Recently in July '26

July was a month full of unexpected events, milestones, and just busyness in general. It’s crazy that we’re way past the half of 2026, and that we’ll be soon – depending on how you look at “soon” – embarking into the autumn.

🍄 Life

At the beginning of the month, we had some friends visit, which is always nice. It was during the Alegria Festival here where we live, and there were food trucks from different countries, as well as from some of the Dutch overseas territories. The food was amazing. I really enjoyed the arepas. I’ve heard a lot about them, buit had never had them before!

Another nice event was with work: we did a team day where we sailed in the canals in Utrecht. It was very nice, lots of good time, good talks, good food. What I did not expect was that being in the sun so long would be soooo tiring.

Among others, I’ve dealt with electricity issues, which resulted in many conversations in Dutch on the phone. Some time ago I wasn’t yet that comfortable speaking on the phone in Dutch, but I think that has changed, just because it had to.

Despite the electricity problem being extremely annoying, I’m happy it’s solved and that I managed to take care of it. It happened while Chris was on vacation on a land far far away, so it’s not as if I had another option.

Maybe one of the most decisive moments this month was my decision to archive File Browser, an open source project I’ve created more than 11 years go. The reactions have been mostly positive, which makes me happy.

💪 Health

I might need to rename this section to something more broad, like “Health and Fitness”, at some point. The line that divides what goes here and what goes into the previous section is also becoming unclear. Anyways: in general, everything’s going well.

I had my last swimming lesson before summer break, and then I participated on the Zwem4daagse, where I swum 500 meters 4 days in a row. I’ve shared about both already. Since then, I’ve been hitting the swimming pool twice a week, with a more thought out plan than before. It’s great, I like it!

My wrist hasn’t seen much improvement the past months: it’s definitely stronger (we’ve done grip tests multiple times), probably stronger than it has ever been. Yet, putting my weight on it while it’s bent is still painful. My PT seems to be definitely set on figuring out what on earth is going on, so at least that’s positive!

📚 Reading

I’ve started reading Recursion, which I’m really enjoying until now. It’s from the same author as Dark Matter, which I’ve previously watched as a series, and I think it sort of matches the genre of books I enjoy to read.

🍿 Entertainment

THis past month we watched Backrooms on the cinema. It was… interesting and scary in ways I did not expect it to be. Besides that movie, we completed a few seasons from some series that had been going on for a while: The Afterparty, Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, Dertigers, Star City and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms.

That was all! Have a nice August!