A Transmission from the Last Weeks of Summer

Hello there blog reader! I’m dropping in after 8 months to give another update. The blog has kind of fallen to the wayside a bit in the last 2 years since I became more active on Instagram again. I’ve been posting a lot of reels talking about my favorite records in my collection which has been quite fun for me. I like making little videos and getting to talk about music since I don't have many music friends these days.

Lately, I'm thinking about taking another break from Instagram (too many muscle gays in tiny speedos constantly popping up on my feed and making me feel bad about my body) so my interest in my blog has been renewed, thus finally writing an update 8 months after the last one.

This year has been a good one so far for the most part. Back in the spring, I went out to Philadelphia to see my friend and Joe and go to the Taylor Swift show there that I somehow miraculously got tickets to. They were very much the nosebleeds but we had still had an absolute blast. I was in the moment and didn't take any photos of the actual show but this illustrates how far away from the stage we were:

A lot of you already know that we completely remodeled our kitchen in the first half of the year. It was mostly stressful coordinating all of the folks doing work (cabinetry, floors, tile, drywall, etc), I did learn a lot about what goes into remodeling a house and I'm less scared of doing more remodeling down the line now. The big takeaway was that it's gonna cost twice what you initially anticipate. Also! Hire someone who's worked with the tile you ordered so you don't wind up with a shitty tile job that you'll eventually have to completely redo like I did. :( You can check out my saved instagram stories to see the entire remodel start to finish. I'll just post a before and after below on here.

We've also made a lot of improvements in the outdoor spaces. Charlie's garden looks incredible right now. He's growing 13 varieties of tomatoes some squash, eggplants, dahlias, sunflowers, and a bunch of different peppers. I probably forgot some of the things he's growing. This clip (which has sound, by the way) illustrates what most of our evenings have been like in the backyard the last month or so:

This morning when I went out into the backyard it felt a bit like fall to me. The season change is right around the corner. I'm trying to enjoy these last days of summer cause I know I'm gonna miss it soon enough. Though right now my thoughts are on Charlie and I's upcoming trip to Japan. I'm SO FUCKING EXCITED. I've been dreaming of going to Japan for years. At the height of the pandemic, I got really into watching videos about trains in Japan which really maxed out my wanderlust for visiting. We're doing Tokyo and the Kyoto/Osaka/Nara area with a night at a green tea farm in between. If you have any hot tips on Japan let us know!

I hope your summer (and year) has been lovely. I'll end this post with some photos of random happenings from these past months. Be on the lookout for that Japan post(s)!

Enjoy the last weeks of summer friends! See you soon.

warmth,

joseph