Every 4 years, the Olympics give us the opportunity for 2 weeks to stay up watching gymnastics, swimming, and other sports that we’d otherwise never see on TV. This year’s summer games in Paris kicked off with a rainy opening ceremony of athletes sailing down the Seine River. Besides the usual sporting events, we checked out soccer, basketball, volleyball, fencing, air rifle, surfing, and even breakdancing, for the first time. The games inspired us to stay consistent with swimming, tennis, and barre exercises, and also the grit to return to the Lands Between. A glitch with my PS5 had led me to reset the console without a backup, causing me to lose over 300 hours of Elden Ring progress. To prepare for the upcoming expansion pack, I paid a seller $45 on Ebay to drop me 2 billion runes along with all the base weapons and armor, but still required me to replay through the main mission to restore my spells, sprit ashes, and story progression. The additional game time did not help with tackling our deadlines at work, but gave us a chance to start bonding with our new rats. After months of coordinating with a breeder and preparing their home, we finally adopted Nico and Remy. It has been almost a decade since our last pair, so we expect to take time to earn their trust and learn their new personalities. We enjoyed the final weeks of summer with Westley over Magic the Gathering, backyard camping, another piano recital, and a Korean-themed backyard BBQ with cousin Pam and Eric. After an exhaustive string of consecutive late nights and stuffing ourselves with hotpot, we left Westley with grandpa as we drove to SFO to embark on our trip to Spain & Portugal.