Time to write my first official entry for Kevinnissimo! Before I get to the main entry, I’m going to briefly highlight how I’m going to organize entries for this site.
I’ve been enjoying the intuitive and organized design of WordPress. It’s been quite helpful since it allows me to keep all of the information in one place. An example is regarding my handouts. Rather than having the PDF in a separate page or site, I can have them as a downloadable link at the end of the entry.
As I had said in my introductory pages for this site, I wanted to keep things a bit more simple. To begin, I ran through different ideas and finalized them to the following topics for the first entry in each category:
| Personal | Archive | Learning |
| Best friend’s pre-wedding venue visit Korean music and drama | One of the fashion talks I attended One of my museum visits (The Met or the American Museum of Natural History) | Nutrition Microbiology |
For personal blog entries, I usually cover two to three topics per post. There would be a main topic (such as an event, holiday/vacation, or an area of interest) with one or two other minor points of interest such as a TV show or a past memory. I’m also going to divide entries into smaller chunks. Looking back at my former archived blog entries, they were quite large. Again, I want Kevinnissimo to be more simplistic and easier to read. I found that stuffing too much information into one entry is quite a task to read.
The blog entries which will be placed in the Archive were the ones I had previously written on my first site. The entries will be kept in their original state. I wrote the original entries when my first site was created using Flash. When I spoke to tech support, they informed me that the entries would not transfer over when I switched my site to HTML5. That would not have been good since I would have lost five years of blog entries! What I did was save everything into a document before I performed the site conversion. With these entries on hand, I can add them along the way here.
Finally, the Learning section will be similar to my handouts, but I will instead spread out the information. Rather than having information divided by chapters, I’m going to break them down into smaller sections/units.
Now on to the main entry! 😀
Since this is the first official entry for the personal blog, I felt like my best friend’s wedding preparations would be a great start.
My best friend and I spoke over the summer to plan a time to catch up. On May, she told me about how her boyfriend (now fiancé) proposed to her. She showed me pictures of the proposal which were absolutely adorable. We scheduled a time the weekend after Labor Day to have lunch at the venue where she is going to have the wedding and reception. The venue is Maritime Parc located at Liberty State Park.
It was the perfect day to catch up. The weather was gorgeous. It was that comfortable cool which you experience during early autumn or spring. Usually, I would be at Liberty State Park during the summer for barbecues (and it would end up raining somehow!) when the weather was a bit hotter. So it was nice to not have the heat beating down on me!
We had reservations for 12:30 PM. My best friend (Jenny), her fiancé (Paul), and I bumped into each other at the parking lot and greeted each other with hugs. The hostess was very friendly and gave us a warm smile as we were promptly seated. We chose to sit inside, but were next to the deck overlooking the waterfront.
For drinks, I got the iced Earl grey tea, Jenny got the strawberry cucumber cooler, and Paul got a Coke. We were catching up on things such as how our summers went, work, family, and the general “going ons” in our lives.
After a bit, we ordered our food. Jenny got the steak and eggs, Paul got the burger, and I got the lobster mac and cheese. We got a very hearty lunch!
We discussed the details of the wedding and how preparations were going. I’m pretty excited to be a part of the wedding party. We were discussing colors, ideas, and other fun stuff. You’ll see everything in action in 2020 when the time comes. It’ll be wonderful! 😉
After we ate our meal, we still had room for dessert. I got the coffee and tiramisu while they shared a chocolate cake.
It was really nice catching up. The last time I saw them was during Jenny’s birthday last October. We went to Chelsea Market and went karaoking afterwards with her family. I enjoyed seeing them all again after such a long time. Here are some pictures we took back then:
As we were eating dessert, we shared stories of vacations, Disneyworld, family members’ quirks, and other vibrant stories. It made me want to go back to Disneyworld! Who doesn’t love a good theme park?
After a bit, we decided to walk around and enjoy the views from the park. We went to the top to look at the event space; however, they were fixing up so we couldn’t go inside. We did take pictures of the park from the top though!
We walked downstairs and sat on a bench close to the old railroad terminal. As we were sitting, there was a wedding party walking along the path to get wedding photos taken. Since the place where Jenny and Paul want to take photos is a bit farther away from Maritime Parc, they were sharing ideas on how to transport the wedding party from one end to the other. One of the ideas we talked about was golf carts which made us smile.
People were walking their dogs, biking, strolling with family and friends, and were just enjoying the sunshine. I’m sure a lot of you try to take advantage of any free time you have to relax and unwind. This was definitely one of the highlights I had from catching up with Jenny and Paul. Despite our hectic schedules, we’re able to laugh and share stories with each other.
After we conversed, we parted ways. We had one final talk about chicken wings and how we’d all drive out somewhere just to get good food. Food is so comforting! Afterwards, they had to meet with the photographer, and I went home to finish up laundry and relax. We promised to catch up again before the holidays.
Over the summer, I began watching Hotel Del Luna. My friend who is a big fan of IU (아이유) brought this to my attention. I watched the first two episodes and fell in love with the story. Here is the official poster they released for the drama:
IU has such a sweet and kind personality, so it was wonderful to see her showcase a different personality in the drama. I loved her unique wardrobe since it perfectly matched her mood when interacting with the other characters. You could tell she was the one “holding the cards” throughout each encounter. Overall, the entire cast was incredible and got me emotionally invested in the drama.
My friend was already halfway through it, so I have to catch up! I’m pretty excited though since I loved the dynamic between the two main characters (Jang Man-Wol/장만월 and Ku Chan-Seong/구찬성). One of the scenes that stood out was Man-Wol trying to test Chan-Seong by making him bring the coffee to her without spilling the drop. I don’t want to spoil what happened along the way, but I was in suspense at what the outcome would be at the time.
Additionally, the soundtrack is phenomenal. At the end of the episode when they played Another Day, I was hooked. Then you have such talented singers like Taeyeon/태연 and Gummy/거미 contribute to the soundtrack and you know it’s going to be a treat. I actually enjoyed every single singer who contributed to Hotel Del Luna’s soundtrack. (Now I’m going to probably end up binge watching the entire drama!)
But indeed, I’m looking forward to finishing it up and going through the story within the next few weeks! It brought back so much memories of college.
It feels so great getting back to blogging. Despite random schedules or new life events popping up, I always feel at home when I write. I tried to get into Twitter, but it didn’t take off for me. I do have an Instagram account set up for Kevinnissimo so that might be something that I can push forward with. Since my blog entries have pictures already, I can highlight a “main picture” in my Instagram. So stay tuned for that!
I’ve been playing around with the widgets here on WordPress and trying to come up with a style I like before I launch the site. I think I pretty much have all of the main elements in place. I don’t want to overthink things before I end up getting too caught up in the details. I think I’ll launch the site tonight and adjust things along the way.
Kevinnissimo: Adventures and Inspiration 