August 2020

 

August went by super quickly for some reason.  I signed up for the Piano With Jonny website, as a way to get my jazz learning going, so I spent time doing that.  I was also planning a trip to North Dakota.  And I started up working out again, after my ankle has felt better.

New movie recap

I watched seven movies for the first time in August!  Due to my ankle injury, the heat outside, and cancelled activities, movies became a bigger part of my life.  I finished three movies in one day on August 1, so two of those were watched partially in July.  

The Running Man (1987).  Had started this the night before, and finished it in the morning.   I had seen parts of this on TV when I was younger, and was always curious to watch it again.   Watching as an adult, it was not that great.  5 stars/10

Bethany Hamilton: Unstoppable (2018).  Watched the first half of this in July, and the second half of this in August.  Watched it with the kids.   There's amazing footage of surfing, and it was interesting to see her life story, and what happened in her family and career.   7 stars/10

Matilda (1996).  We watched this for a family movie night.  It was really well done, and it was funny.  The kids loved it.  It deviated from the book's plot of course. 7 stars/10

Then the next day I started watching The Biggest Little Farm (2018) with my younger daughter.  It had a lot of amazing footage of farm life.  And I got invested in whether their farm would succeed or fail.   7 stars/10

After watching The Running Man, I was reading about Arnold Schwarzenegger, and learned of a documentary called Pumping Iron (1977).  This was made before Arnold was an actor.  This is an entertaining documentary about body builders trying to defeat Arnold to earn the Mr. Olympia title.  7 stars/10

Later, I watched the documentary, Apollo 11 (2019), which is footage of the Apollo 11 mission.   There is no narrator.  I learned a lot about the space craft and the mission that I didn't know before.  The only negative was the strange music. 8 stars/10

With the kids, I watched How To Train Your Dragon (2010), and ranked it 7 stars.

Book recap

I finished 8 books for the 3rd straight month.

Roald Dahl books:

The Witches - 5 stars

The Magic Finger - 5 stars

The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me - 3 stars

The Enormous Crocodile - 3 stars

Esio Trot  - 2 stars

Other books:

I Survived Hurricane Katrina, 2005 (I Survived, #3), by Lauren Tarshis  4 stars/5

The Call of the Wild, is a book I read electronically.  I thought it was creative in that it was written from the perspective of a dog. 4 stars/5

I finished Searching for Sunday, by Rachel Held Evans.  This is the only book I've read from this author, who was my age, and died in 2019.  I really connected with some parts, and not other parts.  It really was a long book.  I listened to the audio book, and it took a few months due to the pandemic, and how I wasn't driving. 3 stars/5

Music Happenings

I was asked to lead worship when our worship leader was on vacation, and I asked Courtney to sing with me.  During COVID-style worship leading, there's no band.  So it was just me on guitar and vocals, and Courtney on vocals.  That was the first time we had done that, that we can remember.

Also, as mentioned earlier, I signed up on Piano With Jonny as a way to get my jazz piano learning going.  Even though I've wanted to learn, I never have gotten lessons, because I feared I would not have time to practice, and didn't want to carve out time for it.  The online format is nice, because I can just pick whatever topic I am interested in, and then squeeze in practice whenever.

New restaurants

I had forgotten this part of my past blog.  Anyway, I really enjoyed Hawaiian Bros, and it was really busy.  It was a ripoff to substitute vegetables for the macaroni salad, for $1.50, since it only came with a small amount of vegetables.  I'd rather just keep the mac, and throw it out. (Can't eat it since I'm gluten free)

Happenings

I gave the kids some new lego sets, which ended up being a good move, since they've been playing with them a lot.

We left for our North Dakota vacation, which spanned August and September.  In August, the highlight was being in Sioux Falls, seeing Courtney's friends, and going to Falls Park.

COVID Happenings

-Went to the office and there have only been around 8 people on the floor, with a capacity of at least 40.