Modern Simple Living

FOOD & DRINK — REFLECTION Building a Home Bar Catalog, One Cocktail at a Time Four spirits, four decent drinks, and the slow realization that a good cocktail is mostly ratios. 4 Core Recipes 4 Spirits Covered 3 New This Round 2026 Year Table of Contents ① A Growing Catalog ② The New Additions ③ Refining the Margarita ④ What's Next Section I A Growing Catalog 2026 has quietly become the year I learned to make my own cocktails. It started with a couple of bar tools and a curiosity about what actually separates a good Old Fashioned from a mediocre one, and it's turned into something closer to a small, deliberate catalog. I'm now at four drinks I'd call decent rather than merely drinkable, and between them I've got rum, vodka, tequila, and whisky covered. That's not a lot of ground, but it's enough to make most requests at a home bar without apologizing for the pour. Section II The New Additions The Mojito is fussier than I expected — a lo...

TRAVEL — HOTEL STAY A Weekend at the Gaylord Texan A deal-driven stay in Grapevine turned into an unexpectedly productive little retreat. Grapevine, TX Location Weekend Stay Included Breakfast $360 F&B Credit Table of Contents ① The Deal ② Where I Actually Spent My Time ③ Everything Under One Roof ④ Would I Go Back Section I The Deal I booked this on a whim, mostly because the price was right. I wasn't expecting much beyond a bed and a pool. Turned out to be one of those cases where the deal undersold itself. Breakfast was included, and on top of that they threw in $360 in food and beverage credits, which is basically covers everything. Section II Where I Actually Spent My Time I didn't do much sightseeing. Most of the weekend was spent finding quiet corners of the resort to sit and decompress. The standout was the Silver Bar near the main lobby. Good drink, good ambient noise, and it turned out to be a surprisingly solid spot to sit with a laptop and get...

GEAR REVIEW — TECH Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8: Retiring the A32 5G A mid-tier workhorse finally hands off work-phone duty to a flagship flip. A32 5G Replaces Flagship Segment 2 Screens Flip Form Factor Table of Contents ① A Venerable Warrior, Finally Retired ② Why the Flip 8 ③ Early Impressions ④ Form Factor, and What's Next Section I A Venerable Warrior, Finally Retired The A32 5G was never supposed to last this long as a work phone. It did anyway, and in the process gave me a genuine soft spot for both Samsung's hardware and Android as a platform. Its battery life, in particular, still outpaces phones released years later, including my personal iPhones. But battery life alone doesn't make a device usable when the processor and RAM start buckling under company chat and email. Section II Why the Flip 8 I wasn't shopping for a flagship experience so much as trying to fix a bottleneck. The A32 could no longer keep up with the basics of a work phone, and th...

GEAR REVIEW — TECH Why I'm Trading the iPhone Air for the iPhone 17 Two weeks in California taught me that battery life and a second camera aren't optional extras. 2 Weeks Trip Length 6.5" Air Screen +1 Cameras Gained Vapor Cooling Pro Exclusive Table of Contents ① The Trip That Exposed the Gaps ② The Air's Charms — and Its Limits ③ Where the 17 Pro Line Loses Me ④ Living With the 17 Section I The Trip That Exposed the Gaps The Air had been fine for a year of ordinary use — email, texting, the occasional photo. Two weeks driving around California with GPS running most of the day was a different story. By the second day I was hunting for a car charger just to keep the screen on for directions. And more than once I handed my phone off and borrowed a friend's 17 Pro Max just to get a usable second shot of something worth remembering. Section II The Air's Charms — and Its Limits I want to be clear: the Air is a genuinely nice object. The 6.5-inch...

CAR NOTES — FUTURE GARAGE The Case for a V8 Lexus: Why the IS500 Is on My Five-Year List A naturally aspirated V8 in a Lexus body might be the last of its kind, and that's exactly the point. 2016 RX350 Current Car 2025 IS500 Target Car 5.0L V8 Engine Table of Contents ① What the RX350 Taught Me ② Why Not the IS350, Why the IS500 ③ A Compromise, Not a Sports Car ④ The Long Game Section I What the RX350 Taught Me Picking up the 2016 RX350 did something I didn't expect: it restored my faith in Lexus. After the maintenance headaches of my 2007 IS250 — which I've come to chalk up to the inherent costs of direct injection — a fully equipped, well-sorted V6 SUV felt like a return to what the brand is supposed to be. It also reminded me how much fun a slightly more powerful engine can add to otherwise ordinary driving. The 3.5L V6 has real character on the highway, more than the Camry or my old Highlander ever offered. But it also has a ceiling, and that ceiling is...

GEAR REVIEW — GAMING No Man's Sky, Take Two: Buying the Same Game Twice Ten  years and one platform later, a launch-day disappointment finally became the relaxing game I wanted. 2016 First Purchase PS4 → MacBook Pro Platform 2 Times Bought Table of Contents ① A Second Chance, on a New Machine ② What's Actually Changed ③ The Part I Didn't Expect ④ Worth Buying Twice Section I A Second Chance, on a New Machine For my first game on the new MacBook Pro, I went with No Man's Sky, mostly because it happened to be on sale. It felt like a low-stakes way to break in a new machine. This wasn't my first time buying it, though. I picked it up on PS4 back on launch day in 2016, back when the game was, generously, a work in progress. Section II What's Actually Changed The gap between then and now is bigger than I expected. Base building has real depth to it now, and piloting has opened up considerably — you can fly and command almost anything, not just your ...