I watched my first pro football match (soccer) yesterday—I went to my daughter’s matches but never really watched a pro match. So we watched a rerun of a Serie A match between Juventus and Milano. Thanks to some explanations from Nat, I think I enjoyed it. Now today I keep thinking about football.

New “Nat and Josh” video where we go camping at Staunton River State Park in Virginia. It’s a nice Dark Sky park set right where to rivers converge. Astrophotography when the wind is super strong just creates blurry photos 😞

youtu.be/OogZvkEO6…

I love how he portrays the software writing experience in these videos. youtu.be/cQO2XTP7Q…

I’ve been using a mix of several different tools for learning Italian. One of them, for pure vocabulary memorizing, has been a pretty good find. In the past (with German & Japanese) I used Anki but never really loved it. This time I’ve been using Mochi. Fewer features but the simplicity is nice.

I’ve mostly stopped sharing photos here but if you liked them I’m going to be sharing them over on pixelfed.social/jnjosh

pixelfed.social/p/jnjosh/…

I’ve been learning a lot about acquiring Italian dual citizenship—my Great Grandfather immigrated from Italy and depending on when he naturalized I could be eligible to be recognized. Finding that paperwork is hard. Yesterday, I got some paperwork from Ohio that implies he didn’t naturalize. 🤯🇮🇹🤌

My sister’s birthday is today and I looked for a photo to share with her happy birthday message. I found this photo from right after I was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis so you can see the swelling in my wrists and knees. Mostly in remission now, but this summer will be 30 years!

So bummed I forgot about Micro camp! I thought I’d watch some while actually camping in the van but… forgot. 😞

Iceland’s vote was perfect. No notes. #Eurovision

I just voted for #Eurovision for the first time 🤣

I really like the little intro segments before each #Eurovision performance. A couple of them in Kyiv I’ve visited too!

I made snacks for #Eurovision!

“Renfield” is a fun movie about vampires with Nicolas Cage being his most extreme Nicolas Cage and it’s great. Here’s the thing though. The movie is a tight 90 minutes. I think I like it even more for this, more movies should be 90 minutes.

I’ve had an Apple Watch for 8 years now and… I think I just made my first call on it. Only to test that it worked.

Woah… I’ve been in Duolingo for 10 years now. Really sucks I haven’t been consistent and am now speaking like 4–5 languages!

I still can’t predictably do a trill with Italian words though. Amazingly a trill will occasionally happen and then surprise me. Like how did that happen? How can I do that intentionally?

I’ve started language learning again… this time with Italian. It’s easier than German or Japanese! Since Nat is still learning Korean we do nightly “language study” together. I’ll go through my vocab list, read a few stories in Lingq, and then watch Easy Italian on YouTube. So fun.

I’ve been diving deep into my family tree—specifically my Italian family—and have found a bunch of documents about my great-grandfather. Seeing it all together in one doc amazed me; I’ve found a lot. Now need to understand the new doc I found about him several states away. Unknown family drama?!

Walking over a bunch of sand dunes I saw a a guy sitting on top of a dune reading a book. As I got closer I realized he was reading “Dune”. Well played.

The fountain at Duke Gardens in Durham, North Carolina

Ilford HP5+ • #photography #film #blackandwhite

Early in the pandemic Nat and I started Twitch streaming our Geoguessr games. This was a fun moment where Nat realized we were in Malta at the last second!

www.twitch.tv/jnjoshpla…

I only learned recently that the Oak Rock trail at Umstead State Park in Raleigh is apparently named after this oak growing out of these rocks. The naming is pretty accurate.

23mm • ƒ/5 • 1/500s • ISO 400 • #photography #nature

I’ve been exploring genealogy again and… I think I may have found my maternal great grandfather’s Italian birth certificate—it’s in Italian of course so I could be reading it wrong, but it seems to match both his date of birth and parent’s names.

This weather alert is hilarious. 😒