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Hi friends! At the beginning of this week we had another whirlwind road trip down to Southern California for Nicole’s grandfather’s funeral. With stops, the drive is about seven hours each way so we listened to a lot of podcasts and ate a lot of fries over multiple stops. On our way back up, we stopped at Octavia’s Bookshelf, an independent bookstore in Pasadena, where we used to live. Named in honor of Octavia E. Butler, this bookshop highlights BIPOC authors and products from Black-owned businesses. The book selection is expertly curated. I haven’t bought this many books at a single shop in a while and I was musing on how important a well-curated bookshop experience is in helping match the right books with the right readers. We got home late Tuesday night and were each back to work the next morning. We’ve also been going to a friends’ place to feed their cat every evening since Wednesday so needless to say, we are absolutely exhausted. January was a whole 365 days on its own.