Weeknotes 22:42

December 31, 2022

Week of December 25–31

Tennessee Aquarium

We spent one of our last days as an entire family visiting the Tennessee Aquarium. We have enjoyed many visits to this Chattanooga attraction over the years. We enjoyed touching rays, interacting with butterflies, seeing the cuttlefish, watching the otters, and enjoying the Secret Reef, which contains sharks, rays, sea turtles, and many varieties of fish.

Getting to touch the rays reminds us of our many years in Florida and many visits to Sea World and the rays tank at Tropicana Field when we went to see the Rays play baseball.

This is the first time we have visited the Aquarium since the pandemic. We enjoyed many of the changes that they have made since our last visit. But much of it remains the same and we were reminded of the many fun times we have enjoyed there over the years as a family.

We also spent some time in downtown Chattanooga as we enjoyed lunch at Tazaki’s. Afterward, we headed over to the MoonPie store to buy some mini MoonPies for dessert. And my daughters bought some pins and stickers.

My oldest daughter will return to Nashville on Monday. We have really enjoyed having everyone home. We still have two more weeks before my son will need to return to Murray State to resume classes to complete his freshman year.

OuiSi

One activity that we enjoyed this week was playing OuiSi as a family. There are many ways to play with OuiSi (wee-see). OuiSi is a game of visual connections. We played Ouisinoes.  Just like dominoes, we made connections through color, shape, composition/pattern, and concept.

We played a variation where each of us had six cards in our hands at once. We played until the table was almost full and then played again. It was fun to see the connections different people in our family made. We are all very visual people, with my kids all enjoying at least one form of art or craft a piece.

Christmas

Several of us went to a candlelight service at a church in our neighborhood on Christmas Eve. We enjoyed eating baked oatmeal for breakfast and then opening gifts on Christmas morning. Starting four years ago, we decided to do a secret Santa where we choose one member of the family to buy gifts for.

It is always fun to see the creativity and love that each family member puts into choosing gifts for the person they chose. Everyone was very happy with their gifts and we enjoyed spending the time together as a family.

Articles I read

• Prevent Scroll Chaining With Overscroll Behavior – I had meant to get back to this article much sooner than I did.
• ACF 6.0.6 Release – Improved Flexible Content Layout UX, Disable Field Settings Tabs and More
• Megan Smith explaining the General Magic prototyping process – I am looking forward to watching the documentary that Dave Rupert mentions in this article.
• An intro to designing accessible data visualizations
• The Biggest Threat to Christianity in 2023 – Identity amnesia
• Best Movies of 2022 (The Gospel Coalition)
• Notes from a dining room chair. – It is always a treat to hear from Ethan Marcotte. Some great encouragement for writing.
• Canadians Must Not Assist a Culture of Death
• Day 69: width in container queries
• Six Questions You Should Ask at the Beginning of 2023
• What’s the Difference Between God’s Sovereignty and His Providence? – I read John Piper’s Providence in 2021 and it was nice to review some of the content of that book through this article.
• Day 67: counting children – This is a use case for :has selector that I plan to utilize a lot.
• 2022 in review (Hidde de Vries) – I liked the simple format of Hidde’s review. I am thinking about writing my own next week.
• Day 70: the defined pseudo-class
• 2022 Year In Review (Ahmad Shadeed) – The format of Ahmad’s review is similar to Hidde’s.

Books I am reading

• The Air We Breathe – I finished this one. One of my favorite reads of the year.
• Load the Wagon: The Kansas Jayhawk’s Road to the 2022 Championship – I enjoyed reliving the Jayhawk’s national basketball championship through the stories in this book. I enjoyed the chapter about the 97-98 team that lost to Arizona in the Sweet 16. That was such a disappointment for such a talented team.
• Practical UI – This book has some really great tips.
• The Prayer Factor – I read this book during my last year in college. I feel like my prayer life was pretty weak this year so I wanted to read something that might help give me some ideas.
• Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn’t
• I completed my Bible reading plan for 2022 which marks the third time that I have read through the Bible in a year. I have been using the Five Day Bible Reading plan. I like that it gives me the weekends to catch up. I had tried in the past using other reading plans but this has been the one that I have been successful with.

What I watched

• Downton Abbey Season 5, Downton Abbey movie, and Downton Abbey: A New Era (Prime Video) – My wife and I finished watching through the Downton series.
• Glass Onion (Netflix) – I enjoyed the second Knives Out mystery at least as much as the first one.
• Abstract: Tinker Hatfield, Footwear Design (Netflix) – I watched most of this with my son, a graphic design student interested in footwear design. Unfortunately, I fell asleep at a few points while watching it, not from a lack of interest but because of my cozy blanket.
• Kansas/Oklahoma State basketball game (CBS) – I really enjoyed seeing my Jayhawks overcome a 15-point deficit at halftime to win this one. This is the first KU game I have watched since the comeback to win the national championship back in April.
• Kim’s Convenience (Netflix)

What I played

• FIFA23 (Manchester City) – I finished the first season of my career with Manchester City. I won the Premier League title and won the Champions League by scoring a goal late in extra time over Juventus. The big disappointment was losing the FA Cup 2-1 to Manchester United. I won the Carabao Cup and had hoped to sweep the cups, Champions League, and Premier League. Just came up one short.
• OuiSi (as mentioned above)