🚪Closing Doors 7/6/25

Many articles have been popping up on my newsfeeds recently about how next year, the US could have smaller supplies of Fireworks, and ergo, based on the laws of supply and demand (thanks AP Macroeconomics), be more expensive. Here’s hoping that everyone got to see a lot of good fireworks this year! Worst case scenario, I’ve also been seeing a lot of impressive drone shows online, so that might not be a bad alternative (especially considering they are a lot quieter). I never thought I’d be the kind of person to complain about how loud fireworks are, but here we are.

Anyway, let’s find out What’s Up With Will…

Moving is literally the worst. It makes me never want to move again. I guess I am now stuck in Walnut Creek permanently. Oh well..

For real though, I am glad to announce that, at long last, this will be the very last moving update (fingers crossed at least). This past Monday was the last day of our lease, so we drove back to our old apartment one last time to pack up the remaining things, do a little bit of cleaning, and officially say goodbye to our place. It was small and sometimes felt like we were stepping on each other’s toes, but it was our first place that we got to call home together.

I don’t think either Rylee or I had the faintest idea about the twists and turns that would happen in these past two years. I mean, I was still in my tech media job, and I had not even an inkling of an idea of going back to school, and I know for a fact that Rylee was not intending for her job to be in Sacramento. I can’t forget about all the adventures that we were able to go on and experience as well. And equally important, the nights we had together in our old apartment, from charcuterie date nights to binge-watching TV shows.

As the saying goes, when one door closes, another one opens.

At risk of sounding too cliche, I am going to start this section with another old adage: You can take the man out of the city, not the city out of the man.

Just a couple of days later, I decided to take a day trip back into San Francisco because I got a couple of free passes for some museums. I don’t know if I have brought this up before, but a lot of the free passes I get for museums are from my local library through a program called Discover and Go. I would check out your local library for resources like this!

The first stop was the de Young Museum, a fine arts museum in Golden Gate Park. I think these galleries are extremely well curated, as the section I walked through presents American Art as a sort of living narrative that evolves alongside the changing times of the nation as a whole. From depictions of liberty and freedom to critiques of race, gender, and power, the galleries show how the art changes, why particular styles emerged, and how each piece reflects some of the biggest ideas and issues in the US at the time it was created. 

The second museum was right across the street, the California Academy of Sciences. The Academy is a Natural History museum with an emphasis on the animals that live alongside us. It has an earthquake simulation room, a 4-story rainforest dome, an aquarium (featuring an albino alligator named Claude), an earthquake simulation room, and not one, but two Tyrannosaurus Rexes (due to a special Dino Days Exhibit). 

Fun Fact: recent research suggests that T. Rexes were actually covered in feathers. Those guys would have been scary birds indeed.

They also had an exhibit entitled “Unseen Oceans,” which shows how much we don’t know about the ocean. We only have 15% of the seafloor mapped, so who knows what other creatures are down there? My takeaway of this museum is that nature is scary.

All that exploring can make a man hungry, so before I started my trek back to Walnut Creek, I stopped for some ice cream at San Francisco Hometown Creamery, which says it is the first in the city to make small-batch ice cream from scratch on-site (I don’t know how true that statement is, but it is pretty specific so I believe them). I couldn’t decide on a flavor, so the server convinced me to get a flight of five flavors. 

There was a plaque about how ice cream is the great unifier, and I believe them too. The only real debate that can emerge is which flavor is the best. To play devil’s advocate, though, that argument can get dicey.

I woke up Friday morning, and I checked my clock. It was 9:00 AM. I rushed to the living room and turned on the TV for my favorite sporting event of the year, the Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest.

This year in particular was special as it would be the GOAT Joey Chestnut’s first time back after a dispute between him and Nathan’s Famous over being sponsored by plant-based meat producer Impossible Foods (Not joking). No one can eat hot dogs the way Joey can, and while he didn’t beat his record of 76 hot dogs, he still blew the rest of his competition out of the water by chowing down 70 in 10 minutes.

Our plan was to go out shopping and have a date night celebrating Rylee’s first week of work. We got the shopping part done, but when it came time to get dinner, we found that a lot of places were shut for the holiday. It seems that while places want you to spend money, they don’t want you to eat.

Our favorite burger spot in the Bay is a place called Gott’s Roadside in Napa. However, it turns out that there is a Gott’s right smack-dab in downtown Walnut Creek, so we had our date night there. It’s a blessing and a curse to be this close to one of our favorite burger spot. And I guess at the end of the day, there is nothing more Americana than burgers and fries. 

Afterwards, we stopped at Tiki Tom’s, Walnut Creek’s very own tiki bar. Walking in, the theming is so on-point. It feels like walking into a tastefully done Rainforest Cafe, if that’s even possible. The drinks were also pretty good!

To finish off the day, we listened to some music in Civic Park from the Walnut Creek Concert Band, and then went back to the apartment to see some fireworks from the rooftop. Apparently, Contra Costa County has a strict no-fireworks policy, but that didn’t stop some people from trying.

On Sunday, I decided to end my long weekend with another adventure. I walked around Walnut Creek and found a miniature golf course called Putters Goat Track Country Club. The outside looked a little run-down, and more than a bit more sketchy, but inside was a 24-hole mini-golf course. I found that I did much better at mini-golf than I did at regular golf. I got multiple below par, and 3 hole-in-ones. You could say that mini-golf is more my for(e)té.

From now on, I am going to take all of my important business meeting out on the putt-putt course.

Then, I decided to watch the new Lilo and Stitch at the local theater, because why not? I heard a lot of hate online for this live-action remake, but I kind of liked it. I didn’t love the original animated movie, so maybe that biases my opinion, but I thought the humor was good, and the characters grew on me.

I hope you all had a great long weekend!

I think somewhere deep down, I knew the Dance Party trope existed. This video, alongside the Dance Party Endings Video by Karsten Runquist that inspired it, shows just how prevalent it was in kid movies. I completely disagree with some of his ratings, though.