage alcoholic, The Late Great Me, that I read earlier this year. This one is a very early treatment of a lesbian relationship (up against much lesbophobia) in a young adult novel, and it has aged just fine.

4. A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload, by Cal Newport (2021)

Clever, interesting, frustrating (because I am not a manager able to create large-scale changes) but still inspiring for me as an individual. His studies of companies that don't operate off email are fascinating because they make you realize how much of our current set-up is neither inevitable nor optimal (or even really good). I also found the history of professional email use interesting in a nerdy way.

5. East, by Edith Pattou (2003)

Reread. When I was a teenager, I liked this book more than it deserved (I thought then) and I think that more now. It's so likeable in some ways but in other ways it phones it in, particularly the farther Rose's journey carries her. I wish it had been edited better. But it gives a good cozy feeling. And it makes me want to learn how to weave. And the cover is so lovely and brings back all these memories.

6. Outside, Inside, by LeUyen Pham (2021)

This picture book about early COVID lockdown made me cry. It is so sweet and good. I'm just sad it doesn't go through the present day (it ends in June 2020) - because it is so comforting to see this set of global experiences through this book's lens, and even as a grown-up, I could have done with being gently and wisely carried along by its pages through all the rest of this exhausting, life-altering experience. My mom, who teaches, told me that the elementary school social workers/counselors in her district were all given copies of this book at the start of the school year, and I can see why.

7. The Beast's Garden, by Kate Forsyth

Uff, Kate Forsyth does it again. I am verging on obsessed and yet to be disappointed! Right after finishing this I went online and put holds on a couple more of her books at the library. This is a World War II-era tale inspired by the German fairy tale "The Singing Springing Lark" (a variation of "Beauty and the Beast"). I was moved to learn at the end how many of the characters were real historical figures (and their actions real historical actions they took in the resistance). Gripping, intricately historical, poignant. This novel covers six years of fiction-within-history, with no skipping around or fading to black to cut out chunks of time! It would have been tiring if it hadn't been so unceasingly fascinating.

8. Where Three Oceans Meet, by Rajani LaRocca, illustrated by Archana Sreenivasan (2021)

Sweet, bright picture book about a multi-generational (a girl and her mother and grandmother) family trip through India.

"Surely You Remember"

After they all leave,
I remain alone with the poems,
some poems of mine, some of others.
I prefer poems that others have written.
I remain quiet, and slowly
the knot in my throat dissolves.
I remain.

Sometimes I wish everyone would go away.
Maybe it's nice, after all, to write poems.
You sit in your room and the walls grow taller.
Colors deepen.
A blue kerchief becomes a deep well.

You wish everyone would go away.
You don't know what's the matter with you.
Perhaps you'll think of something.
Then it all passes, and you are pure crystal.

After that, love.
Narcissus was so much in love with himself.
Only a fool doesn't understand
he loved the river, too.

You sit alone.
Your heart aches, but it won't break.
The faded images wash away one by one.
Then the defects.
A sun sets at midnight. You remember
the dark flowers too.

You wish you were dead or alive or
somebody else.
Isn't there a country you love? A word?
Surely you remember.

Only a fool lets the sun set when it likes.
It always drifts off too early
westward to the islands.

Sun and moon, winter and summer
will come to you,
infinite treasures.

- Dahlia Ravikovitch

translated by Chana Bloch and Ariel Bloch
in The Window

Gratitudes & things that are making me happy

 • Watching hachiya persimmons ripen on my neighbors' trees, the fruit nearly the same color as the changing leaves

• Time off work

• Rainstorms, for my fire- and drought-plagued home

• Critically, a handy neighbor able to stop my roof leaking

• And for a very rainy-day lunch: hot chocolate and grilled cheese

• Fairy tales - I've been reading slowly through the first edition of the Grimm collection

• Isn't It Romantic, the movie - lots of laughs on a recent weekday night

• The colors of the sunset reflecting in the puddles on the rooftop across the way

• New comfy work-from-home pants

• Finding nice, brand-new hiking boots in my size at a secondhand store, for under $40

• Al-Anon meetings, the kindness there and the feeling of hope and calm I receive

• Giving up on a book partway through sometimes 

• Giving up on books I own but haven't read, sometimes

• Booster shots for my girlfriend and my mom

• Juniper (our cat daughter)

• A daydream of learning to weave

Read in September 2021 (part two of two)

(Part one here.)

10. Goldenhand, by Garth Nix (2016)

Eh, meh. As a fan of the original books in this series, I was intrigued to learn of this one's existence, but thankfully my experience of Clariel a few years back tempered my expectations. This felt like a reunion episode of an old TV show, not that well written and made more for audience gratification than to realize a compelling story. Nick and Lirael's awkwardness was cringe-inducing, rather than amusing. Also, it's hard for this book's particular Great Peril to follow the previous one (i.e. the literal end of the world as threatened in Abhorsen).

11. Self Care: A Novel, by Leigh Stein (2020)

As a fascinated/horrified observer of the women's wellness industry, and a veteran of a small and dysfunctional start-up, this satire about the inner workings of a wellness social media platform was certainly amusing to me, and also nudged at some more serious questions about gender and social media.

12. Outside In, by Deborah Underwood, illustrated by Cindy Derby (2020)

Beautiful, moving picture book. 

13. The Secret Hour, by Scott Westerfeld (2004)

Reread. It didn't totally hold up for me, but I get why I thought this was fun when I was nineteen. I think I would still recommend it to a teenager.

14. Reigning Cats & Dogs, by Hilary B. Price (2003) 

Reread, cartoons about the cat/dog-lover life, very amusing. Thanks to my mom for telling me to reread this.

15. Up to This Pointe, by Jennifer Longo (2016)

Reread, read this for the first time last December. Still lovely!

16. The Case of the Missing Marquess, by Nancy Springer (2006)

Fun and original, the first in the Enola Holmes series about Sherlock Holmes's teenage sister and her exploits. Has a nice, appropriate feminist tinge to it that added to my enjoyment. Not 100% lighthearted, against my expectations, but still in the greater part a romp. I would have loved this as a tween.

17. Kitten Lady's Big Book of Little Kittens, by Hannah Shaw (2019

Read as possible gift research for a niece. The author is a Youtuber who specializes in kitten rescue (whom I know of because my girlfriend loves her). Cute and educational, with great information and kitten photos.

18. Ghost Wave: The Discovery of Cortes Bank and the Biggest Wave on Earth, by Chris Dixon (2011)

I think I really wanted a long-form article on this topic rather than a monograph, but I made it through the book anyway. Certainly lots of interesting subject matter here, particular as I enjoy engaging non-fiction about the ocean and oceanic sports. However, this presumed more interest in the particular surfers who populated its pages, and more knowledge of surfing (see: all the jargon involved in describing how a particular wave was ridden) than I actually have. It was also rather mannish, both in the weird "conquering hero" way the men relate to the waves they ride and in little details like all the women mentioned (who are mentioned at all because of the men they're related to) being described as beautiful. Not unhappy I read it, but it took me a few weeks.

Rain walk

 In honor of fall's first rains, photos from a rain walk I took in late autumn last year.

Books read in September 2021 (part one of two)

1. The Rebirth of Rapunzel: A Mythic Biography of the Maiden in the Tower, by Kate Forsyth (2016)

Reading The Wild Girl in August got me really interested in the history of the Grimm tales. I have only slightly more exposure to them than your average bookworm  - this due to having been a student of the German language, which properly should always entail a bit of time spent with the Grimm tales, a.k.a. the world's most famous German-language book.

So, I tracked down this non-fiction work by the same author, who wrote it as part of her dissertation for a phD in fairy tale retellings (I know, right?). It was wonderful and wonderfully interesting! For example, the discussion of lingering matriarchal symbolism in the Rapunzel myth just...makes me all intellectually swoony. 

It did repeat itself somewhat, but I think that's just it being an academic work. Some of the short articles by the author included at the end were a bit irrelevant to Rapunzel, but I didn't mind.

Now I need to reread the other component of her dissertation: her own novelized retelling of Rapunzel, Bitter Greens (read last December).

2. The Last Time I Wore a Dress, by Daphne Scholinski (1997)

This memoir was, in a conversational way, dark as hell, and a weird view of mental hospitals I hadn't seen before - a teenage girl committed involuntarily for several years, basically because her negligent/abusive parents didn't want to be her parents while she was exhibiting behavioral issues. Among other things, she gets slapped with a Gender Identity Disorder diagnosis for being insufficiently feminine, and prescribed makeup lessons, not having a female best friend, and developing romantic interest in male patients. What a good time! Some of her casually tossed-off anecdotes did not read as credible to me, which made me feel a little hmm but I don't disbelieve the framework of her story. Certainly an effective reminder of how well-rooted misogyny and homophobia are in psychiatry. Overall, I feel like stories like this (i.e. about hospitalization as incarceration) are underrepresented am books set in mental hospitals, at least they sure were in what I've read.

3. Zuri Ray Tries Ballet, by Tami Charles, illustrated by Sharon Sordo (2021)

Cute illustrations, cute friendship, read because ballet is one of my Interests. The moral of "Do things in whatever way you want to, even in ballet class! For example, if you want to wear a soccer uniform and do creative soccer movement while everyone else does ballet!" was odd.

4. Commute: An Illustrated Memoir of Female Shame, by Erin Williams (2019

This was somewhat interesting. In part it reminded me of those posts everyone was making during #MeToo, where you'd see a bunch of your female acquaintances on Facebook simply posting a laundry list of every sexual mistreatment men have subjected them too. I feel like too much was made of her thesis about choosing male-gaze desirability (e.g. her twenty-step beauty routine) versus being invisible. It doesn't guide the book that much, and as a lesbian, it's not a feminist topic that I find compelling. To an extent, I would say I feel the same about the current tendency to find/seek feminist solidarity only around our victimization.

5. Flamingo in the Dark: Images, by  Bea Nettles (1979)

I checked this out because I ran across her photographic Tarot deck, the Mountain Dream Tarot. Curious to see the types of manipulation that photographers used before computer editing was available. Dreamy but not totally my thing. I wished her descriptions in the front of what biographic moments each photograph pertained to had been connected to the actual relevant images.

6. The Witches of Worm, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder (1972)

A reread. This author really does creepiness and ambience well. I didn't notice as a child the ambiguity about whether the cat is really a demon or whether the lonely, angry child is just using him to justify her own bad behavior to herself. (Credit to my friend who pointed this out to me before passing on her Little Free Library copy to me!) Also, I reckon this is set in San Francisco, which is always a plus.

7. In Praise of Wasting Time, by Alan Lightman (2018)

To summarize: "Wasting time is good because it makes you more productive." This is companion to a TED Talk (which I haven't watched) and that totally fits for me. I didn't dislike it but much of it was review of topics I've read about elsewhere in greater depth. Am I the only millennial who is indifferent to the institution of TED Talks? I think I've watched two, total.

8. Lirael, by Garth Nix (2001)

A reread. The world-building of the Clayr's Glacier, and particularly its Great Library and Lirael's life in it, is so savory to me. Sam is annoyingly thick, but I guess he is a teenage boy.

9. Abhorsen, by Garth Nix (2003)

A reread. The second half of Lirael's story, but somehow I always liked the first half better, even though much of the plot hadn't really gotten going yet at that point! The parts of his books where the protagonists are running around in a panic, organizing people and magic, trying to stop the world from ending, are a little exhausting and perhaps overly drawn out here. (To me the first book, Sabriel, was the more perfectly plotted of this series.) I love the Disreputable Dog so much.

(Part two here.)

Days, lately, in photos

Hot days in a top-floor apartment = blinds down all afternoon, big fan blasting. It still reliably gets 10 degrees hotter inside than outside on those days.

Immature acorns.


A nice neighbor. I say hi to her every time I pass her yard.

Add pomegranates to the list of fruits I have seen successfully cultivated by home gardeners in my area. Another recent addition: olives!


I have taken up coloring again to keep my hands busy during team meetings on Zoom.



Our girl.

Beautiful color from the liquidambar trees.


My shady walks are becoming gradually less so...

Rosehips are ripening, and reminding me it's a good time of year for rosehip tea (a gracious source of vitamin C).

"Stepping Westward"

What is green in me
darkens, muscadine.
If woman is inconstant,
good, I am faithful to
ebb and flow, I fall
in season and now
is a time of ripening.
If her part
is to be true,
a north star,
good, I hold steady
in the black sky
and vanish by day,
yet burn there
in blue or above
quilts of cloud.
There is no savor
more sweet, more salt
than to be glad to be
what, woman,
and who, myself,
I am, a shadow
that grows longer as the sun
moves, drawn out
on a thread of wonder.
If I bear burdens
they begin to be remembered
as gifts, goods, a basket
of bread that hurts
my shoulders but closes me
in fragrance. I can
eat as I go.

- Denise Levertov

Books reads in August 2021

1. Cosmetics, Fashions, and the Exploitation of Women, by Joseph Hansen, Mary-Alice Waters, and Evelyn Reed (1986)

This book's purpose seems to be to document a debate that took place in the 1950s via a series of article and letters-to-the-editor in a communist newsletter. However, I found I didn't care that much for the most part. Too much militant jargon, also. On the bright side, did you know that "comradely yours" was considered an appropriate communist sign-off for a letter?

2. Changing Season: A Father, A Daughter, A Family Farm, by David Mas Masumoto with Nikiko Masumoto (2016)

A collection of little standalone chapters with musings about life and operations on a small, third-generation family farm. I think these were mostly newspaper columns before they were a book. Conversational and taught me some things I didn't know. I couldn't read too many at once.

3. Looks, by Madeleine George (2008)

What a smart and interesting young adult novel. Really didn't feel like quite any other one I've read before. The story is one I can imagine others doing, but this book felt like it took its world, and its two girl narrators, seriously. Seriously enough to look closely and build them from scratch, not from expectations or cliches.

4. The Wild Girl, by Kate Forsyth (2015)

Ah! Utterly engrossing...I couldn't stop thinking about this one for a while. The only somewhat imagined story of a young woman named Dortchen Wild, who grew up next door to the Brothers Grimm and told them many of their stories. It is masterful as historical fiction - I learned so much about the time and place she lived in, and about the birth of the Grimm's collection of tales, without feeling like I was being taught. Terribly dark in parts, but oh, such a tale. I'd issue a content warning for sexual abuse.

5. Rose Penski, by Roz Perry (1989)

Quirky 1980s romance. This one charmed me because the long-term couple FEELS like a real long-term couple to me. It's not very plotty. There is a cancer context. The two women are quirky and ever so real, as are there interactions, and they are romantic in that exact way - not in a romance novel way.

6. Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe, by Roger McNamee (2019)

Have you deleted your Facebook (and Instagram) yet? I did, almost two years ago and I've been having a grand time. Unfortunately the present and future of my world is still being determined primarily by fellow humans who cannot say the same thing. This book is primarily a history of "the Facebook catastrophe" and its backlash (including the author's work as a lobbyist) to date. 

7. When the Emperor Was Divine, by Julie Otsuka (2002)

Seriously well-crafted. Sharp as a razor. Sparse. Heartbreaking without being dramatic. It's not the first book I've read on the Japanese-American internment experience, but it's so affecting and humanizing that it really shook me into a new way of looking at an old piece of knowledge.

8. Let Them Be Said, by Susan Griffin (1973)

Feminist poetry. Very 1970s leftist vibe and tone. Not totally my thing, despite my love for 1970s feminism.

___

What about you - anything wonderful you've been reading lately?

May and June or so

"Telling a Traveler by Her Eyes"

 A woman travels alone
 to a place where there are only trees
and the wind. Her footsteps
are scattered by the tall grass
No voice whispers back
Sunlight dapples wherever it falls
chalk on the leaves, butter
on her arms. A bird
on a low branch cocks its head
stares into her. Their hearts
race. She feels the hard
clasp of wing and the bones
pierce at her back. She
fights to breathe
Later, she will go live
at the edge of a clearing
She will not face a hunter
straight on

- Carol J. Pierman

in The Naturalized Citizen (1981)

Books read in July 2021 (part two of two)

(Part one here.)

6. People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks (2008)

Skillfully told, often dark, gripping. We begin with a fictional book conservator in the mid-1990s who is examining the (real) centuries-old Sarajevo Haggadah, and with different sections of the novel we dip into different episodes of the imagined history of the volume's creation and survival, against the odds - medieval Spain, Renaissance Italy, 19th-century Vienna, World War II-era Bosnia. Some of that history is horrifying, some is quite beautiful and will linger in my memory.

7. Lifetime Guarantee: A Journey Through Loss and Survival, by Alice Bloch (1981)

I read (and loved) this writer's semi-autobiographical novel, The Law of Return, last summer. This book is a memoir of a period of her life in which her younger sister was ill with leukemia, and two other family members died. Not a book I would normally read, but I'm even keeping this one! Her lyrical, intelligent, and self-aware writing carries the day again.

8. How to Disappear Completely: On Modern Anorexia, by Kelsey Osgood (2013)

Now here's a curious one. It's one part a memoir of the author's own experience of an eating disorder, and it's one part cultural piece ON the eating disorder memoir genre and how we - whether well, "well," or decidedly unwell; whether writers or readers - variously interact with it. Most particularly, where do those who read about eating disorders and think, I want that fit in? I flew through this in about a day; it really fed my intellect and challenged how I relate to my own past and to the histories of other women's disorders. It contains one of the more perfect conclusions I've encountered - I don't think I will forget the poignant last five or so pages for a long time. I am truly grateful for this book and it moved me.

As advisory, I will also note that it left me in a state of some emotional disorientation for a week or so, although I'm going to attribute part of that to a streak of darker reading (see above) in addition to some personal stressors and, you know, pandemic. It avoids the overt triggers, i.e. doesn't contain any weights, calorie counts, diet descriptions, but I would say tread with care and read with some emotional buffer. Your mileage, of course, may vary.

9. Gingerbread, by Helen Oyeyemi (2019)

Quirky and interstitial. It seems like a contemporary adult novel based in our world, but then it really doesn't. The plot didn't 100% satisfy me but I certainly enjoyed her ideas and writing. This reminded me of Jaclyn Moriarty and Theodora Goss, if they were mishmashed together.

10. Jenny Mei Is Sad, by Tracy Subisak (2021)

(I just got this picture book out because I'm interested in emotional intelligence as a children's topic, but I don't have enough of an opinion to really say something.)

11. The Naturalized Citizen, by Carol J. Pierman (1981)

This book of poems seems to have been nearly forgotten by time! Few traces of it online, although I have now added it to Goodreads. It has an interesting, sometimes sparse tone. I enjoyed some of these. I didn't feel like I entirely "got" that many. Here is one poem from this volume.

___

What about you - anything wonderful you've been reading lately?

Books read in July 2021 (part one of two)

1. The Wild Christmas Reindeer, by Jan Brett (1990)

I absolutely LOVED this picture book in elementary school, and reading it now as an adult, it utterly held up. What fantastic, enthralling, intricate illustrations!

2. The Weight of the Sky, by Lisa Ann Sandell (2006)

A verse novel about an American teenager volunteering on a kibbutz for a summer. After reading the first 50 or so pages, I was wondering if the focus was going to be a sub-par romance. Thankfully it didn't turn out as expected. I enjoyed the cross-cultural adventure aspect of it. I read that it's based on the author's own experience volunteering on a kibbutz as a young person, and it left me wondering - to what extent is that experience actually available in this millennium, when this book takes place? I'm curious to know, as I always hear that the kibbutzim of today are a shadow of their former glory.

3. The Tail of Emily Windsnap, by Liz Kessler (2003)

A middle-grade novel about a girl who discovers she turns into a mermaid when submerged in water. I read this as research for future niece birthday gifts. It was cute. I wished there was a bit more inventiveness to the descriptions of the mer-world, e.g. why would merpeople need chairs and beds and desks? How do their pens work? Etc. 

4. Lady Knight, by Tamora Pierce (2002)

Again and again, this series provides the type of fantasy book I enjoy re-reading. (This is the final book in her Protector of the Small quartet.) Such well-crafted and enjoyable reads; such great characters - including a truly great heroine. I think I love the earlier books (the school stories) of this series a little more, but I couldn't not love the whole of it.

5. Aria of the Sea, by Dia Calhoun (2000)

Another old favorite, this time from middle school. To my great fortune, combines several elements I love in one sweet little YA book: ballet, fantasy, an island kingdom with a sea-based religion. It leans toward the middle-grade end of YA. I do enjoy the world-building, how it feels both like an 18th- or 19th-century European reality and like something from another world. There is an interestingly executed focus on how passion, vocation, and obligation interact in the choices and experiences of its young female character.

(Part two here.)

Friday chatter

Happy Friday! My work week is Sunday-Thursday, so it's actually my Saturday. After a lazy morning in bed, I'm in the middle of making cinnamon rolls. I'm using the Buddhist Chef's recipe for the third time, except this time I'm going to try fresh apple pieces in place of the raisins. We shall see how that works. 

The handy thing about these is you can stick them in the fridge overnight for the second rise and bake them fresh in the morning, but I think they're going to be an afternoon snack with tea and then it'll be the leftovers for breakfast tomorrow. Will this dough recover from my curious bad cat stepping on it (through the damp tea towel) while it was rising? I think so. But how rude, how rude.

The other thing I'm doing is watching one of my sisters' and my favorite childhood movies that I just found streaming online. It's an utterly '90s-tastic made-for-TV movie called Robin of Locksley which features Devon Sawa (you know, the Canadian boy heartthrob of said decade) along with some other boys with curtain haircuts. He plays a modern-day teenage Robin Hood who hacks wealthy corporations' bank accounts via the WORLD WIDE WEB ("What's that?" asks one character) in order to, duh, give the money to charity. 

I've probably seen it fifteen times, but not at all recently. I love it. Here it is if you need some cheesy-but-good '90s silliness: https://tubitv.com/movies/413028/robin-of-locksley

So that's what I'm doing today. What about you?

2020 - black-and-white fragments

I've gotten some film developed lately - so I will have more to share soon. What's happened since the last time I blogged here? My partner and I moved, we adopted a cat, we got vaccinated, she finished up grad school. Lately with the rise of the delta variant, I tend to fixate rather glumly on what hasn't changed. My life remains quiet. My loved ones remain safe. And what about you? Give me the mini catch-up on you, if you feel like it.