This past weekend I went to the beach for the first time this summer. It was an extra-hot day on the sand with a fair number of greenheads, so I wanted to go into the ocean pretty early on. August along Atlantic Ocean shores has the kid of cold that will take your breath away, but I knew I wanted to get full-body relief and do one of my favorite things ever: float staring up at the sky. On the way out I debated every choice I’d ever made in life, and once fully in I wasn’t so much acclimated as much as my body was just totally numb from the water temperature. My friend and I started talking about cold plunging, which people have been hyping as a miracle for all kinds of ailments. I admire those folks, but I will say this: my life is hard in many, many other ways. I don’t want to voluntarily do hard stuff like that. I want to do easy stuff.
In the spirit of doing easy stuff, here are some fun and easy to-dos for your weekend.
Eat: Have you seen the videos going around TikTok and Instagram from B. Dylan Hollis? He’s known for taking absurd recipes from vintage cookbooks and actually give them a try. (So. Many. Jello. Molds.) Pick up his latest cookbook and give them a try – he’s carefully untangled the good from the gross. Perfect for the vintage foodie and the daredevil alike.
See: Take a peek out of someone else’s window with the website WindowSwap. By simply opening up your browser window, you can then see the view out of someone else’s window. (Wow. Very meta.) In my time experimenting on the site, I saw a glimpse in Orleans, France and a beautiful early morning in Paris. Imagine my surprise when I saw an incredibly rainy day in Philadelphia, when it was nighttime and had been a bone-dry day across the river in New Jersey. It seems the website will show footage not necessarily in real time, at least in the free preview mode I utilized. While I’m unsure what all the $5/month paid plan offers, I am proud to report that the plants on Policlinico’s small patio in Rome are doing quite well.
Do: This isn’t a novel activity. It’s nothing surprising or necessarily timely. Hype up your friends. I mean it. Do you have a friend that is doing something awesome, maybe going back to school after taking time away during treatment? Or trying a new sport, even if it means learning with little kids? Hype them up. Give them a pep talk, a congratulatory talk, or a string of compliments. You never know what someone needs to hear. Tell them they’re an amazing friend who makes the people around them feel comfortable and like they can be honest about anything. Cheer them on and remind them that most people never even get to the point of trying out a recreational league for anything once they’re older than 15. Put it in a text. Send them a voice memo that they can save. The point is, make it something they can come back to over and over again. They deserve it.
Have a vintage, perspective-shifting, gassing your crew up kind of weekend,
Chrsitina
