A standard complement of cat photos, featuring my favorite and most constant subject.

No major trips this month, but Brandi did have a nice night out at Hyde Park in Columbus, followed by jazz at Ginger Rabbit. I also managed to get home to Troy for a big football game and a quick visit with family.

A little light on photos this month. Highlights include downtown Columbus, where we met up with some friends for a baseball game and some cocktails. A trip to Toledo for work gave me an opportunity for a short visit to Bowling Green. We spent a couple of days in Brandi’s hometown of Clyde, and I made a quick trip to my own hometown of Troy for a football game.

My 46th birthday month (cake pictured above) was a pretty good one! One of the highlights was a tour of Columbus’s rooftop bars—I didn’t take enough photos, but the views were great and so were the cocktails, for the most part. I also had an out-of-town work trip where I randomly ran into two of Brandi’s oldest and dearest friends.

July 20 – 22 I was in Cincinnati. Brandi was there for a conference with her coworkers, so I took Thursday off and went to an afternoon baseball game. I took entirely too much sun and heat, but hey, I was at the ballpark instead of working, and the Reds beat the Giants 5-1.

Brandi’s conference finished up the next day, so we stuck around for the Friday night fireworks game., which saw the Reds beat the Diamondbacks 9-6.

On June 10, Brandi and I went to a Columbus Clippers (Triple A affiliate of the Cleveland Guardians) game–we love the Clip Show, but, as fans of the Cincinnati Reds, we went primarily to see future Hall of Famer Joey Votto as he worked his way back to the big leagues after an injury (as well as to see some of the wealth of upcoming Reds prospects like Christian Encarnacion-Strand).

We finished the month with our fourth trip to Put in Bay on Lake Erie. We went for the first time in 2020 as kind of an easy getaway as pandemic restrictions were easing (prematurely, as it turned out, but hey), and we’ve turned in into an annual trip for an easy way to celebrate our wedding anniversary (June 3 – 17 years this year) and both of our birthdays (hers June 22; mine July 4).

One of the highlights from Put in Bay was our trip to the top of Perry’s Victory and International Peace Memorial commemorating the Battle of Lake Erie from the War of 1812. Despite poor air quality and a heavy haze (which you can see in the photos) from the Canadian wildfires, its 352-foot height provided quite a view of the island. I’m already looking forward to going up again on our next trip, when (hopefully) clearer air will mean an even more majestic view.

This month, Brandi and I took a more-or-less spur-of-the-moment trip to Chicago to see my favorite band, the National, on the third night of their tour to promote their new album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein. It was a whirlwind weekend. We only had a few hours in the city before the concert, but the city was glorious, and the show itself (opened by Soccer Mommy, a band I was unfamiliar with but am now happily exploring) was euphoric.

A handful of cat photos, as per usual…but the highlight of the month was a trip to New Orleans! It’s a place we had never been before and always wanted to check out. It’s known for it’s food, music, and haunted history, and we found all of the above to be outstanding. Definitely one of my favorite vacations.