Sick Day

I'm out of commission with a nasty bug I caught from Ian, so in lieu of an update, enjoy this picture of the cozy beach house we'll be spending Maia's Fall Break in soon!

Fifteenth Anniversary Day

As anniversaries pass, and senility robs us of our wedding memories, we'll always have the photographic evidence to fall back on.

Other posts in this series: 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024

Fall Break Wrap-up

Thursday: Drove out to Lusby, MD to a VRBO house in the Cove Point community. Walked out to the Cove Point Beach before having dinner at Atomic Seafood (1 lb of steamed shrimp and 1 lb of snow crab legs).

Friday: Met my parents at Calvert Cliffs State Park for a 1.8 mile one-way hike out to the beach. Found no sharks' teeth in spite of grandpa's heavy-duty homemade sieves. Dinner at the VRBO home -- mac and cheese for the kids and bulgogi bi bim bap for the parents.

Saturday: Went to the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, a wonderful find. Looked at a lot of marine life, went on a pedal boat, and up into a lighthouse. Dinner at Salsa's in the evening, which was disappointing (it tasted like "Mexican food for white people").

Sunday: One last walk down to Cove Point Beach in the morning, then check-out. Biking around Solomons with lunch at Cryptic Pizza, then headed home to Sterling!

Turtle Day

the turtles on the fridge at our Lusby rental house

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Upload, Season Three:
The second season of this show about the digital afterlife was a miss -- meandering and just gaining momentum when it ended. Season three is slightly better but the tone is uncertain. The show can no longer decide whether it's leaning into the funny sight gags about a future world completely sponsored by advertising companies or trying to bring the more serious "who owns your consciousness on a hard drive?" plotline to a close. I enjoyed the subplot about the AI helper learning to be more human, but felt like the main characters were too split off into their own plotlines to be much fun. On Amazon Prime.

Final Grade: B-

The Bear, Season Three:
I thought I would hate the first episode that takes place almost entirely in dreams (PTSD to the later seasons of The Sopranos), but it hooked me in spite of myself. From that excellent start, the show just treads water for the entirety of the season -- overusing some of the comic characters and preventing Carmy from doing much more than recognizing that he needs to change. The final episode full of real chef guest stars felt more self-congratulatory than good TV. (We almost stopped completely during the pregnancy-themed episode, but that episode ended surprisingly more lightly than expected). On Hulu.

Final Grade: B-

Cobra Kai, Season Six Part One:
I hate the slow place that shows are being released in modern times -- the final season of this karate show is coming out in 3 chunks of 5 episodes each over the coming 12 months. These first episodes are fun but not game-changing, and probably can't be fairly judged until we see where they lead. On Netflix.

Final Grade: B-

Elden Ring:
I tried out Elden Ring during a gaming drought in August, but it never hooked me. It seemed to have all the right ingredients -- open world, challenging combat, great graphics -- but everything in the introductory sequences is poorly explained and the world felt shallow and sterile. I only lasted 80 minutes.

Final Grade: Not Rated

Chad Darnell's 12 of 12

12 pictures of your day on the 12th of every month

6:19 AM: Showered and ready for the day.

7:37 AM: Bagel for breakfast.

10:44 AM: Building factories in Satisfactory.

12:08 PM: Lunch.

12:43 PM: Replacing the walking belt on my 12-year-old treadmill.

1:57 PM: Finally successful.

4:44 PM: Relaxing in the middle of the day is possible when the kids are away.

5:58 PM: Date night at Local Provisions.

6:18 PM: The best flat iron steak.

7:35 PM: Wandering through Reston Town Center during the free performance of The Bacon Brothers.

7:38 PM: Several degrees of separation between us and Kevin Bacon.

8:54 PM: TV time after a run to Trader Joe's for wine and tea.

Ian Fragments Day

♠ Yesterday at 6:54 AM, Ian said that he didn't want the sun to come up because it hurts his eyes and he loves the darkness.

♠ Ian wants to be a ghost for Halloween. We have yet to define these requirements more clearly, but I expect it will be a white sheet type of affair like the one Papa Bear wears in the Berenstain Bears.

♠ Favourite foods: pizza, yogurt, hamburger buns. Tolerated foods: vegetables, chicken tenders. Disliked foods: popcorn shrimp, salmon.

♠ Ian loves riding the yellow balance bike he inherited from Maia and asks us to watch him "drift", which really just means coasting in a big arc on our dead-end court.

♠ Current songs stuck in his head: This Land is Your Land, Life is a Highway, Country Roads.

♠ Recent read: a My Little Pony anthology (belonging to Maia) containing a spooky forest called "Everfree Forest".

♠ Favorite color: the rainbow "because I like all of the colors".

♠ We struggle to get Ian to use the bathroom without endless complaints because "peeing is not my favourite thing". He will hold it for hours.

Review Day

There are no major spoilers in these reviews.

Miguel Wants to Fight (PG):
This is a coming-of-age story about a high schooler who's about to move away and realizes he's never gotten in a fight. It has Reservoir Dogs vibes mixed with the stylishness of Scott Pilgrim VS the World. On Hulu.

Final Grade: B+

Line of Duty, Season Two:
The second season improves on the first, introducing more morally grey habits in the characters and having less "smelling the fart" acting. On Hulu.

Final Grade: B

Barry, Season Three:
The third season of Barry is slightly less weird than the second and goes in some interesting directions. The show's at its best when juxtaposing seriousness with clever sight gags, like Gene Cousineau being chased through a backyard by dogs.

Final Grade: B

Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning (PG-13):
This movie is 2 hours and 45 minutes long and it's only PART ONE of the whole story. It takes 30 minutes to get to the title sequence. It epitomizes the "big budget by committee" problem that these movies have today: fun stunts that go on for three times too long until they're just exhausting interrupted by extended exposition dialogue and cliched one-liners that are intended to be comedic. Skip it. Or fast forward to the two or three big set pieces and enjoy the stunts.

Final Grade: C-

Easy Photos Day

Ian and Grandpa go to the Firehouse Open House in Alexandria last weekend.

Heading into DC to the Natural History Museum.

The kids invent a unicorn-themed treasure hunt at the Sterling Community Center playground.

First fire pit and s'mores of the season this past Saturday night.

Memory Day: Snapshots

This picture was taken 10 years ago today, on October 23, 2014.

We were visiting the Sea Stacks at Ruby Beach, down the 101 in Washington state. I loved how simultaneously vivid and flat the colours and textures were in the area -- I felt like I was in a painted diorama at the Natural History Museum as I walked up the coast.

We stayed on the beach a little too long and couldn't outrun the tide getting back, resulting in soaked shoes for the rest of the day. From here, we traveled to Lake Quinault Lodge for our final full day of vacation.

Review Day: The Scarab Path by Adrian Tchaikovsky

There are no explicit plot spoilers in these reviews.

The Scarab Path is the fifth book in Adrian Tchaikovsky's Shadows of the Apt series. This book is easily my favourite so far, with Book 3, 4, and 5 each becoming better written and more intriguing than what came before.

Following the uneasy peace treaty between the Empire and the Lowlands, word reaches Collegium of a distant city, Kanaphes, where the Beetle-Kinden appear to be intentionally holding back at an early level of technological advancement. Cheerwell Maker travels there as an ambassador in hopes of understanding why she has changed since her exposure to the Shadow Box. Her path unexpectedly crosses with two people from her past, one trying to escape their precarious rise in station and the other bitter about Che's perceived indifference in the past.

Book 5 focuses narrowly on the characters in Kanaphes with a minimum of the expected jumping around to other plots. This gives the characters plenty of room for introspection and development that was missing or just surface level in earlier books. For readers wanting more action, the plot converges steadily on Kanaphes, a mysterious city where the Beetle-Kinden revere "the Masters" even though they haven't been seen in centuries. Even if the selected characters aren't your favourites, the constant military maneuvering, subterfuge amongst the Scorpion-Kinden, and the mystery behind the Masters will entice you to keep reading.

Book 5 is an excellent start to the back half of the 10-book series. What initially appears to be a side quest in this universe gradually reveals itself to have direct impacts on the ongoing plot and continues to hint at the earliest history that will hopefully tie everything together in the end.

Final Grade: A-

Easy Photos Day

Maia receives a free soccer ball and a medal at the end of her 6-week free soccer program at Forest Grove.

Maia and Ian play their first VS Mario Kart race (Maia got the gold trophy and Ian came in 12th).

Trunk or Treat at Forest Grove. Ian was a spooky ghost but the costume was too big for walking around in.

Maia and Rebecca at an all-day Girl Scout event at Lake Fairfax.

Ian eating a burger at Miller's with me during the Girl Scout event.

Maia puts her new fire-starting skills to work so we can carve our pumpkins on the chilly patio ("This kindle tower is called 'the hashtag'.")

End-of-the-Month Highlights Day

New photos have been added to the Life, 2024 album.

• Events
  • Down with one of the kids' viruses on T 10/1.
  
  
  • 15th Anniversary on H 10/3. Fall Break trip to Lusby, MD, H 10/3 - S 10/6. Visited Calvert Cliffs and the Marine Museum.
  
  
  • The kids went to the grandparents', F 10/11 - S 10/13.
  
  
  • Date night at Local Provisions on S 10/12 followed by a Bacon Brothers concert at Reston Town Center.
  
  
  • Went to the HOA meeting on W 10/16.
  
  
  • Helped out with my parents after a broken hip, F 10/18 - S 10/20.
  
  
  • Went to a work dinner celebrating a $1.6B contract on T 10/22.
  
  
  • Rebecca and Maia went to an all-day Girl Scout camping event at Lake Fairfax on S 10/26. Ian and Brian visited the grandparents and had dinner at Miller's.
  
  
  • Carved our pumpkins on S 10/27.
  
  
  • More hip shenanigans on M 10/28.
  
  
  • Extracted a dead mouse from a wall crevice on T 10/29. Family hike in Claude Moore, followed by dinner at Bungalow Lakehouse.
  
  
  • Trick or Treating in the neighbourhood on H 10/31.


• Projects
  • Replaced the walking belt on my 12-year-old treadmill on S 10/12.
  
  
  • Donated laptops to the Girls Who Code program in Sterling.


• Consumerism
  • Played Satisfactory way too much.
  
  
  • No amazing new movies, books, music, or shows this month. Really enjoyed rewatching Fallout though.

October's Final Grade: C+, peaks and valleys cancel each other out