JUL 04

2026

Saturday: I found my schedule upended by both last night's late update and our displacement of our usual shopping run until tomorrow. (Blame the heat.) We spent the whole day inside; I took the time to copy down notes about both my time at Intrust and some old addresses with the aid of Google Maps. I had some of my salad for lunch while rewatching early TADC episodes, got the litter and the laundry, and did my normal Saturday vacuuming. We elected to do our Friday exercises today, but I couldn't keep up the pace. For dinner, I finished the enchilada pasta, while Julie had more soup. We watched the Poirot episode called "The Affair at the Victory Ball," which is the one Julie never remembers, in which six of the attendees of a masquerade are costumed after the characters in the Italian commedia dell'arte. After that, I got my laundry and did a little more FFXIV questing. Spent some time working on my fishing profession.

Q2, 2026
This feels like the most significant season to come along in a while, though I don't have much to show for it. I had been asleep at the wheel until late April, at which point a chance misunderstanding reminded me about the frailty of the human flesh. That's an expression Julie and I use sometimes to remind ourselves about the inevitability of aging and death, but it hadn't been registering with me properly before now. After my moment of revelation, I committed to writing a book this summer: I spent May deciding what was in-scope for the story (identifying which story arcs I'd be writing and which would have to wait for a potential sequel). I spent June outlining those story arcs with more than 64 cards on a timeline. Now in July, I've (properly) started the first draft process. I need to be done with this first draft before we go on our Iceland trip next month.

What else has been going on? I've been exercising more deliberately, though my consistency is starting to waver. I'm working on flexibility, strength, and cardio, though I'm being pretty haphazard about my pursuit of these goals. (I don't have "goals" or any metrics of any kind, actually. Just a desire to improve.) I'm trying to save money and pay down debt. I'm being more deliberate about my appearance. I've resumed my stalled search for mental health resources. I've cut back on some games and some streams. I've remembered some of the things that motivate me, and I've tried to keep those motivations more clearly in view. I've been reconnecting with some people I'd lost touch with, and I'm working to be more personable to the people I encounter in everyday life.

This is also the season I got really into the enneagram, and in which I stopped sneering at Myers-Briggs types as much. I still have too much enthusiasm where categorization for categorization's sake is concerned, but that doesn't mean tools like these are worthless; I just need to remember their limitations.

2025

Friday: Julie and I had a late start today after our night at Stables. We eventually got cleaned up and headed to the house, where we picked up Roger; Chris followed us in his car to Bahama Breeze. Carol and Bruce met us there, and Roger took some photos of us as we made our way in. I was in the process of convincing myself to change my order when the waitress arrived, so I just stuck with my first plan to order a crispy jerk chicken salad. Julie guessed I wouldn't be a fan of this, but she thought I'd find it too spicy; in truth, I just regretted ordering a salad now when I'm going to be having salads for lunch pretty much every day next week.

The lunch turned out to be at least in part an early birthday celebration for Julie, so Carol and Bruce presented an birthday card and a container of brownies. The conversation over lunch was wide-ranging, covering our move to Philadelphia, Chris and Roger's recent goings-on, and the shows that Bruce and Carol had watched lately. After around two hours, we decided it was time to go, and we returned to the house with Roger.

Our evening consisted entirely of sitting outside on the back patio while the bugs ate us. One of the fawns decided to nestle underneath a tree on the neighboring lot, while the other deer continued into a yard behind Roger's. Of the cats, Jack kept us company, mostly sleeping on a chair, while Taco stayed inside. Roger watched a little bit of Family Feud before switching to youtube on the TV, but he had it muted half the time; I played a bunch of Vampire Survivors on my phone. (I unlocked the Emerald Diorama stage and a few characters. This is all stuff I'd already done on the PC version, but I never bothered to sync my data on Android.) By 9 PM, we were both pretty hungry, so Julie and I finally started making our way toward leaving. After bidding Roger farewell, we headed back to the hotel... but we grabbed a pizza and some bready from Little Caesar's, first.

Back at the Comfort Inn, we were dismayed to discover our room keys had died. The guy at the front desk gave us fresh ones, and we finally got to have dinner in our room. Julie put Forensic Files on again; I tried to watch youtube, but I didn't want to provide competing audio, so I just logged into Hearthstone instead. I did another "Return to Un'Goro" prerelease Tavern Brawl, this time using Quest Priest, and I finally finished all the current event quests. Julie decided to turn off the TV around the same time, so now I'm posting this update in the dark. It's our last night here! Goodbye, underwhelming Tony Hawk commercials! Auf Wiedersehn, healthy gut biome ads! I look forward to my next year+ of commercial-free entertainment.

2024

Thursday: since we'd run out of cat treats, Julie and I went to Taco Bell before stopping into Acme. It was an expensive shopping trip. After we got back home, I fell asleep in the bedroom for a while. Julie was going with Rachael to some open roof in Old City to watch fireworks, so I dropped them off before coming back home to play more Dawntrail. Apparently they had limited success. For my part, I finally got into the sixth zone and played through almost all of it, while I had Lauren's Eiyuden stream open on the other screen. I had the last of my Domino's for dinner, and around 11, I went back to pick up Julie and Rachael. I continued playing afterwards.

2023

Tuesday: with it being a holiday, we got to have a lazy morning at home. I had a bowl of cereal before I walked to the Acme on Passyunk. The heat and humidity reminded me of the rainforest building at the Sedgwick County Zoo. I was surprised to notice the Primal Supply butcher shop had closed last month, apparently. I picked up mayonnaise, cat treats, and breakfast bars before walking back home.

It rained a bit as the day wore on, and we played a couple of games of Scrabble and Battleship just for a change of pace before I had some salad for dinner. The rain was such that we thought we might miss the 4th of July get-together at Justin's house, but it dried out enough for us to walk down there. There were a few adults we hadn't met previously. Taking my best guess at spelling, Andie was nervous her kid would cause a mess and was thus less inclined to come outside, while Zach and Ellie were from the north end of town and had a lot of questions about our relocation process. Zach's a baker at a bakery near our apartment, I guess? Anyway, he and Justin and I chatted for a while about Tears of the Kingdom at Julie's prompting.

Before too long, Phil, Katie, and Nolan showed up, and Nolan made himself at home on the grill preparing burgers. He told me what he'd put in them, but the only parts I remember were allspice and a touch of cumin. The burgers were really good, though. Nolan again expressed an interest in playing more Risk, so we'll have to do that eventually.

At some point, the adults finished helping the kids fire off their little firecrackers and moved to the roof balcony to watch the big fireworks. I would have followed, but I was initially distracted by the dogs (Hank and the local Mystery Dog) until Nolan took responsibility and sent me inside. I wound up just eating in the kitchen for a little bit before the boys (Theo and Jack) recruited me to help with their LEGO set.

They brought me downstairs to a pile of some of the tiniest construction blocks I have ever seen—these were either a miniature variety I'd never seen before, or a knock-off using their unusual size to maintain legal distinction. I think Theo could have assembled this set on his own with a little guidance, but the three of us together was too exciting to remain focused, and we instead resorted to some hide-and-seek around the basement. Andie came down and declared a need to absolve herself of the guilt caused by her kid's share of the mess and took to cleaning up before retrieving Jack so that he and Theo could go to bed, at which point I made my own way to the upstairs deck.

The fireworks were alright, but it was getting late, so Julie and I walked home before too much longer. I enjoyed the outing, though not so much the part when the button on my shorts got snagged and came off. The drawstring kept them in place, but I liked these shorts, and the buttons I've tried to repair in the past have never been the same. It's disappointing.

After Julie went to bed, I started working on this idea for a browser extension I had. The idea combines webrings, StumbleUpon, Shinigami Eyes to allow people to create and share networks of trusted and blocked sites semi-dynamically. I'm calling it Whisper Network, but there's nothing really there, yet. We'll see if I get anywhere with this.

2022

I remember going to Becky Bouska's house to see Phil and his family one last time before my trip up to Philadelphia. I think we played games in the basement, this time?? Can't remember.