What's IN/OUT this week

Sorry for missing you on Tuesday, Haters. Everything just got Too Busy between work and travel. Because I am dedicated to delivering my finest mediocrity to your inbox, I had to punt my planned essay to next week.

But my hating ass always has time to put together the Friday INS/OUTS. So here we go!

IN: Snow in Pittsburgh. Dave and I landed in the Burgh a mere hour or two before they got 5-ish (or more?) inches of snow last Saturday. I haven't seen snow on a holiday visit home in quite a while — and it was really kind of nice! It’s funny to me that global warming has made snow nostalgic, but it has. Even the blistering cold (15 degrees!!!) during the Steelers game on Monday night felt stupidly old-school. Like, this is how real fans used to watch football games back in the day. I layered well for the game and wasn’t as bothered by the temperature as I expected. It helped, of course, that the Steelers won and I warmed up by aggressively waving my Terrible Towel. OUT: Mud. The snow in Chicago has largely melted and we are left with MUCK. I took Dottie for a short walk and had to immediately put her in the bathtub when we got back. I would still choose a muddy dog over a clean house cat, though.

IN: The 2025 Hater’s Guide To The Williams-Sonoma Catalog. Drew Magary’s annual takedown of the Williams-Sonoma catalog — i.e., ripping into the rich — is one of my favorite holiday traditions. It reminds me of the old internet, when screeds were sillier and less… democracy-ending. Magary has been writing these guides since 2012, and their yearly appearance at different outlets is also a sad reminder of how much the online media landscape has been shuffled and throttled by investors. That a platform ever existed for this sort of writing makes me teary. There were once outlets that supported Caity Weaver sitting at a TGI Fridays to see if their appetizers were really endless. OUT: Needing to finalize some year-end tax stuff. I need to call my accountant and prepare for my first year as an LLC because I leaned in too hard as a woman and now I gotta do stuff like “file taxes as an S-Corp” and “claim insurance payments as a business.” As a little girl, I never dreamed of having an ADP login.

IN: Tricking the bots. I get the sense that screaming “REPRESENTATIVE” into the phone when I call a company’s customer service line is no longer the shortcut to speaking with a human. A newsletter I follow linked to a Komando article that laid out how to get around “frustration AI,” wherein the robot system is designed to exhaust you until you hang up. I haven’t tried the tips listed yet, but sharing the info with you so we might reduce 2% of our holiday stress should we need to rebook a flight/ask about health insurance/argue about a sweater return. OUT: Pretending I don’t use some bots. Look, one of the greatest things to happen to me as a journalist has been AI transcription services. I remember having to transcribe my own interviews and it was a cruel and unusual punishment: Not only would it take hours, but I also had to listen to my own voice. Disgusting! 

IN: Plugging in all the holiday lights in the apartment the moment it gets even a little dark out. I don’t keep them on all day — Get real! I am a dad who compares each month’s utilities to the prior month. But getting this place twinkling sure helps a LOT once the sun sets at 3 p.m. (or 1 p.m., if it’s rainy). It’s magical! I wish I had 400x more lights all over the place!!!! OUT: The pan of used oil that has been sitting on the stove since last Friday. This is a Dave matter and he is ruining the holiday spirit of the kitchen where I need to make Christmas cookies.

Tell me what you hated this week!