Illustration by Lindsey Frances / Download a free printable calendar here

Things that happened recently:

Egg roll squirrel is my 2019 aesthetic.

Jada Yuan traveled to 52 places in 2018 for the New York Times and she recently wrote this insightful recap of her extraordinary year. Speaking of travel, here’s how not to be an asshole when you travel, and here are some places you should probably take off of your travel list.

President Elizabeth Warren? Despite the face that literally anyone would be better than the current sentient meat sack, I’m in.

Things to do in New York this week:

Sunday is the last day for the NYC Winter Lantern Festival at the Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Garden in Staten Island. Here are some photos from Snug Harbor—in the summer and in the winter—and the hidden cemetery nearby.

Sunday is also the 22nd Annual Brooklyn Three Kings Parade, which kicks off at 2:00 pm at the intersection of Meeker Avenue and Graham Avenue in Williamsburg.

Monday is your last chance to see this year’s Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center (here’s a guide to other holiday delights in New York, if you’re not ready to let the holiday spirit go yet).

Things I’ve discovered recently:

What if the placebo effect isn’t a trick?

I’ve been slowly picking up my reading pace after taking a few weeks off at the end of the year (much-deserved, I think!) and I’m loving this memoir by folksinger Dave Van Ronk. He says that everyone who moves to New York feels as if they arrived ten years too late, and that really resonated with me especially since I’m deep in mourning from the (inevitable and seemingly constant) loss of New York staples like the Pearl Street Diner.

It’s killing me that I’ll never be able to go back in time and see these in real life.

After a few weeks of road trips and what felt like constant plane travel (four flights around the holidays is four too many!), I’m happy to be back in New York for the foreseeable future. I’m looking forward to diner breakfasts, city adventures and catching up on movies (I just signed up for the AMC Stubs A-List program, so I can see three movies a week for just $19.99 a month, which seems almost too good to be true!). Speaking of movies, I watched Bird Box (like everyone else in the world) and liked it, Life Itself and hated it (despite the obvious joy of watching Oscar Isaac do literally anything) and I’ve been told I’d like Roma so I’ll probably watch that this weekend. I just put a bunch of books on my hold list at the library—I’m most excited to start this one next week—and I’m ready to start crushing my 2019 reading challenge. Have a great weekend, and I hope your new year is off to an excellent start!

Happy Friday!