Hello everyone! It’s been an exciting month full of activities to share with you, so here we go!

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As always, these posts are all about my hobbies and fun activities I’m up to.

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My Lively

Creative Fun

DIYs

I went to two outdoor DIY activities at the library this month. The first item was painting a tote bag with watermelons! We used potatoes to get the watermelon shape. It was a little hard because the paint didn’t go on too well, so we mostly used it for the outline and filled it in. I think it looks super cute though and we are all using it as our new library bags of course!

The second activity was a pineapple wall sign. I didn’t really love how it turned out but I was trying to hurry to finish it. Honestly, it’s a complete mess! Oh, but this was fun as someone accidentally spilled paint everywhere and I had brought my puppy niece so she was trying to get into it and I got paint on her trying to get her away. Whoops! My sister got a kick out of the fact that her dog was blue (she had two tiny spots of blue, not actually completely blue!).

Bujo

Ever since I stopped sharing my bujo online it has become much more of a journal. I do a lot more reflections in it and I do like that part of it now! It does make it hard to fill out the pages sometimes but I haven’t made a ton of time for it, so that’s mostly why.

Entertainment

Books

As always, I’m listing all the books I’ve finished since the previous Lively post below with their star ratings. All thoughts on them are saved for future (or even past!) Mini Book Review posts but those will be linked below if so. I won’t include any books that I didn’t finish although I’ll be sure to add them into the review posts.

This month I read 2 books. I’m partly through a few more but they are super long, so I’ve barely made a dent in them! It is, by far, the worst reading month I’ve had all year. I did reach 61 books read in 2021 now though, so hopefully I can catch up to make it to my goal of 100. But I am in such a reading slump! I think it’s because I mostly was trying to read books on my phone too, and I do love ebooks, but I spend so much time staring at screens lately because of my new job that it makes me annoyed and I need paper books again. I got a ton from the library and that has helped!

• The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland by Jim DeFede, 4.5
• Magical Self-Care for Everyday Life by Leah Vanderveldt, 3.25

Movies

I continued my Marvel films journey by watching Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. I hadn’t seen this one before and I liked it enough because it was funny. But not the best Marvel film by far. Pretty much all except one of the following Marvel films were new to me at this point.

I then moved onto Thor: Ragnarok. Oh, all the Marvel films I watched on Disney+ by the way. I did not enjoy it. I honestly don’t love the Thor films and I struggled to get through this one.

I had seen Black Panther before though and still loved it! I am so curious where the future of Wakanda is heading to now that there’s been such a big change in the cast when the main actor passed away.

The next film was Avenger’s Infinity War and that was really interesting. I do tend to like the big cast films even though the story was getting so dark. But it was super cool to see the film just go for dark and the ending had me rushing to get to the next film.

Ant-Man and the Wasp was next and I liked it better than the first film of this hero. I do like the character of Ant-Man and I loved how his family came together so well and rallied behind him in this one and even covered for him when needed. Also, Ant-Man’s friends annoying the Pyms is always great.

I was super excited to watch Captain Marvel, and I thought it was such a cool movie. I do wish the character had been introduced earlier in the series and had more films already. It felt like it would have made more sense in phase 1 when characters like Iron Man and Captain America were being introduced, or maybe closer to when Ant-Man and Dr. Strange were introduced as well. This felt like her intro was just too separate from the rest but I’m glad it happened in the end!

Finally, I got to Avengers: Endgame. Spoilers for it will follow! I felt like the way the film opened was super unrealistic. I think it probably made sense at the time when it was filmed, but not now. The film was just so heavily focused on the remaining half of the population still having a hard time accepting and moving on form what happened years later, and it didn’t make sense now having gone through (and still going through) a world wide pandemic. I just thought that we have clearly seen how resilient humans are in the pandemic and despite everything we are still trying to move along and learn and grow from the experience (for the most part, I know there’s still some crazies out there don’t get me wrong) but this film just seemed to think that a major bad event would send humans into an “I give up” mentality. Of course, this is fiction and it was needed for the dramatic opening, but it was just weird to watch given all that’s happened. But it was a great film as it went on and I did enjoy it. It felt like a really good “end” to the MCU as it was and a great set up for a new, fresh take on the MCU.

Having caught up on the Marvel films at last, I moved onto another film. I watched Bohemian Rhapsody again! I really do love that film. I won’t gush about it anymore since I’ve done that before but I enjoyed it as much as I have before.

TV Shows

I finished Schitt’s Creek! I was so sad to finish it as I love the characters. I also watched that farewell documentary of sorts that they did. I hadn’t realized that three of the actors were related, and so that was cool to learn. I also hadn’t realized that two of those three were the creators of the series. I really, really enjoyed the journey with the Rose family and I loved how each character’s story was wrapped up.

I have been rewatching Madam Secretary and Gilmore Girls too. I love both of those shows!

I started watching WandaVision as I finished the Marvel films. It’s pretty fun and I love that we get more time with the characters of Wanda and Vision for sure.

I started Manifest and I think I’m about halfway through the first season. I thought it was a really cool plot but the acting is not great and the “investigation” is pretty boring as it drags on though.

I also started World’s Most Amazing Vacation Rentals on Netflix, mostly because YouTuber Megan Batoon is on the show. It’s a pretty cool idea but I found that the show is pretty boring overall though. Probably because I couldn’t see myself staying in any of the picks!

Video Games

This month I have been playing more Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I’ve mostly just done the daily tasks or rearranged a few rooms in one of the four houses I have, since I play either before or after work. But I did take advantage of the Fishing Tourney to get trophies and other prizes. I am still missing one fish to complete the fish portion of the museum. I did finish the bug portion though, so that was cool! Now I just need that one more fish and a gazillion more art pieces.

I also played a bit more of Breath of the Wild. I just do not have the time to really get into such a large open-world game. I wish I was more into it! But Link just keeps dying because he’s so weak still and so I can’t really get anywhere in the map and I just want to explore, not have to fight every five seconds so he is not getting much stronger. Oops!

Active Life

Tai Chi

This is a new activity for me! The library has offered Tai Chi in the past, but the class was offered in the middle of the day on a week day before, so I couldn’t go. When I saw it was offered on a Saturday, I jumped at the chance to attend! I had noticed that there were 30 spots but no one else had signed up. I figured I probably saw it early. However, I arrived for the class and I was the only attendee! The librarian who had organized the class also joined in but otherwise I got a private class! I really did like the class, and had already signed up for the August session too so hopefully it doesn’t get cancelled. The instructor revealed she was headed to an alpaca farm in the area to teach yoga which sounded super cool!

walk

I’ve been going on 2-3 walks per day because I still have my puppy niece! I take her out in the morning, and then usually twice after work. I feel bad because she clearly gets bored waiting for me to finish work but she is such a good girl and waits so nicely! I love her so much.

ballet

I have been going to ballet of course. This month was the end of the summer session but we got another mini end-of-summer class added before the fall/winter class. I had such trouble signing up online though! I ended up giving up online and calling the park district number. It specifically said “registration office” so I thought “okay, they register people then”. Apparently not? I was kinda confused but the lady on the phone was so flustered and apologetic about it that I got the sense that people probably call in all the time about the same thing and she probably gets yelled at a lot. She did put me on hold to try to find the person in charge of the dance classes though, which was great. The person had sent out the email with the code and said “contact me with questions” but she had sent the email from a “no-reply” address and didn’t provide contact info. The person that did answer the phone put me into the dance coordinator’s voicemail so hopefully I can sign up once I hear back!

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And that’s what I’ve been up to! Quite a few things as you can see, and hopefully you enjoyed that!

Thanks for reading!

Pamela

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