A Look Back - August 2024
As every August does, we start off the month with our birthdays. Thankfully, this year, they began on a Friday, so I was able to take the day off and spend it with Jenn and Elle. We had Kerry, Elle’s nanny, come on my birthday so Jenn and I could have our first outing together since we left Boram in early June. To celebrate our birthdays, we jumped in a taxi on a hot August day and went to the Whitney Museum, where we spent an hour taking in all the new exhibits. We walked part of the way to my favorite New York City restaurant, Le Coucou. There we had a beautiful 3-course lunch. I started with a gin martini and the hard-boiled egg with mayonnaise and peekytoe crab, while Jenn started with the yellowfin tuna, scallop, espelette oil, and spring onions. For our main course, I had the prime filet, sarawak green peppercorn sauce with a glass of Bordeaux and Jenn had the duck breast with apricots, “gibelotte” of the rest with chanterelles. For dessert with split a divine chocolate cake. It was great to be back and I cannot wait for our next visit.
We arrived late in the afternoon and spent the rest of the day together as a family, working through Jenn’s birthday and the remaining weekend. Jenn wanted to keep things at home for her birthday, so we kept it a quiet Saturday, opening gifts and having her new favorite stomach-friendly dinner of fish, carrots, and baked potato. Elle was a complete angel for our birthdays and the entire weekend.
One of the things I failed to mention in the July recap (I can’t believe I forgot) was how excited we were that Biden (who we are big fans of) dropped out of the race at the Kamala and took his place. On August 6th, it was announced that Kamala Harris had chosen Tim Walz as her running mate. Jenn and I had hoped for Shapiro or Kelly, but within an hour or two, we realized she had made a great choice. As of this writing, the US presidential race is super tight, but we are hopeful this will have a very different outcome to 2016.
The following weekend, we had another date while Kerry cared for Elle. We started with brunch at French Louie, one of our old favorites in Brooklyn for brunch. I’m unsure if it was August or because it isn’t as good as it used to be, but we didn’t love it as much as we did before. After brunch, we went back on the Subway and headed toward midtown to see our first Broadway show since Elle was born. I’m so glad we chose to see Once Upon a Mattress. It was the perfect fun musical we needed to see to ease us back in.
On Sunday, August 11, we did our first real family outing. We started by walking to brunch at La Pecora Bianca in the UWS. We got a table on the patio where I had a shrimp Caesar salad, and Jenn had spaghetti with tomato sauce. From there, we walked across the street to the National History Museum, where Elle marveled at several exhibits, especially the aquatics area with the massive whale. We only spent an hour at the museum before Elle got tired, and we walked back home. It was a great test run before we started going out in earnest in Canada a few weeks later.
We had one more date on Friday, August 23rd, for dinner at Massara, the new restaurant from the team behind Rezdora. Jenn met after work near the Flatiron building and went to dinner. We are big fans of Rezdora, and I genuinely didn’t think they’d be able to have another great restaurant, but we were pleasantly surprised. Massara was phenomenal. We started with a pizza and burrata, which were so good. Then we split a few pastas and the quail that was out of this world. We decided against ordering dinner there and walked to Shcmackery’s on our way home, grabbed two cookies, and returned to Elle and Frasier. When I look back on the photos from tonight, I can’t stop marveling at how beautiful Jenn looked. She had such a rough nine months, followed by a very bumpy 4 to 6 weeks post-partum, that to see her out, enjoying a great dinner, looking as stunning as she did, really makes me happy.
On August 24th, we took Elle to the New York Botanical Gardens. We planned to go the prior weekend but had a flat tire when we picked up our car. With the car fixed, we were off and made the 30-minute drive to the beautiful gardens. We went on a lovely day and walked around most of the grounds before Elle fell asleep, and we started to get too warm. It has been nice to take Elle to new places, see her eyes grow, and show interest in new things.
We had to cut our time at the gardens a little short so I could get back and pack for my first work trip since Elle was born. I left that evening to take a Delta flight to Paris where I landed mid-day on Sunday. I did my normal massive walk around Paris, although noticed very quickly that my life as a Dad meant I was lacking my normal energy level that I used to have when I arrived. I was still able to get a good walk in and had dinner at Colvert that evening. The week went by fast, while Jenn’s Dad came out to visit Jenn and Elle. It was a lot harder to be away then I thought it was going to be. I always worried I was missing a milestone or not there to help if something went wrong. Fortunately it wasn’t the case but it made the short work trip tougher.
I arrived home from London on Thursday, August 29th and we were off to Montreal the very next day. I recapped the entire trip up to Canada already but my very brief recap was that it was spectacular. We wrapped up August in Quebec City and already thinking about what other adventures the three of us will go on next.
TV WE WATCHED
We weren’t able to watch a lot of TV this month. We are still trying to determine the proper schedule for Elle and her sleep. Most nights, we pop on a quick episode of Frasier or go straight to bed. This month's highlights were the hilarious and clever The Gentlemen on Netflix. We are at the halfway point of the show and love it. The other show we’ve been enjoying is Bad Monkey on Apple TV+. It stars Vince Vaughn who we both enjoy and the show has been very entertaining in its first few episodes.
BOOKS I READ (OR LISTENED TO)
I’m happy with how far ahead this year I am in my reading goal because it has made me feel more adventurous to read a long book like Shantaram. I loved 80% of the book, but I thought a few sections could have been skipped. The other two books were Daisy Jones & The Six, which I thought was wildly entertaining, and Yellowface, which I enjoyed but didn’t love.
MOVIES WE WATCHED
Most of the movies I watched were on my flight home from London (The Instigators, Challengers, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes), and I didn’t enjoy any of them. The best movie we watched was About Time, which is still one of the best movies ever made. It made me cry even more now that I’m a dad. The worst movie of the month was A Quiet Place Day One, which I found a very disappointing and plodding prequel.
GAMES I'VE BEEN PLAYING
With the release of Madden in the middle of August, this was a very football-focused month. I wrapped up my season of College Football before moving over to Madden. It’s been a pretty light gaming month all things considered and I anticipate that might just be the case going forward.
2024 GOAL TRACKING
Goal #1: Read 35 Books: I read 28 books and am on pace to far exceed my year's goal of 35.
Goal #2: Get Weight Under 140: Good start to 2024, still under 140.
Goal #3: 12 Monthly Recaps: 8 for 12 and hopefully no end in sight!
