can music save your mortal soul?

I had a v. good day in ye olde Iowa. The day was bookended with video chats, which was a bit weird (not the chats themselves, just the fact that I had two video calls in one day when I'm on vacation). The first was pretty shortly after I woke up, and it was with a woman named Alicia who also works in tech and is attempting to become a published author. We were connected via our mutual friend Alana (hi Alana!), and it was really lovely to meet her - we had a lot of common experiences, which is always a good thing to connect about. We'll probably chat again in a month or two, so it was nice to make a new writer/tech connection.

Then I spent most of the rest of the day on the back porch - it was rainy off and on, and so cool in comparison to the 90+ degree days we've been having that I wore my hoodie for part of it. I did some planning for my remaining time here, and I did a bit of journaling, and then I spent quite a bit of time talking to my dad, which was great - hopefully we'll get some more time before I leave. My vacation has been v. good for just hanging out on the back porch and talking to my parents, so I'm glad I've spent some time here before I go back to Colorado and end up in quarantine again at some point in the future.

At some point in the late afternoon, I decided that I should (re)tackle the massive spread of family photos. I decided to grab the pile of grandma's relatives from before 1940 and bring it upstairs for secondary sorting - this involved breaking those piles into much smaller piles based on who was in the photo, then putting those smaller piles into file folders for each relevant relative. There are still a ton of photos to go through in the secondary sort, but I think this method is a good one - it makes it easy to sort out what is a direct-line ancestor vs. what is an aunt/uncle or cousin in a previous generation, which becomes less relevant as the generations go on.

I did eventually take a break to have supper - Mom made fish, potatoes, and peas, with strawberries and cream for dessert, and it was pretty tasty. Then I did some more photo organizing, talked to [censored], took some photos of a double rainbow, and then ended the evening with a video chat with some writer friends. And now I really need to go to bed (and perhaps scratch my chigger bites) - goodnight!