I very rarely just post a video on the blog. My goal for WorldOfJoel has been to write about stuff I love. Very rarely do YouTube videos have any real impact on my life so I don't post them. However today is different. I was driving to work this past week listening to one of my favorite podcasts, /Filmcast. They were doing a review of the movie The End of the Tour which is about an interview conducted with famed author David Foster Wallace. 

Growing up birthdays were always a big deal. My parents always did a great job of making sure the day was special. Jenn knows that I'm basically a 29 year-old kid so she's kept the tradition alive. This year though, she went all out. Although I do have one gripe, we did promise not to get each other gifts this year. So instead of buying me a gift she scheduled an entire day for us. I still think that was cheating but its water under the bridge at this point. 

By now you've probably read my post "Sometimes the Right Decisions Are the Toughest Decisions". In that I talked in depth about our struggle to decide what to do with our home. Spoiler, we sold it. When we accepted the offer for our home we had (no exaggeration) 14 days to find a place to live and move out. Crazy right? We went to look at a a couple of places but fell in love with one place in particular the Essex Skyline.

When I started blogging in 2003 I used it as a journal. A way to just jot down thoughts about my day, my life, my friends, my tennis career, and my pursuit of Jenn. It slowly morphed from that into a highlight reel of my life. A way for me to have a place to look back on the fond memories. A timeline of events so that one day in the future when I want to remember what I ate in Paris in 2008 when I got off the train I can (it was shrimp risotto from the hotel room service). It's an amazing life to write about. I've been blessed. I have an incredible, amazing wife who's my best friend. I have the best family I could ask for. I have a great job. I get to travel the world. I've been incredibly blessed. 

Every year for Amy's birthday, Jenn and Ally join her to go to the Temecula wine country for a few days of R&R. Well I never get invited to that and always feel like I'm missing out. So this past weekend I invited myself along with Jenn (who's always invited) Jake and Amy while Ally was in Cancun. We met Jake and Amy down in Temecula after going to the 9AM service of church at Mariners over this past Memorial Day weekend.

In 2007 I purchased a Black Toyota Prius. At the time I was going to be driving to UCI from Riverside and I loved how forward thinking Toyota was with its Hybrid. Plus you couldn't beat nearly 50 MPG. Five years later I was working full time and I had put nearly 150K miles on it and the front dashboard had completely gone out. Money was tight so I went and purchased a 2012 Honda Fit. One of the worst car decisions I ever made. It's not that it was a bad car it was just as basic and dull as they come.