The dance moves seen around the world; Scrooge me!; Have I found the perfect coffee maker?

3 Things this week and the poem "My cup today"

I did three posts this week and it’s not lost on me that your inboxes are inundated. I’ll try not to do that again.

I hope my content provides somewhat of a reprieve in the midst of all the Black Friday spam.

As we approach Christmas, I’ll be leaning into advent content and will share with you one candle-lighting post each week. I’m excited to share Songs of Advent with you here. I hope you enjoy it and that in some small way it helps you prep for Christmas.

Thanks for spending some of your weekend with Things I Wrote Down. Here are three things and an a poem.

1. The dance moves seen around the world

This is probably not the press he wanted. Trudeau likely expected blowing off steam and belting out lyrics would be euphoric. Perhaps he even felt entitled to savour the victory of getting Taylor Swift to Toronto to close out the record-breaking multi billion-dollar-making Eras tour (for which she reportedly earns $13.6 million per concert).

The internet has been fiery over the optics of what took place on the weekend as a viral video of Trudeau lit up X. It showed him dancing as Taylor Swift sang “You Don’t Own Me.” Innocuous. Maybe cringey on a normal night. But turns out, just down the 401, rioters burned cars, smashed businesses and pushed Montreal into chaos.

It was interesting to see the story flash around the world as the Canadian opposition leader Pierre Poilievre went viral with a hard-hitting post, critical of the PM, while some armchair critics said “everyone needs a night off.”

The New York Post picked it up as did the Times of India. (There was a lot of attention going into the concert, since the PM directly posted to Taylor Swift to ask her to perform in Canada last year.

Whatever you think, there’s cleanup to be done: broken glass and shattered public image. I suspect it will be a tough news week for him and all that ringing in Trudeau’s ears won’t be from the stadium speakers.

2. Scrooge me!

While the online world is often a bah humbug, this Scrooge news is pretty cool. Last year this fun retelling of A Christmas Carol was the number one podcast on iTunes on the fiction chart. And it's back.

The podcast was sponsored by Compassion, and features two incredible bonus episodes that tell the real life stories of former sponsored kids that overcame poverty and adversity, sorta just like Tiny Tim.

The podcast is narrated John Rhys-Davies (Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones) and features Sean Astin (Lord of the Rings, Rudy, Stranger Things) as Scrooge, Bethany Joy Lentz (One Tree Hill, Dexter) as Elizabeth, and Ben Barnes (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian) as the Ghost of Christmas Present, among others.

I’m not doing a Black Friday sale. But you can still buy my books on Amazon.

3. Have I found the perfect coffee maker?

It’s about $500. But hear me out.

Our faithful Cuisinart, which we bought ten years ago when we first got married, is on it’s last legs. There’s a leak I can’t quite seal that means every pour leaves a pool of coffee on the countertop. It’s dangerous to wear white.

So I’m on a search. And Black Friday is enticing. I, personally, like making drip coffee. I’ve been looking at manual and automatic espresso machines, but am drawn to Fellow’s Aiden Precision Coffee Maker.

Food and Wine suggests it just may be the best on the market, transforming beans and leveraging technology to promise “the quality of pour-over coffee with the convenience of hands-free speed that a typical drip coffee maker provides.”

Bon Appétit’s review of the machine is glowing. And it looks beautiful.

I may just have to start a go-fund-me.

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A poem

Speaking of coffee… here’s the poem “My cup today.” I hope you enjoy reading it, whether you’re feeling half empty or half full today.