diary of a wimpy annie

stuff happened to me this year (SHOCKING!! NOT CLICKBAIT!!)

It is me, the “depths of wikipedia girl,” back with a short update. I’m in Grand Rapids and there’s two feet of snow. I’m also in an xkcd! Anyway, I’m half-watching the 1979 Kate Bush Christmas special and tallying up some stats from the year (with very liberal approximation) in the style of the Harper’s Index or this poem and I thought you might be interested.

2022 in review:

Number of beers: 107. Number of bears: 0. Number of books: 23; that I loved: 4. Number of times I had an idea: 298. Number of times I had no idea: 94. Number of times I fell for a scam: 1. Number of times I fell out of love: 1. Number of times I fell in love: 1. Number of times I fell down the stairs: 1. Number of times I graduated college: 1. Number of people I kissed: 9. Number of times I felt like I was on top of things: 45. Number of times I felt like things were on top of me: 129. Number of times I cheated on vegetarianism: 11. Number of Depths of Wikipedia live shows: 28. Number of Depths of Wikipedia live shows that I left thinking “Hm, I hope people liked that. If only there were a feedback form”: 28. Number of articles I published online: 74; that I’m proud of: 6. Number of weeks I spent in Berlin catsitting: 6. Number of times I cried: 13. Number of times I called my mom: 98; while crying: 2. Number of credit cards I opened: 2. Number of times I called my credit card’s customer service line: 9; while crying: 1. Number of beds I slept in: 65. Number of exclamation points sent: 36,039; recieved: 12,034. Number of times I forgot to cancel a subscription: 3. Number of times I forgot to drink coffee: 0. Number of days in a row that I left my Crockpot on one time: 7. Number of times my car got towed: 1. Number of dollars I spent to get it back: 500. Number of dollars I sold the entire car for a few months later: 1000. Number of hours I spent sulking after my car got towed: 4. Number of roommates I had, cumulatively: 8. Number of kids I would like someday: 2. Number of TikTok “likes” recieved: 5,400,000. Number of times I watched Jeopardy!: 196. Number of times I watched Jeopardy! as a studio audience member at Sony Pictures Studios: 1. Number of times I asked Ken Jennings if he eats a chocolate bar and soda for breakfast like Alex Trebek did, to which he replied “no I don’t really like breakfast but today I had a banana”: 1. Number of times I listened to my favorite podcast episode: 6. Number of times I tracked down the person who made my favorite podcast episode, begged him to make a followup, realized we were both living in West Michigan, hung out for like six hours, kissed kind of randomly, and then I accepted the devastating news that he would not make a followup, but stayed in touch and remained friends: 1. Number of times I went rock climbing: 24. Number of tattoos received: 3. Number of times I got covid: 1. Number of people who owe me money: 1. Number of people whom I owe a big apology: 3. Number of times I wrote about a niche website dedicated to taxonomizing plastic bread tags: 1. Number of miles I ran: 376. Number of cavities I had filled: <1 (dentist said it was a “really small one”). Number of minutes I can plank: 7. Number of minutes I spent planking, cumulatively: 302. Number of times I was really jealous of someone else: 4. Number of times I stayed up late enough to see the sun rise: 13. Number of times I slept in my contact lenses: 19. Number of times I layed down in the grass: 14. Number of times a butterfly landed on me: 0. Number of years old I am: 23. Number of years the US Social Security Administration predicts I have left to live: 62.7. Things are pretty good, all things considered.

Other things I feel like sharing

• The magazine The Believer resurrected from the dead this month and I wrote a page about my favorite 13th century six-year-old

• You know the “and they were roommates…” Vine? According to this TikTok, the now-iconic roommates started a business and then one of them committed fraud and fled the country. And they were roommates! Learning this new information feels like a deleted scene of my favorite movie or something.

• I just found out about Shattered, a one-season show that was on UK Channel 4 in 2004 that gave people 100,000 GBP if they stayed awake for A WEEK. This is literally a torture technique. People were hallucinating. The premise for this show is as bad as that of Heil Honey I’m Home, the sitcom that imagines Hitler as a mid-century family man (canceled after one episode). I need to watch it

• Lately I’ve been feeling a little bit more listless than usual. I don’t really know what I should be doing! Do you? Okay anyway! I liked this project by The Pudding where you label your feelings — almost as much as I enjoyed the previous month’s project about upward mobility in the US (a lot).

• You should buy the picture book I Want To Be A Vase, a story about a plunger with big dreams, which was written by Julio Torres (the guy who made Los Espookys on HBO) and illustrated by my new friend Julian Glander, who I watched on Jeopardy! and met at a Pittsburgh Depths of Wikipedia show!

• Flickr announced a Foundation to preserve its 50 million photos and they’re hiring soon. You should work there! I bet it would be cool

• My favorite Twitter account right now is @mondomascots which posts goofy Japanese mascots

Mondo Mascots @mondomascots

Cup noodle shovels snow

I like writing these occasional newsletters and I like reading your replies and comments, so thanks for sticking around. This is all I have for now because I’m starting to get very y s l e e p y ꩜.

Love, Annie

P.S. Give me book recommendations!! I just read (and loved) “Answers in the Form of Questions,” a book about Jeopardy! by Claire McNear, and “You Could Look It Up,” a history of reference books by Jack Lynch