Six weeks, two splints, two casts, a titanium plate, and six screws later, she's more or less back to normal. I did just realize, though, that I have two Minnesota History quarterlies to get through.so maybe that's this week's print read? FamilyД¬hild #1 broke her arm in a freak playground accident on the first day back from winter break. It's no Washington Post or Star Tribune, but neither I nor the publisher seem to think that it needs to be. I get some grief for being one of those 'dinosaurs' with a subscription to our local newspaper (local journalism matters, by the way), and though it's a weekly with all of its local quirks and oddities, I find it's one of the more enjoyable bits of my reading week. Regarding periodicals, I have less of a backlog. I received a handful of lighter reads over Christmas, but I don't like to read more than one print book at a time so I have to get back to the state house. Very interesting, but I've found that I need to be in the right mindset to best consume its material. It's a good read, overall, but is definitely not light reading. My early-winter read (what I started) is called Scandinavians in the State House, and I'm about 2/3 of the way through it.

On the print materials side of the equation, I have a collection of things to get through. And it's been an amazing improvement overall, and has definitely reduced the amount of noise. Every day for a week or two I removed a source or unsubscribed from something. I deliberately took some advice at the beginning of the year to unsubscribe and review the materials I'm consuming (or having sent my way). Sometimes it'd be easier if the browser(s) just crashed and left me wondering 'What if? Meh.it wasn't that important.' 'What was that favicon representing, exactly?' I didn't formally count, but at one point last week my two primary browsers had over twenty and thirty (respectively) open tabs.to the point where one can't actually read the tab titles in meaningful ways. Of those, two usually have several open tabs for various reasons. On my home machine, I almost always have three (different) browsers open at any given time. I primarily use feedly as my aggregation mechanism but between things that will require additional consideration ('that's super interesting but I'll read it later.') and the interesting/read later stuff I see on Twitter, it sometimes spirals out of control. I preface with this: the vast majority of the materials I read are in some electronic format, which means it's super easy to digitally hoard the backlog without really noticing its growth. As we enter another calendar year, the upgrade/change requests start to trickle in which requires thoughtful consideration and implementation planning. Their various projects and operations are a joy to work with and be a part of. I have the great fortune of a small list of long-term, dedicated clients. I can't plug GnuCash enough for anyone with the fortitude to really take a deep look at their financial situation, though. But it's still another of 'those things' that need to be done and although I have a tried and true process for it, taking the dedicated time to go through said process has been challenging. That's meant the actual process of preparing tax returns was fairly straightforward as all the legwork had been completed. I took the opportunity to really button-up all of the various accounts/accounting and reports during the last few days of December between the Christmas and New Years holidays. I was way ahead of myself in tax preparation this year compared to past years. All the more reason to hunker down and try to get a few additional automation processes in place since they tend to help many folks. Unfortunately, though, some re-prioritization of all of the things on the plate(s) will mean that meaningful projects or improvements will take a less-prominent place in the short term.

We've got some major changes taking place in the work environment, which is a huge opportunity for everyone involved and for the larger institution (all those we serve). Unfortunately, it's also been consistently plain cold.limiting the time spent in the magical white winter dust. Through today, we've had two proper, bona fide blizzards, over a foot of new snow, and lots of wind and other such adventures. The gnarliest started the last week of January with extreme cold. Snow, extreme cold, wind, blizzard, rinse, repeat. But we are most definitely in the deep of winter, and it's getting old. I love Minnesota, and I am a super weather nerd.

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