Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Derry Girls, Complete Series:
This is a fun, 19-episode sitcom about growing up in Northern Ireland in the 90s. The show is consistently funny although the absurd elements are sometimes so absurd that they nullify the impact of the occasional dramatic section. The third season feels like it got a big infusion of cash, with higher production values and guest stars, but I actually prefer the low-key nature of the first two seasons better. On Netflix.

Final Grade: B

Weird: The Al Yankovic Story (PG-13):
This movie kind of feels like UHF if that movie had a budget bigger than $5. It starts out promising but my interest declined steadily throughout. By the time Weird Al was in the jungle battling Pablo Escobar, I was ready for it to end. I also wish there had been more actual MUSIC in the movie, rather than just the same two or three songs over and over.

Final Grade: C+

Only Murders in the Building, Season Three:
The third season of this show is fine (and you can't go wrong with guest appearances from Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep), but some of the magic is gone. It doesn't help that the core conceit of the three main characters working together is delayed until midseason. On the positive side, the fake musical written for the characters to perform in the show is great. On Hulu.

Final Grade: B

Mario Kart 8: Booster Course Pass (Switch):
It took two full years for Nintendo to release all of the content from this DLC, but it was ultimately worth it. Buying this pass doubles the number of Grand Prix cups you can choose from, with memorable maps from earlier iterations of the game. Very worth it if you our your kid are still into Mario Kart -- much less so if you've already moved on.

Final Grade: B

BD Cartoon Day, Part VII

a selection of original cartoons from the business development Slack channel I maintain at work

Other posts in this series: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VII

Coding Day

How it's going...

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Lincoln Lawyer, Season Two:
The second season of this show is so shallow that infants can swim in it unattended. The court case is marginally interesting but the characters are plot ciphers that constantly speak the clunkiest, cliche dialogue in every scene. May have been written by an AI. On Netflix.

Final Grade: C-

Barbie (PG-13):
We liked this more than expected. It had a great visual style and was much more subversive and tongue-in-cheek than one might expect from a Mattel-blessed movie. Good performances and a nice balance of absurd and dramatic.

Final Grade: B

Le Pop by Katzenjammer:
This Norwegian band has a fun, kitchsy sounds that mixed Gadjo, early Cardigans, and Dirt Poor Robins. I discovered it when Demon Kitty Rag started appearing on my Pandora stations -- unfortunately, the band broke up back in 2015 so I'm late to the party. Tea with Cinnamon is ony of my favourite tracks on this first album.

Final Grade: A

Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree:
A prequel to the "cozy fantasy" book, Legends and Lattes, this book is a short, pleasant exploration of the protagonist's earliest days as an adventuring orc. It doesn't cover a lot of new, interesting ground but manages to recreate most of the low-stakes warmth as the first book.

Final Grade: B-

Easy Photos Day

The maximum life span of these dumb Home Depot deer is 2 holiday seasons.

We attend a holiday open house at the home of a model train aficionado.

Maia goes to an Air Force Band concert in DC with my parents.

Cookie season!

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month

2:08 AM: 3rd person to finish solving the Day 12 Advent of Code puzzle in our company competition.

9:04 AM: Showered and ready for the day.

9:23 AM: Bagel for breakfast.

10:41 AM: Working.

12:12 PM: Preparing my annual presentation about careers and business development.

1:10 PM: Rebecca and Ian return from Tuesday morning church group.

1:18 PM: Working lunch.

1:50 PM: Beat Saber workout break.

4:52 PM: Ready for the penultimate dance class.

6:03 PM: Trying a new pizza for dinner.

6:27 PM: "This pizza tastes weird," says the girl whose favourite pizza is one with mushrooms and white sauce.

11:53 PM: Back in the chair, ready for Advent of Code Day 13.

12 12 of 12s

a recap of 12 of 12 posts from 2023

January: We ride the new Silver Line to Ashburn.

February: We spend Super Bowl Sunday in Harper's Ferry.

March: We play the game, "Uri! Pile-up".

April: We open a lemonade stand on our screen porch.

May: We buy a game that's equal parts entertaining and frustrating that we still haven't beaten yet.

June: We learn how to play Kingdomino.

July: We brave the heat for summer camps.

August: We spend a lot of the year sick.

September: We await our first dance class.

October: We have a 19-year cat.

November: We have Friendsgiving at Tammy's house.

December: We continue having family dinners five nights a week.

Maia's Art Day

"My monster is spooky because he loves to scare people."

Maia's first trezur hunt: "Where leaves fall, a box hides next to the tree."

A surprisingly accurate representation of our state.

"I think spiders are creepy. Especially big ones."

"Hey, come back here!"

We do!

Food, yum!

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Cobra Kai, Season One:
This is a follow-on TV series to the seminal movie, Karate Kid, and can be enjoyed even if you've only seen the first movie in the trilogy. I liked that the show has more to say about the original characters -- it's not just a typical reboot with young actors playing the exact same types of roles as the original. There's a good balance of cheesiness throughout even though the setting and character depth has been modernized (no one's a villain but no one is perfect). On Netflix.

Final Grade: B+

Last of Us, Season One:
This HBO show is based on a video game I've never played, featuring a hardened mercenary type escorting a young teen across a dangerous post-apocalyptic US. The premise of a fungus that turns people into zombie-like infected ends up being a loose skeleton that allows the show to focus on smaller, character-driven stories. The show is warmly bleak, and occasionally too bleak.

Final Grade: B

Elemental (PG):
This Pixar movie is a gentle step back from the movies that were a little too abstract to succeed (Inside Out, Soul). It's pleasant ride but not one of Pixar's greatest movies -- it kind of covers similar ground as Turning Red.

Final Grade: B-

A Kiss Before You Go by Katzenjammer:
Katzenjammer's second album is slightly less rough-hewn and more polished than the first, with the overall sound moving more towards pop. There are lots of catchy tunes here, and it's definitely worth a listen. Rock Paper Scissors is a good representative track from this album.

Final Grade: B+

Top Reviews of 2023

Here are the experiences I gave the highest ratings to in 2023. I hope you discover something new!

Television Shows

• Severance, Season One (A+) (AppleTV+)
• Silo, Season One (A+) (AppleTV+)
• Sandman, Season One (A) (Netflix)
• This Fool, Season One (A) (Hulu)
• The Bear, Season Two (A) (Hulu)
• Beef (A) (Netflix)
• Mythic Quest, Season One (A) (AppleTV+)
• Righteous Gemstones, Season One (B+)
• Party Down, Season One and Two (B+) (Amazon Video)
• Better Call Saul, Season Six (B+) (Netflix)
• Cunk on Earth (B+) (Netflix)
• Cobra Kai, Season One (B+) (Netflix)

Movies / Specials

• Knives Out: Glass Onion (A) (Netflix)
• Ali Wong: Don Wong (B+) (Netflix)
• Turning Red (B+) (Disney+)

Music

• Le Pop by Katzenjammer (A)
• A Kiss Before You Go by Katzenjammer (A)
• Scaled and Icy by twenty-one pilots (B+)

Books

• Storm Forge by Paige L. Christie (A+)
• The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch (A-)
• Last of the Atalanteans by P.L. Stuart (B+)

Christmas Day

2023 Timeline

A smattering of events from 2023

• Rode the brand new Silver Line.
• Started learning Kotlin.

• We took a soup cooking class and have since made many soups.

• Maia got glasses.
• Visited with a lot of the Hicks family.

• Saw Elizabeth and the Catapult.
• Went to Massanutten for five days touring the petting zoo and water park.
• Ian turned 2.
• I started learning Spanish.

• Strep throat for everyone!

• Weekend trip to the Plains to see Anna and go to my work party.
• Rebecca had a petting zoo for her birthday.
• Rebecca and Maia went to Big Meadow Lodge with Annie and Dom.
• Maia lost her first tooth.

• Maia turned 6.
• Went to Lake of the Woods for 5 days with the Smiths.

• We all got COVID.
• Maia started First Grade.
• I got a new computer.

• Maia started ballet.
• Ian started preschool.
• Went to Shannondale for my 44th birthday.
• Paid off my mortgage.

• 14th wedding anniversary.
• Rebecca went to Atlanta with Emily in between sicknesses.

• Had a lot of fire pit fires.
• Friendsgiving at Tammy's.
• Thanksgiving with the Whitmers.
• Started learning Hangeul.

• Sara came to visit from Minnesota.
• Maia had her end-of-the-year dance recital.
• Did Avent of Code for the 6th year and came in 2nd place.
• Went to Shannondale with my parents.

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2023 album.

• Events
  • Sara came for an overnight visit on S 12/2. Soup night (barley and mushroom) with Sara, Car, and Jordan.
  
  
  • Solo dad dinner at Local Provisions on H 12/7.
  
  
  • Maia went to the grandparents' for the weekend on F 12/8.
  
  
  • Went to a holiday open house at John & Kate's house on S 12/9. Family dinner minus Maia at Best Buns in One Loudoun.
  
  
  • Stayed home while Rebecca and Ian went to church and then Harpers Ferry on S 12/10. Dinner with the grandparents (salmon) in the evening.
  
  
  • Family dinner at Local Provisions on W 12/13.
  
  
  • Lilly and Monica came to visit on F 12/15.
  
  
  • Maia had her final dance recital on T 12/19.
  
  
  • Rebecca took the kids to Claude Moore rec center on H 12/21.
  
  
  • Rebecca took the kids to Char's for a belated birthday party on F 12/22. Ian w as sick for less than a day.
  
  
  • Made Manhattan clam chowder for dinner on S 12/23.
  
  
  • Went to Riverside for church service on S 12/24.
  
  
  • Christmas Day at home on M 12/25.
  
  
  • Trip to the Shannondale mountain cabin with the Uri grandparents, T 12/26 - H 12/28. Maia got sick on Tuesday, so she and I came up a day late on W 12/27.
  
  
  • Visited the Smiths for lunch and games on F 12/29.
  
  
  • Ian switched to a "free range" crib with 1 wall removed on S 12/30. Family dinner at Red Robin followed by a quick mall trip for kid shoes.
  
  
  • Rebecca and Maia went ice skating on S 12/31.


• Projects
  • Continued learning Spanish (with a bit of Korean and French) on DuoLingo.
  
  
  • Did Advent of Code at midnight for the 6th straight year.
  
  
  • Gave my annual presentation to the Tech Leadership Development Program at work on H 12/14.


• Consumerism
  • Enjoyed watching Cobra Kai and House of the Dragon.
  
  
  • Enjoyed listening to Katzenjammer this month.
  
  
  • Not playing any games or reading any books at the moment.

December's Final Grade: B, Happy New Year!