Condensed Thoughts

It's that week again! Dane and I have birthdays that are two days (and three years) apart so when that weeks rolls around we go hard celebrating. Unsurprisingly, this year's celebrations have been a bit more mellow. I will chronicle them below, they are about 87% food related

California MMXX         hope everyone is staying safe and staying cool. It's been miserably hot all week here in LA. Dane and I went hiking at Mt. Baldy to get away from the heat which was successful, but it was a VERY STRENUOUS 11 miles and today my legs are jelly. Here's what else I've been up to, aside from melting: Electioneering Big week for election stuff! I watched most of the DNC for the first time in my life. It gave me BIG General Conference vibes (which is probably in large part because of the virtual format). While it was a little hit and miss, it was overall well done. Highlights for me included personal stories of actual human beings, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and of course Michelle Obama's incredible speech (Barak's was quite good too). Lowlights includes all the awkward zoom claps and having to hear Pete Buttigieg talk with his mouth. ‘The President Was Not Encouraging’: What Obama Really Thought About Biden - Politico, "Behind the friendship was a

  Hi! It's very hot over here in LA (and the rest of Cali from what I'm hearing?). Hope wherever you are you are staying cool and have had a good week. Here's what I've been up to.

I had my first vacation since last December and let's just say it was much needed. I'm going to keep this short and sweet and photo heavy so I'm not intimidated by the thought of writing it and then put it off indefinitely. I saw so many great signs and sights on our drive but I only managed to capture this beauty: I mean, that's all you *really* need to know, isn't it?   We went to Sequoia National Park and camped in the national forest nearby. The main touristy thing to do at this park is to look at this big tree At one point this tree was named after Karl Marx. It is a fairly impressive tree but was it worth being around so many people with varying levels of mask discipline? Ehhhhh. At the very least it actually wasn't too hard to get away from what crowds there were.    Here is an interesting fact we learned from our beef stroganoff It appears the US Department of Agriculture was created by the Aztec Empire Here is another interesting fact, this one actually

Is Joseph going to make fun of me for calling these condensations? Should I call them "what I've been up to this week" or something and just have it be a condensation in the tags?? Either way here's what I've been up to Reading Dane's short story for July! 19 Reasons Why True Latter Day Saints Would Never Wear a Mask - Zelophehad's Daughters The Whiners Who Earn $200,000 a Year and Complain They're Broke - New Republic (behind a soft paywall, you get 3 free articles a month) Another Dull Quarantine Weekend At Home, Target, Chipotle, Home Depot, and Our Niece’s Graduation Party - McSweeney's I went to Disneyworld - The Atlantic (soft paywall) Here is the most absurd headline I saw this week: this is on par with Hobby Lobby antiquities smuggling Listening Radiohead on youtube - Their entire discography is on there and I just love that of course since youtube is how I listen to music most days. I just discovered Ill Wind which was a bonus track o