3.27.25
Yesterday was our RD decision release day, where we notified over 30,000 students about their admission status. It's the biggest day on our operations and systems calendar, and although we still have a decent amount of work to do in April and May before things slow down and we can focus on summer projects, it's always great to have a successful release day behind us. It's one of the last big milestones for each admission cycle, and even after more than 20 years of being in charge of this process, I always breathe a sigh of relief when we have another year under our belts with no issues.

Will's spring break is a little later than usual this year, and although we're not planning as big a trip as we usually do, we're still going to get out of town for a few days. Very much looking forward to disconnecting from work for a while, this year more than most.

3.26.25
Almost every day crawls along so slowly that sometimes it feels like several days or even a full work week has passed between when I get up early in the morning and when I'm finally able to get to sleep late at night. Nothing really seems to help this—focusing on work, playing video games, watching television and movies, reading and writing, and napping. I feel very intensely the grinding, inexorable passage of time, and there are many weeks where just getting to the middle of the week takes a draining amount of energy and stamina.

At the same time, the weeks and months, separate from the minutes, hours, and days, seem to fly by in a way that feels very destabilizing. It's the end of March now, but my internal clock is telling me it should be much earlier in the year. Trying to reconcile these two completely opposite but overlapping and intertwined perceptions of time is deeply disorienting, and it's compounded by the nights when I have vivid, immersive dreams that sometimes feel like they can last days or weeks on their own.

3.25.25
The show I probably regret missing the most so far this year is the of Montreal show in Athens—frontman Kevin Barnes moved up north a couple of years ago, so he likely won't play the Atlanta area as often as he used to. And this tour is celebrating the 20th anniversary of their breakthrough album The Sunlandic Twins by playing the entire album front to back; it's likely that many of those songs won't be performed live again for a very long time.

3.20.25
There's a non-zero chance that two of the Ravens' division rivals, the Browns and the Steelers, neither of whom currently has a starting quarterback on their rosters, could end up with the overrated draft prospect Shedeur Sanders (son of NFL and MLB legend Deion Sanders) and the completely washed locker room cancer Aaron Rodgers respectively.

Either of those outcomes would be hilarious and deeply gratifying, but the possibility of both happening would already make my 2025 NFL season before even a single game has been played.

3.19.25
Music releases started off pretty slowly for me this year—I didn't buy my first album of new music until mid-February (Horsegirl's brilliant second album Phonetics On and On)—but it's starting to pick up now. Since then, I've bought six more records, including releases from Bob Mould, Hamilton Leithauser (formerly of the Walkmen), Destroyer, and Japanese Breakfast, and I'm pretty certain that at least a couple of these will end up on my top 10 for 2025.

And April and May will bring even more, as many of the acts I follow will be releasing new records to coincide with the start of their headlining tours and/or with the summer festival season. I've had trouble getting out to shows, due to a combination of anxiety, illness (which may be caused/enhanced by my anxiety), and exhaustion (which may also be caused/enhanced by my anxiety), but there are lots of bands putting out new records who I'm also hoping to see live in the next few months, including Bartees Strange, Sleigh Bells, and the Mekons.

I can still have great experiences at live shows, but my sensitivity to noise and odors and my growing dislike of crowds makes it harder for me to forget the world around me and just be present in the moment with the music. I'm not ready to give up on concerts yet, because most of these shows are going to be great and some will be transcendent, but there's a lot of anxiety-based inertia that I have to overcome to deal with the logistics of going to these events.

3.18.25
Continuing the pattern with getting out to concerts this year, I have also missed the first two games of the new Atlanta United season. I've had season tickets with a couple of friends since the team's first year, and although they're a lot less successful than they were in those first few years, I still enjoy seeing the games in person and learning more about the sport.

Their next home game isn't until two weekends from now, which will be after our last big work thing for a few months, so I'm hoping I'll be relaxed and anxiety-free enough to finally get over to the stadium for a game. I'm very excited about fan favorite Miguel Almiron being back—he was a critical part of our early success (along with Josef Martinez and coach Tata Martinez) and a good enough player that he's spent the past few years with Newcastle in the Premier League.

But he's back with us now, and although he can't do it by himself, I'm hoping he still has enough juice to help elevate the rest of the offense and get us back to a place where we aren't struggling to score even a single goal every game.

3.13.25
I'm a huge fan of Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series (although I've only read the first two at this point; I didn't realize he had published a third book in the series until recently), where he explores the social structures and communication styles of various non-human intelligences, including spiders, hybrid human-AI, octopuses, and alien species, and how a generation ship of human colonists learn to interact and cooperate with them.

I recently read one of his books not set in that series, Service Model, which is about an android valet named Charles who slowly gains self-awareness and agency after he is freed from his programmed duties when he kills his master (this isn't really a spoiler as this act is essentially where the narrative begins) and goes out into the ravaged, post-apocalyptic world to seek new employment. Along the way he encounters various other robots and artificial intelligences (along with a few humans) who are all creating their own versions of new societies now that the various networks and corporations that programmed them no longer exist.

I hate to say it, but I was kind of disappointed with this book. Without doing an in-depth analysis, I'm pretty sure Tchaikovsky was playing on Dante's journey through Hell and/or Purgatory, with occasional references to the Wizard of Oz, but the hero's quest (specifically Charles' internal dialogues as he gains increasing autonomy) can seem a little arbitrary and inconsistent. For all his brilliance in helping us understand the motivations, beliefs, and genetics/programming of non-humans in his Children of Time books, he falls flat here in rounding out Charles as a full character, even by the climax of his progress to self-awareness.

It doesn't help that I have a friend (one of my longtime guildmates from World of Warcraft) who wrote with a similar premise (which was published before Service Model) that tells this story much more coherently than Tchaikovsky. That novel is called Joy, and it's by B.R.M. Evett. I initially read it because he was a friend, but I really enjoyed it, and I was very pleased when he recently shared with me that a sequel will be published this fall.

Anyway. Tchaikovsky is a great writer and thinker, and I will continue to explore his other novels (as well as finally read the third Children of Time book), but in this one instance, he didn't quite pull off the great book that this story had the potential to be.

3.12.25
I've been wanting to watch the new HBO-produced Dune show, Dune: Prophecy, but since I still hadn't watched the second installment of Dennis Villeneuve's take on the first book, I figured I should make that happen before I dove into the series, especially because I'm not really very knowledgable about the Dune universe (I have never read the books, a similar blind spot in my sci fi library as Asimov's Foundation, which now has a series on Apple TV+).

I was intrigued by the Villeneuve's first movie, but the second one didn't do as much for me. Paul Atreides became a much less likable character whose motives remained unclear even at the end, and although I think we were supposed to as an audience struggle with the Arakis-focues revolution that Chani wants or the galactic-level power shifts envisioned by Paul as his power grows, I didn't find myself really sympathizing with either one of them. The visuals were stunning as usual for a Villeneuve film, but there was a formality and emptiness behind it all that made me less engaging with the characters.

The HBO series, which is set 10,000 years before the events of the Dune movies and which explores the origins of the Bene Gesserit order that Paul's mother belongs to. I haven't even read the main Dune novel, much less the multiple sequels, prequels, and spinoffs, so it was helpful to have a better understanding of some the early events that eventually lead to the main Dune story.

Elements of the show draw from overly-complicated, plot- and character-dense shows like The Acolyte (set in the Star Wars universe), Silo, and House of the Dragon, but despite the exposition- and flashback-heavy approach (and some truly dark plot elements), it keeps up a decent pace that kept me more engaged than some of those other shows.

The one thing I really didn't like about Dune: Prophecy was the casting of Travis Fimmel for the role of Desmond Hart, a mysterious character who has an unknown connection to the Bene Gesserit through his time as a soldier on Arakis. Fimmel plays him as a wild-eyed religious nut who uses his strange powers to maim and kill in ways that ingratiate him to the sitting emperor but destabilize much of the structure of the ruling council.

The character outline and Fimmel's portrayal of him both have very strong echoes of the character Fimmel played on HBO's Raised By Wolves series (which may or may not have ties to Ridley Scott's Alien universe). I didn't like his character in Raised By Wolves, and I absolutely hate having to watch a practically identical character in this show, which I otherwise like pretty well. Despite what was revealed about his background in the final episodes of this season, I'm rooting for the character's death because it's a chore to keep watching whenever he's on screen.

3.11.25
I missed yet another concert on Saturday night, this one from the band Bright Eyes, who I've never seen play live before. Julie was also going to join me for that one, but I was still feeling a little worn out from being sick earlier in the week and I also had a bit of a panic attack as we were making a final decision about whether to go or not, and the combination of both of those things made me want to stay home. She's not a huge fan of Bright Eyes, so missing the show itself wasn't a big deal as much as missing the chance to go out and do something fun together (but she was really very understanding about my situation).

We'll see how the next couple of months go, but if I'm still finding it difficult to make it out to shows by May, then I may switch from buying tickets the moment they go on sale (my usual approach) to buying tickets closer to the event itself. I don't mind spending money to buy tickets if it supports the band, but I don't want to feel like I'm throwing money away constantly, and I also want to make sure some fan gets to see the show in my place if the show is sold out.

3.6.25
I've been greatly enjoying Only Murders in the Building, and I just finished season 3. I love how they've been able to keep this going and have the plots get more complex with bigger frames for their postmodern meta-aware stories while keeping the core of the show about the close relationships between the three main characters (played by Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez).

Season 3 is set a year after the events of season 2, and it takes place during the staging of a play directed by Short's character where one of the main cast members is killed overnight. As usual, there is ample room for guest stars during the season, this time featuring Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd, with briefer appearances by Matthew Broderick, Mel Brooks, Tina Fey, and Jane Lynch.

I'm eager to dig into season 4, but I'm forcing myself to take a break just because I don't want the experience of being in love with this show to be over yet. Season 5 has been greenlit and they are supposed to start working on it soon, so there's an outside chance we could see it before the end of this year, so once it gets a firmer release date, I'll try to pace myself with season 4 in the leadup to new episodes.

Or maybe I'll just binge it and then rewatch the whole series again in the meantime.

3.5.25
Yesterday was supposed to be the first time my group of friends gathering to do trivia at Thinking Man Tavern in nearly two years (we used to do it fairly regularly before Covid), but I ended up not being able to go because I came down with something that's still knocking me out today. It really came out of nowhere very quickly, and although it's been miserable, I'm feeling a little better this afternoon and I'm hoping it's just one of those weird 24 hour things.

The group did end up gathering without me (they all know each other pretty well, but as I was—and remain—the organizer, I'm the common link between most of them), which I was glad to hear—I didn't want my illness to spoil the evening for the rest of them. I'll just have to make sure to schedule another one soon once I'm feeling better, and once work settles down a bit (although between the intense work schedule for the rest of the month and Will's spring break in early April, that might not be until mid-April).

3.4.25
So far this year, I've missed far more concerts than I've attended. Through a combination of illness, exhaustion, and anxiety, I just haven't it made it out to many shows that I had tickets for and that I was really looking forward to.

These include MJ Lenderman (rescheduled from October when he had to postpone the first week of his tour because of the devastation Hurricane Helene brought to his hometown of Asheville NC), Friko, Jeff Rosenstock, and Robyn Hitchcock (although he played two dates near Atlanta on back-to-back nights, so while I didn't make it to the first performance, I did see him the next night).

The good news (and possibly a contributing factor in me missing these shows) is that I've seen all of these artists sometime in the past year or so, and it seems likely that I will have chances to see them all again sometime in the next 12 months. That won't necessarily make up for the shows I missed, because all of these are artists who have a high chance of delivering a transcendent live performance, but knowing that these weren't once-every-few-years shows makes it a little better to forgive myself for not being able to attend.

I only have a couple more on the calendar between now and the end of April, when I have a couple of weeks that are packed with concerts, so we'll see if I make either of those (Bright Eyes this Saturday, of Montreal in Athens during the week in a couple of weeks, and then St. Vincent in Atlanta on a Friday night which we may or may not be in town for depending on how our spring break plans play out).