Recently in July '25

I always want to say that the past month was relatively uneventful, but then I write the post and I realized that more things happened than I first thought. So, let’s recap July, which is now coming to an end.

✍️ Website

This month celebrated the 11th anniversary of this website. Maybe that played an unconscious role on me writing a few more posts than usual. In addition, I also reorganized a few things within the website, as one sometimes does.

I want to highlight the reorganization - or rather, condensation - of the categories of this website. Where once there were four or five, there are now just two: ✏️ writings and 📷 photos. They are quite self-explanatory: photos are mostly just photos, while writings are mostly written posts.

It could be that sometimes something else slips into the writings, but I didn’t want to just call it “blog”. You will now also see book reviews, and occasional bookmarks, showing up on your feed if you were just following my writings.

I also added the blogroll to the main navigation, replacing the link to the fragments. I wasn’t sure what else to put there, but I really wanted something to fill the void. I think the blogroll is a nice way of sharing other blogs I enjoy, so… why not?

🍄 Life

As far as I can remember, there were not that many big events this past month. I visited friends here and there, we also visited the Zoo in Arnhem, which was beautiful. It has a very large indoor rainforest - mesmerizing! They also had newborn capybaras that had been born that week! So cute.

We also visited Dordrecht, Haarlem and Zandvoort. I’m personally on a quest to cover the most railway I can in The Netherlands. Since I have a subscription for free train travel on the weekends, it should not be impossible! We’re now just past 50%.

💪 Health

My wrist is feeling better. I am now working on wearing the brace less and less at night. I went from wearing it every day, to every night, then to every other night, and now it’s two nights in a row without and one with. It goes slowly, but steadily.

Also visited the dentist, but that’s not very interesting. Just the usual: a few places to be monitored - I feel like they’ve been in monitoring for years -, and a bit of cleaning between my permanent retainer. Other than that, it’s good.

We also started running again, but I may write a bit more on that later.

📚 Reading

I read a bit more this month. I read two books, which I thought were very interesting: Piranesi and The Ministry of Time. I also dedicated some time at reading two coffee magazines: Standart and Cherry Bones. I am now reading a Dutch book: Taal Is Zeg Maar Echt Mijn Ding from Paulien Cornelisse. Very nice so far!

🍿 Entertainment

We went to a concert in the Melkweg, in Amsterdam, where we saw Allie X live. We had tickets for her a few years ago, but she canceled, but, fortunately, she came back to The Netherlands. The concert was quite amazing and I’m actually pleasantly surprised by her live capabilities. It was awesome!

When it comes to movies, we did not watch that much this month. We watched Jurassic World: Rebirth and Peacock on the cinema. They were both enjoyable, in their own ways. They’re very different, I don’t know why I’m trying to compare them subconsciously.

In the real of series, we watched the first seasons of Foundation, Murderbot, Stick and Arcane, as well as the last season from The Sandman. From these, I would definitely highlight Foundation, which I’ve been really enjoying.

Now - saying it this way feels more and more Dutch to me, but is it? -, July is coming to an end, and August is just starting. Happy August!