i am writing another entry because things have been pretty eventful. yesterday we went to a friend's house for a fourth of july party (it's the anniversary of the founding of the united states, though most people reading this will know that). the fourth of july is, somewhat ironically, also the anniversary of my relationship with my lovely partner andrei. (eight years, wow!) anyway, i was worried because i knew the party was going to be outside (our friend lives on the beach), but it turned out to be fine. it was slightly cooler (only 90 degrees, lol), there was shade, and it turns out that swimming in the ocean cools you down a lot. that's something humans have probably known for a long time, so i felt sort of silly that it was a revelation to me.
we hung out with people, and ate turkish food and a tasty frozen dessert that andrei made, with frozen bananas, peanut butter, and chocolate on a nut-flour shortbread. as we left the party near sundown, we saw a gathering storm on the horizon. on the drive home, we were just in time to catch a glimpse of every fireworks display between new haven and shoreline. there were a lot of different ones, and we stopped a couple times briefly to watch. on the bridge over the bay, they were setting them off on the shore right below, and they were exploding right above us. with my car's roof open, it felt slightly dangerous to be that close to the explosions, though the biggest danger was probably people being distracted while driving.
as if that was not dramatic enough, less than a mile from our house, a monsoon-level amount of rain started pouring down, and i had to pull over and wait until i could see literally anything through the windshield. when we finally turned onto our block, we had to drive through a few inches of water flooding the road. today, i saw a lot of leaves on the ground (green ones), and some terrifyingly large branches that had fallen (one sycamore branch was like a foot in diameter).
the nice thing is that the rain coincided with the heat wave breaking. though i normally wouldn't call this weather cool, it was a welcome shift, and we celebrated by going on a walk in the morning. we stopped by a local cafe and then the farmers' market.
now, i'm at the community art space because my partner and our friends are doing a closing performance for the group video art exhibition. i biked over here and now i'm waiting for it to start.
in between these things, i've been doing a bit of computery stuff. i'm preparing for my week of patching, which starts tomorrow! i created a log page to track my experiments, which is blank now but will be added to soon. and i also documented the final items i made for zine club, and wrote a blog post about zine club ending and AV club beginning. so it's been "officially" announced now.
tomorrow, i'm working during the day, but i'm excited to start patching in the evening. i think i am going to primarily focus on creating patches inside of touch designer, a node-based platform for creating mostly visual things. i've been wanting to delve deeper into it since making the patch that became a zine called "vessels," so i hope this will be the opportunity/motivation for me to take the time to do so.