Weekly Update 2026-01-25: Winter Storm Fern Edition
What happened during the week of January 16th - January 25th, 2026:
π₯Ά Boy, am I glad my family decided to hold the memorial for my grandmother last weekend instead of this one. St. Louis is in the midst of Winter Storm Fern, and all predictions of its severity were accurate. Temps are in the single digits, the Hawk is howling, and there's at least 8 inches of snow on the ground. Nobody would have been able to attend the service had it been held on Saturday 01-24.
β±οΈ Speaking of the service, here's how it went down. The two photos at the bottom of the post were from May 1993, when my grandparents and I went on a road trip to the Canadian Rockies, which included a stop in Banff, Alberta as seen here. This was during the era when my grandparents lived in Spokane, WA, which I had detailed at length in a June 2025 entry.
ππ ΄π§’ In my entry recapping the memorial service, I alluded to other events that occurred during our visit. Let's catch up on those here.
- πΆ After L. and I arrived at our hotel in Wilmette on Friday 01-16, we were hungry for dinner, but not really keen on eating in at the hotel. We found Torino Ramen in downtown Wilmette, which was within walking distance of the Metra station and a violin shop, and enjoyed a really tasty yuzu chicken ramen. I've only had this dish once before, back in the Portland suburbs during a hellacious trip in March 2022, and I'd say that the version in Wilmette is very much in line with what I remember. We were also inspired to try a sake flight, with Dassai 45 (super-clean, soft, floral), and Kenbishi "Mizuho" (if a sake and bourbon had a child, this would be it) being standouts that I'd buy if I could find them in a store.
- π When the funeral lunch concluded on Saturday 01-17, it was mid-afternoon, and many folks were going their separate ways. Our plans were to find a brewery in Chicago, then head to King Spa for a relaxing few hours of dinner and heat therapy. The first brewery choice was Illuminated Brew Works, but the musical fest they were hosting that evening would likely have clashed with our post-funeral moods. Sometimes being around happy people isn't appropriate, which has nothing to do with them and everything to do with our moods, so it's best to remove ourselves from the situation. A dimly-lit is/was brewing, with their spruce and gin-barrel aged saisons, was much more our speed.
- ππΌ King Spa offered just the right amount of heat and solitude to relax ourselves. We stayed there for 3.5 hours, which included time eating at their underrated and spicy cafeteria. It's well worth a visit if you are in the near northern suburbs of Chicago, or even if you aren't.
- πΉπΌπ―π΅ On our way back to St. Louis on Sunday 01-18, L. and I stopped in to visit our parents for a couple of hours. In exchange for advice to work with folks running cemeteries, I gave my father a homework assignment: can you recall places from your time stationed in Taiwan during your time in the Air Force? I have talked for a couple years about making a visit to Taiwan, to see where I was born, and I'd like to do it while my father is still with me and can vicariously share in the experience. He was able to recall a few things while we talked with him, such as spending a couple days in Yokohama during a regional fast-pitch softball tournament between various US military bases, as well as the cities he visited in Taiwan. Our current thinking for a trip to Taiwan and Japan won't cover Yokohama, but it would focus instead on the southern part of Japan, as well as Okinawa and Taiwan itself.
βοΈ Now that we're home again, both L. and I spent the majority of this week catching up on work tasks, reorienting our brains back to a "normal" state of being, and preparing for the cold and snow. We both were overtaken by some work events, though to be fair many of these events were brewing for some time. It only feels like we're being overwhelmed by them, largely because of our emotional state earlier in the week. Perhaps being snowbound may become a time to reset ourselves? Let's see! At least we know of an appropriate movie to watch in this cold weather.
Items Of Note From Last Week:
Outbound Actions
- π¨ Create: Writing my post about my grandmother, as mentioned earlier. Updated my "Where are you?" post to reflect some social media changes. Started reading up on ON1 Photo RAW MAX 2026 (more below).
- π§βπ§βπ§βπ§ Encounters: Spent time at Side Project on Thursday 01-22. Otherwise, I kept close to home.
- βοΈ Health: Usual round of three 7-minute workouts this week. I'm kicking around the idea of adding a fourth workout to the week, given that it isn't too easy to take neighborhood walks in winter.
Internal Obligations
- ποΈ Organize: Lots of laundry to clean up after our road trip, including dry cleaning. I'm finally reading up on San Diego, as I'd like to get an itinerary settled before January ends. As L. & I were snowbound and cold-bound on Saturday 01-24 and Sunday 01-25, we busied ourselves with various tasks: shoe polishing, revamping closet storage, sorting through photography equipment and photos, etc.
- π¬ Testing: Deactivated my Bluesky account and deleted the Bluesky (iOS) app! I will keep the account deactivated until the end of February, then decide what to do about it. Downloaded ON1 Photo RAW MAX 2026 (macOS) and ON1 Photo RAW (iOS), then deleted Photomator (macOS and iOS).
- πΌ Work: Lots of meetings, and lots of BCA assignments that are a bit overwhelming. I was warned that BCA would be a lot of work, and those warnings were unfortunately accurate. My meeting on Friday 01-16 was a lot better than earlier ones, as the overwhelming chatter finally coalesced into a format that made some sense.
Media
- π Listen: CESperate Measures feat. Ed Zitron, Trashfuture Bonus Content Feed (Extremely Good); Batch 305: Barleywine is Life 7: The State of Barleywhales, Malt Couture
- π Read: Photographer Shoots, Develops, and Publishes NFL Film Photos Before the Game Ends, PetaPixel; Picking up the missing pieces of Appleβs Creator Studio, Six Colors
- π₯οΈ Watch: Hang Out with Two of the RAREST Birds in North America., YouTube, Bob Duchesne; How To Plan Your First Trip to Japan - 2026 Edition, YouTube, Japan Guide
More Info About The Media Selections From This Week:
I'll keep the media selections shorter than usual this week, but longer than last week's entry.
Apple has been leaning into its Services platform for a few years, with an increasing amount of the company's revenue coming from recurring subscriptions. A creative bundle like the Creator Studio was inevitable at some point, as this package puts together various applications to serve creative needs: video editing, graphics creation, musical creation and editing, and enhanced (yes, unfortunately with AI) office productivity. Many folks, including Six Colors and Craney, noticed the lack of a photography-oriented program, all the more puzzling since Apple owns Photomator, the sibling of the Pixelmator app included in the bundle. Apple used to have its own photography editing app, Aperture, whose absence is still lamented today. I share Craney's worry that the current offering of Photomator isn't long for this world, particularly since Apple has done little with it since buying Pixelmator last year. I hedged my bets on Friday 01-23 by taking advantage of a 50% coupon from ON1, so now I own both ON1 Photo RAW MAX 2026 and its iOS app. Whatever happens with Photomator in the future will no longer be a concern for me Β―_(γ)_/Β―
As I'm new to ON1 software, I understand it will take me some time to learn how to use it well. Time was a luxury unavailable to Miles Myerscough-Harris, as he shot an NFL game in December 2025 on film, but still managed to develop and post the photos online before the game finished! Admittedly, Miles was only speeding up a process that was achingly familiar to sports photographers of the past, but it is still an impressive feat to do today in 2025-2026. PetaPixel has a brief showcase of the photos from Miles' time in Miami, and I have to say that pairing expired film with the Dolphins' throwback uniforms (which I believe they should revert back to full-time) is an inspired choice.
L. and I didn't see much of North Alabama last November, thanks to an inopportune illness that caused us to cut short our vacation. We missed spending time at Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge near Decatur, and after seeing Bob Duchesne's video of his time there around Christmas, we realize now we had skipped a wonderful birding opportunity. Wheeler is one of the few places in the United States where Whooping Cranes can be spotted, as they often travel with their smaller Sandhill Crane cousins, and it would have been a really special treat to have seen them for ourselves. Both Huntsville and Decatur are within our comfort driving zone, so perhaps we should plan a trip there in the next year or two...but first, we have to plan our trip to Japan and Taiwan. The Japan Guide site has produced helpful tourist videos for many years, but now that we are talking out loud about making a visit, it's time to take their advice seriously.
Ed Zitron is not a man of few words. All you need to do is read one of his articles on AI or NVIDIA to see what I mean. He's one of the better frequent guests on Trashfuture, as he combines a fair amount of technology knowledge with an equal level of disdain that the tech field so richly deserves. Ed suffered for us all by attending CES in Las Vegas (which, no, not even with a gun to my head), but lived to tell the tale of sadness and woe with Riley and the rest of the gang. Meanwhile, in some circles, drinking four rare barleywines would not be considered sad or disdainful, but rather something to celebrate while you're still sober enough to do so. Malt Couture takes a seventh swing (swig?) at the Barleywine Is Life ethos, covering high-alcohol and high-stickiness offerings from The Veil, Goose Island, Anchorage, and Half Acre. You'll have to pay attention right off the bat, as I will spoil one thing for you: the best beer out of the four is the very first one they try.
Finally, here's a media bonus for everyone: the BahΓ‘'Γ Temple in Wilmette on a very cold and snowy night, from Friday 01-16.
