When did summer arrive? The last few months have flown by. Summer is my least favorite time of year, and also the season that feels like it drags on the longest. The excessive heat and humidity keep me mostly indoors, making exercise a lot harder and less enjoyable. We do enjoy visits to the nearby pool with friends, at least.

A long expected trip

We are freshly back from a two-week family vacation across Europe. We have been planning this trip for over three years, but we kept pushing it back due to various life events. Thankfully, we finally made it! I plan to write about the trip in more detail soon, but here’s a quick synopsis: Over two weeks, we traveled to Paris, Geneva, Venice, and Rome. We travelled by plane to and from Europe and train between cities. It was absolutely wonderful, and I’m sad that it’s over while simultaneously happy to be back home.

About halfway through the trip, I caught what I think is a sinus infection. I’m still somewhat recovering from that along with the jet lag of a six hour time difference.

A new job

In my last update, I had just started looking for a new job. I have since started a new full-time role. It’s a mix of design and development, helping to design, build, and support applications and websites for a state agency. The team was very understanding when I explained that I had already booked and paid for our vacation, so we didn’t have to push the vacation again thankfully. But it definitely felt weird to start a job and then promptly disappear a month later for two weeks.

I’m still very new to the agency and the work, so there’s a lot to learn still. But I’m excited about the work I’ll be doing and I like the people I’m working with so that’s a great start.

Coming up

With our long-awaited vacation over, I’m excited to work with one of my freelance clients again as well as get back to some personal projects. I’m also hoping to get some D&D games started up: one as a player with some folks online and another locally as the dungeon master.