7: Eepy

Luke Oliver

05 Jul 2025 • 2 min read

This is a completely and totally unrelated photo, but one that I have on my iMac at home, which is what I'm writing this post on. If I remember correctly, this is a view of whatever river runs through Minneapolis, I was there last May as part of that year's CWC, and walked the city to take cool photos.

I'll keep this one short, because I am tired, and it is very late.

Today was a good day, a simple weekend. I got out of bed at ~10:30, went to visit my sister at the ski resort she works at, brought her lunch and hung out for a little while. My dad and I dropped off the rest of the family at home and went out to the Backcountry warehouse, where I tried on a few backpacks and belts and got what will be a significant upgrade in the everyday luggage department. I love my little backpack, but it is in fact very small, and the top grab handle tore out on one side, which makes it much less usable day-to-day, so I got a significantly larger backpack to use for days when I need to carry more than my laptop and notebook (which is most days, if I'm being honest).

I will definitely be keeping the little backpack, and I'll eventually take it to a seamstress to fix the handle, because the rest of the backpack is totally functional, but for the rest of the summer at least I'll be pivoting to the new one. I honestly could probably have pulled off this weekend trip in just that backpack, if I had had it before.

After dad and I got back from the Backcountry warehouse, we had a family dinner with my grandparents, which was great. It was nice to see everyone again while I'm here, and I provided some much-needed tech support.

I then had the Utah Locals btw(TM) over, which was as lovely as it always is. We gossiped, played card games, and did the incredibly difficult NYT Crossword (though I didn't realize until we'd finished it that we actually did tomorrows, Sundays, because it switches over ungodly early on Saturdays. If doing Saturday and Sunday in the wrong order loses me my streak, it'll make me sad.) We then also played some of the Contexto, which is a very similar word-based brain teaser game that we all did collaboratively for a while. I am so glad that my friends find that kind of intellectually challenging games fun, because it is one of my favorite pastimes, and sharing it with others and working together is truly the cherry on top.

I head back to DC tomorrow night, and it'll be a quick turnaround once I get there, but I'll manage alright, I've had worse than 7 hours of sleep.