Link Love, vol. 29
Hello and happy Wednesday, friends! I am waist deep in prepping for our first long vacation of the year (the cruise to celebrate my mom and step dad’s 60th birthdays) and planning for our next week-long trip only a couple of weeks later. I’m also going through the hiring process at work! It’s interesting being on the hiring manager side of things. The next few weeks are going to be VERY busy for me on that front.
This past weekend marked three months since I had COVID, so I was finally eligible for the bivalent booster! I got that along with the flu shot over the weekend, and boy did it knock me out the past couple of days, ooof. I had pretty strong immune reactions after my second vaccine (Moderna series) and after my first booster (Pfizer) and had heard that reactions were generally not as bad after the bivalent booster, but it still hit me hard.
I got the booster around 3 pm on Sunday and went to bed feeling fine. I woke up on Monday thinking I was fine until I got out of bed and realized I was aching everywhere, so I fed the cats and went back to bed until around 1 pm, when I moved to the couch. My body ached all day. By the end of Monday, I was also having trouble regulating my body temperature (simultaneously sweating and freezing). Tuesday morning, I woke up with a horrific headache and stayed in bed until 2:30 pm! I got a few hours of work in (like I said, I’m going through the hiring process!). I still felt hot and cold but overall I’m doing better now. Whew! 😅
Link Love, vol. 29
I nodded my head the entire time I read this essay on bringing back personal blogging (via The Verge). As someone that started blogging almost 10 years ago and never stopped, it makes me sad thinking about all the blogging friends I used to have all those years ago that have since stopped blogging. It’s way more fun than social media!
Kelsea Ballerini surprise-dropped a six-song EP and short film, Rolling Up the Welcome Mat, telling her side of the story regarding her recent divorce. It’s probably her best body of work to date. It’s so heartbreaking, vulnerable, and hauntingly beautiful at the same time. Highly recommend, even if you’ve never experienced divorce yourself. I definitely cried listening and watching.
Do you need more books on your TBR? (Said no one ever! 😆) Browse Elle’s list of the best books of 2023. I’m personally on a Kindle-book-no-buy this year while I read down my TBR, but I am allowing myself to preorder a few physical books. So far, I’ve preordered Swipe Up for More by Stephanie McNeal and The Christmas Orphans Club by Becca Freeman.
Like any natural disaster, the massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey was devastating while also being quite fascinating to scientists. A picture of the surface rupture showing 3 meters of displacement was shared on Twitter (it’s from this article, which I believe is written in Turkish…I can’t read it but there are a few other photographs of the damage).
For my fellow avgeeks: Watch this video for a more in-depth explanation of what happened with regards to the near-miss at Austin with the Fedex and Southwest planes. I had NO IDEA how close they were to disaster. (This video on Twitter shows a simulation of what happened, but with clear conditions. Visibility was near-zero during the actual event due to fog and it being nighttime. Yikes!)
This is what I would like to do for my next birthday. Or maybe even for my 10th blogging anniversary later this year. Would you be down?! 🤣
Did you catch Super Bowl 57 this past weekend? You missed out on what this opinion piece (via USA Today) is calling the “Blackest, most woke Super Bowl ever”! I loved this recap. Why TF do conservatives use the word “woke” to mean “Black” or “progressive”? It’s funny, when you ask them to define it, they simply ignore you.
I’ve been too busy to do much clothing shopping, but here are some things I have my eyes on for spring: the Merly denim jacket or the Bailey classic denim jacket by ABLE (I’m -this close- to buying one of these denim jackets, but I can’t decide on which one), this suede moto jacket by BlankNYC (my charcoal suede jacket is too tight, and I cannot get the color of this jacket out of my head), curve love jeans by Abercrombie (have heard great things about these jeans made for curvy women), and this cute embroidered baseball cap by A Life Well Dressed (a Black-owned brand at Nordstrom I recently featured)!