Sept 2023 Life Updates

👋🏻 Hello, everyone. We’re officially halfway through the month, and I thought I’d update on some fun things that’s been going on.

New blog theme

As you might be able to see, I have a new blog theme. Still utilizing Jekyll on the backend, but I finally revamped the look and feel of the site, switched over to Bootstrap 5, using some different fonts in places, & finally figured out what I wanted to do with footnote styling after… what, 10 years? ¹ Anyway, if you see anything hinky with the site, please let me know.

Raising money for St. Jude

I’ve done a handful of little activities here and there working to raise money for St. Jude via the Relay FM campaign. I personally have been able to raise (at this time) $890, which is super cool. Relay as a whole has cracked $321k, which smashed their monthly goal of $293k that they had set for themselves; this also means that over the 5 years they’ve been fundraising, they have managed to raise over $2.5 MILLION dollars, which is just incredible.

Leaning in to new hobbies

I’ve barely played any video games in September (I’m right at the start of Act 2 in Baldur’s Gate), as I’ve been focused on some other hobbies. Mostly, this has centered around my new desk that I’m sitting (actually standing) at as I write this. I’ve been utilizing my father in law’s workshop behind their house to do some woodworking, which included finishing this desk, and this whole week has centered around getting my office a bit more organized. I’ll probably do an office tour here in the coming days. I have a whole bunch of woodworking projects that I want to tackle, and I think I’m going to start looking into a 3D printer for the two of us to dabble with. This could be fun.

I’m also still in a Play By Text (via Discord) D&D campaign that’s been running over 2 years at this point; we’re level 6, our party has stopped the end of the world (for now), and my character (a cleric) has been suffering a crisis of faith for the vast majority of it. I still have some aspirations to write and run my own campaign, but I have the utmost respect for all of the DMs I’ve had in my life; the effort that is required to run a good campaign is astounding, and I’m constantly in awe of the world building the games I’ve been a part of have had in them. (Who knows, maybe I’ll just join another game and punch things…)

I also sat down and devoured a book on Tuesday ², which is something I haven’t done in years. I’ve checked out a couple of physical books from the library over the past few months, but they have all just sat unopened until I’ve needed to return them. This time was different; I felt called to just sit and read, and the next thing I knew, it was 11:30pm and I was done with the book. Felt really good, and now I gotta find the next book to read.

Losing weight (again)

A friend and I have been motivating each other and providing accountability to get healthy and lose some weight this summer/fall. My family has had a handful of health scares over the past couple of years, and with my daughter growing like a weed, I know that I’m gonna need to be in the best shape possible in order to keep up. So far, everything has focused on just eating the right foods as much as possible; it hasn’t been perfect, but I’m already seeing results, feeling a lot better, and I know that I have exercise and more strict food consumption in my back pocket when I hit my plateau.

Parenting

V is an amazing human being, full of joy and curiosity. Current favs: slowly rotating the recliner while one of the cats sits on it and saying “wheeeeee!” (everything is “wheeeee!” right now, but that one is extra cute), making mama and I “play drums” on a fan before bed, having every person that’s dropped by our home stop and shoot hoops with her, and chasing both cats all around the house. It took 18 months for me to really feel like we have everything under control, which inevitably means something drastic is about to change.

Sports

My wife and I have both been enjoying sports a lot more over the past few years, and we’re really leaning into it this fall. Iowa football is back, my wife has felt compelled to root for the Chicago Bears, baseball season is winding down and the Red Sox are gonna miss the postseason, the NBA season is just around the corner and the Celtics have high hopes, F1 has been a delight (as long as we don’t pay attention to who wins the races), and we’ve even started to pay attention to the Premier League, adopting Liverpool as our team of choice (subject to change). I’m not gonna force a love for any sport or team on my daughter, but I really hope she takes to it at least a little bit; it’d be a lot of fun to be able to share my love of sports with her as she grows up.

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I’m always aiming to write more, and I do have a handful of things banked that I’ll probably jot down in the coming days. Otherwise, check out my Now page for updates on what I’m currently doing.