I updated my now page today. This post snapshots the current version.

Now

• continuing to “INST TECH LIBRARY MEDIA” all over ‘em +

  a couple of recent notable artifacts: Sora collection development - ‘New Books in Granite’s Sora’, library circulation stats (physical and digital combined)

• rewilding my front yard +

  I am an official grant recipient of the Utah Pollinator Habitat Program and I actually picked up my 150-ish little baby native plants yesterday! Need to get them in the ground soon. I should post more about this.

• started biking, mostly just around town, and I’m actually enjoying it +
  I have a lot of thoughts about this, such as why this is suddenly do-able for me after decades away, what I’m discovering about my city by exploring it this way, whether I will start actually mountain biking and realizing maybe I actually don’t like mountain biking and hiking, I like walking through the woods and deserts but not climbing mountains or rushing down mountains, but these should be their own post or posts, so I’ll refrain from an endless note here.
• new owner of an iPhone Air, preorderd and obtained day of release +
  I’m not usually an early purchaser/adopter and I was actually still quite content with my existing phone (an iPhone 13 mini). My daughter needs a phone, though, so I’m passing the 13 mini to her, but I made her wait until these new 17 phones came out. Decided to go for the somewhat ridiculous Air because it just looked like it would be nice to have and fun to use, something different and new. I don’t have a tablet/iPad/ereader or anything like that and I like to read and do tablet-y stuff on my phone so that helped me justify it - yet another thing I could probably explore more thoroughly and post
• finishing up a CSA subscription - its one of the New Roots CSAs and I pick it up right at their Redwood Farm every Tuesday. +
  This has been equal parts fun to try and exceedingly stressful. By my hopes and designs It forced me to try cooking and eating a lot of new-to-me things, many of which I liked, but now I have a secondary fridge full of specific, weird vegetables (beets, chard, kale) at varying levels of freshness to rottenness that I can’t deal with because though I like them I don’t always want to cook these particular things and no one else in my family really likes vegetables like I do - I should write and post about this experience as well.

Next

• get those baby native plants into the ground in the next week or so
• remember this website
  • start logging my listening, reading, playing, etc. here again, writing book reviews, etc.
  • start writing about other stuff here, too
  • cultivate a thriving digital garden
• figure out how to keep my phone primarily as a tool for learning, creativity, positive communication
• stop ignoring all the things wrong with my house and get some things working and decent
• ChatGLP-1?

This reflects my ‘now’ page update of September 21, 2025. Please visit that main now page to see my dynamic log galleries, as well as an archive of prior and newer ‘now’ updates.¹

Credit for the ‘now’ page concept goes to Derek Sivers. I tend to get aspirational when I update it, so I’ve decided to embrace that by calling it ‘now and next.’

Standalone post link: Now and Next (September 21, 2025)

cute little peaches from this cute little peach tree I planted in my backyard two years ago

They taste pretty good, and they didn’t really have any bugs or problems, though I did no pesticides or really anything special beyond deep watering the tree once or twice a week starting mid-May. And though they are small, the pits are small, too, so there still is a good amount of fruit in each one for their diminutive size. They are little plum-sized peaches. And thankfully freestone.

I planted this as a small, bare root in April 2023. The variety is either New Haven Peach (according to my planting notes) or Red Haven Peach (according to the original order invoice), sourced from Burnt Ridge Nursery in Onalaska, Washington.

Additional updates on my backyard mini-orchard

In April 2023 I also planted a nectarine tree that was initially larger than this peach tree. While the peach tree thrives the nectarine just gets along. It has a few fruits growing on it that are still hard. Birds or squirrels have already taken nips at some of them, but left the rest behind. I’m not super confident that they will be a good harvest this year, if even edible.

I also planted two pear trees in April 2023. They blossomed for the first time this year, and one of them has a single pear growing on the very end of a branch, hanging down close to the ground. I think pears are supposed to take 3-5 years before they start truly bearing fruit, so we are on track with the pears.

This spring I planted four apple trees, all bare root whips, boosting my backyard mini-orchard to a total of eight trees. They all leafed out but a couple seem to be struggling in this endless dry heat. I need to nurse them through it and hopefully from the fall to spring they can establish themselves better. I planted one each of Kidd’s Orange Red, Black Oxford, Rubinette, and Ozark Gold.

My daughter requested today that we plant a pomengranate tree. This is irregular for northern Utah, but I understand from certain posts in the Utah Rare Fruit Growers group on Facebook it is entirely possible with certain cultivars and certain interventions, so perhaps I will explore that for next year. If I’m going to try a pomengranate I will probably try a fig as well.

Standalone post link: cute little peaches from this cute little peach tree I planted in my backyard two years ago

So great!

Should probably have a lot more to say about this, and maybe I will someday, but until then I need to at least get it logged. It needs the hype of being posted on this most obscure and derelict website, extremely appropriate.

Past Log Updates

DATE :

I’ve been kind of logged off myself, or at least not making note of things, and I don’t remember when I started reading this…

Resources

Standalone post link: Reading Log: Log Off

Standalone post link: ''''

Started almost immediately upon finishing A Study in Drowning. I guess I like the vibes and the fake literature excerpts? Don’t mind the characters? Not sure why I feel pre-emptively defensive, like someone is going to give me grief for reading these books…

Past Log Updates

DATE :

Resources

Standalone post link: Reading Log: A Theory of Dreaming

Gotten into summer of the first year. Tempted to start over and try spring again now that I know a little better how things work…

My kids have been playing this on the Switch but I got the Steam MacOS version for my laptop since we have just the one Switch.

Past Log Updates

DATE :

Resources

Standalone post link: Playing Log: Stardew Valley

This is a phenomenal book.

Gave me so much to think about with writing, learning, creativity, friendship and its failings, faith and doubt, war and peace, religion and mythology, just living life, relationships, human nature. And of course insights into the lives and works of these two authors who were so important to my own imaginative life as a child and tween.

The presentation is next-level - rather than graphic novel or narrative nonfiction it feels almost like a new thing unto itself. I never felt jarred by the transitions between print text blocks and illustrated spreads, between the fantastic and the realistic. Everything just flows, fully-integrated and inevitable, Hendrix fully in command of both writing and illustration to share all of this from many different angles at the same time, the fantastic and the realistic, logos and mythos.

Extra stars for the “portals” to mythology, fairy tales, fantasy fiction, etc. Such a great way to transform “appendices” into something fun and almost magical. And again so on-point calling back to Tolkein in particular, with his rich appendices.

Past Log Updates

DATE :

Resources

Standalone post link: Reading Log: The Mythmakers

Amazing images and atmospheres throughout this book. Among other things it made me want to take photographs, gave me new ways to think about photography. I like photography but I’m a dummy about it.

Maybe I have unfair expecations, but if I’m being honest, it feels very unfinished. Fragmentary. I gues that’s actually the point, since all we have are fragments of Stesichorus' original…

This is one of the original titles added to my Goodreads “Want-to-read” shelf, apparently clear back in August of 2008.

Not entirely clear to me why I finally sought this out and read it after 17 years¹, but I did…I guess it might be because I keep looking for novels in verse and this comes up in the library catalog and different places when I browse that genre heading, decided to put it on hold and finally read the thing before returning it to the library already overdue.

Past Log Updates

DATE :

Resources

Standalone post link: Reading Log: Autobiography of Red

Continuing in re-reading the Chronicles of Narnia with my son.

Past Log Updates

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Resources

210 - 135 202-135 67/75

Standalone post link: Reading Log: The Horse and His Boy

Listening to every track by Big Thief on shuffle because I’ve wanted to see them for years but never could, and found out they are doing a Twilight Concert in Salt Lake in September for just $20 a ticket and I got a ticket and now I just need to figure out if or how I can convince anyone in my family to go to this concert with me. No worries if not, though, I will not hesitate to go by myself.

Plus, Big Thief are current-day 4AD artists so it kind of ties back to my somewhat neglected Still in a Dream extended listening project, right?

Past Log Updates

DATE :

Resources

Standalone post link: Listening Log: Big Thief Complete Discography on Shuffle