Things I Like Watching Lately

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Today's post is about some of the things I've liked watching - mostly on YouTube - recently. As I mentioned in my last reading reflections post, because of all the things going on in the world right now, I seem to have very little mental energy for anything after work. After I get home from the office, I can't even muster up the brain power to read for fun, even though I'm currently working through some books that are quite well-written and not particularly heavy or sad in subject matter. 

My current favorite YouTube channel is Mejoo and Cats, see a post from their Instagram account above. Mejoo's family of cats: Monji, Bongji, Hyuji, and Yoji, all have big personalities, and the videos are very relaxing and soothing. That's Bongji and Monji in the Instagram photo above. Bongji, in particular, is quite a character. (Make sure closed captions are turned on if you need the English subtitles for their videos.) 

I've also been enjoying some YouTube day-in-the-life vlogs that have no or minimal talking, mostly just ambient noise and some added background music. Most of the the channels I watch in this genre are run by women based in Japan or Korea, most of whom live alone in fairly small studio or one-bedroom apartments. Many of them cook often, making meals that feel fancy and a bit complicated because they make several dishes, some of them carefully plated. I find these videos very calming and relaxing. 

My favorite creators in this vlog genre are Usako Style and Nami's Life. I also like Yuireu (she often uses more lively background music than the other day-in-the-life vloggers I've listed here) and deemd. Because many creators in this genre are internationally based and English is not the primary language they post in, I'm completely dependent on the YouTube algorithm to show me other similar channels. I have no sense of whether the people I follow are some of the more popular ones in this space, or if there are a whole world of other, more famous ones out there! 

August 2021 Reading Reflections

Pardon me for disappearing for a while. Work managed to get too busy quite suddenly for me to post last week!

I had a pretty good reading month in the first half of August, but since then I've been right back in another one of those weird moods where I'm just not motivated to read for fun, particularly before bed. There's been a lot of bad news in the world recently, and I just... don't have the energy to use my brain for anything after work, even to read books that are objectively quite well-written and also not too terribly heavy in subject matter. 

Our courthouse wedding in late September is going to be super informal and super casual, and K and I have already done basically all the minimal planning work that's required. Even so, I suspect my brain will probably still feel too preoccupied and distracted to read for fun for most of the rest of the month. So maybe I'll end up having no new books to report on for September.

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As usual, here are the books I read last month in the order in which I finished them:

• Case Histories by Kate Atkinson - This was recommended by a commenter here, I enjoyed it a lot and am now working on One Good Turn, the next book in the series. Based off these two volumes, Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series is a bit of a nontraditional murder mystery series, the focus is much more on the characters and their inner lives than it is on anyone actively taking many steps to solve the mystery. I don't mind that at all, though when reading Case Histories I sometimes found myself confused by the pacing because I was initially expecting the main character - who was working as a private investigator, after retiring as a policeman - to get fully to the bottom of each of the separate crimes involved in the story. But once I let go of that expectation, I was okay with the book's somewhat slow pace. I enjoy Atkinson's writing style and the way she gets in the head of all her characters, so I can see myself finishing the entire Jackson Brodie series in fairly short order, once I'm able to shake off my current non-reading mood. 
• Imposter Syndrome by Kathy Wang - I really loved Kathy's debut novel, Family Trust, so I was excited to read this when the New York Public Library finally got it in as an ebook. This is a very different, more fast-paced story than Family Trust, and once I got to the end I really wanted there to be more! Like in Kathy's first novel, there are many sharp, darkly funny observations about life in the Bay Area and life in the tech industry interspersed throughout this story. I can't wait for her next book. 
• Crying in H-Mart by Michelle Zauner - This book had tons of buzz amongst the many writers I follow on Twitter, and all their rave reviews are extremely well-deserved. I loved this memoir, and it's going to be right up there amongst my favorite nonfiction books of the year.  It's an incredibly sad story, as the author lost her mother to cancer after two brutal rounds of chemotherapy. I've recommended so many memoirs on this blog over the years because it's a genre I greatly enjoy. Every author's life story is so different that it isn't exactly proper to compare them head-to-head and try to label any of them the "best" or anything like that. But I don't think I've read another memoir before that was truly this vividly "real" and unflinching about grief - including the ugly parts of it, the anger and resentment that can accompany it - and about sometimes-difficult family relationships, including when Zauner was a teenager and her mother hadn't yet accepted Zauner's creative ambitions. 

Like I mentioned in July, I'm also still working through Andrew Solomon's The Noonday Demon. It's not quite as densely filled with detailed descriptions of scientific research as I feared from the first chapter. Solomon focuses much more on personal stories, including his own, and I find those personal stories interesting. But either way, this type of nonfiction that's on the more dense and academic side of the spectrum is a tough genre for me to read on Kindle, I can only work through it slowly. 

I've also been reading Laura Lippman's Lady in the Lake, following Kathy's recommendation for Lippman's books as being consistently well-written "literary" thrillers that deserve more buzz and attention. This is only my first Lippman book, so it's maybe a little too early for me to declare Kathy's recommendation absolutely on point. But my feeling so far is that the writing,  development of the characters and setting, etc. are so good that I'd be shocked if it doesn't carry over to the author's other work. I try a lot of best-selling, highly-marketed "women's" thrillers and often the writing is... just not great and many of the books are close to unreadable. Lady in the Lake is nothing like those not-so-great representatives of the genre, and I'm eager to finish this and pick up Lippman's other books (at least once I get over my current mood about reading). 

August 2021 Shopping Reflections

With this month's huge purchase, I was originally going to rely on the secondhand market and wait for the right one to come along in hopefully decent condition and for the right price. There I heard some whisperings about an imminent 10-20% price increase on Celine handbags on August 25, which was corroborated by a sales associate I spoke to at one of the NYC Celine boutiques. So then I made the order, only to find that when August 25 finally rolled around, the price for this specific bag remained completely unchanged online, at least as of today. So that's a bit of a comedy of errors. 

Please note that this post contains affiliate links that could result in my earning a small commission - at no extra cost to you - if you click and make a purchase. Thank you for your support! 

I've been thinking about the large Celine Seau Sangle for quite some time. In fact, had the COVID pandemic not turned critical in the US and western Europe exactly when it did, I'd probably already own one, thanks to a lengthy Paris business trip that was scheduled for mid-March 2020 but ultimately never happened due to COVID shutdowns and travel restrictions.

Despite my longtime interest in this bag, I never seriously considered looking at the secondhand market for it - or for any similarly priced designer handbag, really - until very recently, when I was finally within spitting distance of completely paying off my student loans. After first dabbling with the secondhand designer handbag market through the purchase of the currently more modestly priced Balenciaga City, I felt more confident about potentially buying the Celine Seau Sangle that way. I've been tracking the secondhand market for the large Seau Sangles closely ever since, primarily on Fashionphile, but also on TheRealReal ("TRR") and Yoogi's Closet. 

Out of the three secondhand sellers I've been looking at for the past six weeks, only Fashionphile and TRR get new inventory in often enough and quickly enough to have had a few Seau Sangles pass through in that time. Fashionphile's pricing is generally quite competitive, they start many large Seau Sangles at ~$1,600 or less - sometimes a lot less - though more neutral colors like dark gray or black may start higher. I don't really trust TRR's authentication processes at all*, and they also tend to price large Seau Sangles much higher, often at least $2,100 for black, gray, or navy in decent condition. Seau Sangles in neutral colors tend to sell quickly - even the more pricey ones at TRR - they often don't stick around long enough for even one round of automatic markdowns by either Fashionphile or TRR. 

Life Lately: A Spendy Month (or Two)

The green chickpea hummus at ABCV, which is quite tasty and also a suitable dish for my current health and fitness goals!

As of last week, NYC now requires restaurants and many other businesses to check for proof of vaccination before allowing guests over the age of 12 to participate in various indoor activities. K and I have been indoors at a few restaurants since the new policy took effect, and we've seen... a range of different levels of verification. 

One restaurant checked our vaccine cards - using the New York state Excelsior app, because K and I both got our shots from state-run sites - and our photo identification. Another asked us to self-attest to our vaccination status, but waved away our attempt to pull out our phones to actually show our vaccine information in Excelsior. Yet another restaurant didn't ask us anything at all. We'll see whether restaurants become more uniform in checking vaccination status in the next few weeks. 

Since I officially finished paying off my student loans last month, I've sort of been spending money like it's going out of style. There was that substantial jewelry gift to myself, which was planned out ahead of time, and then a round of orthodontic treatment, which was a bit less planned out. (I'd had a vague notion since the accident in 2017 that I'd seek out an orthodontic consult for it eventually, but had no concrete idea of when that should actually happen.) Our recent trip to Crested Butte, CO was also on the pricier side. 

K and I have also decided to move forward with a small, immediate family-only courthouse wedding ceremony, leaving any bigger celebration and reception for an as yet unknown date down the line - only after the COVID situation has calmed down both domestically and internationally - so there are also quite a few expenses related to that. For instance, K bought my engagement ring so I'm buying our wedding bands. 

I think K and I may have left it far too late to successfully book a photographer now for a late September date - even if it's on a weekday and we'd only need the photographer for two hours max because it's going to be an extremely informal and quick wedding - but if it's possible, we'd like to arrange that. It was probably extremely foolish on my part to have waited until last week to start looking for a photographer. Everyone I've spoken to so far is already close to fully booked through the end of the year. (I may have been lulled into a false sense of security by my own line of work. Clients who are willing to pay can easily arrange to retain a team of biglaw or biglaw-ish lawyers for significant, urgent work with barely a week or two's notice... Obviously, the legal business is very, very different from most others, which I should have realized, duh.) 

Also, I now have my new braces on, for a round of treatment expected to take four to six months. It's been quite an adjustment! I had braces when I was a teen, but I'd completely forgotten they come with restrictions against eating certain types of food. I never experienced much pain, discomfort, or other problems with my braces as a teen, but I think my teeth are slightly more sensitive this time around. My speech is somewhat affected, I can't pronounce some words well because the braces are in the way. 

After barely a week of wearing my new braces, I swear I can already see some movement! So I'm currently feeling reasonably optimistic that my treatment timeline might be closer to four months than six. Either way, because I'll likely be wearing a mask in all indoor public settings for the next several months - except when actively eating or drinking - barely anyone outside of close friends and family will ever actually see my braces.