I saw several fish swimming in the creek¹ this morning, as many as eight to twelve. A grey ghostly shadowed slow shimmering of fins and scales in a protected pocket of murky water beneath the rough old rock wall, across on the neighbor’s side.² I didn’t think I could capture them sufficiently in a photograph or video, especially at that distance.

They looked a little sickly or diseased to me, but perhaps I am projecting that onto them because the creek smells foul these days, and I understand it to be somewhat polluted, both from readings (see link in¹ below) and past personal observations³. In actuality I guess these fish are flourishing? I’ll check on them again soon.

Standalone post link: Murky Shimmer | Picture Not Taken

I want to learn how to take honest photographs with my phone.¹ Until then, I just have quick snapshots that I feel inclined to share for some reason.²

This was my walking destination and writing spot yesterday morning.

Here were the geese making a lunch stop in the softball field again.³

This was my writing spot and conditions this morning and right now.

Standalone post link: Writing Spot Snapshots 2025-12-31 and 2026-01-01

I’ve left this site derelict but at the end of the year now I’m wishing I had kept up a comprehensive reading log and music log here, (my own personal ad hoc ‘wrapped’), so I might retroactively populate my site and feed with a bunch of backdated posts, mostly reading log updates. Just a heads up if you are out there somehow following this feed.

Standalone post link: ''joshuawxyzmetaupdate20251231''

I updated my now page today. This post snapshots the current version.

Now

• continuing to “INST TECH LIBRARY MEDIA” all over ‘em +

  a couple of recent notable artifacts: Sora collection development - ‘New Books in Granite’s Sora’, library circulation stats (physical and digital combined)

• rewilding my front yard +

  I am an official grant recipient of the Utah Pollinator Habitat Program and I actually picked up my 150-ish little baby native plants yesterday! Need to get them in the ground soon. I should post more about this.

• started biking, mostly just around town, and I’m actually enjoying it +
  I have a lot of thoughts about this, such as why this is suddenly do-able for me after decades away, what I’m discovering about my city by exploring it this way, whether I will start actually mountain biking and realizing maybe I actually don’t like mountain biking and hiking, I like walking through the woods and deserts but not climbing mountains or rushing down mountains, but these should be their own post or posts, so I’ll refrain from an endless note here.
• new owner of an iPhone Air, preorderd and obtained day of release +
  I’m not usually an early purchaser/adopter and I was actually still quite content with my existing phone (an iPhone 13 mini). My daughter needs a phone, though, so I’m passing the 13 mini to her, but I made her wait until these new 17 phones came out. Decided to go for the somewhat ridiculous Air because it just looked like it would be nice to have and fun to use, something different and new. I don’t have a tablet/iPad/ereader or anything like that and I like to read and do tablet-y stuff on my phone so that helped me justify it - yet another thing I could probably explore more thoroughly and post
• finishing up a CSA subscription - its one of the New Roots CSAs and I pick it up right at their Redwood Farm every Tuesday. +
  This has been equal parts fun to try and exceedingly stressful. By my hopes and designs It forced me to try cooking and eating a lot of new-to-me things, many of which I liked, but now I have a secondary fridge full of specific, weird vegetables (beets, chard, kale) at varying levels of freshness to rottenness that I can’t deal with because though I like them I don’t always want to cook these particular things and no one else in my family really likes vegetables like I do - I should write and post about this experience as well.

Next

• get those baby native plants into the ground in the next week or so
• remember this website
  • start logging my listening, reading, playing, etc. here again, writing book reviews, etc.
  • start writing about other stuff here, too
  • cultivate a thriving digital garden
• figure out how to keep my phone primarily as a tool for learning, creativity, positive communication
• stop ignoring all the things wrong with my house and get some things working and decent
• ChatGLP-1?

This reflects my ‘now’ page update of September 21, 2025. Please visit that main now page to see my dynamic log galleries, as well as an archive of prior and newer ‘now’ updates.¹

Credit for the ‘now’ page concept goes to Derek Sivers. I tend to get aspirational when I update it, so I’ve decided to embrace that by calling it ‘now and next.’

Standalone post link: Now and Next (September 21, 2025)

cute little peaches from this cute little peach tree I planted in my backyard two years ago

They taste pretty good, and they didn’t really have any bugs or problems, though I did no pesticides or really anything special beyond deep watering the tree once or twice a week starting mid-May. And though they are small, the pits are small, too, so there still is a good amount of fruit in each one for their diminutive size. They are little plum-sized peaches. And thankfully freestone.

I planted this as a small, bare root in April 2023. The variety is either New Haven Peach (according to my planting notes) or Red Haven Peach (according to the original order invoice), sourced from Burnt Ridge Nursery in Onalaska, Washington.

Additional updates on my backyard mini-orchard

In April 2023 I also planted a nectarine tree that was initially larger than this peach tree. While the peach tree thrives the nectarine just gets along. It has a few fruits growing on it that are still hard. Birds or squirrels have already taken nips at some of them, but left the rest behind. I’m not super confident that they will be a good harvest this year, if even edible.

I also planted two pear trees in April 2023. They blossomed for the first time this year, and one of them has a single pear growing on the very end of a branch, hanging down close to the ground. I think pears are supposed to take 3-5 years before they start truly bearing fruit, so we are on track with the pears.

This spring I planted four apple trees, all bare root whips, boosting my backyard mini-orchard to a total of eight trees. They all leafed out but a couple seem to be struggling in this endless dry heat. I need to nurse them through it and hopefully from the fall to spring they can establish themselves better. I planted one each of Kidd’s Orange Red, Black Oxford, Rubinette, and Ozark Gold.

My daughter requested today that we plant a pomengranate tree. This is irregular for northern Utah, but I understand from certain posts in the Utah Rare Fruit Growers group on Facebook it is entirely possible with certain cultivars and certain interventions, so perhaps I will explore that for next year. If I’m going to try a pomengranate I will probably try a fig as well.

Standalone post link: cute little peaches from this cute little peach tree I planted in my backyard two years ago

Standalone post link: ''''

I updated my now page today. This post snapshots the current version.

Now

• support, training, troubleshooting around our library management software +

  guiding the library and technology staff in my school district through several recent software updates and other technical changes to our library and resource management software (Destiny)

• curation and collection development in between all the tech support +

  filling student purchase recommendations, buying more copies of the most popular books, and making fun collections in our ebook/audiobook platform for students (Sora)

• rewilding most of my yard +

  took one of the recent mild, warm days off to plant a bunch of native wildflower seeds in pots just before the current snowstorms - may still have been a waste of time at this point as I should have done this back in the late fall, but hopefully the weather will stay cool enough for a few more weeks for them to be cold stratified and at least some of them will grow and I can put them in the ground later (I discovered last year that sowing directly into the ground during a woodchip grass/weed smother didn’t really work)

• cooking real food occasionally +

  examples: I sort of figured out stir fry finally, I recently made a homemade chocolate sauce/syrup that I really love, and I spent way too much money on a shipment of single origin spices from Burlap & Barrel that arrived last night

• spending many evenings playing euchre and rummy 500 on CardzMania.com +

  Yes, that’s ‘cardzmania’ with a ‘z’ - this isn’t really a problem except for it is what I am doing instead of other things I supposedly want to be doing like reading, writing, working on this website, or even playing other video games

• listening to every track by Big Thief on shuffle +

  because I’ve wanted to see them for years but never could, and found out they are doing a Twilight Concert in Salt Lake in September for just $20 a ticket and I got a ticket and now I just need to figure out if or how I can convince anyone in my family to go to this concert with me - no worries if not, though, I will not hesitate to go by myself

Next

• rebrand our old “Get Outside!” Sora collection as “Touch Grass,” and also get outside more myself (though probably not literally touch grass because I already smothered our grass with woodchips)
• get even more serious and official about this rewilding thing and apply for the Utah Pollinator Habitat Program
• try cooking more real things with all these new spices I just got
• make using this website and sharing things on the internet a consistent part of my life again

This reflects my ‘now’ page update of March 15, 2025. Please visit that main now page to see my dynamic log galleries, as well as an archive of prior and newer ‘now’ updates.¹

Credit for the ‘now’ page concept goes to Derek Sivers. I tend to get aspirational when I update it, so I’ve decided to embrace that by calling it ‘now and next.’

Standalone post link: Now and Next (March 15, 2025)

On some lowkey Wallace Stevens shit this Sunday morning.

It’s a blustery, dark day, though. No sunny chair. No green-winged cockatoo around. Closest thing is the calls of migrant geese on the wind, and our dog’s occasional whimpers at the creaking trees and house noises, and/or at us for just sitting around.

Especially appropriate because I used to be a believing Mormon so coffee is a no-no for every morning, but perhaps an especial sacralege for Sunday morning when I’m supposed to be at church taking the sacrament and recommitting to do and not do a bunch of things such as not drink coffee. Death and resurrection, newness of life. Awake and arise.

Standalone post link: On some lowkey Wallace Stevens shit this Sunday morning

In spring of 2024 I started building on this website a bespoke music listening log and gallery to match my 2024 reading log, but I wasn’t consistent posting to it. The end of the year came and I had regrets about the lack of a beautiful gallery of all my favorite albums of the year, but recognized that going backward to update all the holes would be tedious and overwhelming.

However, I have been obsessively consistent with scrobbling¹ all of my music listens to last.fm, and it turns out that last.fm, like nearly everyone else², has gotten into the “wrapped” game with some year-end interactive web thingies that are actually kind of cool and much more accurate to my listening than the ones provided by streaming services, since I do a fair amount of analog listening. So, in lieu of my bespoke music listening log gallery I am going to go ahead and link and share some details from my last.fm “Playback”

froztfreez’s year in music 2024| Last.fm

Playback - froztfreez - 2024 | Last.fm

My Top 25 Albums in 2024

(by number of plays, fairly accurate)

1. 19 MASTERS by Saya Gray
2. pointy heights by Fousheé
3. AMANA by Crumb
4. PHASOR by Helado Negro
5. Multitudes by Feist
6. COWBOY CARTER by Beyoncé
7. I Killed Your Dog by L’Rain
8. Epoch by DeYarmond Edison
9. Astoria Kazegage by Mesita
10. Only God Was Above Us by Vampire Weekend
11. Something in the Room She Moves by Julia Holter
12. Pleasure by Feist
13. QWERTY by Saya Gray
14. THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT: THE ANTHOLOGY by Taylor Swift
15. Hole Erth by Toro y Moi
16. Way to Be by youbet
17. My Method Actor by Nilüfer Yanya
18. Fatigue by L’Rain
19. The Reminder by Feist
20. A Light for Attracting Attention by The Smile
21. Your Day Will Come by Chanel Beads
22. empathogen by Willow
23. nothing or something to die for by mui zyu
24. Poetry by Dehd
25. A Storm in Heaven (2018 Remastered / Deluxe) by The Verve

My Top 25 Artists in 2024

*(by number of plays, fairly accurate)*

1. Saya Gray
2. Feist
3. Helado Negro
4. Fousheé
5. Crumb
6. L’Rain
7. Bob Marley & The Wailers
8. Mesita
9. Vampire Weekend
10. Bon Iver
11. Jay Som
12. The Smile
13. The Stone Roses
14. The Most Serene Republic
15. Beyoncé
16. youbet
17. Toro y Moi
18. Steve Lacy
19. A.R. Kane
20. Nilüfer Yanya
21. Julia Holter
22. Rainbow Kitten Surprise
23. Braid
24. Taylor Swift
25. José González

I didn’t take on any big listening projects in 2024, so my listening was somewhat scattershot. I listened to nearly 1,500 artists at least once last year. The top listings mostly center on vibe-y things that I found easy to pull up and listen to again and again. Then most of my other listens were things I only tried once or twice, but sometimes still made the list because of epic track lists. And a couple of albums I was trying to decide whether I actually liked. Also, for a while I had some Feist CDs in my car and replayed them a lot.

My Listening Footprint

More adventuresome and eclectic than some, but still pretty basic…

For 2025…

I’m going to continue with my last.fm scrobbling as I have done since 2008. I’m not quite ready to let my bespoke listening log gallery idea go; I’m committing to trying again. That being said, we’re already a week into 2025 and I have several things I should have added already but haven’t yet, so it remains to be seen…³

Standalone post link: My 2024 Music Listening

I’ve set up my weird little website to crosspost certain status updates to micro.blog, Bluesky, and Threads now. Let’s see what happens…

Thanks! If you’re reading this you clicked through the link, or maybe you’re some mysterious real one who follows my RSS feed.

Standalone post link: First joshuaw.xyz microblogging crosspost