As someone from southern Colorado, the green chile slopper is the greatest food item ever created. I’ll occasionally try describing how good it is to people not from the area, and this article (in which a self-described skeptic tries it and falls in love) is a handy reference.

Edit to include my favorite quote:

We took our first bite and… holy shit. It was a revelation. I’m not being hyperbolic. It is literally one of the best things I’ve ever put in my face. A slopper is happy food. It’s heartwarming food.

My version of the “could care less” pet peeve (which is annoying but tolerable) is when people reverse the order of the cases in a “let alone” phrase. The entire point of “let alone” is that you fail to meet the general case, so of course you don’t satisfy the specific case.

For example, if I asked someone “Have you ever been to Germany?” they might answer “I’ve never been to Germany, let alone Europe!” As is, this is nonsensical, but if you reverse the order, all is well. Most examples in the wild aren’t this obvious, but they’re commonplace once you start looking for them.

I’m going to a nearby convention for work for most of this week. The convention itself isn’t terribly interesting, but it has been nice to catch up with old friends and meet some new people.

Looking ahead, this is my first proper weekend off in over a year, so I’m looking around for a good destination for a weekend trip (something I’m told normal people do!). Any recommendations within a 4-5 hour drive from downtown Chicago?

We’ve moved with our cat twice now and are preparing for our third. We’re very lucky in that my partner’s parents live in the same city, so we always take the cat to their house, leave her there while we get everything moved, and then take her to the new place once it’s ready. That seems to stress her out less than moving everything while she’s around, and she gets a nice vacation out of the deal!

She’s maybe a little nervous for the first day or two, but always seems to settle in quickly. She also does this adorable thing whenever she goes somewhere new. She’ll slowly walk along the perimeter of each room, mapping it out and sniffing everything, and when she’s ready, she’ll go on to the next room and repeat. It’s really quite something to watch!

Our rent skyrocketed so we’ve been looking to move, and after a hectic week of making appointments, going to showings, and all that unpleasantness, we found a great new place today! We really lucked out in a lot of ways to get this place. The icing on the cake is that it’s about two blocks away from my work. I also made quite a bit of progress on one of my side projects earlier in the week. So in all, a busy week but a good one :)