You just gotta ignite the light

I mentioned in July I had some less than stellar ideas for watching Fourth of July fireworks without crowds. I made up for it tonight by getting a great spot for the Beverly Homecoming ones.

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It’s amazing how well the iPhone Pros can take pictures at night. In the past I’ve tried getting photos of fireworks with a decent DSLR and ended up with blurry lights, now I can balance the phone that I carry in my pocket on my ankle and get something good-enough in 3 seconds.

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Elden Ring

Some notes:

• Took about 90 hours, not including time spent Googling “wtf is going on”.
• Ended up doing two runs, one as a DEX/INT build with Ranni’s ending, and a second NG+ run as STR/FTH that was a speed run to the end so I could do the other two endings via some save scumming. DEX/INT I ran with Moonveil katana and Wing of Astel, and then got enough INT to throw the moon at people. STR/FTH I dual wielded Blasphemous Blade and the Gargoyle's Blackblade. Both were fun. Never used a shield.
• If you’ve never played a Dark Souls game, this is the easiest one to get into, for sure, and there are a lot of ways to have fun exploring and not constantly seeing YOU DIED screens.
• Definitely a top ten favorite game. Maybe a top five. The open world map is just the right size: huge, and so much to explore, but almost every inch of it has enough to make it unique and memorable.

Now, time to wait for some more God of War.

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Leaving the Island

Back on the Cecilia Ann.

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Island Night

Clear skies.

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Morning View

From the Block Island Beach House.

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Cecelia Ann

On the way to Block Island.

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An illustrated guide to why I haven’t been posting as much

A few reasons:

1. It’s been a beautiful Summer

Like, super nice. Lots of times I’ve just gone out and sat on the back porch and done this for a bit:

Granted, it’s nice because it’s been dry, no rainy days, not a lot of humidity, so we’re slowly heading towards a future that looks like this:

2. I’ve been playing a lot of Elden Ring

Probably not a lot by some standards but a lot by my standards. I’m working on Platinum-ing it. It’s good. That might be an understatement. It might be my favorite game ever, just need to make it through the last few bosses to make a final judgement.

3. I’ve been playing guitar more

I went all in on Helix and picked up a Helix LT¹ to replace my Pod Go. It’s cool and makes loud noises at reasonable volumes.

4. We’ve been doing house projects

Sometimes it feels silly to be redoing parts of a house that’s not even 10 years old, but it turns out that when builders do a new construction you get a decent house built to the latest standards and literally the cheapest versions of every single thing to finish the house. For example, I was at the store today looking for a replacement for our back lights² and I found our current lights. They cost $7. In 2022! The light bulb in them cost more than that.

Andrea has done most of the planning and work, but she subcontracts to me for plumbing and electrical and moving heavy stuff and some amount of demolition although that’s mostly because I want to use the sawzall.

our redone guest bathroom

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1. More on this later.↩
2. More on this later too.↩

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Not all ideas are good ideas

The back of our house points towards Salem, and Salem had their 4th of July fireworks tonight. In past years the booms have been loud enough to wake up Lorelei, and we could see the flashes through the trees on our back deck, but it wasn’t “watching fireworks”.

This year, I thought… oh, there’s a trail behind our house, in the woods. Let’s walk back there to where there’s a clear view over the water and watch them. Lorelei is old enough to stay up late, it’ll be fun.

We watched three tiny explosions before I was informed this was “the worst idea ever” and we marched back home. Standing in the (surprisingly dark considering we live in a city) woods was not her idea of a good time. Honestly it wasn’t my idea of a good time either (how long has it been since I was in the woods at night?), but the booms of the grand finale are taunting me a bit right now.

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