Kimberly Hirsh

🍿 Watched Falling for Christmas.

I’ve been an unironic Lindsay Lohan fan since I saw Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, so I was delighted to see her in this adorable trope-filled bit of holiday fluff. Cute & funny.

Q asks Baby Q Amanda Rogers if she’s ever caused the spontaneous combustion of someone she doesn’t like, then gives Picard a look as if to say, “You see how much I like you? I haven’t combusted you! 😍” 🖖🏻

Getting blood work done, it’s been 20 minutes since my appointment time and I still haven’t been seen, fasting and haven’t eaten in almost 15 hours… Not happy.

🎮 I’m more than 10 yrs behind & have already played Inquisition but some quick thoughts after 1 hr of DA: Origins:

1. I appreciate that the music in the Denerim Alienage has Klezmer vibes.

2. I do NOT appreciate that my leather armor is a bikini.

🎮 Apparently my Dragon Age: Origins character isn’t in leather armor that looks like underwear. She’s in her actual underwear because I guess I unequipped her regular clothes but failed to actually equip the leather armor. I’ll fix this when I’m next playing.

Trying to figure out if I can make a crow cane head work on my adjustable cane so I can walk the streets of Amsterdam pretending it’s Ketterdam and I’m Kaz Brekker… 📚

My whole family and I are moving to Tom Bombadil’s house. He and Goldberry are such gracious hosts and we will be relaxed there. (Please note: we cannot actually do this.) 📚

🔖🎮 Read Playing ‘Tunic’ Reminds Me How to Approach Sickness and Recovery by Martin Cahill (Catapult).

The head teacher at my kid’s school for next year sent an email saying that the only school supplies he will need are a backpack and a lunchbox and I haven’t felt so disappointed in a long time. Guess I just have to buy school supplies for myself…

Y’all don’t even know how transformed this fireplace is from just a couple months ago. W painted it white & my brother-in-law MM and I hung the mantel. First picture is after & second is before.

Everybody is doing their year-end stuff, so I thought I’d do mine.

I read 46 books this year including comics/graphic novels and poetry. About 12 of those were graphic novels or poetry and another 2 or 3 were short story or novella collections. This puts me right about where my usual average for longer works is, around 30 books. I don’t set quantitative reading goals anymore besides reading one more book than I’ve read so far in a given year.

My reading this year was heavily influenced by the microgenres/aesthetics of cozy fantasy, adventurecore, and woodland goth.

I sought out cozy fantasy and adventurecore in particular because I wanted my reading to comfort me.

I joined the Atlas Obscura book club on Literati, because Austin Kleon stopped running his book club. I only finished two of the 5 books I got, but I look forward to finishing the ones I didn’t. I love the curation but the monthly format doesn’t really work for me and I wasn’t making the kinds of connections to other readers that I’d hoped to.

I started to list my favorite books I’ve read this year but the list got too long. I loved the Hildafolk series and The Bloody Chamber.

I began the year with the intention to get caught up on Leigh Bardugo’s backlist, and I only have one book to go, The Rule of Wolves. I started that this week, so I hope to finish before the year is out and be caught up just in time for the release of the new Alex Stern book.

I think that’s all I have to share about my reading this year. How did your reading year go?

I have done all the things in Stardew Valley 1.4 and it took me ~245 hrs. That’s ~245 hrs when I was playing Stardew Valley and not doomscrolling.

You can log a lot more hours in a game when it’s playable in little bits.

Hey Micro.blog friendos, I activated ActivityPub & can follow Mastodon peeps via M.b but how do I tell people to find me at @kimberlyhirsh@kimberlyhirsh.com? I’m not showing up in the Mastodon search on indieweb.social. TIA!

@help @jean @manton

My son sings “Step by Step” at school sometimes. I always thought it sounded like a union song and, indeed, the lyrics come from a miner’s union. I continue to strike today in solidarity with the Graduate Student Employees & Student Researchers.

Friends! Are you on Mastodon? Are you seeing this on Mastodon? I’m about to stop using indieweb.social to syndicate my posts to Mastodon but you can still follow me! Drop @kimberlyhirsh@kimberlyhirsh.com in your Mastodon search & give me a follow.

Some notes on my Spotify Wrapped:

1. Joe Hisaishi is the composer for My Neighbor Totoro, which is what I wake M up with on the rare morning he’s not awake by 7:30.
2. All 5 of my top songs are from the Totoro soundtrack because I play it other times too.
3. The reason my minutes are so high is that I use Spotify for M’s white noise.
4. Where this says “New Wave,” you should read “Goth.”.

No Enya this year, but The Lonely Island stands strong.

Wonderful things 🥳:

1. My kid fell asleep before 9:30 for the first time this week. 😴
2. I ❤️ Tom Bombadil, Goldberry, & Andy Serkis singing as both of them. 📚
3. Tomorrow I get to watch Neverafter. 🧙‍♀️
4. My friend Little Willow rescued a kitty & sent me many pictures. 🐱

True facts about my time on the early web:

In many chats (like, html + server side scripting with auto-refresh), my handle was Elora Danan and my profile picture was a Labyrinth-era photo of Jennifer Connelly.

I am a very specific sort of nerd.

🎮 If you told me in 2015 that I would be really psyched about getting farming sims by 2022, I would have laughed at you. Yet here we are.

Today has not been my favorite day, for reasons I may choose to detail more extensively in the future. For now, I’ll just say that the day began with poor sleep, a migraine, and gut issues and it hasn’t gotten better from there. (Thus far it’s been an okay day for family health.)

🔖 Read ‘Y’all,’ that most Southern of Southernisms, is going mainstream – and it’s about time by David B. Parker (The Conversation), h/t @benwerd.

As my Latin teacher said when teaching us the 2nd person plural, “y’all” is a legitimate contraction.

I’m like a toddler over here with big feelings, might cry from relief because my parents got my brother’s special needs trust and ABLE accounts squared away. 💞

🔖 Read Taking on the Feminine Labor of Creating Holiday Magic by Sarah Hunter Simanson (Catapult).

This year will be the first Christmas that my mom has leukemia, that she can’t walk. I hope we will have more Christmases with her. I think her household is in for an awakening about this form of labor. In our household, everyone is responsible for a little of the holiday magic - we decorate together and bake together. I’m hoping it builds a connection for our son while it also makes the labor visible and reduces my holiday stress.

🖖🏻 I’ve been falling asleep to the TNG episode “Relics,” and every time Captain Picard says “Ensign Rager” it sounds like he’s saying “Ensign Raygun.”

🔖 Read 1 in 4 hiring managers say they are less likely to move forward with Jewish applicants (ResumeBuilder), h/t @benwerd.

The convenience sampling used here is a significant limitation but these are still distressing survey results.