Easy Photos Day

First date night since our anniversary 10 months ago: Dinner at Parallel Wine & Whiskey Bar in Ashburn. I had a tempranillo, Siglo, and a malbec, Llama. Rebecca had a cocktail, SMASH AND PASS.

Post-dinner walk through the muggy wilderness around Beaverdam Reservoir.

Ian rekindles his love of lasagna. No word on whether he hates Mondays yet.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Booksmart (R):
This coming-of-age movie plays out kind of like a female version of Superbad (and also stars Jonah Hill's sister). If that's the kind of movie you need at the moment, this one hits all of the right marks and is full of pleasant and vulgar laughs. On Hulu.

Final Grade: B

Cascadia:
We got this board game for Rebecca's birthday. You build an ecosystem in the Pacific Northwest and place different kinds of animals, with points based on best habitats (longest salmon runs and number of hawks not near any other hawks, for example) and longest terrain runs. Replayability comes from different sets of scoring criteria, which allows you to learn the base game very easily and randomly choose cards with more advanced scoring later on. We've enjoyed this a lot over four or five games although it's very easy to let the game drag by overthinking any single move.

Final Grade: B

Formentera by Metric:
Metric's newest album is as good as Art of Doubt but doesn't quite reach Pagans in Vegas. The placement of a ten-minute overture as track one feels out of place, as it's the kind of song that Muse would tack on to the end of one of their albums.

Final Grade: B-

Upload, Season Two:
This show about a digital afterlife was pleasant in season one but doesn't really go anywhere in season two. There are only 7 episodes and events end just as the plot really starts to pick up. On Amazon.

Final Grade: C+

BD Cartoon Day, Part IV

a selection of original cartoons from the business development Slack channel I maintain at work

Other posts in this series: Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV

New Edition Day

The URI! Zone turns 26 years old this month, which means that I'll have to kick it off my health insurance and out of my basement soon. By the numbers, here's what the URI! Zone looks like today:

• over 190,500 unique visitors since 2003
• 4717 blog posts since 2001
• 9154 comments from 153 unique visitors since 2003
• 9340 images, MP3s, and other files, totaling 487 megabytes
• over $4500 spent on web hosting since 2003
• exactly $222 in prizes given away in caption and name-that-tune contests (this will become $232 if Asmodues ever collects his 2022 Census prize)
• $0 in income from ad revenue, because ads are awful

After nearly nine years without new features, there's a tiny new one to demarcate this 27th Edition: I added a "day in history" button under each post which will allow you to see everything I ever wrote on a particular month and day throughout the site's history. This will give you more content to rediscover while bored at work when I default to an "Easy Photos Day".

This site will continue to exist for years to come, even if the thrice-a-week updates aren't utterly scintillating. I do still enjoy blogging and have grandiose plans to someday return to long-form articles about real topics. However, those plans are on hold while I raise two kids under the age of 6. Stand back and stand by until Ian has reached kindergarten, and hopefully it'll be worth the wait!

Thank you for your continued friendship and readership!

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2022 album.

• Events
  • Went to the dentist on F 7/1.
  
  
  • Had Ghazaley and Mike over for vegan tacos on S 7/2.
  
  
  • Had Elizabeth, Renae, and Sammie over for the afternoon on S 7/3.
  
  
  • Rebecca, Maia, and Ian went to Lake Barcroft with Rebecca's parents on M 7/4. Rebecca and Maia went to the Herndon fireworks that night.
  
  
  • Maia got sick with a non-COVID sore throat on T 7/5. Rebecca caught it and had the sore throat for another two weeks.
  
  
  • Maia had a family birthday party on W 7/6.
  
  
  • Maia had a kid-filled birthday party with water activities on S 7/10.
  
  
  • Visited my parents with Maia on S 7/16 to teach them about their new smartphones.
  
  
  • Went to Taylorstown on S 7/17 for a belated 4th celebration.
  
  
  • Rebecca and Maia went to Pohick Bay and Pirate's Cove with our Fredericksburg friends on H 7/21. I stayed home with Ian and tooled around Sterling.
  
  
  • Airport drop-off for my parents on F 7/22.
  
  
  • Lunch visit to the Smiths on S 7/23.
  
  
  • Maia and I drove to Alexandria on the hottest day of the heat wave to water plants, on S 7/24.
  
  
  • Ghazaley stopped by for a birthday visit after dinner on H 7/28.
  
  
  • Picked up my parents at the airport on F 7/29.
  
  
  • Rebecca, Maia, and Ian went to Lake Barcroft with Rebecca's parents on S 7/30.
  
  
  • Had Car and Jordan over for sushi dinner on S 7/31.


• Projects
  • Refilled the refrigerant in our cars with weak A/C on M 7/18.
  
  
  • Laid down some new mulch in the neighbourhood common area on S 7/30.


• Consumerism
  • Enjoyed watching Only Murders in the Building, Season One.
  
  
  • Still playing Fallout 76 at level 274.
  
  
  • No amazing new music or books this month.
  
  

July's Final Grade: B-, lots of heat and sickness without much downtime