End of Week Review: February 3, 2019

Favorite experience this week: Watching the most important sporting event of the year … The Penguin Bowl! You heard me right. It streams every year. Check it out!

Least favorite experience this week: It turns out the whole “chocolate is poison to cats” thing is true. I spent a solid hour freaking out about my cat, Zyva, licking the remnants of my brother’s chocolate lava cake that he casually left in my room. (Luckily, she’s totally fine — she didn’t each very much.)

Wackiest experience this week: Losing to my seven-year-old sister in Monopoly at an Outback Steakhouse.

Interesting article this week: My friend and fellow survivor-activist Alyssa Leader — now a law student, by the way — wrote a killer opinion piece in The New York Times about the importance of enforcing Title IX protections for survivors. Definitely worth a read.

Favorite book this week: Lauren Oliver’s Broken Things! It’s one of those books that you read from start to finish.

Photo from this week: My dad made the mistake of getting a dart board and we’re obsessed. We play to 300 instead of using the regular rules, and let’s say we’re a touch competitive …

End of Week Review: January 27, 2018 (I Totally Didn't Miss Last Week Edition)

Let’s pretend like I remembered to do this last week and carry on …

Favorite experience this week: I don’t know if anyone else has heard of Terraforming Mars (the board game), but my family is officially obsessed — we’ve played three times this week. My dad called me to tell me he and my stepmom were stuck in a bar after closing because they were in a middle of the game (yes, they really took a board game to a bar for a date), so when I say obsessed, I mean obsessed.

Least favorite experience this week: I spent some quality time in the hospital learning about every possible way to misdiagnose a stomach flu. On the bright side, I got free apple juice!

Wackiest experience this week: My nine-year-old sister beat everyone in the family at darts.

Interesting article this week: The honorary New Yorker in me (thanks, Columbia!) is in hysterics about this Onion article: “8.4 Million New Yorkers Suddenly Realize New York City a Horrible Place to Live.” If you’ve lived there, you’ll get it, even if you love the city.

Favorite book this week: I finally finished I Have the Right To by my wonderful college classmate and fellow survivor-activist Chessy Prout (and Jenn Abelson). It’s a beautiful memoir about her experience as a survivor. It honestly had me in tears for a lot of it; it’s so down to earth and even though my assault experiences were different than hers, I identify with so much of her writing about the aftermath. It makes me super optimistic about the portrayal of sexual assault in literature and survivors being able to see people like themselves in what they read. Read it if you can!

Photo from this week: My attending nurse at the hospital being optimistic (or annoyed at me— still unsure which):

Sunday Night Catchall: November 22, 2015

Not going to lie: one of the most satisfying moments of my week was beating my dad and brother at Catan. (Okay, fine — the most satisfying moment of my week ...) Anyone else play board games with your family that get really awkwardly competitive?

Speaking of competitive board games, I'm dying to know the answer to this: my friend Rebecca and I have been playing very intense games of Bananagrams (which, for those of you who don't know, is like Scrabble but about speed more than anything). I use nothing but super short words; she mainly uses longer words to free up board space. For those of you who play, which strategy do you use? Now I'm curious.

Obligatory cat photo! Sorry to be clogging up the internet with more cat pics than it already has. If I had a pet wombat, I'd post those pictures instead, but I'm stuck with this guy (who does not seem happy that my mom's taking a picture of him).

If you haven't already perused the hashtag on Twitter, check out some highlights from yesterday's #TransYAChat! It's interesting regardless of whether or not you're a writer.

Oh, and if you've followed my Twitter account this weekend, you know I spent my entire weekend working on a novel instead of writing an essay. Welp, want to guess what I'm supposed to be doing instead of writing this blog post? Oops.