So it is Autumn again? I have the feeling that this year lasted longer and longer. My september vibe was: exhausted. I just realized that we had every weather this month. At the beginning I was at a Travis concert, just here not far away from home. It was burning hot. I was melting in the venue. The band even apologized for this shitty venue without air conditioning. Other than that the concert was so nice, I was almost at the front stage and the band was so wholesome and lovely as always. I also visted a theater play which was horrible. It was not only bad but also very boring. But besides that it was nice to visit my home town Düsseldorf again. I also planned to go to a podcast live show but then there was an accident and my train didn’t run. I am still very sad that I missed the show…
Other than the this month was full of doctor’s appointments. Had a cancer scare which occupied my mind. No cancer but there was the possibility that I needed a small surgery to remove the thing. Well, fast forward, now it is gone. Worries for nothing. There was also another big thing appointment for which i waited a long time. I was nervous and dying, I am so grateful that a friend was there via text messages to calm me. In the end the appointment was very good. I am so glad that this is over, although now I have to do other stuff regarding this appointment. But it’s nothing urgent.
Other than that the month was full of migraines, insomnia and being on the verge of a breakdown because I was just so overloaded and tired of everything, especially of work things.

Gaming:
A bit of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, all the Clever games, some games of Root (on the computer and on the table, too) and a game of Wingspan. Not much, but nice games anyway.

Books:
Again a month with not so many books. I finished The Realm of the Elderlings Book 2. I still enjoy the series very much, but it is a rather slow read. Then I read Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasgow. It was ok, but nothing I will remember for long. Another book was Die Rassistin by Jana Scheerer which I found very weird due to it’s narrative style and I kind of regreted reading it because there wasn’t much in it.

Films:
4 films. My fav was Nine to Five with Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton and Jane Fonda. What a fun office comedy but still very sad because almost nothing changed since the 80s. I also liked All of Us Strangers though my expectations where higher from what I heard about this movie. Still a good story. I also liked Breaking Surface, a Swedish survival thriller. What I didn’t like was Poor Things, a Yorgos Lanthimos film. He makes weird films, yes, but this one tried to be feministic, I think, and failed to end more on the sexist side. And it was really boring.

TV Shows:
Currently I am into the Rings of Power which I enjoy very much. It makes me miss my tabletop rpg which was close to the Tolkien lore. (I really can’t warm up to Pathfinder/DnD stuff because it has not magical flavor since it is so overrun by magical beings, a whole humanoid zootopia world, and monsters)
I am also watching The Bear. The show is good but I don’t get the hype about it. We also finished Shogun. I didn’t understand the underlying historical events that much but nevertheless I enjoyed the show. We also finished Decameron which I didn’t like, it was boring and the humor not my kind. Again also hate-watching Emily in Paris Rome. I also finished The Perfect Couple which was again this kind of „rich people are crazy“-plot, I liked the show. But Nicole Kidman is always playing the same character? I also had run through Geek Girl, which was quite wholsome. And I finished Pørni, hope there will be another season soon, I really love that show. Last but not least we finished That 90s Show. I think the kids are annoying and that it is not that authentic considering the 90s (but it is okay to not include the homophobia and AIDS pandemic). But I like everything with Kitty and Red.

What a month, it felt like a year long. It was not really intended that way, but in the end we did two vacations in August. One started at the beginning of the month and we flew to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival. It was not our first time, but the last time we didn’t visit any shows because our time was rare. This year, I booked ahead a lot of tickets. The comedians we liked were: Susie McCabe, Chloe Petts, Jay Lafferty, Nish Kumar, Stevie Martin and Jack Docherty as The Chief. Honory mention to Eric The Submariner, not a stand-up comedian but a real retired submariner who told about his life in the navy. We also saw the Military Tattoo Parade. It was good but not so good as the one in 2016. Not so many acts like last time, very few guest countries, no special goodies. Another hightlight was the visit of the Britannia, the Queen’s beloved yacht.
I love this city so much.

Our next trip started only a couple of days after returning home. We went to the Ostsee, which I now know is called the „Baltic Sea“ in English, ha, didn’t know those were the same. My partner did a sailing course while I stayed in our apartment with the doggys. Wasn’t the best apartment and I missed having a garden. In addition, I got ill. At least the weather was really nice, not too hot like in the rest of Germany, and the doggys had a lot of fun with swimming in the ocean.

Then back to work for the end of August, urgh, which was very annoying, I need a vacation again. The month ended with me going to war with half a million other people and fight for a ticket to the Oasis concerts next year. I am still a bit sceptical about those gigs. I loved Liam’s Definitetly Maybe concerts, they were awesome and since he „turned around“ his concerts are just that which is Oasis. Noel’s concerts are also good, but his own sound and style is very different and I don’t like some of his newer versions of Oasis songs. Hope I won’t hear them next year but the original ones. I was actually trying for tickets for Wembley, but now I’ll end up in Edinburgh. For the Fringe, again. A couple of weeks after I said that I won’t visit the Fringe for the next 10 years. But not sad that I have to go again next year.

Gaming:
I played all the Clevers, a nice casual game called Bonsai, the Lord of the Rings Adventure Book game (which I am not willing to sell, since it’s more annoying than fun), Wingspan and Robin Hood.

Books:
Not so many books this month. I finally consumed My Year of Rest and Relaxation and this book was just very annoying. I also read the TikTok hit It ends with us, didn’t know that it is about abuse, so I was quite suprised when shit turned dark. Next was A House with Good Bones by T.Kingfisher, a Southern USA gothic (mild) horror. I very much liked it, it’s about a generation of women, their relations to each other and finding their peace. A more casual read was My Life the the Walter Boys, I enjoyed it as much as the TV show on Netflix.

Films:
I worked through my Netflix watchlist this month. My fav was tick,tick…BOOM, wow, much sad, but I really liked that film. I also liked Captain Phillips with Tom Hanks though the suspension was killing me. But my fav was probably The Quiet Girl, an Irish film form 2022, about a girl from a poor family visiting relatives in the countryside. There isn’t really much happening but I just enjoyed watching this coming-of-age film.
And I watched the film It ends with us. I don’t know what to think about it, it was a nice addition to the book but I don’t think the films works without knowing the book.

TV Shows:
I finished Mr & Mrs Smith, I liked the show and hope there will be a second season. Then there were a few new episodes of Emily in Paris, my hate-watch. My binge of the month was Pørni. It’s a Norwegian show about a mid 40s mother who just kicks ass in her everyday life.

What a month with so much great stuff! First of all there were two zoo adventures: I visited the Gaia Zoo in Kerkrade, in the Netherlands and it was a very nice. The zoo is beautiful, the animal areas seem vast and enriching and one can see the animals from various positiond. The next zoo visit was Zoom in Gelsenkirchen. A friend celebrated her birthday there with a nice picknick and an exclusive zoo tour. How nice, my first zoo birthday! The tour Was great, it was about 90min, we learned some things about the inhabitants and had an exklusive look at some wolves.
The biggest thing in July was my trip to London for visting my friend again. I visited the musicals Hadestown and The Book of Mormon (my second time), both were awesome and I choose very good (and cheap) seats. Since the weather was constantly perfect, I also managed to finally visit some outdoor places: Hampstead Heath, Richmond Park and Kew Gardes (including Queen Charlottes Kew Palace). Every location was so beautiful and nice, yeah, I am the person going to London to enjoy flowers, woods and the countryside.
The highlight of this trip was the concert of The Killers, with Travis as special guest. I listened to The Killers about 20 years ago, I didn’t know that they were still so big to fill the O2 arena for six nights in a row. And of course it was nice to see Travis again, for the first time in a big venue. Travis were delightful as always and did a beautiful set with some of my fav songs. Then The Killers came on stage and a party erupted, there was glitter, light shows and a handsome singer called Brandon Flowers in a glitter suit. The guitar player looked like someone from ACDC and the bass player like a typical metal-medieval guy with long hair. The show was awesome, the band is from Las Vegas and I felt like watching a Las Vegas show. Then suddenly they switched the monitors to the live football game where England was playing. The band didn’t miss during the concert that people were watching their phones and since England was on the verge of winning, they showed the very last minutes. A bold choice, I was so anxious that England would loose last minute. But they won, the arena errupted in roars and the band started to play Mr Brightside which turned the arena into a whole happy party. Really great concert, I will definitely see The Killers another time if possible.

Gaming:
Not that many boardgames but we managed to play Twilight Imperium 4 again, three players, we were bitterlich crushed by my partner and his space pirates. And on another we had a nice, long gaming session with Maracaibo, too.

Books:
I finished 7 books. It was not the best reading month. I read „Sorrow and Bliss“ by Meg Mason. It has some Eleanor Oliphant vibes but I didn’t like the main character at all. „The Stars too Fondly“ by Emily Hamilton was an okayish space opera but the 20/30s characters sounded and behaved like teenagers, it was very annoying. „Throne of Glass“ by Sarah J. Maas started off soooo slowly. But at the end it got interesting and my friend promised that the second book is way better. „One of us is lying“ by Karen McManus, I thought it would be like „Pretty Little Liars“ but it lacked the bite. The suspense to the incoming murderer reveal was rather declining than growing.

Films:
Only three films this month. I watched „Finding Dory“ for the first time and liked it way more then the first movie. Then we watched „Whiskey Tango Foxtrot“ on Netflix. It was very weird but kind of interesting? Last movie of the month was „The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare“. I hate films with Nazis (especially when one is played by Till Schweiger) but this one was quite okay because it played on the sea and the island Fernando Po (Now Bioko), different locations than the standard WW2 films.

TV Shows:
I finished Kaulitz & Kaulitz and now I am ready for a second season. The I finished the Walter Boys which I quite liked. Next up was Emily in Paris, despite not really liking Emily and Paris, I watched all three seasons this month. I also finished the 4th season of The Boys, why do shows always feel the need for gory violence? But besides that I also liked that season. Then we went on to watching Gen V, a spinoff of the Boys, that I enjoy so far. And I started watching Mr & Mrs Smith, the new tv show, also quite good.