hello, september.

Hello? Is anyone still there? My online presence since June has been practically nonexistent -- I can absolutely blame my new job for that one. I worked as much as I possibly could before school limited my ability to bring in income. On my off days I was too exhausted to take photos.

I was lucky to be able to spend a week with my friends at the shore in Virginia Beach just before school started back up. I was mostly unplugged the entire week! No wifi/minimal cell service was one of the first things we discovered upon our arrival. I'm thankful for it, though. We played lots of card, dice, and board games. We drank and were merry. Every night (aside from my birthday dinner at a local crab shack) we had home cooked meals together. A select few of us would wander onto the beaches at night and stargaze. We were able to catch the tail end of the Perseid meteor shower and were able to witness bioluminescent waves to boot!

No, I'm serious. The waves glowed. I took a photo:

A crappy zero-light iPhone photo, but still!!! I had asked my friends "are the waves glowing!?" and they were all skeptical until a big wave crashed and it looked like a thunderstorm was happening within the foam. I forget how long we all stood out there mesmerized -- none of us had seen anything like it before! Thanks, phytoplankton!

I really hope we're able to make vacations like that a regular thing every year. It was wonderful!

I'm back in school now, my hours at work are cut back, and I'm keeping myself busy studying. I have a small degree of free time with which, as you might be able to tell, I used today to spruce things up around the blog! This summer was a rough one. I'm back and am sorry for my absence. Sometimes life just takes off and all you can do is hold on and wait for things to settle down!