Over half of this month was out traveling the world getting to experience Tokyo again and Seoul/Taipei for the first time. What a wonderful life we live!

I am not even sure I can properly describe the whirlwind the end of May and June was like. I arrived home from my second trip to London on June 1st with an early flight into New York where I proceeded to get into the wrong car to go home, I guess I wasn’t the only Joel going to West End that day. The next morning Jenn was boarding a flight from Laguardia to Toronto and then Tokyo for her work trip. I’m not sure I would have believed this was our life a few years ago but here we are.

Frasier and I had a father-son weekend with Jenn safely in Tokyo before he got picked up on Monday, June 5th to go to Far Fetched Acres and I went to Tokyo on June 6th with a direct flight from Newark. The next two weeks which I fully documented were sublime. Now a few weeks removed from the trip I can say what I say about any great trip, it made me eager to get back out and travel more.

We arrived home on June 20th (a day late) after our connecting flight in Toronto was canceled and we spent an extra 12 hours stuck there. When we arrived in Newark we rented a car and drove to pick up Frasier and came back home exhausted and ready for a few days to recuperate before going straight back to work 12 hours later. That entire week was a blur, I remember having more trouble than normal adjusting to the time zone differences. We eventually survived the week and finished it with our first and only Broadway show of the month, Parade.

Jenn was scheduled to travel to Montreal during the last week of June but due to the massive wildfires in Canada all of her flights were canceled each day so she took her teams offsite remote. It meant more time home together something we were desperate for after all the traveling of the past 6-weeks. June was getting incredibly warm and we were excited to slow down a bit this summer.

TV WE WATCHED

This is far and away the least TV we watched in a month, especially given two of the six I watched on flights (FUBAR and Boom Boom). The two standouts were the final season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel which after a few rocky seasons ended near its peak, a great finale. The other is the third season of The Great which continues to be one of the best-written shows on today.

BOOKS I READ (OR LISTENED TO)

Given all of the travel, I didn’t get as much reading done this month. I finished up Lethal White the latest in Robert Galbraith's (JK Rowling) mystery series that I really enjoy. They are the type of books that you know what you’re getting into when you read them and they’re a good consistent read. The other book I read was also quite good. The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell was a beautiful story of a boy born with red eyes and how this one difference changed his entire life.

MOVIES WE WATCHED

Four incredible movies. And as much as I loved The Son, Women Talking, and especially The Fabelmans, the best movie of the month was Past Lives. Jenn and I went to go see it at our local movie theater and were both crying by the end. It was a beautiful love story that we were both captivated by from the moment the lights went down. I love that movie so much, I can’t wait to re-watch it.

THEATER WE SAW

We only saw one show this month which was one we were quite excited about, Parade. Although not going to be in our top shows of the year I thought it was a captivating tale about an innocent man being convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. Ben Platt one of the biggest stars on Broadway and the incredible voice of Micaela Diamond made a Broadway that I found a bit long in the tooth so much sweeter to watch. There was a duet toward the end of the performance that gave me literal goosebumps.

GAMES I'VE BEEN PLAYING

I’ll break this into two parts, before our trip I was playing a mix of golf and baseball games. When we got back from South Korea I put in at least 20 hours into Horizon Forbidden West. After shaking off the cobwebs I am fully back in and hope to finish it before the summer is up. It’s nice to play a real game again!