Hello Everyone!
I had a Kindle Unlimited 3-month trial that recently expired, but I made sure to make good use of it while I could. In that time, I managed to finish 7 ebooks! Not too shabby if I say so myself, especially on top of all of the school reading. I also just finished a physical book, so that puts my total to 8 books this year. I did not originally plan to have a New Year's resolution, but do you think it is okay to retroactively make one now?
By the way, all of those 7 ebooks were part of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series, a Sci-Fi LITRPG novel. The books center on the titular character Carl and his cat Princess Donut as they fight through an 18-floor medieval dungeon as part of an elaborate Battle Royale-style game show broadcast to the rest of the universe. To all my nerd friends out there, I would recommend. Book 8 releases in May, and I am anxiously counting down the days.
With that said, let’s find out What’s Up With Will…
As previously mentioned, my Gender Studies class was cancelled this week, and instead, we were asked to visit one of two museums. Last week, I visited the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive to see the exhibit “Theresa Hak Kyung Cha: Multiple Offerings”, but because I am such an overachiever, I decided to go to the Asian Art Museum as well!
The Asian Art Museum had a special exhibit entitled Two Home Countries, a collection of works by the artist Chiharu Shiota, examining identity, mortality, and belonging. Shiota’s work is most widely known for its large-scale, grandiose, and experiential installations, using yarn as a medium to represent traces and memories of bodies. In Diary, Shiota weaves together handwritten diary pages from WWII soldiers to reflect on shared human existence across national borders.
As I was slowly walking through the exhibit, a docent approached me to ask if I wanted a photo. He must have spotted me from a mile away. I don’t know if it’s because I look like the type that would want a shot of myself strolling through the exhibit, or if he is just fantastic at his job. If we are honest, it’s probably both. At least I know I am predictable.
In Methods, we started examining sources for our research project outside of interviews. The world around is full of material that can be broken down and analyzed. While this statement feels more applicable to traditional academic journals, the same goes for blog articles, YouTube, movies, books, or even social media. Everything around us can be engaged with research, as they all can be primary sources (first-hand accounts, raw data, or original analysis), especially when viewed through a communicative lens where meaning is actively constructed through interaction.
We also spent time closely analyzing academic articles. Oftentimes, it’s tempting to find a research paper with a single line that perfectly supports your point, slap a citation in your work, and call it a day. I know I have in the past. However, to effectively utilize a researcher’s work, you need to thoroughly understand it more fully. What is the main point? What are the methods? What conclusions are they drawing? All these questions are paramount to engaging with journal articles. Even if the work is published or if it is peer-reviewed can provide context to whether or not you want to actually use it.
For the public speaking class that I am teaching, we started by continuing to develop persuasive skills by taking a look at Ethos (Appeals to Credibility), Pathos (Appeals to Emotion), and Logos (Appeals to Logic). These are things that I think most of us learn about in elementary school, so I briefly rushed through an overview before spending the rest of the time watching them used in real-time through commercials. As the hip professor that I am, I decided to focus on commercials from the most recent Super Bowl as they are relatively relevant to the pop-culture zeitgeist (just imagine if I did this lesson the week after the Super Bowl itself. I’ll put this lesson plan in my back pocket for next year). After each commercial, we would dive into which appeals we saw and whether or not they were effective. I, for some reason, started getting emotional when watching the most recent Lay’s Potato Chip commercial, which probably meant that it was a good appeal to Pathos. Lay’s had me crying in the classroom.
The other day, we watched everyone’s lip-sync assignments. I think that it takes a level of courage to lip-sync anything, but these students took the assignment and ran with it. There were some crazy edits, some sick dance moves, and great music selection all around. One student lip-synced to “Party In The USA”, which was funny because, if you remember, on the first day of class, I played that song during a free-write. It has come full circle.
Finally, I registered for classes this week! I don’t want to spoil the surprise, but I think next semester is going to be a good one!
This week marks Rylee and I’s 4 Year Anniversary of Dating! This past year has been so incredibly crazy, filled with so many unknowns, but there was one thing that was always known, and that’s Rylee. It’s a special thing when you get to have a partner who is also your best friend, so cheers to another year of adventures!
Our actual anniversary was on a weekday, which is inherently less fun than a weekend, but we decided to do a small celebration during the week and a bigger one on the weekend.
We drove over to the Barnyard Epicurean Wine Bar in Danville, which functioned both as a place to celebrate and to help me research for my methods class wine project. Did I know that if I selected wine, I would be going to wine bars all the time? Not entirely, but it is not an outcome that I am disappointed by. (Epicurean, by the way, is a Greek philosophy of devoting one’s life to pleasure and avoidance of pain. It’s different from hedonism in that it advocates for the simple life free from pain and anxiety rather than the intense pursuit of pleasure.)
I appreciated the bar’s ethos of encouraging customers to explore wine, featuring a weekly rotating wine list meant for customers to try new wines from around the world. It’s also interesting to see variations in how different wine bars approach the topic of wine.
After some wine research, we stopped by Leo’s Chinese Restaurant for our dinner, grabbing some chicken fried rice and cashew nut prawns, while sharing some of our favorite memories from the past year. There aren’t a lot of Chinese restaurants that are gluten-free, so when the opportunity arises to go to one, you have to jump at it.
My friend Jacob was in the Bay Area this week!
While discussing what we were to do, I remember that SF Restaurant Week was still happening, so we landed on a meal at the Cuban/Colombian restaurant ¡Chao Pescao!, which roughly translates to the American phrase, “See you later, Alligator”. Peter and a couple of his friends (not pictured) joined us as we ate a three-course meal, the first course being an empanada de res, filled with shredded flank steak, potato, and tomato, followed by one of the best Cubano sandwiches of my life, and ending with a Tarta de Queso, topped with chocolate and guava. As we all left, I would like to say we collectively thought to ourselves, “Hasta luego, cocodrilo”, or whatever roughly translates best to “In a while, Crocodile”.
After our feast, we grabbed a couple of board games (Tyler enjoyed Hanabi so much when he visited that he started playing it with Jacob and got him obsessed with it) and sat outside in a park to hang out. What a fun crossover episode!
For a more proper anniversary celebration, Rylee and I went up to Napa Valley! We made it a point to let everyone know that it was our anniversary on the off-chance that they would give us another splash of wine to celebrate, but it didn’t work.
Our first stop was Groth Vineyards and Winery, located in the Oakville AVA, which is home to some of the most expensive wine grapes in the world (our wine educator told us that the vineyard across the street sells grapes for upwards of $50,000 a ton). The story goes that the CFO of Atari decided to cash out right before its crash in 1983 and bought what is now Groth. After 40 years, the vineyard is still family-owned and incorporates ideas from future generations. For example, one of the daughters is an artist, and her work lines the tasting room. In a fitting touch, each guest is provided with a set of colored pencils and a postcard-sized coloring sheet, and is encouraged to draw their own masterpiece.
I have never colored before while drinking wine, but I can see the appeal. Even though I have the artistic capabilities of a 5-year-old, I was able to color between the lines, helped no doubt by the fact that this was our first winery. It did have me wondering, though, how many coloring sheets quickly become something more akin to drunken avant-garde scribble art.
Groth specializes in Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon. I’m a sucker for a fruit-forward Cab, but the Chardonnay had this almost Savannah Banana Cream Soda flavor to it, with both buttery and oaky notes. I was also surprised by their Sauvignon Blanc with a touch of Semillon, as it cut through some of the acidity and gave the wine a lovely texture.
Our second stop of the day was Joseph Cellars, where we were treated to a cave tour alongside our tasting. Not all places in Napa Valley even have a wine cave, and it’s even rarer for them to let visitors inside. A lot of wineries talk about barrel aging or using concrete eggs, but being up close and personal allows me to appreciate the craft of wine. While it is clear that Joseph Cellars takes winemaking seriously, they stress a relaxed approach to how wine is meant to be enjoyed. Rather than focus on estate-grown single varietals, they source grapes from across the Valley to focus on the exceptional quality of wine that California has to offer. As our wine educator for the tasting put it, “Life is serious enough as it is…why shouldn’t wine be approachable?”
Some of the standout wines here were a Rosé made of Mourvèdre, which was like drinking a liquified watermelon Jolly Rancher, and a Napa Valley Sangiovese, which I do not think I have ever seen being grown in Napa before.
In other news this week, Joe Jonas started vlogging??? It feels very early 2010’s. It’s unpolished and chaotic, and yet intriguing? It almost makes me want to start vlogging again haha…
