I ate six lunch-size bags of cookies that expired last month. It was that kind of work day.

Thinking as I lay wide awake at 1 a.m. on Monday that that wonderful pot of Adeni chai I had Sunday afternoon wasn’t such a good idea. 😑

Apparently there’s some football game going on today. I am celebrating appropriately.

A small pot of Adeni chai with two glasses and a slice of buttery Yemeni sabaya pastry.

Doing another one of those 20 [fill-in-the-blank] things on Bluesky, this time with albums. As before with the book list, I’m just posting all 20 at once here.

Lead-in text for each daily post: “Choose 20 albums that have stayed with you or influenced you. One album per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers.”

Just ate a third of a sourdough loaf and too much cheese. At least my stress eating and carb consumption are the least of my worries.

I suspect my husband will object to making my car a potential target for hostility, and I may not leave it there for long. (It’s a removable magnet.) But it feels good to express my frustration publicly for now.

Happy Groundhog Day.

I don’t remember where I picked this up, but props to whoever posted this on the socials. Excellent food for thought here.

Raymond wishes you a happy Caturday.

Orange and white cat sitting on a chair

I was supposed to fly into Reagan National in March for a work function. I was immensely relieved to cancel my trip after my nonprofit employer pulled back on travel for budgetary reasons.

My team (the Padres) is annoying me, but baseball remains a soothing balm for me. Running YouTube videos of Ichiro Suzuki highlights and full games (the 2007 All-Star Game and the Japan-Korea WBC final from 2009) while I work.

The Atlantic reports on an extremist “army of God” movement that has picked up steam among Christians and helped Trump win the presidency twice: “At this point, tens of millions of believers—about 40 percent of American Christians, including Catholics, according to a recent Denison University survey—are embracing an alluring, charismatic movement that has little use for religious pluralism, individual rights, or constitutional democracy.”

Says a Denison political scientist: “They are taking on these extreme beliefs that give them a sense of power—they believe they have the power to change the nature of the Earth. The adoption of these sort of beliefs is happening incredibly fast.”

It was a two-Klondike bar work day. And yet the work day isn’t over yet. 😑

Note to self.

BlueSky post from user Orcspiration: YOU MUST TAKE YOUR MEDICATIONS TO HAVE STRENGTH TO CRUSH YOUR ENEMIES.

Spending my afternoon avoiding news and reading this graphic novelized biography of artist Yayoi Kusama. Fascinating figure in the pop art movement of the late 20th century who faced mental illness and moved into a psychiatric hospital in the 1970s to do her work. At 95, she’s still there today.

A copy of “Kusama,” a graphic novelized biography of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama

A Padres fan can’t even go out to pick up sushi without being tormented.

I never had a TikTok account, so I don’t feel any sense of loss personally with this ban thing. The stuff I saw creep onto other platforms seemed so vapid that I felt no need to go there.

But I understand some people actually made a living off it, and I do feel bad for them.

Lower abdominal cramping kept me away from my usual coffeehouse writing time this afternoon. Getting a frappe from McD’s on the way home seemed to help. Maybe it’s a hydration thing.

I threw a “Twin Peaks” party when I was working at my first newspaper job in Fresno back in 1990. I was proud to host as the Viking hostess from Episode 5, though it took forever to find a Viking helmet in those pre-Amazon days.

It may be time to introduce my teenager to “Twin Peaks.”

So, when ICE converges on Chicago, are they going to cast a wide net, or will they ignore the white European immigrants who are here illegally?

To be clear, I’m not advocating this sweep no matter who is targeted. But I strongly suspect that it’s going to be rather selective.

Between the inauguration and my team officially losing again to That Team, this time in the Sasaki sweepstakes, I have a lot of mental health work ahead of me this weekend.

Now that it appears my team has been dumped from the Roki Sasaki sweepstakes, fake game podcasts may be the extent of my baseball world for a while.

Can’t help but think the late owner’s widow suing over the ownership situation really f’ed up the Padres’ chances of nabbing possibly a generational talent. Postmortem money battles are the worst.

Officially logged out of work till Tuesday. I had hoped to be logged out sooner, but shit happens. Glad to be done with that part of my life for a few days.

I’m addicted to changing my social media handle. Went from Dylan to dystopian within an hour. Sticking with dystopian through next week, though that’s been my vibe since late last year.