August 2021 Recap

My August simply flew by. One minute it was the first week of August, the next it was my birthday. Now, that's not entirely due to good things, but it hasn't been all terrible.

• The bad stuff: my whole family got Covid. For most of us, it wasn't that bad, but my mom had to go to the hospital for a whole week. That's what took up most of my August, as I tried to recover first, and then run the household and take care of my siblings while my mom was sick. But she's back now and things are getting better.

• But yesterday was my birthday, so that was nice. I'm 24 now, which seems old when I say it. My sister and I went to the mall in Tysons Corner, which is huge and two stories. It has both a Barnes and Noble and American Girl store. Then we came home and celebrated with my family. It was a good day.

• At the beginning of August me and my oldest two siblings went to Poiema, a young adult Christian camp, held in the Outer Banks. It was a great and encouraging time, even if we came home sick. I got to see old friends, meet new ones, spend time in God's Word, and sing every day.

• A small blessing this month is that my sister and I were well enough to attend Awesome Con this year. They didn't hold it last year, so we were excited to go. I cosplayed as Spider-Gwen and Bethany went as Bucky. I got a lot of compliments on my cosplay and found some cool things to buy. At the end of the day, we got to see Billy Boyd do a Q&A. He even sang "Edge of Night" for us! A good time.

Us with the Delorian!

• Another nice thing was going on a walk with the family at a nearby trail. We hiked down an old railroad bed to the river. It was hot and sticky, but a nice break.

•Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life- Steven Martin (5 stars)

•The Crimson Skew- S. E. Grove (4 stars)

•Just My Type: A Book About Fonts- Simon Garfield (4 stars)

•The Downstairs Girl- Stacey Lee (4 stars)

•Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion- Derek Hough (3 stars)

•Five Little Pigs- Agatha Christie (5 stars)

•The Count of Monte Cristo- Alexandre Dumas (4 stars)

•Mortal Engines (a rewatch I still enjoyed)

•Pixel Perfect (one of the oddest DCOMs I've seen)

•Prince of Egypt (still excellent)

•Joseph: King of Dreams (my siblings had too much fun with this one)

•Sanditon (okay, but you can tell someone besides Jane Austen wrote it)

•Trollhunters: The Rise of the Titans (kind of ruined the whole ending)

•Wish Dragon (super cute)

•Rango (weird but sort of enjoyable)

•I've continued work on my beta reader edits. Due to all that's gone on in my life, I wasn't able to get as far as I hoped, but I still managed to get almost halfway through. It's been slow but steady work. As always, I hope that I'm actually improving it, not making it worse.

•I took a blogging break for the month of August, and I'm so glad I did. I put up a post talking about some upcoming changes to the blog, so do be sure to check that out. It's nothing bad, so don't worry.

•I also think I found a better looking RSS email provider, so I think I'm going to work on switching to that one this month.

Art-wise, I didn't have time to do a lot of art, or at least not things I feel like sharing. I practiced using my gouache paint more, which was fun. I did make this collage with some old paint chips, though.

I also feel like I should share my gorgeous light academia bullet journal theme. It was so fun to put together.

•I plan to not do much besides try to catch up with life and return to normalcy. Fingers crossed it stays that way.

•I want to finish edits on New Magic, so I need to buckle down on that.

•I'd also like to make a new painting or two. Maybe break out the watercolors? Or keep practicing with gouache.

How was your August? What's one good thing that happened to you this month? Tell me in the comments!