🏠 Making This Place Our Home 6/8/25

Hi Everyone!

I had an idea recently, and I don’t know if anyone will take me up on my offer, but I will put it out there in case anyone does. I want this newsletter not just to be a one-way form of communication, but instead to be an opportunity to start a dialogue or conversation between us. With that being said, if any of you have any big updates, I would love to hear from you and potentially highlight that update too. I have some pretty awesome friends, so I want to showcase that. If anyone takes me up on this offer, Great! If not, also Great!

With that out of the way, let’s find out What’s Up With Will…

Things have been busy this past week (I say that like any week isn’t a busy week for me), as we have been full throttle on moving. It’s been a lot of packing boxes and moving them to the new apartment.

On Tuesday, we went to Ikea to buy some new furniture for the place as we are moving up from a one-bedroom to a two-bedroom! That’s a 200% increase. What’s more is that this was our third Ikea trip as a couple, and we still haven’t broken up. That’s a testament to a strong relationship if I have ever seen one. 

That’s also meant that we have done a lot of assembly of furniture too. When I say assembly, it’s mostly Rylee dealing with all the nuts and bolts of it all (I mean, she is an engineer), but I help out with moving the heavy pieces and providing moral support. It all balances out.

Unfortunately, moving in has also presented a challenge in that the place was a lot dirtier than we initially expected it to be. This also meant that we had to spend an inordinately large amount of time dedicated to just cleaning. On the bright side, we have a sparkly clean apartment now, and I now know how to use a carpet cleaner!

Even with all the moving things we have been doing, we made it a point to do some fun things throughout the week. 

Since moving to Oakland, we have been sporadically going to Trivia Nights. We will get in a rhythm and go for a couple of weeks straight before not doing it again for multiple months.

Everyone has their trivia night spot, and our spot is a brewery called Two Pitchers Brewing Company in Downtown Oakland. We figured that we would give it one last hurrah before we moved further away from the brewery.

What I love about Two Pitchers Brewing is that all the beer they make are radlers. For those who don’t know, a radler is a drink popular in Germany that is a mix of beer and generally a citrus-flavored soft drink. At Two Pitchers, though, they take radlers to a whole new level with a plethora of flavor combinations. I had the classic grapefruit and blood orange flavored radler, and a margarita flavored one too. What’s more is that you can get your drink served in a Boot!

I think an important thing to note is that we are not the best at Trivia, but we go for the good vibes. I like that you are, in general, going to learn something new at every trivia night. We decided to call ourselves the “Smarty Pints”, and we started pretty strong in the first round. But then came the music round…

The music rounds are always our downfall. Because of that round alone, we came in last place. If you or anyone you know is good at knowing music, let us know, as we would love to have you join our team.

On Thursday night, I had some time to go into the city for the Downtown First Thursday Event. This time, though, they had a special country-themed section. Now, San Francisco isn’t country, and I don’t know who thought that they were, but I figured this is the type of country crowd I can fit in with: a bunch of city-slickers cosplaying as cowboys. I practiced my “howdy y’all” a couple of times, and then I was off to the races riding a mechanical bull and taking a group line-dancing class.

I couldn’t stay long, as I had to run to the SF MOMA. 

As a special event for the First Thursday Street Party, the SF MOMA gives free tickets to anyone that lives in the Bay Area, and occasionally does a lecture series on some of the work showcased. This time around it was a lecture on the “Around Group f.64: Legacies and Counterhistories in Bay Area Photography” exhibit. They brought in the SF MOMA’s head of photography and a couple of the artists whose works are being shown to talk about the exhibit and the lasting impact of f/64.

Back in the 1920’s, the dominant style of photography was Pictorialism, which focused on making images try to imitate art. f/64 was a movement that rose in the 1930’s in the Bay Area that saw Pictorialism as watered down art, and wanted to create a new modernist style of photography that embraced the machine with sharply focused and carefully framed images. This style was made prominent by photographers like Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and Edward Weston and laid the foundation for a lot of modern American photography. I was able to walk through the exhibit after the lecture and see the works of the artists close up, too.

On the complete other side of the spectrum, I also got to see an exhibit entitled “Kunié Sugiura: Photopainting”. While f/64 was focused on realism and creating truth in photography, Sugiura’s work was focused on experimentation and transformation of photography through painted altering the image, whether that be cropping, enlarging, or even painting on the image. 

I loved being able to see such a juxtaposition between two vastly different art styles. I’m generally more of a meat and potatoes guy (read that as favoring f/64), but I couldn’t deny how beautiful Sugiura’s work was. Regardless of which style I preferred though, I realized my photography has a long way to go.

I had to rush back to Oakland though, as I had one last event for the night to attend: a game night with some friends. We went out to get some meat and potatoes at dinner (a burger from a place called TrueBurger), and then we started back up our Slay the Spire Campaign. 

I have a confession to make. At the end of our last Slay the Spire session, I was given homework to play the Slay the Spire video game. I didn’t complete it because I got hooked on another rogue-like called Balatro. The moral of this story is that you should not start playing a rogue-like unless you are prepared to abandon all other responsibilities.

Friday night, I went participated in a Magic: The Gathering Pre-release event at Victory Point Cafe. Victory Point Cafe is a cute little spot that is part cafe, part bar, and part board game shop.

This pre-release was special as it was a set focused on the Final Fantasy game series, taking actual characters and moments from the game and turning them into cards. This set is part of the Universes Beyond collection, which creates cards based on IP outside of MTG, like The Lord of the Rings and Marvel. A lot of the players that I talked to at the event have mixed feelings about Universes Beyond. Some dislike that Magic is losing some of its lore and diluting the identity of the brand, but others appreciate that there are opportunities to play with some of their favorite characters and that it brings new people to the hobby. I am of the second group. 

As for the event itself, my fantasies of winning were quickly squashed and I finished 1-2 in my rounds.

On Saturday, we hosted our first-ever Belmont Stakes Party.

For some context, my parents met at the Kentucky Derby, so growing up, every year my family threw an annual Kentucky Derby party. We’d gather with close friends, share great food and drinks, and draw horse names from a hat to cheer on during each race. We weren’t frequent party hosts, but that was our thing, and it always felt special. Then in college, funnily enough, Rylee and I’s first date was at a Kentucky Derby party.

Now that I’m older, I wanted to revive that tradition, so I threw on a jockey outfit and reserved the backroom of Kingfish Pub and Cafe in Oakland for an afternoon of good vibes, cold drinks, and some friendly horse racing fun. 

The pub was gracious enough to make two special drinks for us: the classic Mint Julep and the Belmont’s signature drink, the Belmont Jewel (which is a combination of Whiskey, lemonade, and pomegranate juice).

As soon as everyone arrived, our friends at the Wine Mine (our favorite local wine shop) opened early for a private tasting where we got to try wine from Eastern Europe. We go to the Wine Mine almost any Saturday that we are free for a $2 tasting, so I loved that we got to share this experience with everyone else. I would very much recommend this spot if you are in the area.

Then we got back to the pub where everyone hung out and watched horse racing for the rest of the day. I didn’t know how much everyone would get into the races when we pulled numbers out of the hat, but come race time, everyone was cheering and hollering for their horse to win. 

It was a close race, but at the end of the day, Sovereignty pulled ahead and won the race. This meant that the winner of our 2025 Belmont Stakes Party was Jessa!

Afterwards, the remaining people at our party went to Asmara Kitchen, a local Ethiopian restaurant that’s been in business for over 40 years. This Ethiopian restaurant has been on our list to go since we moved here, and it only took two years to get to. The food was also totally worth the wait, and I’m a little sad we didn’t go there sooner!

This whole day really felt like the encapsulation of our time in the Bay so far. We came here knowing barely anyone, and now we have this amazing group of friends. We also have found fantastic places like the Wine Mine and built relationships with the people that run them. We truly have made this place our home.

This newsletter is about y’all following my life journey. To that end, I decided to make the video I watched about how to use a carpet cleaner my video of the week. Now you know how to use a carpet cleaner, too! Who said you can’t learn anything practical in a newsletter? Also, take a look at that marvelous thumbnail!