August

1: Bonza
2: shoe painting
3: learning about the ship the album Mignonette was named after
4: piggyback through the bosque
5: peachy sunrise, orange midnight moon
6: already recognizing some new places thanks to Google street view
7: driving tour of Charlotte with my roommates
8: games and chatting with some people in my hall
9: playing a space shooter video game while it storms outside
10: watching workplace safety videos and wishing they were the JonTron parody
11: biking down a tree-lined street toward uptown
12: visiting other Habitat builds in the city
13: putting up posters he sent me
14: hammering up in the attic we built
15: him taking me along virtually on his commute to work
16: meal prepping for the week
17: busting into the boarded-up house next door (and immediately reinstalling the locks)
18: installing cabinets
19: settling for "good enough" on nitpicky adjustments
20: the fact that the caulking gun has a hook that perfectly fits ladder rungs (very helpful while up on the ladder)
21: glovin' up for tub scrubbin'
22: trying out chairs at the ReStore (or, "Sweet Seats" irl)
23: 100 Humans
24: putting in new doors
25: random and slightly creepy findings among the things left behind in the abandoned house
26: finding lined-paper pages of an unknown person's novel
27: getting into the deep existential discussions with my work teammate
28: jamming to Akrasia while rolling some fresh paint on the walls
29: new desk setup
30: black bean sweet potato chili
31: talking about my options

July

1: discovering the "meat store" is also a little hole-in-the-wall natural grocery
2: digging down to the lava and corruption layers
3: family Hamilton streaming
4: biking back after sundown surrounded by boom-pop-crackles, sparkle-flashes, and gunpowder scent
5: throwing down that random bean & rice dish a second time
6: pedaling along the highway at night
7: taking on the illagers with an army of wolves
8: cringey Disney binge
9: his soft spot for the dogs (and their soft spot for him)
10: steel-toed boots
11: playing Minecraft side by side (just like the old days)
12: a hike around the crest
13: talking about how dinosaur reconstructions from fossils are likely wildly inaccurate to what they actually looked like
14: Cloud Atlas
15: hanging our heads out the window on a stormy summer afternoon
16: Island Saver
17: watching movies while he sleeps next to me
18: the dogs (sensing my anxiety?) huddling near me
19: dad and bro coming to help when my car got fucked up
20: accompanying Dad to the auto parts store
21: scrolling through subreddits
22: undone
23: gaining the dogs' trust bean by bean
24: fucking up on a truck driving simulator
25: bike tinkering with the help of fix-it videos
26: "cheating" with a premade sauce
27: my nut-allergic brother sharing some chili pistachios
28: clambering over rocks in Embudito Canyon
29: hiking Black Volcano and looking over the city (and the place we first hiked together)
30: accompanying him to his favorite joint (Whataburger)
31: climbing up the foothill boulders and getting buffeted by the wind

June

1: drifting off during evening rain
2: discovering some DROELOE in his Spotify likes
3: him coming over to meet (and make dinner for) the fam
4: his fresh haircut
5: eating a meal he made while watching a movie
6: bingeing Big Mouth
7: Cities: Skylines
8: dinner on the (restaurant) patio
9: new frontiers re: colors my hair has been
10: crossing the desert grassland and reaching a new suburb at the edge of the city
11: making vegan gumbo
12: strolling hand-in-hand through the bosque
13: views from the south South Sandia Peak (check out the blog post here!)
14: reminiscing with a crewmate about our summer on trail
15: What We Left Behind
16: a new EP from CloudNone
17: Creativerse, a knockoff Minecraft
18: cleanshaven baby face
19: thought-tangenting off the "if a tree falls in the forest" question to speculations about the nature of reality
20: life in a sandbox survival game
21: the visually lyrical and strangely riveting performance art opera of Akhnaten
22: him recreating a dish from a restaurant he worked at
23: watching Love, Victor with my mom
24: dozing off in each other's arms
25: sneaking into and peeking in on a house under construction
26: Morningstar veggitizers
27: making a Sim
28: his mom telling me about her family
29: contemplative drives (& bike ride)
30: bingeing Rocky Kanaka videos

May

1: him noticing and decoding (and losing it over) my mannerisms
2: working on and recording our presentation together
3: improv parody song lyrics with my parents
4: playing Team Fortress 2 for the first time
5: napping between Zoom calls
6: vegan cheese wheel with bread
7: answering a question from the Q&A
8: bingeing It's Me or the Dog clips
9: flying crows silhouetted against a painted sunset sky
10: a quarantine-themed Mother's Day ecard
11: staying up til 5, sleeping in til 2
12: his cute face in a vulnerable moment
13: meeting up in person
14: Cosmonauts on repeat
15: cloud-gazing
16: Zoom hangout with some old college pals
17: parody videos of political debates
18: really embracing the Virgin vs Chad meme
19: former professors attending my thesis Q&A (and hearkening back to past classes I had with them)
20: grassland cactus jungle
21: cotton swirling in the evening light of the bosque
22: taste testing cake pops
23: texting with peeps on my birthday
24: the perfect joke about a shitty situation making me laugh
25: finishing the I Wish You All the Best audiobook
26: a walk together through the desert
27: people- (and dog-) watching in the park
28: midday snuggle sesh
29: Lies We Tell Ourselves
30: his sleepy, bedheaded focus
31: return to Mt. Taylor

April

1: getting bamboozled by a winding trail that I didn't realize looped back on itself
2: the kind of intensely intimidating guy being surprisingly approachable and nice to talk to
3: "Chasing Light"
4: coyote-spotting
5: the full range of crush craziness (dreams, teasing texts, mad butterflies, an hours-long video chat)
6: Dad unscientifically milking his tea and creating the effect of "a lava lamp in a cup"
7: actually completing a homework assignment with minimal procrastination during these highly-unmotivated times
8: metacognitive discussions (about vat-brains)
9: black lentil Everyday Dal
10: quoting and tagging each other in tweets in real time
11: a happy foot-shuffle when he says 'my dear'
12: entertaining my family with some dating-app drama
13: unexpected snow
14: chatting with my host dad (and seeing my host dog again ❤)
15: learning what parts of the brain are responsible for pattern recognition (and freaking out when a pattern is broken)
16: star patterns in tiny fruits
17: the juxtaposition of political discussion with cringey pickup lines
18: running through the beach sand for a hot minute
19: sharing music we like and music we've made
20: pushing myself to make progress on my thesis (even though I was up until 3 am)
21: riding a familiar route backwards and feeling like I'm on a totally new one
22: prepulse inhibition for the nervous freakout response
23: getting HyPeD about old 99L tracks
24: the sass, the suave, and the sweet
25: getting a shoutout from 99L on the livestream
26: a video-call date ("weird, but nice")
27: little bug hitching a ride on my arm for the first leg of my trip
28: spooky marimba
29: staring and smiling at each other instead of playing Words with Friends
30: making graphs in Excel for my group project

March

1: putting up glow-in-the-dark stars together
2: my brother's high ravings about animals
3: first post-grad job* offer
4: smoothie vs. tornado vs. ballet (a very random ASL video lesson with Bill Vicars)
5: slaying a phone interview
6: a friend over for dinner
7: a 4-year-old saying that when she's 20 she'll go to PTA meetings
8: going to a community meeting about a proposed tiny house village
9: April weather in March
10: "Hairy Legs"
11: laughing my ass off at Family Guy (I needed that kind of dumb and funny content)
12: reconnecting with an old friend in light of the COVID-19 college evacuations
13: airport sushi
14: Superstore (while coloring)
15: "Butterfly Effect"
16: songs ("One Line Wonder") and movies (Say Anything) hitting real personal
17: carrying my bike over my shoulder and toeing my way through private-property wild desert to avoid some wackos dragging a mattress behind their car and riding on it
18: a seven-rune runecast
19: catharsis through poem and song
20: hearing that, when my cousin tried to come out to my grandma, she accidentally linked her to a video about toenail fungus
21: carrying a stack of wood secured with neckties back from the desert on my bike
22: sawing and hammering some shit
23: Tuca & Bertie
24: old places/landmarks and new ones out in Narnia
25: a book of poems by Alice Walker
26: messaging strangers in internet chatrooms (covering the full scope)
27: shower dance parties
28: finally coming down from a shitty anxiety day
29: "quarantine cuts" family picture
30: swiping through dating apps
31: webcam class meeting

February

1: sink goblin in Johnson
2: the grueling sleepless day of travel to San Fran
3: Sacramento (the little bit we got to visit, anyway)
4: walking the skyscraper-corridored streets of San Francisco
5: when someone describes a position and it is pretty much, word for word, my dream job
6: pomegranate jalapeño shrub
7: the soothing, meditative aura of the ocean exhibits and ambient music (at Monterey Bay Aquarium)
8: uncovering a positive side to my sociality
9: playing with a dilapidated soccer ball at the dog park
10: building a pipe-cleaner structure in the lab (the Brain Architecture game)
11: "Break in the Clouds"
12: an adapted version of musical chairs promoting collaboration over competition
13: "Hero" by Rameses B ft. Irosa
14: a sweet little Valentine's letter from my boy
15: the domesticity of grocery shopping together
16: riding my bike in the snow
17: brain examination & dissection
18: stealing his turtleneck to cover up the hickey he gave me
19: coloring book of the brain
20: finesse with a cereal box tattoo
21: our hands taped together around a beverage (so I can't slither away and hide in a corner)
22: my boss bringing me a vegan muffin
23: homework break at the Snow Bowl ski lodge
24: holding a human brain stem (why does it look so damn cool?)
25: stumbling upon some silly George Harrison music videos
26: writing a song for my sproot and singing it to him
27: Melody Gardot radio on Pandora
28: the candy olympics (Friday-night insanity with 12- and 13-year olds)
29: Clover's blue-dyed tail looking like a peacock's