Brandi has been several times, but I finally made my first visit to Austin.
Our second time in DC included a trip to the top of the Washington Monument.
And of course…Luna, our best girl.
I made a post last January 1 that noted a handful of goals for the year. Mission accomplished on these:
Steps: 2,000,000
Short stories read: 52
Books read: 40
As for the rest…well, I fell short on the rest. What can I say? The world has been on fire, and reaching any goals is a pretty significant accomplishment. Here’s to a better year all around in 2026.
March is a cat-focused month. Brandi and I got Luna in February of 2008, so March is usually when we end up taking her in for her annual checkup. She’s 17, so there’s always some anxiety involved—for her and for us. But, other than a few teeth that were cracked and needed to be removed, all the news was good. Which wasn’t exactly a surprise, as she looks and acts as young as ever, but a relief nonetheless.
And a couple of fun shots taken during a night out with friends. I haven’t been doing a great job of taking photos lately—a function of so much time inside, in the same environs, during the winter—but I’m hoping to do better.
August means the start of the high school football season here in Ohio. My alma mater just had artificial turf put down for the first time—I personally preferred the natural grass field, but those are going by the wayside for now. In news that’s actually Commaphile related, the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style made its debut; my copy was delivered on release day and has already taken pride of place near my desk.
I got a new phone (Pixel 9 Pro XL) this month, which of course means I also got a new camera. The football photos and the cocktail photo above were taken with it, as was the cat photo below with the TV in the background. It’s pretty spectacular, just in the limited amount I’ve used it so far; I just need to remember to use it more often.
July kicked off with my 47th birthday on the 4th—my wife baked an incredible cake you can see above. It is called, bizarrely, pig-lickin’ cake; my mom used to make it when I was a kid. Instead of braving downtown Columbus for Red White and Boom or a school construction zone for our local fireworks, we went to a Clippers game on the 5th. The game was great—the Clippers won on a walkoff homer in the bottom of the ninth—but the postgame fireworks were incredibly disappointing. Lesson learned.
I’m a big fan of the National, a longstanding indie rock band with roots in Ohio. They’re known, among other things, for their melancholy, introspective lyrics, often inspired at least in part by classic or contemporary literature (one of their recent albums is titled First Two Pages of Frankenstein). From this came the “Sad Dads Book Club” on Instagram, a book club dedicated to books inspiring or inspired by the band. I was lucky enough to win a recent giveaway, a copy of the novel Sorrow by Tiffanie DeBartolo (inspired, fittingly enough, by the National song “Sorrow”), and when it arrived I was ecstatic to see that it was signed and personalized by the author. I’m very much looking forward to reading it.
Our neighborhood is always a haven for wildlife. In addition to the lawn-grazing family of deer seen above and typical suburban sights like rabbits and squirrels, there are also plenty of chipmunks, the occasional fox, and once or twice even a couple of turkey vultures, just off the top of my head. There are also a ton of backyard birds, and for a couple of days, we had a goldfinch that got obsessed with our bedroom window. It would flutter around right in front of it and would even perch on the screen so it could peer inside for long stretches at a time. This went on for probably the better part of two days; on the third day I still saw it a few times sitting in the pine tree just outside the window, and then it apparently decided it was time to get on with its life.
Some fun outings this month! A Clippers baseball game featured an appearance by the ZOOperstars, which is a traveling troupe of inflatable animal/sports-themed mascots. It was kind of surreal, but as a baseball fan who came of age in the 1980s, when the most readily available way to watch the sport was via afternoon Cubs broadcasts on WGN, “Harry Canary” cracked me up. A personalized Funko Pop figurine immortalizing Luna and me was a hilarious Father’s Day gift from Brandi. We made our first visit to the Franklin Park Conservatory for a cocktail event—the drinks were mostly “meh,” but the venue was awesome. And finally, Brandi’s birthday gave us an occasion for a nice dinner and a fun night on the town.
It’s certainly been a year. I haven’t been great about documenting it, but in an effort to start getting a handle on it, here are some of the highlights so far, from January through May.
In the first part of October, Brandi and I took a long weekend trip to Washington, DC, with our friends Spencer and Chris. I feel like a lot of people end up there at some point early in their lives, but somehow neither Brandi nor I had ever been there. Chris, on the other hand, grew up in the area and still has family there, so it was nice having a built-in tour guide.
Our first outing was to the Library of Congress.
I’m a library nerd, so the one thing I knew I definitely wanted to try to do while we were in DC was visit the Library of Congress. And it turns out that they host a happy hour every Thursday evening! It also turns out that this happy hour is quite popular—the line for drinks was quite long. (Full disclosure: I used my phone’s “magic eraser” function to remove bystanders from a couple of the photos above.) A lot of people, in fact, were getting drinks and then immediately getting back in line for their next one. We just went through once, and then took the opportunity to wander around and see the place, which is stunning. Being in the main reading room was something I’ll never forget.
The next day, Friday, was a heavy walking day. We started at our hotel (Motto, in Chinatown), grabbed some Starbucks along the way, and hit the National Mall (and then some): the Washington Monument, the World War II Memorial, the Reflecting Pool, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, and the MLK Memorial. We also popped into the National Museum of American History to see the original Star-Spangled Banner and checked out a couple of exhibits at the National Museum of Natural History.
That evening we went to the U Street Corridor/Logan Circle for dinner. We started at Izakaya, a restaurant specializing in Japanese small plates that Spencer and Chris have visited several times, and it was amazing. From there we procured cocktails from Left Door (amazing), the Crown & Crow (meh), Aslin Beer Company (very cool vibe; befriended a dog), and the Alchemist (my personal favorite) before calling it a night.
Saturday was not a particularly touristy day; we spent most of it with Chris’s parents, and his sister and her boyfriend. But this included dinner at Mission, and so we got to see Nationals Park (sadly, the regular baseball season had just ended, so we couldn’t go inside) and visit a few places in the Navy Yard area. At the Dacha Beer Garden, as you’ll see below, our waiter asked if I wanted my beer “tall or short” without specifying what that meant, so I ordered “tall” and got an enormous glass boot full of beer.
We ended Saturday with a nightcap at our hotel’s rooftop bar, which is where I captured the image above.
Sunday was our last day, but we did sneak in a bit more sightseeing. First up was the White House! Just the outside, unfortunately—Chris contacted our representative to request a tour, but that was at a time when it seemed like the government was going to shut down, and he never got a response. But seeing it from outside was still very cool, and honestly, for our first trip to DC, it was enough. Our last stop was the National Portrait Gallery for the presidential portraits. Then we had a quick lunch at Cava before making the long drive back to Ohio.
Being in DC for the first time was kind of surreal, especially at first. Even though I had never seen these places before in person, they were all so familiar…it felt like stepping into a TV show. It was amazing to be surrounded by so much history and culture, and I know this is a place I will want to revisit again and again. I already have a short list of things I’d like to do (a White House tour; seeing Congress in session; a ballgame at Nats Park; so many museums), and I have a feeling that it would take several visits before that list would start to shrink instead of grow.
And it occurred to me after we got home that we didn’t take any pictures of the Metro. Brandi and I were totally enamored; it made getting around so easy. From the time we got into town on Thursday afternoon through when we left on Sunday, we walked and/or rode the Metro everywhere we went. Loved it. Time to step up your public transportation game, Columbus.
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.
The Commaphile 