Hello Everyone!

I have some exciting news to share: Brent’s parents’ farm, Ivy Fields Farm, has been nominated for USA Today’s 10 Best Farm Stays in America! While that’s freaking awesome, the fight for first place is currently underway. We can make Ivy Fields Farm the #1 Farm Stay in America. Aside from voting on it just because I tell you to (which, to be honest, makes me question our friendship just a little bit), we went back there for Brent’s Pig Picking (🐷Pig Roast 11/09/25), so you can see photos of it yourself. It’s a beautiful property with some adorable animals and some amazing people running the spot. You can vote here once a day, every day until Sunday! 

With that said, let’s find out What’s Up With Will…

I stumbled upon a free Summer Virtual Training Conference for Faculty and staff put on by the Adobe Education Institute (Adobe Education Institute Virtual Training Conference for Faculty & Staff North America 2026). For the first part of the week, I sat in multiple sessions for the first part of the week primarily dedicated to acquiring hands-on experience with their Adobe Express tool, a Browser-based cloud application that allows you to quickly produce and publish creative content using some of the most popular tools in the Adobe Creative Suite. While it’s not as powerful as say, Photoshop, Illustrator, or Premiere Pro, I see the potential for this being another tool in the toolkit for any type of work created in class, ranging from recording videos for virtual speeches to crafting visual aids for presentations (especially considering how SFSU Students get Adobe Creative Cloud for FREE). 

The sessions also offered opportunities to practice developing some of the items they were talking about. I played around with video and slide creation, as well as tried my hand at website development and making graphics with the templates they provided! Above are some of my creations!

Aside from the professional development (I’m always grinding), I also did some fun stuff close to home!

Daniel and Hannah’s wedding is quickly approaching, and as I am the Best Man, I am going to be decked out to the nines in a formal tux. Since I don’t go to many black-tie affairs, though, I had to go get fitted for a rental tux. In fact, I think the last time I wore formal wear was my Large Group Performance Evaluation (LGPE) for high school band.

As I arrived, I was informed that they were going to size me in a normal suit and make adjustments as necessary for when I pick up the tuxedo, which I was slightly disappointed about, but I think I still look good! (Check out my rad squirrel socks!) When I asked for a picture, the woman took a few shots and started telling me about a customer who thought the lighting was bad. Apparently, they had them walk to the front of the store to do a whole 20-minute photo shoot in the Men’s Warehouse! While that sounded tempting, I thought the one photo would suffice…

Also, what happens when someone loves you too much???? Rylee and I found out by going to see the horror movie Obsession with Maria and Johnny! I am not the biggest horror fan, but Rylee promised to hold my hand for the entire movie. Aside from a few jump scares, though, I didn’t leave too emotionally scarred. I would describe it more as a creepy comedy psychological horror. I give it the Will Willis seal of approval!

Historians say that the bachelor party, or stag party as some call it, dates back to at least the 5th Century B.C (Haire, 2009). The Spartans would hold a dinner in the groom-to-be’s honor and make toasts on their behalf. The term bachelor party, though, emerged much later, appearing in a 1922  Scottish publication of Chambers’s Journal of Literature, Science and Arts to describe a “Jolly Old” Party, and it’s been more so in the past century that the bachelor party has morphed into this revelry of drunken debauchery that we have come to expect of it. At the end of the day, though, I would consider it to be a quintessential rite of passage. It is both a beautiful reminder and celebration of one’s incredible life thus far and the transition to the next phase of an equally incredible married life, and you get to do this while being surrounded by the people who mean the most to you. This week, it was Daniel’s Rite of Passage, and you already know that it was going to be a “Jolly Old” Time!

When we were planning the bachelor party, I asked Daniel what he wanted to do, and he emphatically answered, “CRUISE!”, so that is what we were going to do! After some discussions in the bachelor party group chat, we settled on a 3-night Bahamas Cruise sailing from Port Canaveral. After arriving late in Orlando, we drove to the port the next morning to meet our ship for the weekend: the MSC Seashore, a Seaside EVO-class cruise ship that represented an improvement in design from MSC’s older Seaside-class design. We waited for everyone to arrive, and then we walked onto the boat.

Now, I believe it’s important to note here that at the old age of 27, I  was fully planning on opting out of the alcoholic drink package. However, when I was about to tell Daniel, he texted me, telling me he had already booked us both for the drink package, so I would have to keep up. A lot of these guys are in their prime, having just graduated from college, and for many of them, this is their first time to properly let loose. As we were walking through the security line, everyone began chatting about their lofty goals of hitting the 15-alcoholic-drinks-per-day limit. Meanwhile, I was doing the mental math in my head. Assuming 8 hours of sleep (which, I know, is dubious at best for a bachelor party), it meant that I would have to drink 1.07 drinks per hour to hit that goal. Suddenly, this cruise was both a sprint and a marathon.

With an intense schedule to keep, we wasted no time getting our first drink, toasting to the groom-to-be, and then exploring all that the MSC Seashore had to offer. For some reason, the ship designers opted for New York City-theming, featuring a Central Park Restaurant, a Long Island Pool Deck (where sipping Long Island Iced Teas felt like a requirement), and an expansive retail and entertainment area known as Times Square. It even has a miniature 9.5-foot Statue of Liberty. We walked around checking out the casino, the 6 different pools, the dining hall, and finally our rooms. We spent the day doing what you are supposed to be doing on a cruise: relaxing. We lounged by the pool, gambled at the roulette wheel, devoured our way through the buffet in a rage of pure gluttony, and made generous use of our drink package.

The next morning, we woke up docked in Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, which served as a pirate haven in the 17th and 18th centuries. While I was asking about what the plans were at breakfast, it became evident that there was only one item on the itinerary for this spot: Señor Frog’s.

We pulled up to life-sized cartoonish frogs at the entrance, and speakers blaring “Shots”, which I imagine is exactly what the pirates of yore experienced when frequenting this bar. We got things started with two buckets of Sands Light, the local Bahamas light beer, and it was sort of idyllic looking out on the blue water, but the seas were about to get quite turbulent pretty quickly. 

We told the server it was his’s bachelor party, and she immediately ripped off his hat and started blowing on a whistle while sprinting away. She came back with a squirt bottle filled with a mysterious orange (and presumably alcoholic) liquid and proceeded to squirt some in all of our mouths. She then scurried away and came back once again, attaching an “OnlyFans Model” sign to his’s chair while giving him a wheel to spin for a special prize. When it landed on free shots, she ran away again, and a few minutes later, she brought out an airplane filled with lemon drop shots for us to take. Moments later, she brought out yard-length glasses of frozen drinks to all of us, and I was passed an extra strong piña colada. It didn’t end there, though.

She kept on bringing out shots and yards to our table until we practically pleaded for the drinks to stop flowing. When it was all said and done, I think we were given 5 rounds of shots and 2 yards each. In between our shots, I managed to find the time to ask the table, “What’s a fun memory of Daniel that you have?” I really enjoyed hearing all the memories that they made together, all the while making a new one as we spoke.

Our final day was spent on Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve, MSC’s very own private island. Located in the Bimini Islands, it was an artificial island built in the 1960’s for the purposes of mining aragonite sand. After years of dredging, the island was left to decay, but MSC leased the land in 2015, cleaned up the island, and developed a new resort that would obtain marine reserve status. Our time here was much more laid-back than the previous day’s chaos. As opposed to other cruise lines’ private islands, it felt more like a secluded retreat than an amusement park. Instead of slides, there were 8 different beaches, so we pulled up to the closest next to the cruise ship and spent the day in the clear water and soaking up the Bahamian sun.

If I am going to be honest, I was a bit worried about being the 11th wheel, but everyone in attendance was so inviting and friendly. While I have partied with Daniel’s friends on a few occasions when we would go back to Auburn, this trip really allowed me to get to know each member of the wedding party more. While I did not get anywhere close to my 15-drink limit on any day, I thought it was a freaking sick bachelor party that we will be talking about for ages! I can’t wait to party with these guys again at the wedding!

All this talk about weddings reminds me of one of my favorite reality TV shows that has ever existed. Each episode of Don’t Tell The Bride focuses on one couple who gets $5,000-ish dollars to plan a wedding. The kicker, though, is that they separate them and only let the man plan the wedding. As you can already tell, this almost always leads to catastrophe. If you can’t, here is a video to show how chaotic it can get.