1 – NOAH KAHAN
Over the weekend, I popped north to go see Noah Kahan, he of TikTok and Stick Season fame, and y’all, it was incredible. I expect long-time rock stars, to put on a big show, but you never know what you’ll get from a newer artist, especially one very new to playing for crowds of 15,000 and this show went above and beyond any expectation I had. It was a good, good night, and now all I’m doing with my free time is wandering around singing Noah Kahan songs and it is not a bad problem to have.
2 – GRISETTE
One of my favorite things about Richmond is the incredible food scene. This city is not huge, but we have incredible talent here and as far as I’m concerned, one of the absolute best restaurants in Richmond is Grisette. The service is brilliant, the wine list revelatory and the food transcendent. It is incredible food. It is ingredients you can name and see and taste and savor, all put together beautifully in a way that will you make you say a quiet thanks for your tastebuds, for the chef, for the mastery of the craft that set an incredible dish in front of you. I don’t go often enough, but I spent a delightful evening there with two friends and each time a new thing arrived at our table, I said, “oh, this is drugs, thank you so much.”
3 – SUMMER RUNNING
This is maybe a little bit of a lie, but I am trying hard to enjoy summer running. I have a half marathon at the end of August, which means in order to succeed there, I need to embrace summer running, which is a thing I attempt every summer. I have taken a different approach to this training cycle and am being nice to myself, running slower, sometimes even walking, and just trying to enjoy the process of moving my body, because that’s a gift, albeit a sweaty one.
4 – WORK THINGS
A neat thing about my job as an Army journalist is that I get to be there and tell the story when people do incredible and hard things. It’s one of my favorite parts of my job, to be there and watch Soldiers giving their all toward a goal and then being there at the finish line to see all of that hard work culminate in success. That’s what this week was like. What started with 121 Soldiers trying to earn a coveted badge resulted in just 14 walking away with it. A few of those 14 tried to earn the badge in 2017, too, and I was there back then as well, cheering for them, taking photos and doing my thing, and to see those few back again, to see them finally cross the line and get the damn thing, was brilliant.
5 – BEDTIME CLAUDE
Claude the cattle dog is a high velcro dog, in that he does not ever want to be more than two feet from me. He is stuck to me nearly always, and while he tends to sleep in a variety of places at night, including on the bed, under my night stand and, if there’s rain, under my bed, he always demands some amount of snuggle time before lights out. Claude has many skills, but his number one skill is snuggling and ending my days giving him pets does wonders for making the trash of the day fade away.
