I do so like when other people, like @cygnoir, write week notes, so I thought I’d give it a try.

On New Year’s Day, my little household made our way over to my parents' house for chili and board games. We played Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, a cute party game. We also played Chutes & Ladders: Marvel Super Hero Squad, because that is the one game M will play by the actual rules.

We watched Beware the Groove, a documentary my brother made about the making of The Emperor’s New Groove. It’s super cool and I’m proud of him. If you like The Emperor’s New Groove, animation, or movies in general, you should try it out.

M was back on campus Tuesday for a day camp before school officially started on Wednesday. Tuesday evening, I attended a webinar about Quaker education. M attends a Quaker school and I really hope to work there, so this was a very valuable session for me to attend.

Wednesday, I had the last team meeting for my postdoc. The report we’ve been working on for a long time is still in progress. My colleagues will be finishing it. (This is a useful example of the impact of funding: the people who wrote the grant had originally written my postdoc as a 3 year postdoc, but when the program officer told them they needed to cut costs in their proposal, they cut the third year. And now there’s no one whose job it is to work on the project full-time anymore, so it has to take a back seat to other projects.)

I’ll be first author on the report whenever it’s actually published, so that’s nice.

Thursday was a quiet day. M resumed his musical theater dance class, which he started only because a friend was doing it but now says he really enjoys.

Friday was another quiet day. Which is good, because Saturday was a big day!

We went to the NC Chinese Lantern Festival. It’s always beautiful, but this year was extra magical because in honor of the Year of the Dragon, there were many beautiful dragons hanging out in crystal forests.

Large Chinese lanterns: a dragon and a crystal forest

There were also a lot of Monkey King-themed lanterns.

To get a sense of the whole experience, take a look at the online program.

Sunday was another quiet day which was literally sorely needed, as my body didn’t like me asking it to do so much walking around at the festival, so Sunday was a high pain day. (It’s also possible there was some unexpected corn flour in something I ate.)

And that’s week 1 of 2024!