GUESS WHAT I have returned!!! To my korene (roots!) !!!!! It literally doesn’t even feel real and I am so happy to be here!! I won’t lie, my first couple days have been bumpy. We flew in on Wednesday after traveling for almost a full 24 hours and so the jet lag has been hitting.  Apart from that just getting adjusted to the for real for real missionary schedule has been a lot. Going up…

One of my favorite parts of my job as an academic librarian is when I get the chance to sit in on classes and learn a little. (If I could go to classes all day every day, I probably would.) Today, I got to listen in on a lecture focused around an assignment the professor had developed called a “Poker Chip Investment Analysis.” The basics are straightforward. Take a character from a narrative (book, movie,…

I got knocked out this week by illness, which you’d think would mean I’d have had a ton of time to watch movies. Sadly, it wasn’t that kind of sickness. It was more along the lines of “I can’t really focus on anything too much so I don’t do much of anything.” Not fun. So I watched a bit of fairly mindless television. (A few episodes of Physical 100: Italy, the first episode of Great…

I’ve largely stayed out of political posts for the last while, not because I haven’t had thoughts about what’s happening in the world (I’ve had plenty), but more because (as I’ve noted before), it’s become more of a trench warfare scenario than anything else. People have very firmly held beliefs, and they’ve shown little interest in entertaining anything that goes against those beliefs. However, I’ve had something bumping around in my head for the last…

Hello hello hello! ♡ My companion Sister Kruger got her visa!! So we will (hopefully) get to fly to Prague together!! Not much to report on so instead here is a list of highlights Are you all so hyped that this is my LAST mtc email!?!?!?!       The sad thing is that Sister Dribnak and Marlowe received their reassignments 🙁 but we shall be reunited on the mission!! ♡ I got the sweeeeetest…

First, thank you all for the kind birthday wishes yesterday. I took the day off from work and went to the local fair with my family in the evening. Michaela had tons of fun riding all the rides that do essentially the same thing (go around, really fast), we ate donuts, saw cows, ate fries, and got maple cotton candy. Best of all, I didn’t do much in the way of work. 🙂 But I…

It’s been a while since I popped in to update you all on various writing efforts I’ve got underway. No time like the present, right? I had a bit of a streak (couple of weeks) where I was in-between projects, but by and large I’ve been in full writing mode for the past long while. In November 2025, I pitched several different books to Sourcebooks. Basic plots that I was interested in writing, but which…

Ahoj všetci!!!! Well another week in eternity. Don’t get me wrong I am still having SO much fun but dang bro when are my travel plans gonna come in. So far just Starši Tippets has his sooo we are crossing our fingers he doesn’t have to fly alone :(. And pray for the Czech Sisters!! They still dont have their visas BIG FROWNIE FACE. None the less, in 13 days I AM flying to Prague. …

So, back in ye olden days, a classic tactic to manage how many complaints or requests a department received was to just make sure any requests had to come in with a filled-out form. The very act of making someone fill out paperwork was enough to discourage many people from even bothering to try. Say what you will about LLMs, but one area where they excel in is “doing stuff lots of other people have…

It was a super busy week for me this past week. I’ve been on writing deadline, and that basically meant any time I wasn’t working, I was at home sitting down revising. And so I haven’t really watched or read much of anything except a few things. Thankfully, one of those things is one of my favorite movies, so I at least had that to fall back on. No books finished, alas. Television? We’re still…