9 Things Making My Life Better So Far This Year (July – Sept. 2019)

Shana tova! Hope my fellow Jews out there have a sweet and healthy new year!

Here are a few things I’ll be carrying over from the “old year” to make sure my new one is just that:

1. Dreyer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style by Benjamin Dreyer

Reading style guides is kind of like learning detailed proper form for an everyday movement at the gym. Are you really gonna spend five minutes checking the exact position of your head and shoulders and back and feet etc. before each individual rep? Probably not. Can anybody else know your body better than you do? Of course not.

But even if you don’t retain every detail, at least a few will stick. And they’ll improve your routine overall.

Apart from being an entertaining read, Dreyer’s English is also thankfully more inclusive than some of its predecessors. It acknowledges, for example, that not everyone uses “he/him” or “she/her” pronouns and that, say, avoiding racism is an important reason to check one’s use of written dialect. Caveat: because grammar, phrasing, and taste are tied to class and cultural background, this book supports specifically white, upper/middle-class traditional ways of communication and isn’t always self-aware.

2. Cottage time with the fam

My extended family is extraordinarily lucky in that we’re close, we enjoy each other’s company, and we have a family cottage at which to congregate.

Also, that there are many local farms and an excellent chip wagon.

ALSO, it was strawberry season :D

3. Adidas Adilette pool slides

For a long time, I fell for Birkenstock’s excellent reviews and ignored my own experience that the way they make their sandals actually hurts my weirdo feet. After admiring various cousins’ comfy-looking pool slides at the cottage, I bought a navy pair from Adidas. And they are super comfortable for me! They’re great for hot days, going to the condo’s pool, and lounging around.

Bonus: Despite these sandals sporting Adidas’s trademark white stripes, I haven’t yet managed to stain them permanently. *fingers crossed*

4. Fire Emblem: Three Houses (Nintendo Switch game)

As someone completely lacking the patience to think ahead even one move, I always thought turn-based strategy like the Fire Emblem series wouldn’t be for me. But then I watched Husband play this game, and wouldn’t ya know it, they went ahead and Persona-fied this installment. I may not have started out excited to deploy my military units across the map/grid, but, gosh darn it, I’ll happily learn how if it means I get to be a pretend professor who builds relationships with and between a bunch of dramatic anime archetypes.

Also, as a real-life professor, I gotta say: If ONLY teaching was as easy as it is in this game! No marking? Everyone thinks you’re the best all the time? It’s important to chill out and go fishing? Count me in!

(It does pretty accurately present professor life with the you-can-only-do-so-many-things-a-day-but-never-enough-to-do-all-of-them mechanic tho)

5. WorldCon inclusion

As I’ve written about before, navigating unfamiliar spaces while being gender-nonconforming can be difficult. I can only speak for myself and my personal experience, but WorldCon in Dublin this August was one of the few not-home places where I felt comfortable using gendered spaces if I needed to. They provided pronoun stickers and posted signs explicitly indicating the con’s inclusive policy and describing how attendees should behave to support it. All that helped me a lot and was a huge relief compared even to conferences at my own workplace.

(Also, thanks to Liz and Amanda and Socratic Theatre Collective for getting me there in the first place!)

6. The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place (middle-grade book series by Maryrose Wood)

These six books are about a governess sent to a mysterious manor to teach three children who were literally raised by wolves. The narrative voice is strong and intrusive, like Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events, so if you like that kind of style and humour, this is a great read.

Unlike Snicket, Wood resolves all the mysteries clearly and doles out information at a steady pace. As an adult, I wasn’t always excited or surprised by every revelation, but the overall arc was satisfying and fun to read.

7. the calzone recipe from Food Processor Perfection by America’s Test Kitchen

I haven’t made the exact calzones in this recipe, but I’ve use the basic idea (dough and cooking instructions) to make fantastic beef-pepperoni calzones and BBQ chicken pizza. It’s turned out really well — the best and easiest pizza dough recipe I’ve used so far, considering all the kneading gets done in the food processor.

(I did double the yeast in this recipe just because, but it seems to have worked out great.)

8. Spotify One-Hit-Wonders playlist

To be honest, I’ve been listening to this since April, but it only became my go-to over the summer. Go-to for what, you might ask? Well, when I’m doing a lot of cooking, I love a fast-paced playlist in the background. It has to be peppy, and I have to recognize most of the songs but not know any of them so well they get distracting. One Hit Wonders fits the bill perfectly: most famous songs from otherwise unknown bands are catchy, I know them but not too well, and since there are so many different artists, the music doesn’t get too same-y.

9. Going to bed an hour earlier

After I got back from WorldCon, I leveraged my jetlag to change up my schedule. Nowadays, I try to get to bed an hour earlier than I used to.

So far, it’s working out well. I’m less tired when I have an 8am class, though leaving the apartment before sunrise still isn’t fun. And I’m waking up when I want to be instead of sleeping in on weekends until half the morning is gone.