July was very busy and now August was very unbusy. I must admit that it was also a bit lonely from time to time.
I had two nice dates with friends for boardgames and snacks. And two roleplaying sessions, one in an ongoing offline group for Pathfinder, the other with a new online group where we will play DnD The Wild Beyond the Witchlight. I am so looking forward to this campaign!
It was also time to get back to work after my vacation. My team-mate also came back after a longer hiatus. To celebrate her being back, we had a delicous long breakfast and brunch at another colleague’s house where we could sit outside in her beautiful garden. And we went to a couple of lunch breaks together. This was very nice, I love going to cafés and restaurants, it sparks so much joy.

Boardgames:
I didn’t play as much as I wanted to but still I got a couple of games in. The best one was Everdell. I like it so much and the design is beautiful. Other than that I played a couple of smaller games like Azul, Clever or Fantastic Realms.
I finally finished the first campagin of Welcome To The Moon. I really didn’t enjoy this game and will sell it (probably today).

Books:
I listened to the autobiography Verse, Chorus, Monster! by Graham Coxon. Despite being a huge fan of Oasis, I also always liked Blur and especially Graham Coxon because of him being so weird and such an awesome musician. In the book, he talks a lot about his struggles with social anxiety which even led to him becoming an alcoholic. Of course I also liked the bits about the britpop wars and what a big influence the labels and press had on it. Well not all of it, the beef between Damon and Liam was pretty real. I also listened to the audiobook Looking after your autististic self by Niamh Garvey where I got some good advice. Then there were two books I struggled with: Human Acts by Han Kang, it was about a revolt in the 80s in Korea, history I definitely don’t know anything about and due to the stories changing narrators and perspectives I struggled with this book. I had a similar problem with the classic book Beloved by Toni Morrison. I get why this book won a pulitzer award but it was so hard to read with the changing perspectives and going back and forth in the timeline.

Films:
August was the release of Red White and Royal Blue. And the film was as good as I hoped it would be. Even better than the book. It’s a cheesy romance about the son of the president of the USA falling in love with an English prince. But my fav movie was A Man Called Otto with Tom Hanks. It was so cozy and wholesome. Other films worth a mention:
– The Favourite with Olivia Colman playing a very disturbing role.
– The Florida Project about a poor single mother living in the shadow of Disney World.
– del Toro’s Pinocchio with Cate Blanchett voicing a monkey that is only doing monkey sounds. Imagine casting Cate Blanchett for this!

TV Shows:
Oh, a lot of shows in August, so what I lacked in social contacts I substituted with tv shows.
I did a speed run through Sweet Magnolias. I wanted something easy and light and I got it. It’s about three 40something female friends living an upper-middle class life in Southern USA. I don’t think that living there is like in the show, with no racism and polite, emotionally aware hot men, with every women having to choose between two men. But the show is there for entertainment and I felt very entertained.
I also finished Ted Lasso Season 3. It was the best season and a beautiful ending for the show/the first arc. Then there was the second season of Heartstopper which was cute and nice to watch. Another show finished was Daisy Jones & The Six. I didn’t like the casting of some of the characters and it made me angry through the whole show. There are finally new episodes of Foundation. I love the plot around Empire and Lee Pace’s performance as wanna-be-god-like emporer. I also got my hands on a copy of the fifth season of The Handmaid’s Tale. Not possible to watch it on any streaming service, so I got it from my library.
Still like the show very much, despites it’s very heavy theme. Elisabeth Moss is such a brilliant actor. I once saw her (and Jon Hamm) live during a screening for Mad Men. In reality, she looks so tiny and fragile, yet she manages to play this furious, strong and frightening character in the Handmaid’s Tale.

Another month gone and now it feels like the year is almost over. According to the news, this year’s July was one of the warmest but also one with more rain than usual. Yeah, I noticed that. But it is good, we had summers where there was no rain for months.

July was my vacation month. I took 2,5 weeks off of work.

I visited a friend in London for 4 days. It was very exhausting; the city is so loud and there is so much trouble. I forgot my loops but at least I had my in-ear nc plugs. I did a lot of shopping, mostly my usual stuff at Whittard, Waterstone’s and HMV. I tried new food, I especially liked Wagamama and cinnamon pretzel sticks.
I also had the crazy idea to do three museums in a day. Well, turns out: time are changing. It’s not like back in my London days, where one could conveniently hop into a museum for a bit. It was so FULL. You should book entry tickets in advance, otherwise you can easily spend one hour or more waiting for entrance. I had to wait for my entrance slot, so I spent two hours at the Victoria & Albert Museum. No entrance slots, queues and crowds there. It’s a nice collection of various titbits and statues from all around the world. Nice to look at but it seems a bit old-fashioned with colonialism in mind, and how much everything cost the people of the UK just to entertain their monarchs (how about a real size replica of David by Michelangelo?). Well, but they have a nice café there where I got delicious scones. Next stop was the Science Museum. I remembered it as huge and fun. Yeah. Nowadays it was okay. I still love the space exhibition with rockets and landing modules. The rest wasn’t that interesting to me. But I got to see my first exhibition about Corona. Weird being part of history. So, I mostly enjoyed the space stuff, it was a bit surreal because my freshest memories are of the tv show For All Mankind which is not a completely accurate rendition of history. Then I did some shopping at the gift shop and got a NASA magnet, yay. Next stop was the Natural History Museum which was even louder and more crowded than the Science Museum. I enjoyed the vast stone and gem collection and wanted to become a stone collector myself. Well, I kind of did and bought some colourful stones in the gift shop. I couldn’t enjoy the rest of the collection (mostly stuffed animals) because there were just too many screaming kids around. In the dinosaur exhibition, I was on the verge on a panic attack, it wasn’t only crowded but also very narrow. Not a good museum. I definitely prefer the natural history museum in Vienna.
In the evening, we went to see the Les Miserables musical. It was good, the stage setup was awesome, but the musical was too long and depressing for my taste. The next day we spent in Richmond near the Themes River and in the evening, we spontaneously went to see the Frozen Musical. It was gorgeous and magical, I can totally recommend it. I hope that at my next visit the weather will be either fine enough to visit Windsor or Kew Gardens.

Next vacation was in the Netherlands in a holiday house near the beach. We have been there a couple of times and it was nice as usual. The doggys could play in the large garden, we swam in the ocean (even Panka) and ate a lot of greasy and sugary Dutch stuff.

Last but not least: we went to the Zoo in Wuppertal. A town not far from Cologne known for its Schwebebahn. In my opinion, one of the most disgusting and inconvenient means of public transport (I have lived there for about 3 years). But the Zoo is so beautiful! I think it is the best one in my area. So green, spacious and well-kept. I hope to go there again soon.

So, lot of nice things in July but now I am happy to go back to some routine and less traveling.

Boardgames:
The most complex game we tried was The Way of Panda. It was okay but not really good. Same goes for Paper Dungeons. Other than that, I played a coupled of small games like the Clever series, Fantasy Realms, The Game, Port Royal and Piraten Kapern!

Books:
I consumed nine books, didn’t even notice it were that many. About falf audio books and half reading books.
My favs:
– Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
– Far From the Tree by Robin Benway
– Daisy Jones & The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid (recommend using the audio book)
– The Word for World is Forest by Ursula K. Le Guin

Films:
I’m a Barbie girl, in a Barbie wooooorld~ Yeah, Barbie was my fav. It was funny, entertaining and had some pretty serious notes. And I really enjoyed the atmosphere in the cinema, such good vibes. I also enjoyed Riders of Justice with Mads Mikkelsen, Slumberland and Bones and All.

TV Shows:
I watched the newest season of Black Mirror. It was good but not so dark as some previous episodes. I also said goodbye to the Witcher. The third season was really bad. But at least we had some nice scenes with our little family of Geralt, Yen and Ciri. I’ll probably not watch another season. I adore Henry Cavill but even if it wasn’t him: I hate it when they swap actors. This was only funny in Roseanne.

Let’s see if I will be better with monthly reviews. I still do my daily diary but it’s shorter and for me only.

Looking back June was soooo full. But mostly good stuff. There was the Muse concert which was awesome. I visted my Clever friends two times, had my coworker and her partner over for boardgames, had a nice pancake & zoo visit with two friends, a breakfast with my coworkers, a very good workshop at work, the summer party of our faculty, survived lots of appointments, played a lot of backgammon and other boardgames.

On top of that I finally got a Playstation 5 and the newest Final Fantasy. I have been a fan of the series since Final Fantasy 8, and now 16 really got to me. I love the story and could play it for hours if I had the time. It hasn’t that many RPG elements as the Final Fantasys, but the story is superb and the gameplay fun. I’m so glad we got rid of the open-world stuff. I hated it so much in 15.

Boardgames:
I tried Sea, Salt and Paper for the first time and really enjoyed it. But my boardgame of the month is Ark Nova which I played twice. And Backgammon as my fav quick game.

Books:
I read/listened to seven books, wow! (Maybe 8 books if I finish the last one today).
I especially like these two young adult books:
– We deserve Mountains by Jas Hammonds
– All My Rage by Sabaa Tahir

Films:
My fav film this month: Crimes of the Future. It’s really weird, a kind of medical horror, not everybody’s taste.

TV Shows:
I watched XO, Kitty and The Power, both were kind of ok but nothing special. I looooved Queen Charlotte and The Queen’s Gambit. And I also liked the final season of Never Have I Ever, it was a good ending for the show.