Kimberly Hirsh

Most of the time the answer to not having enough storage is to get rid of stuff, but with books, I tend to feel the answer is more bookshelves.

Y’all, check out this picture of Gene Roddenberry cosplaying as a Romulan commander from Balance of Terror from Cinefantastique #20 that I found on the fanlore.org cosplay page. 😍🖖🏻

Me, pitching future research clients: So in this scenario, see, you’re Buffy, and you know there’s fork guy and he’s scared of the substitute teacher but you don’t know what it all means, and I’m Giles and I’m going to use books and stuff to make sense of fork guy for you. 👱‍♀️

I’m workshopping a new professional tagline because I want to emphasize that I’m a qualitative researcher. First draft: “I use stories to answer questions.” I’m open to feedback.

I found a picture of myself on Tumblr. Dropping all other descriptors of myself in favor of “Data in an oversized cardigan.” 🖖🏻

“There’s surviving, and then there’s living.” - Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 🖖🏻📺💬

Finished Strange New Worlds Season 1. A+. Somebody give Ethan Peck’s eyebrow an Emmy. 🖖🏻📺

Sometimes I’ll have a run of bad dreams such that I then fear sleep for a bit.

👱‍♀️I had a dream last night that Giles a) was real b) was still in his 40s and most importantly, c) owned a really beautiful indie bookstore. I wanted to hang out there a lot. It was in this really beautiful little city center shopping district area. Later in the dream, I discovered the whole district - the whole town, really - was embedded in a Disney resort. And I had to decide if I still loved it now that I knew it wasn’t actually indie.

On Kimbertide Day 4, I enjoyed an ice cream sandwich. For day 5, I’m playing Metroid: Zero Mission. 🎮

It’s a rough time for our democratic republic. Heather Cox Richardson reminds us what it’s supposed to be about. 🇺🇸

🔖 Ben Werdmüller has a different but related, equally valuable, set of insights on what we should be thinking about this Independence Day. 🇺🇸

Editor Jordan Pavlin says historical fiction “has a unique ability to elicit deep compassion and empathy,” and I can’t help but wonder if that isn’t the precise reason the people leading the call for book bans want these books gone. 📚

Finished Stranger Things 4 and I love it so much and also will somebody just play D&D with Will already, yeesh. 📺

Kimbertide Day 3: Played a little of the new Capcom Fighting Collection 🎮

Finished reading: Borderland edited by Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold 📚

The beginnings of woodland goth. I love it, of course.

Today for Kimbertide, I made banana bread from a Simple Mills mix.

It’s the first day of my birthday month! I often extend the celebration beyond the day itself (July 14) and this year I’ve decided to do it all month long. I’ll let you know what that means once I figure it out. Until then, happy Kimbertide! 🧁🥳

For Day 1 of Kimbertide, I celebrated with a special lunch: hardboiled eggs & sweet baby gherkin pickles. I didn’t know this when I made lunch but my mom just told me that when she was pregnant with me, her favorite meal was hardboiled eggs, dill pickles, and french fries.

Finished reading: The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life by A.J. Jacobs 📚

Great fun with some good insights for the rest of life, not just puzzles.

🔖 A solution to writer’s block: Transcribe yourself (Austin Kleon)

This is a brilliant piece of advice. The 1000+ words of my post about sweetweird and hopepunk flowed out of me beautifully and easily. I use the Otter.ai app on my phone for this.

Santigold’s Can’t Get Enough of Myself is mental health goals. 🎵

“…anger is counterproductive to puzzle solving. And to problem solving in general.” A. J. Jacobs in The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life

📚💬

I’m extra psyched about July’s Atlas Obscura Finding Wonder book club pick, The Brilliant Abyss by Helen Scales. It’s got that perfect new paperback smell and is about the deep ocean, a place that fascinates me. 📚

Today I swam one pool-length, then water-walked for about 30 minutes. I also packed up 3 boxes of storage stuff to clear out the room we’re going to turn into an art studio.