Happy Friday! It’s been a long week and I’m ready for a 3-day weekend. Hope you enjoy yours. Here’s the roundup.
Quote of the week:
“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose, or paint can manage to escape the madness, melancholia, the panic and fear which is inherent in a human situation.”
–Graham Greene
What I’m reading:
Leaving by Roxana Robinson. It’s about two former lovers who cross paths years later and start to rekindle something. Very sweet and well written.
What I’m listening to:
Sleeping Giants by Rene Denfeld. Character-driven stories are my jam and this one has been very enjoyable so far.
What I’m watching:
I started watching Expats on Amazon Prime this week and realized that it’s based on the book Expatriates by Janice Y.K. Lee, which I read a few years ago and really liked. The series is great. It’s quite heavy, but very well done. I also watched the Ashley Madison docuseries on Netflix and was captivated. So curious who the hacker was!
Writing news:
Today marks 8 years since my first book, People Who Knew Me, was published. It was re-released with a bonus chapter in 2021. The episodic podcast series based on the book came out last year and I’m so pleased with how it turned out (Apple, Spotify). Below is a photo my sister took at my first launch event at Pages bookstore in Los Angeles—such a memorable time.
Interesting things I learned this week:
- The 2024 Gathering of Kyles on May 18 was the City of Kyle’s fifth attempt to break the official Guinness World Record for the largest gathering of people with the same first name. This year the attempt fell short of the 2,325-person record, with 706 Kyles gathering
- An early, consistent finding in the field of collective neuroscience is that when people converse or share an experience, their brain waves synchronize. Neurons in corresponding locations of the different brains fire at the same time, creating matching patterns, like dancers moving together. So cool (read more here)
- There is an evolutionary reason why human beings find birdsong so appealing. The thinking is that because birds stop singing when there are dangerous predators around, our subconscious associates birdsong with safety. Over thousands of years, this connection with safety has made people feel calm and at peace when they hear birdsong
- Overdose deaths declined in 2023. Experts are saying this is indicative of us being at the tail end of the opioid epidemic (yes, apparently there are usual patterns to these things)
- A human heart beats an average of 100,000 times per day
Weirdest thing I googled this week:
“how high can bees fly.” I read that bees can fly higher than Mt. Everest and that seemed unbelievable. Google to the rescue: “Honeybees can fly at altitudes over 25,000 feet, and in lab experiments, bumblebees have flown as high as 30,000 feet, which is about 2,100 stories. In the wild, researchers have captured male bumblebees at around 10,660 feet, and then simulated higher elevations with reduced oxygen and air density. In these simulations, the average bumblebee could hover at about 26,000 simulated feet, and two bees flew higher than 29,527 simulated feet, which is about 500 feet above the summit of Mount Everest.” So, there you go.
What I’m grateful for:
Mom friends, non-mom friends, the community I’m in, my daughter’s babysitter (we love her so much), my daughter’s kindergarten teacher (can’t believe next week is the last week of school!), the Boys & Girls Club (we are doing summer camp there and can’t wait), cool mornings that make running in 85% humidity somewhat tolerable.
Snapshots:
From top to bottom: Fun 70s music show with my mom; hangin’ with my soulmate cat; attempting to work with a dog in my lap; couch time is the best time (and I am always surrounded by pets…and my daughter haha).
