On Thursday Clay and I attended our first concert in over three years.

New Found Glory just released a new acoustic album. It’s a really great, emotional album written and recorded after Chad almost died and was diagnosed with Pheochromocytoma, a rare cancer that often goes misdiagnosed. Their accompanying tour is raising awareness and funds for the Pheo Para Alliance. I knew we had to be there.

They played Celebrity Theatre, an intimate venue known for its revolving stage (stationary for this show, though). It was incredible. A real gift of a show for longtime fans. I only teared up twice: once during Dressed to Kill and once during Kiss the Floor (my fave song from the new album).

Grateful to experience this show and for this music I’ve loved for so much of my life. Hopeful for Chad’s health and for more NFG in the future.

I grabbed some photos from their Instagram to remember the night. Shots by Ana Massard.

They played a lot of songs they don’t often play live, so I made a Spotify playlist of their set. Missing from the playlist is I’ll Be (Edwin McCain) which to my knowledge they never recorded.

Here’s to us fools that have no meaning
I tip my glass to you
Let’s toast the night away to friends
And forget about tomorrow

Neal Agarwal is one of my favorite people on the web. He makes weird interactive projects over at neal.fun and his latest is a joy to explore.

It’s called Wonders of Street View and drops you into Google Street View at curated spots. You can click around and explore for hours, trust me. There are a bunch of neat places and things to see and my favorites are...

The road side attractions:

The absolutely gorgeous natural wonders:

The distant places I will never see in person:

The captures at the perfect moment:

And of course I love a Google glitch:

Of course there are tons more delightful and beautiful places to explore, so check it out!

Wonders of Street View

The tech industry loves stickers and so do I. Lisa Frank really had us hoarding stickers at an early age. Like many others before me, I can never decide where to put them. There’s only so much laptop surface area and the permanence of it all feels daunting.

I looked into some ways of finally using them. I don’t have the courage to go full David Darnes and do the sticker desk, though I absolutely love how it looks.

Sticker desk from @DavidDarnes on Twitter

Of the options I saw, fridge magnets felt like a safe and easy thing to try. So this weekend I got some adhesive magnet sheets and gave it a go.

just a portion of my sticker hoard

It was pretty simple. Peel the sticker, peel the magnet, stick them together, cut.

Turned out decent enough. If you look too closely you might be like, did a child cut these? Related, I recommend extremely sharp scissors. The easier ones were the ones I could use a straight edge and X-ACTO knife. But, it’s better than having them sit in a drawer hidden away.

Should I cover the entire fridge? Just might.

With Chinese New Year tomorrow, I’ve got dim sum on the brain. My friends have said they don’t know what to order when they go on their own, so here are the staples we always order to get you started (mostly for meat eaters, sorry).

Siu mai
Steamed pork dumplings often with mushroom and shrimp in thin wrapper. Usually in the cart with lots of stacked metal steamers.

photo by Sara McCleary

Har gow
Shrimp dumplings in a sticky, translucent wrapper. Almost always ordered with siu mai, so same cart.

photo by Matt @ PEK

Char siu bao (steamed)
Fluffy buns filled with barbecue pork. At dim sum I recommend getting the steamed version (pictured here). If you visit a Chinese bakery definitely try the baked version (will be a brown, round bun).

photo by Takeaway

Noh mai gai (sticky rice)
Sticky rice filled with chopped mushrooms, chicken, and often a piece of lap cheong (Chinese sausage). Wrapped in lotus leaves.

photo by Takeaway

Gai lan
Steamed Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce.

photo from whiskeyandbooch.com

Shrimp balls
Fried. Shrimp. Balls. I recommend you get shrimp toast first if you see it, but I’ve found a lot of dim sum restaurants have switched to doing these shrimp balls and they’re also very delicious.

photo from makanan.club

Chicken feet
If you’re feeling adventurous... The chicken feet are deep fried in hot oil and steamed so the cartilage puffs up and becomes soft. They’re then simmered in a sweet and spicy black bean sauce. Think of it kind of like eating a chicken wing, where you eat around the bones. Not for everyone, but I love ’em.

photo from tucsonfoodie.com

A few others we often order to round things out:

• crispy spring rolls
• shrimp cheung fun (shrimp filled, flat rice noodles with sweet soy sauce)
• Singapore noodles (yellow curry noodles)
• steamed spare ribs
• dan tat (egg custard)
• jian dui (sesame balls)

Add some hot mustard or a chili oil/soy sauce mix and enjoy. And also, Gung Hay Fat Choy! Happy year of the rabbit 🐇

2022 was a good year for television with a bunch of fun new series and one major standout. Some honorable mentions for this list are Maya Rudolph’s Loot, anxiety-filled The Bear, Rachel Bloom’s Reboot, and the adorable Ms Marvel. We also had a lot of fun catching up on LEGO Masters (so wholesome) and Succession (not so wholesome).

Here are my fave miniseries and series debuts from 2022.

10. Yellowjackets

9. The Resort

8. Inside Man

7. Heartstopper

6. Wednesday

5. Our Flag Means Death

4. Peacemaker

3. A League of Their Own

2. The Afterparty

1. Severance