Last Last Year in New England [2023]

It was only when I went to write my 2024 recap post that I realized/remembered that I never wrote my 2023 post. I have monthly posts for most of the year, but for the sake of completeness, I wanted to get this post out, since I have one for every year since 2017. [Monthly posts can be found here: March April May June July August September October November December.]

The year began in January, as it does. There was at least one day that snowed enough to need to shovel the driveway. Before the end of the month, I finished what I started during NaNoWriMo 2022, writing the conclusion to the first draft of my novel and bringing it to a total of 74,747 words. I also made it to the end of the Mighty Nein’s adventures in campaign 2 of Critical Role, renewed my driver’s license, and baked Linzer cookies.

In February, I read Crying in H Mart, watched Jane the Virgin and Everything Everywhere All at Once, and baked a wool roll with a strawberry and lime cream cheese filling. I cross stitched a dragon that still needs to be delivered to a friend, raked leaves, shoveled snow, and made a birthday Prinsesstarta from the Great British Bake Off’s The Big Book of Amazing Cakes. My verdict: it’s a lot of work for a good, but not amazing, tasting cake. And the Revolution began their 28th season in MLS with an away win in Charlotte (North Carolina).

The tomato seedlings were started in March. In between job interviews, I solved a jungle puzzle, a Rubik’s cube puzzle, and a puzzle of a horse and a barn. I watched Derry Girls and Galaxy Quest, finished the cross stitching on the dragon (back stitching still to come), and rolled some sushi.

April was tax month. I guess the big news for the month is that I received a job offer, accepted the job offer, and started work. Right before losing all my free time, I went for one last hike up Mount Watatic, which has a fairly high view to effort ratio. I began watching Friday Night Lights and reading The Night Circus, baked a peanut butter cake, and got to watch the Revolution survive their first 2023 Open Cup match.

Clockwise from top left: January - snow, February - the Prinsesstarta (sponge cake layered with pastry cream and blackberry apple jam, covered in whipped cream, covered in marzipan), March - the Rubik's Zigzaw, April - penguin at the MA/NH state line after the descent from Watatic

During May, I settled into work, and performed a TFF process, was introduced to the AKTA, made a lot of buffers, and organized the lab’s collection of tiny plastic parts (mostly for the AKTAs). We tried playing pickleball, the tomatoes made it into the raised bed outside, and I worked on my LEGO Millenium Falcon. At the end of the month, I went into Boston to see some Cornell friends and spend a day wandering the city since it had been awhile.

With a whole 6 weeks of experience, I was left co-in charge of a client run involving multiple chromatography columns, membranes, filters, and concentrations at the start of June. I also bought a new phone to go with the new stalker watch (Garmin Forerunner 45S) that I got last month, made it through A Storm of Swords, baked pecan rolls, saw the Dungeons and Dragons movie, got out for a hike at the town forest, and started in on season 19 of Grey’s Anatomy.

In between rain showers and storms, we managed to hike every weekend in July, mostly visiting nearby trails. I got a milkshake from Shake Shack, finished Daisy Jones & The Six and started The Courtship of Princess Leia, watched the MLS All Stars lose 0-5 to Arsenal, and went blueberry and raspberry picking and made a birthday blueberry lemon pound cake. At work, we prepared for a large scale run by making buffers in barrels and packing our big column.

August 2023 is a month that will live on in infamy at my office because after surviving our large-scale run, doing it again the next week, and starting take three, half the company caught Covid from management. Before that, there were a few hikes when it wasn’t raining, I ate some chocolate hummus, tomato harvest began, and I read more Star Wars books. By this point in the year, the Revolution were embroiled in Bruce Arena drama and beginning their slide down the standings.

Clockwise from top left: May - swan boats at the Boston Public Garden, June - ghost pipe seen while hiking, July - raspberries, August - tomatoes

Thankfully, September was a less eventful month. We went to see an outdoor art exhibit, and to the Big E (New England’s state fair for all six states) for the first time. Free Friday lunch at work was cancelled, then not cancelled, then kind of cancelled indefinitely. I made a quiche to make a dent in the piles of tomatoes coming out of the garden, baked a chocolate cake in the instant pot, and we played 7 Wonders, a favorite of some of my college friends.

At the beginning of October, we went apple picking, and I started fall color watch, eventually getting one of my favorite fall color photos in the middle of the month. We hiked an 8-mile 6-mile loop around a lake and spent a day at World’s End. I saw a Cornell ChemE friend for the first time in years, raked, finished the backstitching on the cross stitch dragon, and had a fall party with coworkers.

I was left unattended at home for most of November. At work, we simultaneously executed another large scale run and design of experiment (DoE) runs. Outside of work, I went to Tower Hill for Gnomevember, made waffles, and celebrated Thanksgiving with all-sides Thanksgiving (mashed potatoes, stuffing, steamed broccoli, and cranberry sauce).

In December, we had one last run for the year for one of our clients, but got into the holiday spirit with our holiday party and Yankee swap. I also baked gingerbread dinosaurs, made cross stitch post-Christmas Christmas gifts, for some reason thought it was a good idea to do a puzzle of a bottle of sriracha, and almost caught up with campaign 3 of Critical Role.

Clockwise from top left: September - The Big E, October - fall colors, November - steampunk gnome, December - gingerbread dinosaurs (and snickerdoodles)

That was 2023. I’m sure I missed some details, which is what happens when you’re writing two years later, but I think I got all of the highlights and lowlights.

I ran out of puzzle puns (for now) [character/IP puzzles]

It’s me, slipping back in before the new year to review some puzzles, in this case a few puzzles with characters from various franchises. The puzzles were completed between June 2022 and October 2023 and range from 300 to 3000 pieces.

First up is a puzzle of the Mandalorian and his baby alien Grogu hanging out in the Razor Crest. I solved this puzzle well before seeing The Mandalorian, but I’ve since seen the first season and enjoyed it. The puzzle is a 1000-piece puzzle from Buffalo Games, maker of jigsaw puzzles and board games since 1986. It was a fairly straightforward assembly, a bit on the dark side but with enough color variation and texture to not require resorting to shape sorting or brute force trial and error. Buffalo Games puzzles are often found at stores like Target and Walmart, and tend to be slightly cheaper than puzzles from dedicated manufacturers such as Ravensburger or White Mountain Puzzles (sub-$20 vs. $20-$25 for 1000-piece puzzles). The quality is good but not amazing, and pieces fit together tightly enough to pick up sections of the puzzle, maybe the whole puzzle if you’re careful. You may get some pieces that feel like false fits, but looking more carefully at the pieces is enough to see if they really go together or not.

 

Mandalorian and Child

Next on the list was Hidden Cows, featuring hidden (and not so hidden) cows in a Sandra Boynton illustration. This was a fun solve, on the easier side thanks to all the colors and clear lines, and it was borrowed from the library. The puzzle comes from Workman Puzzles, started in 2020 as a branch of Workman Publishing Company, which was founded in 1968 but as of 2021 is now part of Hachette Book Group, one of the “big five” publishers.

Hidden Cows

The largest puzzle (by number of pieces) I’ve ever solved is this 3000-piece puzzle of Marvel superheroes. It was another loan from the library, and is produced by Aquarius Puzzles, who seem to specialize in licensed puzzles (they’ve also got a couple Star Trek puzzles and some Lord of the Rings puzzles). Quality is similar to Buffalo Games puzzles, so quite reasonable for the price point. As is fairly typical for these kinds of images, the dark parts with seemingly random lines and body parts dragged a bit, but it wasn’t too bad. In the end, it took 9 or 10 days to finish, compared to 2-3 days for a similar image on a 1000-piece puzzle, so time scaled pretty linearly with number of pieces.

Marvel Cast

And the largest puzzle is followed by the smallest puzzle of this group, a 300-piece puzzle of scenes from The Office. It was a very fast solve on a Saturday morning, pretty average in terms of quality, and fun for fans of the show. From what I can tell, the puzzle is made by the New York-based Cardinal Games, but there doesn’t seem to be much information about this company. Overall, this was an entertaining group of puzzles, and I actually just finished another Star Wars puzzle, but it’ll have to wait until next time.

Scenes from The Office

The Year in New England [2024]

Hello there! Well, 2024 happened. So did 2023. I would still like to go back and write about some of the things that happened, but we’ll see if that ends up getting done. For now, here’s the yearly overview of the things I read, watched, made, and did in 2024.

In January, there was one hike in unseasonably nice weather, snow, and one hike in the snow, within a period of four days. I finished my last post-Christmas Christmas gift for my coworkers (a cross stitch of peppers, pattern provided free by DMC), we played a new-to-us board game (Forbidden Desert), and I baked a matcha Swiss roll and my yearly batch of pecan rolls. After putting it off for some time, I committed to watching the first arc of La Casa de Papel (Money Heist) (in Spanish with English subtitles), and picked up Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree and Ted Chiang’s Exhalation: Stories at the library.

February in New England was cold, dark, and depressing as usual, but eventful because I said farewell to my foot mole. Dermatology wanted it gone, so right after Valentine’s Day podiatry sliced out an inch of my foot, I wasn’t allowed to put weight on that foot for a couple weeks, then I had a very cool Frankenfoot (seven stitches) for a few more weeks after. I also tried a new thumbprint cookie recipe, finished another cross stitch project, read The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, and watched the first season of Star Trek: Discovery. Mixed feelings about Discovery, but mostly positive, I think.

As some semblance of warmth returned in March, we got out for a couple hikes. I filed my taxes slightly early for me, finally made the Wellesley fudge cake I meant to make for my birthday last year, and assembled some knock-off not-LEGO flowers. Knock-off LEGO has come a long way, but still doesn’t quite compare to the real thing. Barbie showed up at the library, so I finally got to watch and enjoy the movie. At work, we turned over 60 L of cell juice from upstream into 10 g of protein in seven days.

For a very late birthday present, I took my mother and a friend to a paint bar in April. Later in the month, after seeing other people post about it, we went tulip picking. There was also eclipse day, and I completed the last cross stitch in a set of three that I’d originally started back in Ann Arbor. Last minute, I decided I did want a garden this year and started the tomato seeds way too late.

Clockwise from top left: January - snow along the reservoir, February - thumbprint cookies, March - trees on a hike, April - tulips

In May, we went to Dam Day at Wachusett, one of two days in the year that people are allowed to walk on the Wachusett Dam. After some delay, a boardwalk trail finally opened nearby, so we went to check it out one weekend. I continued my delayed media consumption with season one of The Mandalorian, which I liked, and Lessons in Chemistry, which I have to give a very mixed review.

Unlike last year, it did not rain almost every weekend all summer, so we got outside every weekend in June. There was a day trip to Quabbin Park, strawberry picking, Art on the Trails at a local park, and a visit to the botanical garden at Tower Hill.

We celebrated the 4th of July by hiking at Wachusett, then continued the summer of activities with blueberry picking, a day at Purgatory Chasm, and a trip to Revere Beach for the annual sandcastle competition. For a birthday, I baked my best-ever sponge cake for a Japanese strawberry shortcake that turned out delicious. On the library front, I continued my slow way through Terry Pratchett’s Discworld with the next night watch book, Night Watch. In the garden, I harvested my first zucchini.

In August, we visited Moore State Park (it frequently comes up in lists of places to visit in central Massachusetts) and spent a day at the beach in Salisbury. In the second half of the month, my at least second favorite brother came to visit. We spent a week at Acadia and hiked a lot, ending up covering over 130,000 steps or a little over 55 miles. The tomatoes from my one volunteer tomato plant that ended up growing this year were coming in in earnest, and I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Patrick Stewart’s memoir Making It So.

Clockwise from top left: May - Dam Day, June - Quabbin Reservoir, July - blueberries, August - Cadillac Mountain

I was allowed sent to attend BPI East in September, my first conference since grad school. It was held at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, and we got to go to the Museum of Science as our “scientists can have fun too” activity. We went for a first round of apple picking, and I baked a belated birthday key lime pie.

October always brings on the hunt for fall colors. I did some exploration around the reservoir, and we hiked Mount Watatic and a hill a few towns over. As it got cold, we officially pulled up the garden for the year, closing out this year’s harvest list at arugula, baby bok choy, green beans, red peppers, orange lunchbox peppers, habanero peppers, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, and a bunch of other unsuccessful tomatoes. Additionally, I completed my next cross stitch project, an anatomical heart, baked a birthday German chocolate cake, picked apples (again), and went bowling with my company for our fall outing. I watched The Big Year, This is Us, and Over the Garden Wall, all of which I would recommend, but for very different reasons and probably audiences, unless you’re me.

On Halloween, with unseasonably warm temperatures in the forecast, we took an impromptu road trip to Cape Cod, seeing in the first day of November with sunrise on the beach. We saw a bunch of lighthouses, hiked Great Island, and got a nice dose of coarse, rough, irritating sand that gets everywhere. As the days really started to shorten and cool, there was less hiking, but we did make it to Tower Hill for Gnomevember. And also I built a k’nex roller coaster.

Finally, that brings us to December. Earlier in the month, we went to see lights at Tower Hill, and there was one day warm enough for me to take a 7.7 mile walk up the aqueduct. At work, we had our annual Yankee Swap, and we celebrated the company’s 10 year anniversary at Top Golf. Now it’s Christmas Eve, it’s cold out, and there’s snow on the ground. We’ll see what 2025 brings, but for now, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Happy Holidays to all!

Clockwise from top left: September - Musuem of Science, October - fall colors, December - lights at Tower Hill, November - sunrise on the beach

What I Watched in 2023

I watched more TV than I originally thought in 2023, though the list looks long because a good amount of it was shorter series than I usually get into. There were a few movies as well, but I have not seen Barbie (or Oppenheimer) yet. Here are the highlights, a lowlight, and some quick-ish reviews.

Movies:
Thor: Love and Thunder – I know people hated this movie, but I liked it. It was ridiculous, which I’m fine with after the conclusion of the Infinity Saga with Avengers: Endgame.

Knives Out and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery – Enjoyed both installments. The plots held up well enough, and the casting was solid.

Galaxy Quest – A movie making fun of Star Trek that could only have been made by people who love Star Trek. By Grabthar’s hammer, never give up; never surrender.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves – A good adaption of a tabletop RPG to a movie, with enough nods to D&D mechanics without getting bogged down in dice rolls and rules lawyering. The “speak with dead” scene was particularly funny.

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. – Though I never read the book, I thought the movie was good.

Jungle Cruise and Sonic the Hedgehog/Sonic the Hedgehog 2 – Perfectly fine adaptations of a Disney ride and a videogame. I like watching them even if they’re a bit forgettable.

Blue People Avatar 2 Avatar: The Way of Water – The cinematography was great; I hate Jake Sully so much I wanted the comically evil antienvironment military zealots to turn Pandora into a strip mine and/or desolate post-apocalyptic wasteland.

TV shows:
Jane the Virgin (S3-5) – Especially liked the telenovela aspects and Petra’s character arc, but Rafael’s role too often felt like “hot rich guy” with no other personality traits, and I wanted more for Michael.

Star Trek: Lower Decks (S2) – It’s growing on me; I’m mainly just annoyed that of all the ships in Starfleet, Mariner ended up on that specific ship with that specific captain, when their personal relationship clearly affects the professional lives of the rest of the crew.

Wednesday – Wednesday’s teenage angst would have been an interesting jumping off point for the show, but part of what makes the movies so good is that everybody around the Addams family is completely, 100% normal, and they’re weird, but not edgy. It was too much of a character departure for me to fully enjoy the show.

Somebody Feed Phil (S4-6) – More food, more travel.

New Amsterdam (S5) – A not-entirely satisfying conclusion to the show. The main character was marginally less annoying than in previous seasons; the supporting characters were generally more interesting.

Game of Thrones (S1) – The books are better. Same amount of incest and decapitations, less backstory and details that fill out the world of Westeros.

The Chair – The parts about women in academia were good, but it felt like they tried to do too much with the rest of the show.

Derry Girls – Catholic school shenanigans in 1990s Ireland. One of my favorite watches of the year.

Bojack Horseman (S1) – Don’t like the animation style, also a bit depressing to watch for too long, but I might come back to the show because of the character development.

Heartstopper – Good adaptation of the comic.

Friday Night Lights – I do like a good sports movie/show. More optimistic and less racist than the book.

Heartland (S15) – Continuation of the series; more settled than the previous season.

Grey’s Anatomy (S19) – The drama at Grey Sloan just keeps on going.

The Baby-Sitters Club – Never read the books, but I liked this series.

Pokémon Indigo League – Surprisingly clever writing for a kids show, even if the plotlines are nothing to write home about. And Team Rocket make excellent dumb sometimes villains.

Great British Bake Off (S14) – A more grounded season than they’ve had the past couple years.

XO, Kitty – A spin off series from the To All the Boys movies featuring Lara Jean’s younger sister Kitty. The drama was sometimes a bit over the top, but overall a cute show.

Anne with an E – Inspired by the Anne books, an exploration of the darker aspects of Anne’s story. I thought they stayed true to the characters, if not the plot, and I liked the depth they added to some of the characters, particularly Diana and her Aunt Josephine.

The Dragon Prince (S1/2) – Often recommended after watching Avatar (A:TLA), but I’m still not sure how I feel about this show, and using Sokka’s voice actor as one of the main characters is distracting if you watch it right after A:TLA.

The Good Place (S1) – Another show I’m withholding judgement on until I get farther into it. The last episode of season 1 makes it worth it, but I still haven’t really gotten into the show.

Overall, I was disappointed the most by Wednesday and The Dragon Prince, and my favorite watches of the year were Lower Decks, Derry Girls, Bake Off, and Anne with an E.

What I Read in 2023

2023 felt like another kind of strange year for reading. I read 38 books for the first time, reread another half dozen or so, and read some in print for the first time (originally read in webcomic form). I did read a single nonfiction book, plus two memoirs, three additional graphic memoirs, and a semi-autobiographical short story collection. There were 19 graphic novels, 4 romances, 2 short story/novella collections, an epistolatory novel, a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, and only one vampire book.¹ Goodreads tells me that I read over 12,000 pages (first time reads only), the longest book was George R. R. Martin’s A Clash of Kings, and my most shelved book was Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

¹Nonfiction: Mother Tongue (Bill Bryson)
Memoirs: Lab Girl (Hope Jahren), Crying in H Mart (Michelle Zauner)
Graphic memoirs: Sunshine (Jarrett J. Krosoczka), Almost American Girl (Robin Ha),
    ¡Ay, Mija! (Christine Suggs)
Semi-autobiographical short stories: A River Runs Through It (Norman Maclean)
(Science) romances: The Love Hypothesis, Love on the Brain, 

    Loathe to Love You (Ali Hazelwood), The Soulmate Equation (Christina Lauren)
Short stories/novellas: A River Runs Through It (Norman Maclean), 

    Loathe to Love You (Ali Hazelwood)
Epistolatory (email) novel: Dear Committee Members (Julie Schumacher)
Vampire book: The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner (Stephenie Meyer)

Some notable reads:
A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords (George R. R. Martin) (A Song of Ice and Fire [ASOIAF] books 2 and 3) – Westeros is at war – there are too many kings and their armies are wreaking havoc across the continent. The Stark children are mostly missing, scattered from the Wall to King’s Landing. Meanwhile, Daenerys plots from across the Narrow Sea and something’s brewing north of the Wall. Despite their length and number of characters/plots, the ASOIAF books (to this point) are surprisingly readable and not excessively convoluted to follow. I’ve enjoyed this fantasy series so far.

The Night Circus (Erin Morgenstern) – The general consensus on this book is that the descriptive passages are magical, the plot somewhat less so. The premise is that there’s a travelling circus that appears, operates at night, and has the most incredible exhibits in its tents, then it disappears, perhaps not to return for years. The mystery of the circus is revealed throughout the book, and I do think the plot gets a little weird at the end, but the writing is worth it.

Daisy Jones & The Six (Taylor Jenkins Reid) – I’m a fan of mockumentaries, so I maybe shouldn’t have been as surprised that I liked this book as much as I did. Presented as an oral history, primarily featuring quotes from interviews of band members and those close to them, Daisy Jones & The Six follows the rise and fall of the band – how they came together, wrote a wildly successful album, and what led to them eventually going their separate ways. The author has talked about the story being inspired by Fleetwood Mac.

Mistborn: The Final Empire, The Well of Ascension, and The Hero of Ages (Brandon Sanderson) – Less of a commitment than The Stormlight Archive or The Wheel of Time, Mistborn was a good introduction to Sanderson’s work. The (first) trilogy takes place in a world where plants are brown, ash falls from the sky, and mists come at night and certain people, Allomancers, can use metals to gain different abilities. The first book is overall a heist novel, the second is more political, and the third turns philosophical. The world is built well, with varied characters, though the conclusion is a bit deus ex machina-y.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold and Tales from the Café (Toshikazu Kawaguchi) – An interesting take on time travel, where patrons of a café are allowed to go back in time, but only at one table in the café that they can’t get up from, and their stay is limited to the amount of time it takes a cup of coffee to get cold. The books are translated from Japanese, so the writing doesn’t always flow perfectly, but that’s not necessarily a negative for a translated novel.

The Sandman: Season of Mists and A Game of You (Neil Gaiman) – The Sandman continues with Morpheus taking a trip to Hell to see his ex, only to find the realm abandoned and having to deal with the consequences of that, then New Yorker Barbie travels to her magical dream realm to save it from the Cuckoo. A step removed from the real world, as befits the Lord of the Dreaming.

Sunshine (Jarrett J. Krosoczka) – It’s about a camp for children with cancer and their families, so of course it was going to be sad, but also poignant. Based on the author’s actual experiences.

Avatar: The Last Airbender: The Promise, The Search, and The Rift (Gene Luen Yang) – After Aang saves the world, Team Avatar still has a lot of work to do. Aang and Zuko must figure out how to rule a Fire Nation colony in the Earth Kingdom, Zuko looks for his mother, and Toph faces her family. The author did a good job continuing the story and portraying the characters.

Star Wars – Heir to the Empire (Timothy Zahn), The Courtship of Princess Leia (Dave Wolverton), the Jedi Academy trilogy (Jedi Search, Dark Apprentice, Champions of the Force) (Kevin J. Anderson) – The Star Wars books I read in this year featured the emergence of Thrawn, Han chasing Leia to a planet of force witches, and Luke’s quest to establish an academy to begin teaching the next generation of Jedi. Everything was readable, if nothing spectacular.