Weekly Report: February 19th - February 25th 2024

The Week in Summary:

• Family Day was spent idling around the condo, reading, listening to music, and having an excellent vegetable soup for dinner (made solely by my love). Due to the holiday, our team only works four days this week. (Thanks Premier Getty!)
• Work was fairly normal this week, though I worked on learning a chemistry program that was new to me.
• We finished season 3 of Succession and we are well into season 4 now. There is something so oddly entrancing about watching obscenely rich people chase after even more money.
• I picked up Hunt Showdown on Steam for 65% off and played a few hours this week. It’s an extraction-shooter based in Louisiana in 1895 and very much thematically tied to a Southern Gothic aesthetic. It gives off the same tension that some DayZ encounters do. I must have had some fairly good folks in the party, because I got a few bounties, though eventually my luck wore out. 
• On Saturday, with my love out to their parents for the day for playing an ongoing RPG campaign, I spent a quiet day reading Station Eleven, went to Alumni for lunch, and picked up a new record.
• On Sunday, my partner and I hung around the house. We listened to some records and I started reading The City & The City by China Mieville. For dinner, we ordered some Tibetan food from Tibet Kitchen in Kensington. After dinner, I played Helldivers 2 with my bud for a few hours.

Recommendations:

• The Never-Ending Fall of Rome (CBC Ideas): Focused on the myth of Roman decline as a political tool and how that myth has historically been weaponized.
• Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel (Book): Fantastic quiet post-apocalyptic novel focused on the importance of arts and companionship, even in the most dire situations (after a deadly pandemic). I teared up a few times. It brought up a lot of memories of teaching performing arts back in the elementary school in Winnipeg.
• The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place by Explosions in the Sky (Album): Classic post-rock album. I ordered it a couple weeks ago and picked the vinyl record last weekend from Blackbyrd Myoozik.

The Week in Images