rinsemiddlebliss
"At the mercy of the geography"
Haunted manuals lightning talk
by AK Krajewska
Last week, I presented a lightning talk at Write the Docs based on my haunted manuals series. A recording of the talk is now available on YouTube. While I've been thinking about haunted manuals for a long time, the 5-minute lightning talk was something of a last-minute decision. I didn't practice... Continue reading (680 words)
Reset button
by AK Krajewska
It happened again: scope creep. When I re-started regularly blogging here in 2023, I specifically said I would avoid the trap of only writing serious and thoughtful posts, because as we all know from that anecdote about the pottery class, the way you get good work is not by trying to produce good work but by producing a lot... Continue reading (1644 words)
A perennial garden post
by AK Krajewska
I spent most of this weekend in the garden. What I meant to do was to anchor some shelves to the walls so they don't fall down in case of an earthquake, and to do that I had to go to the local big box hardware store, which in these parts is Lowe's, to buy some specialty screws and attachmenty... Continue reading (678 words)
Fort McDowell on Angel Island
Sea, sun, and plants reclaim a former military outpost
by AK Krajewska
The remnants of Angel Island's military base buildings have been partly preserved, and partly allowed to gracefully decay. Slowly, water and plants wear them down. Clearly, some kind of work is being put in to keep the structures from becoming so unsafe that they'd need to be completely fenced... Continue reading (941 words)
Acorn woodpeckers of Angel Island
by AK Krajewska
Angel Island is a park and nature sanctuary in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. It used to be an immigration and quarantine station and a military base, and now it's a park with interesting historical features. You can only get there by ferry, and while you can camp there, the only people who... Continue reading (730 words)
The best damn udon in San Francisco
My udon quest led me to the surprisingly good Stonestown mall
by AK Krajewska
In 2020, I made a New Year's resolution to find the best udon in San Francisco. I thought it would be easy and fun. I planned to go to restaurants and order udon and decide if I liked it or not. Almost all the udon I've had in San Francisco has been disappointing, and a resolution to find the... Continue reading (1734 words)
Neither waffle nor a cold open
In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg is my model for topic introductions
by AK Krajewska
It's hard to write a good first sentence these days. Apologetic preemptory waffle is the reflexive post-traumatic response to having said, or even witnessed someone else say, something on social media that got picked up by reply guys, well- and ill-meaning scolds, and people who missed the point... Continue reading (1311 words)
Breaking down Breaking Dawn
I accidentally reread the Twilight Saga and I have thoughts
by AK Krajewska
Breaking Dawn, the last book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight series about a teenage girl and her vampire boyfriend who wants to eat her but doesn't because that would be immoral, represents a structural and dramatic break from the previous three novels. Hello, I accidentally... Continue reading (1636 words)
Magic balls, psychic aliens, and part-time yokai
The versatile sources of magic powers in Danadan
by AK Krajewska
The residual effects of demon possession, a traumatic encounter with space aliens, and touching magic balls are some of the charming and unusual ways that characters in Dandadan (ダンダダン) get their magic powers. Dandadan is a delightfully bizarre anime about... Continue reading (1316 words)
Escape from the horrors
by AK Krajewska
I'm watching my cat sleep as I write this. She keeps shifting between various cute, curled up positions on her warming pad. My favorite is the slightly goofy one where she puts her head down sideways directly on the pad, which seems to be a new one she's invented recently. Her favorite, based on... Continue reading (713 words)
