Fun
Went to the South Bay for lunch with a friend. I also stopped in at Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park (where I bought a book and a notebook for writing in, since mine is almost done) and had a nice mint hot chocolate (with real whipped cream) at Cafe Borrone next door. Those are two of the places I miss the most from my grad school days.
Things Made
Chocolate chip banana bread. Made this again because it’s delicious! This time I used 4.5 freezer bananas.
Reading
Read Me Before You by JoJo Moyes. I had trouble putting this book about a woman who ends up caring for a quadripeligic down. At times, it made me laugh out loud. I didn’t actually cry (a common side effect, apparently) but parts of this book were very sad.
Got Gretchen Rubin’s Better Than Before: Mastering the Habits of Our Everyday Lives from the library. It was a little less research-y (think Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit) and a bit more anecdotal; while somewhat interesting, I didn’t like it nearly as much as her book The Happiness Project, and am not sure I learned all that much by reading it.
Read The Little Paris Bookshop (my purchase from Kepler’s). I found this book about a bookseller and his barge, love, and loss rather endearing.
A “food for thought” article about who the “Tiny House Movement” is for. I’ve been reading minimalism blogs off and on for some time now and always find myself intrigued by some of the ideas therein. Note: the article is from BuzzFeed, which I was pleased to see has more than listicles these days 🙂
Discovered Rands in Repose, a blog with a lot of pieces about software engineering, management, and such. Got sucked into article after article.