Weeknotes 2024W48

Last week, I alluded to an Austin trip. It’s a wonderful city and it was awesome to see my Peace Corps friends that I’ve never seen in the United States. We mostly ate, drank, saw the city, and cracked jokes. My favorite food we had was Home Slice. That pizza was nearly transcendent. We had to wait for a while but it was completely worth it. The best bar we went to was Ego’s Karaoke Bar. It’s underneath a parking garage and kind of hidden. Inside was warm and cozy with a perfect mix of characters doing karaoke. AM absolutely killed Me and Bobby McGee by Janis Joplin and my friend Joaquin did a parody of Drift Away by Dobie Gray.

We took the bus home, rested, and prepared for Thanksgiving. The day before, my friend and Arabic teacher from Morocco, Maryem, took the bus up from Huntsville to spend her first Thanksgiving with us. It was fun to speak some Arabic with her and AM after not speaking it for a few weeks. I made mac and cheese and everyone else brought all the usual sides (except for mashed potatoes). We ate too much, enjoyed the company, and made stockings for Christmas.

That night, we played board games. My favorite was Exploding Kittens. It’s well-designed, short, easy to learn, and really fun. I have a working theory that good games (and puzzles) are ones that make you feel smart. At least, my favorite ones do. Exploding Kittens has just enough strategy to do that without the steep learning curve. Monopoly Deal was similar but I like the original better. Poetry for Neanderthals was a new one that I had never heard before. It’s like Taboo but you can only use one syllable words so you end up stringing together sentences so you sound like a neanderthal. Really fun.

I usually don’t go out on Black Friday. Partly because of the crowds and partly because of the consumerism of the whole event. I went out in the afternoon for a small trip and went to the Red Wing store here in town. I’ve wanted the Weekender Chukkas for years and finally got them on a 20% discount. I could never justify the cost (and stille feel a little guilty about the purchase) but I finally pulled the trigger and absolutely love them.

The stars aligned and someone reached out to me to do some coding work for her social enterprise focused on youth development and youth entrepreneurship—the same field I just spent two years doing. We’re still talking about the project but hopefully much more to come. I am incredibly excited to continue serving youth in my own country in a way that is more aligned with my skill set.

On Saturday, I went with AM’s family to a University of Texas watch party. There is a big rivalry between UT and the Aggies so we sat around, watched the game, drank, and ate. It was nice meeting new people and mingling.

Finally, AM and I started watching Arcane: League of Legends. It’s really intriguing so far and the animation, visuals, and colors are something else.

Weeknotes 2024W48

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