Last updated: February 24, 2024
Big Updates
Starting with a major life update, I bought an apartment in NYC! It's a 2-bedroom, and more importantly, 2-bathroom condo in Hell's Kitchen, a mere 3-minute walk from my previous apartment. One long and one short block to the west and south, for those familiar with the NYC grid.
It all happened very quickly. My couple friends Ziv and Or recently bought a place, and they highly recommended their real estate agent, Keri. With my rental lease poised to end in June, I figured it might take me 2–3 months to find a place and another 2–3 months to close, so I thought I'd cautiously start looking in October, giving me plenty of time to decide whether I want to keep renting or buy. With Keri's help, I found a place that felt perfect for me within two weeks. It took 2 months to close, a process that made it feel like no one in the entire history of NYC has ever bought or sold an apartment before. Everyone (except Keri and my lawyer) kept acting shocked and surprised by every little thing that happened, creating a lot of unnecessary anxiety. Thankfully, it all ended well, and I closed on December 27. I moved on January 8. (I struck a deal with the landlord to cut my lease short.) My parents helped a lot with the down payment; I would not have been able to afford the place otherwise!
In sad news, my aunt Mirta passed away after a long struggle with an illness that left the doctors baffled for months. Over the past decade, it has been hard to keep in touch given the distance, though I was always looking forward to seeing her with every visit. It feels weird to think she won't be there at the next big family gathering. I miss her very much.
Hosting
Oshry and Kris came to visit for Christmas and New Year's Eve. It was Kris's first time in the US, and he wanted to try all the different snacks and fast food places he'd only ever seen on TV, which in turn meant that my place was chock full of Utz Cheese Balls and Velveeta Cheese. Oshry has always had a soft spot for NY's famous $1 pizza (unfortunately now $1.50), which meant my place was chock full of this deliciously poisonous pizza. I gained some weight during their visit. 10/10 Would Host Again.
I hosted a combined New Year's Eve and housecooling party that was a blast, and two months later I hosted a combined birthday and housewarming party at the new apartment. I hired a bartender for the latter, and as Sean told me during the party, I can no longer host parties without one. I think he's right. It upgraded the event significantly, and I liked that people couldn't congregate in the kitchen since it was the bartender's exclusive zone.
My friend Thor from Berlin, along with his friend Kay, stayed over a few days at my place. We went clubbing multiple times during their visit, as if I were in my early 20s again.
Travel
Dealing with the apartment took most of my attention and energy in the last few months, so I haven't had a lot of opportunity to travel. Saying that, I had a week-long work trip to San Francisco and happily caught up with Davide, Anthony, and Alex. Davide surprised me on the day I landed by taking me to a Mormon temple for a Christmas concert by the US Air Force band. It was… certainly unexpected. I joined Alex for his beekeeper association's annual dinner. That was also unexpected and quite entertaining. Everything was bee-themed.
Hobbies
Tired of manually typing access codes that get texted to me from my phone to my computer, I wrote a Firefox extension that automates that for me. A niche product if there ever was one, as it only works for people who use Firefox, have an Android phone, and use Google's text messaging app.
As Mozilla opened up Firefox for Android to third-party extensions, I adapted my fan-favourite Justify It extension to work on mobile and received a pretty cool free t-shirt for my trouble.
I wrote two more Wear OS (Android Watch) apps. The first is NYC City Bike at a Glance (I refuse to use the brand name, and I love giving really long names for my Wear OS apps). It's especially useful when you're already on a bike and need to find nearby docks. The second app is The Missing Home Screen, which, as the name suggests, adds a sort of home screen to the watch to add shortcuts to favourite apps. This feature, as the name suggests again, is oddly missing from the operating system.
Reading
- I finally finished reading all of The Expanse, managing to finish it before the end of 2023, as was my goal
- A City on Mars, Kelly and Zach Weinersmith, a popular science book sprinkled with the Weinersmiths' signature style of humour about the prospects of humanity expanding to space (not just Mars), with a deep dive on the legal and political issues around it. Admittedly, I thought legal issues would be the last thing that would hold humanity back from this venture, but this book convinced me that we're looking at a very difficult uphill climb, given the intersection of the legal and the political
- I am currently reading the Forward collection
Theatre
- Shucked. An assult of puns. Cute, but not necessarily something I would bother watching again
- Gutenberg. A hilarious two-man show about two friends who want to write a Broadway musical about Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press. The duo plays dozens of characters using an ever-rotating stack of hats with names written on them. Highly recommended!
- Titanique, yet again. What can I say, it's a great show to take guests to!
Soon
- Montréal, Miami Beach Pride, and Houston in the next few months
- Israel, as soon as the war stops. My dad told me not to hold my breath