Links: Olympics, Fonts, Claudia Kishi, & More!

Hi all! Welcome to Wednesday Links, where we post about cool things we’ve seen around the internet!

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The Olympics are underway and admittedly, I’m only half watching it. But despite the questionable coverage by NBC and all the awful injuries (get well soon, athletes!) there are some super cute aspects, like Olympic couples:

Jen Armbruster and Asya Miller

Sports: They both play goalball, a sport specifically created for blind athletes, for the USA’s Paralympic team.

Their story: Jen has played in six (!) Paralympic games since 1992, and Asya thought of her as a role model before they met while playing the game. They won a silver medal playing together in Athens in 2004, and got married in 2007, one year before winning the gold in Beijing. They had their first child, a son named Ryder, in 2011.

Aww alert: “Occasionally we do argue like spouses and our teammates laugh at it. And sometimes we use terms of endearment on the court,” Asya said in an interview for the upcoming games.

The list features only nine couples, so it’s by no means an exhaustive count of couples competing. Feel free to add comments about your favorite Olympic couple!

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A note from Sarah: At RWA this year, I co-presented two workshops – one on newsletters and another on virtual assistants – that at their core were about organizing yourself, your tasks, and your time.

I’m also hard at work on an online course about calendar organization and time management.

I know many of you found my series on Google Calendar useful for your own schedules, and this course is an expanded, more intensive version of that series designed to help you organize your time and your daily, weekly, and monthly schedule.

I’ll be sending out tips and step-by-step instructions for specific organization and time management strategies through the Organization Academy mailing list:

Please sign up if you’d like information about the course when it’s ready. My goal is to help you get control of your time and your schedule methods so you have less of that can’t-catch-up, overwhelmed feeling we all dislike so much.

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Admittedly, it took me a while to get into Stranger Things (if you have Netflix and aren’t watching it, GO NOW!), but once I did, I’ve been reading everything I can about the show, even articles of the title’s font:

The Duffer Brothers recently told The Hollywood Reporter that their title font is a “super important” aspect of their show. They wanted to capture the look and feel of the 15 book covers – the vast majority from Stephen King novels – that they sent to a design company called Imaginary Forces. The result was, they said, completely true to the feeling of being “in middle school or high school reading those paperbacks.”

Other viewers have experienced a lightbulb moment when they realise that the font is the same that is used on the children’s book series, Choose Your Own Adventure. Stranger Things shares its ability to make viewers travel through time with its title font, ITC Benguiat.

Excuse me while I nerd out all over the place.

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Thanks to Reader Lakshmi for passing along her tribute to The Baby-Sitters Club‘s Claudia Kishi over at NBC News:

Beyond seeing an Asian-American girl who was artistic and creative, readers who grew up surrounded by their extended families also said they appreciated seeing a realistic portrayal of an Asian-American family. “My absolute favorite book was ‘Claudia and the Sad Good-Bye,’ which is the book in which Claudia’s beloved grandmother, Mimi, passes away,” Pooja Makhijani, a writer and editor now living in Singapore, told NBC News in an email. “I was raised by my paternal grandparents – we lived in a multigenerational home – and Claudia’s relationship with her grandmother was always precious to me.”

I could be wrong, but I feel as though Claudia was the fan favorite. Who was your favorite character?

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 A reminder! Buzz Books Romance 2016 is still available in the US, so if you’re looking for new books to try, you can find yourself a digital copy on the Publisher’s Lunch Buzz Books page, and for download from Amazon, BN, iBooks, and Google: Play.

I wrote the introduction, and since I didn’t have a hand in the curation process, I’m extremely curious about several of the books excerpted inside – especially the ones involving magic and under-explored historical time periods.

If you’ve downloaded a copy, would you share what you thought of it? I’d love to hear your reactions!

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Don’t forget to share what super cool things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!