Summer update

Summer is my very favorite season. The days are long and I am the absolute best version of myself . As you can tell by the sporadic posting, I’m deep in a writer’s block funk, so here’s a quick catch-up of the Summer of Forced Fun so far…

kim staring into a woodsy area. this photo was taken with a photo timer so it looks candid but it in fact quite planed and posed.

Homemade vanilla syrup

The older I get the more I dig a quality vanilla. I bought vanilla beans from Amazon a month ago and made my own vanilla coffee syrup! On my first try, the sugar re-solidified (I boiled too much moisture away), but the second attempt yielded a syrup that was perfectly thick with a vanilla kick that increased as time went by.

Anniversary

July fifth was our wedding anniversary! Cheers, cheers to 14 years. To celebrate, WM and I had dinner at Central Taco in Haddon Township. For the big 15 next year we’re going to Fogo de Chao.

Analog puzzling

I’m desperate for less screen time so I unsubscribed from some Substacks and Patreons and moved my money toward a quarterly Sunday Club subscription. I receive a paper issue full of different puzzles. They’re not impossible to complete, and there are enough for me to complete over a weekend or two. WITH A PENCIL.

Pool time

This is the second year that Mom has belonged to a pool which means I get to be her freeloading guest. I’m not the strongest swimmer — I taught myself when I was 28 — but I’m getting better at dragging myself from one side of the pool to another. My goal this summer is to not freak out when I am in the 6 foot deep area.

The desire to redecorate

I yearn to change up some of our rooms, but that would include moving SO MANY things (I live with collectors, we’ll leave it at that) that it seems impossible.

Goodbye Spotify

I cancelled my Spotify Premium subscription, not because of any moral position (if we boycott everything terrible, we have absolutely nothing, and they win), but because I discovered that my YouTube Premium subscription includes YouTube music. I used TuneMyMusic to transfer my playlists over, resubscribed to my podcasts (a little more difficult, I had to resort to RSS feeds), and I’m doing fine. So far the algorithm seems less confining. Spotify kept pushing Taylor Swift into every playlist and I only listened to her latest album once.