This month marks 14 years since both the birth of this blog and Pemulis and Joelle's one-and-a-half year sojourn in Europe (slightly extended) began. Interesting side note: DFW's magnum opus Infinite Jest (from whence come the characters of the blog!) turns 30 this month. You can read one of many takes on its place in the zeitgeist at its 30th birthday in the New Yorker here, and apparently you can also buy the Infinite Jest (30th Anniversary Edition) here which was just released today, February 3rd, 2026!
Fourteen years, it turns out, is a really long time. Long enough to have changed jobs three times (in the tech world it's also long enough to have changed jobs closer to 15 times), have doubled in size as a family with very grown up children (not mature, grown up), lost all your hair, witnessed a far-right fascist takeover of much of the western world, the coming bankruptcy of the UN, and probably a bunch of other things happening since fourteen years is as I just said a super long time. Still no Stanley Cups in Montreal though.
Since it's been 14 years then I guess that means we are starting our 15th year living "abroad". Seems like a good reason to come up with resolutions for the year. Here are a few of them:
1. Move somewhere (who knows where) so that Helga and Heinrich can each have their own room;
2. Not quit my job out of extreme frustration;
3. Become a cyclist again;
4. Run a marathon (boring millenial goal but why not);
5. Write more blogposts on GrenobleWMD than last year (very easy one);
6. Use my Vinothek gift certificate that my work gave me almost a year ago but haven't been able to use yet because as was mentioned in paragraph 2 we have children and can't go out for dinner unless we get a babysitter which we tried once and she tried to blame Heinrich for cracking the screen of her already-broken iPad.
7. More millienial angst-driven technological disenchantment digital fatigue borne analog nostalgia: take some non-over-processed photos. I actually quite like the look of the photos that I took on my "old" digital camera last year for the Feast of Corpus Christi (see here).
Already getting going on (7), here are some photos I took in the "raw" style using an App called Halide that allows you to turn off (yes you need an app for that) all the crazy photo effects and AI processing that happens automatically nowadays when you take a photo on your iPhone. I think they look kind of cool.
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