A more-or-less yearly occurrence may have revealed I’m entering my villain era.
Yule begins this week and I for one am doing my best to cultivate my Yuletide spirit. I’ve watched A Christmas Story at least once a day since thanksgiving; in fact, I’m watching it right now! I’ve changed out my harvest decorations for more winter-themed ones, and I’ve ramped up the burning of more woodsy incense in the Räucherhütte. I’ve also been playing my many “home fireplace” DVDs and listening to Spotify playlists made for folks like me.
Of course, Spotify released their Wrapped list a few weeks ago. I’ve never quite understood why they can’t postpone this for another month or so since it’s not really a year in review. But I digress.
For the first time since I started paying attention to Spotify Wrapped, and surprising nobody who paid attention to me in 2023, Taylor Swift unseated My Chemical Romance as my number one artist for the year, with The Lakes (Long Pond Studio Sessions) as my number one song.
This past year I discovered a new indie artist on TikTok called Rabbitology, and they just barely missed making my top five. Am I already making a playlist for 2024 to help boost certain songs and artists? You bet I am.
Click through the gallery to see more highlights from Spotify. I will say that Old Gods of Appalachia being my number one podcast may be misleading. OGA is the only podcast I listen to on Spotify; every other one I listen to is on Overcast, which doesn’t have any kind of stats feature.
In my last post I talked about seasoning my cast iron pan; it did up this salmon easily:
The other month I was thinking about my dad and how when he had to cook us supper he’d often go for some kind of fried potato. We’ve had a few colder nights here so I decided I’d try to do up some polish kielbasa with fried potatoes in the skillet. I don’t have a picture, but Krystal has said I can keep it on the list. Oh, that reminds me I’m supposed to make that tonight and need to take the meat out of the freezer . . . I also made a fantastic farmer’s pie, which I also neglected to take a picture of.
Also, I apologize for ending that sentence with a preposition. It looks wrong but I’m just too lazy this morning to fix it.
Back on the first Saturday in December we went to a light show with Krystal’s folks. I wore some of my Nonbinary Finery and liked the look so much I wore it to work twice in the last few weeks; once to our department Christmas party – where with the careful application of some (golden?) glittery eyeshadow I received more than a few compliments. Of course I look slightly different now (more on that in just a few sentences) but here’s what I looked like the night of the light show:
It doesn’t hurt that it also gives off more than a few Black Parade vibes, about which several of my coworkers also commented.
That time I fixed the preposition; consider it an early present from me to you.
And now, like one of those recipes that has to tell you a story before getting to the actual promised content, here we are at the Great Beard Harvest of 2023 – also known as Candlelight. Behold my transformation from an office worker at a community college into an eighteenth-century colonial governor:
Of course I had to take one fun photo:
Now normally I don’t like shaving off my facial hair: for one, because I’m lazy and don’t like shaving; and for two, because it has always just looked “wrong” to me – and definitely to Krystal, who often shouts “grow faster” at my hair (which already grows at a rapid pace).
But this year was slightly different. This year I’ve let my hair grow since I last got it cut on April 27th – I know the date because it was the day before I drove to Georgia for the Taylor Swift concert on April 29th. With longer hair, it doesn’t look bad and even Krystal kinda likes it. I even looked at myself in the mirror one day and thought “is this gender?” – and that thought reminded me of my look a few years ago when my mom realized I looked like my great-grandfather . . .
However, I did not anticipate a certain problem this would cause. Since I’ve never had hair this long before I’m still figuring out how to do anything with it, and by the end of the day it can really express itself regardless of how much product I’ve used to shape it into place. Again, not a huge deal, except that I needed to renew my driver’s license. Since I renewed online last time, I had to go in person this time, and would necessitate a new picture being taken – a fact I realized about halfway through shaving off my beard a couple weeks ago.
The DMV itself was no problem. Though they were short staffed, there were only two people ahead of me and both were already being served. (Mr. Humphries, are you free?) So I was actually at the DMV less than half an hour. The problem was with my photograph. Now I know that people rarely like their ID photos, but this one struck me in a way, while also realizing there was nothing I could do about it because it was literally the way I looked.
At this point I have to ask you a question: are you familiar with the movie No Country for Old Men, specifically Javier Bardem’s character, Anton Chigurh? If you aren’t, just know that (a) he’s a killer and (b) looks like this:
Now, let’s take a look at what I looked like when my picture was taken at the DMV:
And now for a side-by-side look:
Apparently I am entering my villain era . . .
What Have You Been Up To?
Running In My Head 