Growing up, I was taught to graze at religious texts, focusing on anecdotes that supported what we already believed. One of the great pleasures of my adulthood has been learning to read them more critically: wrestling with their problems and learning deeper lessons.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we’ve reached the season where my colleagues (and students) think I’m crazy for continuing to bike commute. Despite sometimes achey fingers, the cold itself is usually easy to deal with. When I get worried is when there’s ice on the roads.

I sometimes wonder how I’d react if I were put through a ‘Peggy Sue loop’: made to repeat an earlier part of my life with all my knowledge of how things turned out. I have major disagreements with my past self, but I also owe him a lot, so there would be difficult decisions.

I bought a French novel at a used bookstore last week, but I’ve felt burned out on reading lately, so it’s gone to the pile of books I keep meaning to read but keep skipping in favor of Minecraft or something else.

‘Kiddo, I’m glad you’re a part of our family.’ ‘… the weirdest family?’ I will never tire of her developing sense of humor.

I’m a teetotaler, so some of my microbrewing grad school friends once declared that I would make a good “beer eunuch”—I could be trusted to hold onto a barrel (or whatever—I don’t know how this stuff works) without abusing that trust.

chenséliser \ʃɑ̃zelize\ (verbe intransitif) : se balader à Paris comme touriste

J’aime quasiment toutes les pistes sur le nouvel album de Stromae, mais j’apprécie surtout « C’est que du bonheur », où il parle en toute franchise des hauts et des bas de l’expérience d’être parent d’un jeune enfant.

Hearing about Kevin Conroy’s death (😭😭😭) has me reading about Batman: The Animated Series, which has me reading about various “ages” (golden, silver, bronze) of comics. Was there ever an aluminium age? If not, what would it have looked like?

Is to adopt a new religious identity necessarily to leave the old one behind? Many—justifiably and understandably—use that language, but it’s never quite fit my own experience. I feel like I’m nitpicking when I try to explain it, though.

I’m currently on a train where you can’t adjust the seat in any way. As tall as I am, that means the head rest digs into my shoulder blades if I sit up straight. No wonder my posture is lousy.

Yesterday’s conference presentation went well, but despite a nagging suspicion that I’d prepared too many slides, I didn’t take the time to trim and wound up skipping a chunk of the talk. Alas.

Doing a research presentation at a conference today. The slides are essentially a fancy HTML doc (thanks to remarkjs), and I’m proud that I figured out how to get Font Awesome SVGs to display in-line with text.

Over a decade ago, when I was discovering British TV, I imagined a ridiculous hypothetical crossover of all my favorite shows. For example, Sir Humphrey from ‘Yes, Minister’ turned out to be the Master from ‘Doctor Who.’

In 2022, I joined the prescription sunglasses club. It’s great, but it requires making certain I’m packing any glasses I’m not wearing. That failed yesterday, so I’m wearing old, scratched indoor glasses until I can get my good ones from work.

Looking at the haul of new library books in our living room today, I realized that we’re both a family that buys a lot of books and a family that saves huge amounts of money thanks to the library.

Sounds like my tenure application has completed unit-level review and is on its way to college review. I guess there’s time for a sigh of relief before I start holding my breath again.

I love that I got to vote early this year, but it also means I keep forgetting that today is Election Day.

Le mec sur RTS Option Musique dit que Johnny Hallyday a fait une version française de « Sweet Home Alabama », et je ne sais pas comment réagir.

A mentor in Community of Christ is encouraging me to attend the April 2023 World Conference—and even to register as a voting delegate. The idea of a church conference that asks for bottom-up consensus is very different than my previous, top-down ecclesiastical experience.

Kiddo is coming with me to class this afternoon, which is fun—but complicated by the fact that my lecture today is the most controversial and ‘adult’ of the semester for this class. Still, maybe a kid will have important insight on controversies surrounding content moderation?

I worry about how often events in my country seem to echo the Dreyfus Affair of late 19th/early 20th century France. As one author put it, truth and justice were set aside by those who perceived them as threats to their vision of the country.

Kiddo after waiting and watching patiently while I filled out ballot at early voting: ‘I have to admit, that was pretty fun!’

I feel like I am constantly fine-tuning how I do assessments in my classes. I want to trust students and avoid policing them, but I’m frustrated when they respond to this approach by acting like it exempts them from attending class and participating.

Finished reviewing my ballot for early voting tomorrow!