Really loved this post from @jabel as I continue to figure out how my annual New Year refresh will manifest itself in 2022.

Enjoying poking through the Micro.blog community anew and finding voices I’ve missed.

Way too excited over the lint shaver depilling one of my favorite hoodies. Can’t decide if it’s because I’m old or weird. Probably both.

I can’t decide whether it’s healthy to follow a Twitter epidemiologist who alternates between latest developments in terrible COVID strains and rage over people not taking any of this seriously.

Been posting a lot the past few days on social media and here. Starting to add some of my blog posts again to the Micro.blog community ether after taking a hiatus from it.

It could be that I’m looking to renew a sense of connection with the wider world at the outset of this year. Or maybe I’m just trying to avoid decluttering my office. Hard to say.

Breakfast lumpia is the best.

(This should wind down my holiday Filipino comfort food obsession for the season. And after the last of this, my eating habits should get back on track. 🤞🏼)

Charlie Warzel on social media: “What if the internet so frequently feels miserable, and makes those of us posting and reacting feel miserable, because so many people are miserable in the first place? What if we all absorb that misery at scale online and, sometimes unwittingly, inflict it on one another?”

Very grateful for online homilies that can make up for scary in-person ones – the kind that I worry will drive my kid away from the faith – at morning Mass.

Our neighbor started up her snowblower around 7:10 this morning. This is after shoveling at least twice yesterday and using her snowblower extensively through 10 p.m. last night.

Oddly enough, this is NOT the same neighbor who mows her lawn twice a week.

And some people wonder why I didn’t want to leave my South Loop condo for the suburbs when I got married. Sure, there were the nightly sirens, which didn’t bother me, but at least I didn’t have to shovel the sidewalk seven stories below.

First attempt at making lumpia from scratch (except for the wrapper, which was store-bought). My sister talked me through the basic ingredients of our mom’s recipe (ground pork, julienned vegetables [carrots, snow peas], bean sprouts, and sliced water chestnuts), and I took it from there.

Okay for a first attempt, though I need practice in wrapping them. Cooked them in my new air fryer, and I find I miss the greasy sheen of deep frying.

Most of all, I miss being able to ask Mom how to pull these off.



Hope and resolve. The words popped into my head during Mass today.

The practice of picking words to guide a year usually entails one or three words. There might be another word popping up later, but “hope” and “resolve” are definitely keepers.

In 2021, I lost my mom, then a dear friend, and then found out a couple of college friends had died in the past year. And that’s on top of all the other messes in the world.

Thanking God that there were still pockets of joy along the way. Still, this year can’t end fast enough.

A few thoughts on this New York Times piece on the multiculturalization of Chicago’s Italian beef sandwich:

  • I love living in an area that has Korean-Polish delis and a 1950s-style diner that serves halal meat.
  • I am intrigued by Kasama’s version of “Italian beef” with thinly sliced adobo meat, longanisa, and giardianera. But I won’t try it until I’ve tried their combo longanisa/tocino combo breakfast.
  • Portillo’s is not the best Italian beef in the area. Not by a longshot. (Chris converted me months ago to the cult of Johnnie’s Beef in Elmwood Park, but Buona is good, too.) But I’m not as fussy about such things, and I’ll tolerate it more than Chris does.
  • I love how protective Chicagoans are about their food.
  • All that said, the sandwich purists really need to get a grip.

Tidied up my workspace a bit this morning.

Happy to report a peaceful Christmas Eve that started with a lovely vigil Mass at our parish, then the decoration of our humble tabletop fake tree, followed by a dinner of home-baked milk rolls, arroz caldo, and a tankard of coquito.

No photos. I leave my phone in the car for Mass these days, preferring not to look for the next cool shot to share from church. And I’m increasingly content to relegate the phone to Spotify duty at home. Sometimes it’s just tiring to strive for an Instagrammable holiday. Glad to take a break from it right now.

Merry Christmas.

This is about the time of year when I make it clear that I really, REALLY despise forced corporate frivolity.

I have to keep reminding myself that just because a person cannot spell or use English properly, especially on social media, that doesn’t mean that they are idiots.

Attended a midday Latin Mass at our parish for today’s feast of the Immaculate Conception.

It was a particularly interesting experience after a vigil Mass the night before at another parish that is decidedly less, well, reverent than ours:

  • fully blinged-out Christmas trees behind the altar;
  • strict adherence to arcane diocesan rules that all but discourage reception of the Eucharist on the tongue;
  • a small army of laypersons armed with hand sanitizers before you receive;
  • and an “extraordinary” Eucharistic minister helping to hand out Communion next to the celebrant, even though there was another priest available to do so.

And for all of that, today’s Latin Mass – in the middle of the day, a somewhat more inconvenient time, really – had more than twice as many people attending, and our pastor distributed the Eucharist himself.

I really don’t want to be one of those stereotypically cranky and indignant TLM types. I’m fine with the so-called Novus Ordo liturgy in the vernacular, so long as it’s celebrated by clergy and parishioners in a reverent and respectful manner. This is rarely the case in the three parishes in our DuPage County suburb, which is one of the reasons why we are registered at a more orthodox parish down the road in a decidedly more working-class Cook County area.

But every time I attend Mass in our town, I’m immensely grateful for our parish, where the faith and the Real Presence is taken seriously. It’s been a gift.

Oh, come on, Amazon.

Bought a wreath at church today. The marbled paper star that F made in school pairs up nicely with it.

Today’s amusing catechical moment: sitting behind the older CCD boys at Mass and, when the priest mentioned in passing that there would be no video games in Heaven, hearing their audible gasps.

Christmas fudge season is officially under way. Experimenting here with a vanilla mint batch. (Annoyed that I had to get my preferred Guittard mint chips online because they’re not sold here anymore.) The swirling and red nonpareils were Frannie’s idea.

So far, we’ve also produced batches of milk chocolate, plain (using fat-free condensed milk and sugar-free semisweet chips made with stevia), snickerdoodle, walnut, almond joy, and mocha.

Before the weekend is out, looking to create chocolate mint, vanilla mint (stevia and fat-free condensed milk version), and possibly a vegan fudge using condensed oat milk I found at the grocery store today. Still need to try making caramels (regular and vegan) after some uselessly hard batches made a couple of weeks ago.

And then I can start packing little boxes to ship to colleagues and a few friends and family members. Will make fresh batches later for Frannie’s friends and teachers/counselors next week.

I think I’m on my 12th viewing of the “Ted Lasso” Christmas episode in the past week. I’ve lost count. #ComfortViewing

First night of Advent. Painted a papier-mâché calendar (with Frannie’s color scheme, snowflakes, and numbers) and a wooden tree, and set up the Advent candles.

(The bucket of holiday candy in the middle of the candles is not in accordance with tradition, but it fit there.)

Posting this a day late. We hit our favorite Polish smorgasbord for Thanksgiving after missing it last year. (Sawa’s, like most restaurants about this time last year, had shut down because of the pandemic.)

We really missed this place over the past year and a half. The extra carbs were worth it.