This month was very intense with work stuff. I had two larger work gatherings that were every exhausting. But it was good that I attended them. There were a few positive developments at work, too. On the social side, September was very lonely. I had no playdates on the weekends, the only date was cancelled. Well, there was a session of roleplaying but this was not with close friends. But I had my electric guitar fixed by a friendly helper, my partner’s work colleague who builds his own guitars. I was right that my guitar was weird. He fixed the strings and the neck and now it the guitar smooth again. My fender is now 23 years old but still in good shape. Well, I only played it for 6 years but I want to get back to this hobby. I saw my old stuff from the guitar lessons back then. I never learned to do the „Wonderwall by campfire“ thing but I was actually really skilled at playing complex guitar solos and jazz. I was so impressed by my younger self.

One of the most cherished events of the month was the theater play of A Little Life. I watched it in the cinema and now I am still a bit angry at myself for not visiting the real play in London. It was so good. The book is very sad and hardcore, it contains a lot of traumatic stuff but is also about friendship and love. The play was excellent in catching these things. First I was a bit unhappy about James Norton playing Jude. He is too tall and broad, and looks a bit too „manly“. I always imagined Jude as fragile and more feminine looking (maybe like Elijah Wood). But James Norton is such a brilliant actor. And he even can sing. In German. It was so eerie, he sang a song by Mahler/Rückert Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen which suits so well to the character. The camera play was also awesome. They didn’t just film the play like you would see it as the audience but did close ups and other perspectives. It was also fascinating how they sometimes put the camera in such a perspective, that James Norton looked much smaller than Luke Thompson/Willem. I hope that they will release the play on Bluray. I would really like to watch it again. It didn’t even bother me that the play is about 3,5 hours (I usually hate films above 2hours).

So, not so many social events, but even more media consumption.

Boardgames:
Only four boardgames this month. Not good. I played Backgammon, a couple of solo games of Cascadia, Cartographer Heroes and the newest Clever 4Ever expansion. I hope October will be a better boardgame month.

Books:
I consumed six books/audio books this month, unfortunately there were some that were a bit too boring. I think my fav book was the comic Dark One by Brandon Sanderson. A big suprise was that I actually liked Das Kind in dir muss Heimat finden by Stefanie Stahl. I thought it was one of „those“ self-help books but actually it was quite good and (seemingly) science-orientated on what is actually done in psychotherapy. I also read How Long Til Black Future Month by N.K.Jemisin, a collection of her short stories. There were good ones, one a predecessor to her Broken Earth series but all in all I don’t like short stories that much.

Films:
We watched some of the old and the not so old Jurassic Park and Jurassic World films. They aged well and are still good, although I am not into dinosaurs. Okay, but now I am into raptors because they were like geese or ducks (okay, the birds don’t bother with killing humans nowadays). My fav film as The Matrix Resurrections. I think it was a really good sequel, better than the other two sequel Matrix films. And I also liked The Killing of a Sacred Deer, a suspenseful psychological horror film and so far my fav by Yorgos Lanthimos. I also watched Lanthimos‘ film Dogtooth this month. I don’t know whether I liked it or if it was too absurd.

TV Shows:
September was the month of brilliant tv shows! I loved The Afterparty (Apple+) and binge-watched the whole two seasons. It’s a murder mystery where every episode has a different genre. I also finished the 5th season of the Handmaid’s Tale (DVD from library) which I also liked very much. Another great tv show was Mask Girl (Netflix). It didn’t sound so good at all from its teaser, but turned out to be a captivating psychological horror drama. If you are not used to Korean horror (not to be confused with the Korean show Squid Game which was rather harmless and very „westernized“), you should check CNs. I finished Foundation (Apple+) season 2 as well, I think it was even better than the first season. I’m still a huge fan of Lee Pace and his performance of the variants of Empire Day. Next up was the 5th season of Virgin River (Netflix). It continues to be a cosy romance-drama with a beautiful landscape. Then a speed run through The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart (Amazon Prime) because I only had Prime for a week. Great female-centered miniseries with Sigourney Weaver as matriach of a flower farm. My fav of the month was Silo (Apple+), a dystopian mystery show where 10.000 people live in an underground Silo. I also watched some new episodes of The Morning Show (Apple+), Sex Education (Netflix) and then I started Killing Eve (Netflix) which is okay-ish but didn’t catch me so hard like other shows.
Yeah, a very good tv month indeed.

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.