Hi Friends,

We saw a glimpse of snow this week in New York City 🙂  Unfortunately it was just a flurry, and it didn't stay cold enough for the snow to stick. It does feel like it's getting colder, though, so I'm hoping it's just a matter of days before we see our first real snowfall of the season ❄️

Reading

A Brief History of Time: I'm still working my way through this one. I know I said last week that I would try and finish it over the weekend, but I just didn't feel up to it. It's not difficult reading, but I was pretty worn out and in the mood for something way on the easy end.

This weekend I'm feeling like I have some more energy, some renewed resolve, and am planning on taking a couple hours tonight to get through the rest of it.

Without Remorse: Like I said, I was looking for some easy reading last weekend. A friend of mine was recently reading Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, which is what made me think of Clancy. This is the first novel of his that I've read, and it basically fits the bill. It's like an action movie in book form, but better, since in my opinion books are just a better form of entertainment than film.

In order to recover from kind of a long week, I spent most of this past week binging Without Remorse. I'm 400 pages in out of about 750.

I haven't read many action thrillers before, so it's kind of exciting to find this whole new genre. Most of the fiction reading in my life has been rather high-brow science fiction, for better or worse. Not because I'm a snob or anything, it's just that's the kind of sci-fi that my dad introduced me to all the way back in 7th grade with William Gibson's Neuromancer. I've just never given much time to other kinds of fiction.

The most interesting thing about my experience reading Without Remorse is how it can basically stand in for watching tv. It's easy reading, just like tv is easy because you don't have to put in much/any work to consume it. Similarly, I don't have to think while reading an action thriller. I can just let myself feel whatever the book is throwing at me, and that is enough of an escape as to serve the same purpose as tv.

Cooking

This week we cooked and ate sambar as our main meal. We made so much of it, and it was so good, that we ended up just eating it all week. The recipe we used is this one from our favorite Indian food YouTube channel, CookingShooking.

Some friends came over for dinner on Friday, so we cooked two extra main dishes. Our tried and true combination of biryani and dum aloo (both also from CookingShooking).

The best part of making a bunch of food and having people over for dinner is the left-overs 😜

That's all I have for now!

Stay safe and see you next week ❤️