Entry 828: Halloween 2026

It's Halloween, y'all! And it's coming at the right time. I've been feeling kinda glum this past week (an accumulation of small stuff), and Halloween is a fun festive occasion to raise my spirits (from the dead!). Lil' S1 is doing his own thing with friends across the city, and then S, Lil' S2, and I are going over to some friends' house in the neighborhood. The adults will all hang out and drink and eat, and the kids will go trick-or-treating. We will probably have to have at least one adult go out with them. Maybe me. I enjoy being out and about on Halloween. The neighborhood* gets popping in a way that mine never did as a kid. And it's so nice to see a community hanging out together, in person, when so many forces in society—social, economic, etc.—are pushing us away from human interaction.

*Though not our particular street which gets almost no trick-or-treaters for some reason. 

I took something tantamount to a "me morning" today. I wasn't planning on it. But I turned my weekend alarm off at 8:30 and went back to sleep and was out until 10:30. Then I got up and decided to treat myself to a Starbucks, which I normal don't do, because I'd be spending $150 on coffee each month if I bought one everyday, and now I'm just chilling, writing this blog entry. The rest of the family is mostly preoccupied with other things, which affords me this opportunity. Also, S was away for work this past week, so she's less likely to give me the side eye for zoning out in my own world. 

I also deleted the news podcasts in my feed that I usually listen to Saturday morning. The midterms are right around the corner, which is undoubtedly a cause of my malaise this past week, and I don't want to listen to stories about them. The Dems are favored to do very well, which means either they won't, which will be a huge disappointment, or they will, which isn't such a great thing either, given some of the candidates they are running. I've been trying, and mostly succeeding, to not get emotionally invested in the election this time around. It is the epitome of "no sense worrying about something out of my control." I vote in DC, so I already voted on everything important during the primary, and there isn't even much of a point for me to submit a ballot (but I will anyway). I'll vote for the prohibition of force feeding animals,* which is the only real thing on the DC slate this election.

*Humans have to kill something to produce the amount of food necessary to feed everybody on the planet—if not the animals directly, then the pests that would destroy our crops—but we don't have to torture them.

I could donate money to candidates out of the district, but I don't actually think that helps. Every cycle we get these Democratic candidates, ready to pull off the upset in some red area, and they receive outsize national attention and build up this enormous war chest, and then they lose handily. Beto O'Rourke is the first example that comes to mind, but there was also that lady who was gonna beat Mitch McConnell in Kentucky and that dude in South Carolina and probably a half dozen other examples I could come up with if I thought about it a bit longer. Now, don't get me wrong, Dems should try like hell to win in races like these. The political winds shift can shift drastically over time, even if it doesn't always seem like it. But it happens by winning the support of people who actually vote in those elections, not from outsiders. In fact, one of my semi-hot takes is that too much outside money often hurts candidates because it raises the profile of the election and makes the locals resentful of the interlopers meddling in their business.

Anyway... another thing that got me down this week is that I went into CVS. I should have known better. CVS's are among the most depressing establishments in the country, and the one in my neighborhood is particularly bad. There are only three reasons I go in there: To get a vaccine; to pick up a prescription; to buy some over the counter medicine. The first one is the best of the three, and it involves getting jabbed with a needle. The second one is typically an interminable experience, where I wait in a line that stretches all the way through one of the aisles, and there is always at least one person in front of me who argues vociferously with the cashier about things the cashier clearly has no control over. (They don't know why your doctor only prescribed one-week of medication instead of two! They're just facilitating the transaction!) I actually switched my pharmacy to the one in the supermarket next to the CVS (which is still not great, but much better), but S and the kids still use the CVS, for some reason, so I still have to go there to pick up meds every now and then.

But this week I went in for the third reason, to buy some antacid that I didn't even need. I just wanted to break a 20* and had a momentary lapse of judgement in where to do it. The first thing I notice every time I go into a CVS is that there are almost no employees there, except for in the pharmacy in the back. There's not even a cashier there because everything is self-checkout. Then I notice that almost all the products are behind theft-resistent plastic. It used to just be relatively expensive things that are easy to pocket now you have to find somebody to unlock the case (which isn't easy because of the lack of employees) to get, like, mouthwash. It's super depressing. It's like being in a prison commissary.

*Some neighborhood kids came by asking to rake our leaves. I didn't want them to for several reasons, one of which was that they had this old scraggly, busted-up rake that looked like it was going to shred our lawn rather rake it, but I didn't want to be a curmudgeon, so I told them I'd give them $6 to do a tiny portion of our yard. Then I realized I didn't have any bills lower than $20, so I gave them an IOU, and then they came over everyday the next few days to collect, but I still didn't have the money, because who uses cash anymore? But I couldn't be the guy who stiffs the neighborhood ten-year-olds, so I went to CVS to get the $6.

Antacid is actually not one of the products that is locked up, so I grabbed a box of Pepto tablets and wandered around until I found somebody who works there and told her that I needed to pay. She motioned me to the self-checkout machines, and I said that I wanted to pay in cash. She took me to the register (no line at least), rang me up, and then realized there was no money in the till. So, she put out a call over the intercom: "Will a manager please come to the front of the store?"

We waited and waited and waited, and then she made a second call: "Will a manager please come to the front of the store?"

And we waited and waited and waited some more, she made an exasperated sound under her breath and then put out a third call: "Will a manager please come to the front of the store?"

"I think the manager went home early," I said jokingly, making a weak attempt to break the awkwardness of the situation. She didn't respond to me, but said over the intercom for the fourth time, "Will a manager please come to the front of the store?"

After waiting a bit longer, I asked her to just cancel the transaction, but she said she couldn't do that because she had already rung it up. I started getting frustrated at this point, and said something to the effect of, "This is ridiculous! All I need is $11 in change, and it's taking a half-hour." The length of time was an exaggeration, but not by all that much. She seemed sympathetic, and finally said, "Okay, okay," and then she punched a code into a different till and opened it and gave me my change. Why she didn't just do that in the first place, I don't know, but at least I could pay off my debts now and not have to worry about a group of elementary schoolers breaking my kneecaps.

In happier news, our flag football team won in the first round of the playoffs, so we play in the semifinals on Sunday. This, despite the fact that one of our best players was out with an injury. It's really remarkable, considering how much talent we lost from last season, that we are one game away from playing in the championship for the third straight time. We might not make it, but still I'm proud of how the kids played. It's already been a pretty good season, and there's at least a chance it will get even better.

Okay, gotta go. Until next time... 

Entry 825: Fall Olio

It's been a kinda dud of a morning so far. I woke up and almost instantly engaged in virtual battle against Tesla. They charged us $100, directly deducted from our checking account, for a self-driving subscription that a) we never signed up for, b) is for a car that we don't own and probably doesn't even exist anymore. We were able to get our bank to cancel the payment, so all good there, but still, it made me realized that we need to disentangle ourselves from the Tesla web completely. This is part of the brave new world in which we now live. We all need to add "Remove Vehicle and Delete Profile" to our list of things to do after we sell or total a car. This never even crossed my mind. Once our car was gone, I deleted the Tesla app from my phone (good riddance!) and got on with life, not thinking that of course all the background data was still being stored and was active and could still be used against us.

So, after we got this bogus charge nullified, I set out to delete our accounts and depart the Tesla world* once and for all. Easy written than done, of course. Since I deleted the app already, I started on the website and followed the instructions to delete my account. It wouldn't let me because it said I had to remove our vehicle from our profile first. But I couldn't do that because the vehicle isn't controllable from my profile, only from S's. So, I logged in using S's credentials and went to remove the vehicle, but there is no option to do that on the website (at least that I could find), and all the instructions online say to do it from the app, so I reluctantly downloaded the app again, and logged in as S.

*It's a shitty world. The car itself is actually really good, but everything that comes with owning it kinda sucks. Repairs take a long time and are super expensive; everything that can possibly be run by AI is run by AI, so getting support is dystopian and dehumanizing; and apparently you get charged for shit you never asked for. One thing this ordeal reinforced is that it's nice to not have a Tesla anymore.

The prompts for removing a vehicle through the app are straightforward, if you sold it—not so much if you totaled it. I called Tesla support (even more reluctantly than with downloading the app) and talked to a robot who told me to follow the same prompts as if we sold the car to a third party. I guess technically we did that with our insurance company, but that's not what people think when they get in an accident. When my neighbor asked what happened to our Tesla, I didn't tell him we sold it to a third party. What would be nice is if the prompt on the app says "Sold to Third Party or Totaled in an Accident," then it would be crystal clear as to what button to tap. To any event, I submitted a request to remove the vehicle that probably doesn't exist anymore from our account, and it told me it takes a few hours to do this, so I'll check back later today. If it actually removed the vehicle, then I'll try to delete our accounts. If it didn't, then I'll probably have to call that robot back. I removed all forms of payment from both of our accounts (we don't even remember linking our checking account, which is a bit disconcerting), so they don't (or at least they shouldn't) have a way to extract money from us in the meantime.

Then, after I was done with all this (for the time being), I had to clean up a mess of undercooked chocolate chip cookies. Lil' S1 was baking them for some event he's going to later today. He frequently uses the same recipe, and the cookies are delicious, but the stated cook time is never long enough, so they are too doughy if you follow the instructions to a tee. Instead of remembering this and leaving them in the oven a few minutes longer, Lil' S1 always takes them out before they are done and then insists that they are fine. I would be wise to bite my tongue and just let him deal with his mushy cookies, but for some reason I can't do that, which today led to the following conversation.

Me: You need to cook these longer they aren't done.
Him: Yes they are. They'll harden. Look this one is brown on the edges [points to the most cooked one].
Me: They aren't going to harden that much. Look at this one and that one and that one [points to a bunch that are still super doughy]. These aren't done.
Him: Fine. I'll put this tray back in. But the other ones are done.

[As he's clumsily putting the cookies back in, he drops the tray, it flips over, and everything falls onto the backside of the open oven door in a messy pile.]

Him: This is your fault!
Me: How is it my fault? You dropped the tray because you weren't holding it properly.
Him: You're the one who told me to put them back in the oven! If you didn't say that, this never would have happened.
Me: So if I ask you to go to the store, and you trip on your way out the door, that's my fault?
Him: Yes!

[About a half-hour later, he's taking the cookies from the other trays and putting them into a Tupperware container.]

Him: Actually, you were right—a lot of these cookies are too soft. 

In other news, we have a doubleheader flag football game tomorrow. We had to reschedule a game a few weeks ago because we didn't have enough kids (half our team went to Michigan to watch the Wolverines lose to Iowa on a last second touchdown), and this was the only way the league could do it. It's a holiday on Monday and parent-teacher conferences on Tuesday, so the kids have four days of no school, so I had to make sure enough people would be in town this weekend before I signed off on the doubleheader. It would be very embarrassing to reschedule only to have to cancel again for the same reason. Well, we have enough kids, but now storms are in the forecast, so there is a decent chance everything gets called off because of inclement weather. Wouldn't that be ironic? It's like ra-a-a-ain on your football games...

We are scheduled to play probably the best team in the league tomorrow, and, honestly, I wouldn't be completely bummed if we have to miss them. We've actually had their number the past two years, beating them three of four times, and our only loss came by a single point under dubious circumstances (the referees told me the score and then changed it later when the opposing coach argued about it). But we aren't as good this year. We lost three really good players and replaced them with one not that good player. So, if we have to miss the best team, I won't be heartbroken. We will probably play them in the playoffs anyway.

Despite our personnel hit, we are off to a very good start. We're 3-0 and the games have been really fun. Everybody is getting more playing time, and kids are stepping up and making the most of it. Lil' S2 didn't play much defense in past games, because he plays quarterback, sometimes the entire game, so it's hard to justify also playing him a lot on defense over other kids who don't see the field as much. But at most we have two subs each game this year, so Lil' S2 gets to play a lot more D, and he balled out last game. He had two interceptions, including a game-clincher. (He also threw three or four touchdowns and caught one on offense.)

Part of that was my brilliant coaching, and I'm only being half facetious. Our opponent had this big kid on their team, tall and thick, and although he wasn't very fast, he was killing us early on because our defenders were too small to D him up properly when we were in zone, and he was catching everything on them. So, I made a switch to man-to-man, and put Lil' S2 on him, because he's decent-size (though not as big as the other kid), and he's physical so I knew he wouldn't get outmuscled at the point of the catch.* Sure enough, they try the big kid again, after I make the switch, and Lil' S2 wins the jump ball for the INT, and then he got another one later in the game too. 

*You can't make overt contact, in this league, but it's kinda like basketball, where the more aggressive kids get the rebounds because they get to the right spot and box out.

That's the thing. I've had to do more coaching this year, because the players aren't quite as skilled, and one of the players we lost (who is excellent) is the son of my former co-coach, so now it's just me, and my responsibilities have doubled. It's forced me to get more creative, which doesn't always work. (I called a play for a kid who doesn't get the ball much last game, and he was wide open, but not even looking for the ball (doh!), so our QB had to throw it to somebody else.) But it is really satisfying when it does. We have this kid on our team who can't catch very well, but he's pretty fast, so I called a wide receiver reverse for him on first down, hoping we'd get five or six yards and have second and medium, and he took it to the house for a touchdown. It was awesome.

We still do a lot of silly things—like throw an interception in the end zone when all we need to do is burn clock—and if we really need a big play, sometimes I'll tell our quarterback "just throw it to Z" (our best receiver, by far). But that's 11-year-old football. Heck, that's any football. Every week I watch NFL games, and think to myself Why did they do that? There is usually not a satisfying answer. Actually, there is: football is played by humans, and humans make mistakes. With the AI takeover seemingly imminent, this is something to celebrate, not lament, in my opinion.

Until next time... 

Entry 821: Back To School 2026 And Other Things

This weekend really got away from me. S and I got into a fight early Friday evening, and it threw off my entire routine. We reconciled--it's totally good now--but I was never able to catch up schedule-wise. That's an underrated negative of fighting: the time it takes. As a result, I don't have much time for blogging. I'm going to have to rip through some bullet points and call it a post.

• Both kids now take the bus to school, and it's weird to not have to drive anybody anywhere in the morning. I don't even really have to get anybody ready anymore. Lil' S1 has to leave quite early--like around 7:10 am--so I try to get out of bed by 6:45 am, just to make sure he has everything he needs and see him off, but there's really no reason to do that (other than to not feel like--nor look like--a slacker parent). He gets up and gets ready and gets out the door completely on his own. I just stand there, coffee in hand, and say, "You good?" And he says "yeah, dad," in that eye-rolling, I'm-not-a-baby-anymore tween kind of way and leaves. 
  
  
• One thing we've been trying to do with the kids is get them into school-based activities. There are so many clubs and sports to try and neither of them really want to do anything. Actually, Suren did want to play tackle football, but it's at a different school that he would have to take the city bus to by himself, and it seemed liked too much in his first semester in middle school, so I wouldn't let him do it. (S deferred to me on this one--a rarity.) To be honest, I don't love the idea of him playing tackle football (especially not after reading Chuck Klosterman's new, really good, really weird book Football). I think I'll probably let him do it, ultimately, but I'm fine delaying it by at least a year. He doesn't need to be getting destroyed by 14-year-old 8th-graders with pube staches.
  
  
• I've become kinda obsessed with Kirkland brand lids. We shop at Costco, so we get a lot of Kirkland items, and they frequently have those "sealed for freshness" glue-on lids, and they are always terrible. The adhesive is so much stronger than the integrity of the lid that you can't actually take the lid off the way it is meant to be taken off. You have to pull super hard, and when you do almost always the lid splits wide upon in the middle with the edges still glued down tightly, or the little tab rips clean off. I'm about 30% in opening Kirkland milk correctly--I usually have to cut the seal off with a knife--and I've literally never done it with their peanut butter. The thing is, it's not just Kirkland, it's a lot of brands. I don't know how big lid keeps getting away with this. One of my plans for after retirement is to start a YouTube channel called "Grids & Lids," in which I film myself doing Immaculate Grid and trying to remove terrible lids.
  
  
• We are watching Malcolm in the Middle as a family, and I'm growing to despise this show. It's fine in limited doses, but it's terrible to watch on a nightly basis. The characters are cartoonishly mean to one another, which gets old fast, and the storyline of the oldest son is simultaneously irritating and boring. We're not even halfway through the series (there are seven seasons! with like 25 episode in each one!), and I don't think I can make it. I keep trying to get everybody to switch to a new show, but Lil' S1, and to a lesser degree Lil' S2, is adamant that it's good and we keep watching it. I want to spend time with my family--I mean, the fact that our sons hang out with us at all is something to tightly hold onto--but I just can't hang with another five months of Lois screaming and Francis scrubbing.
  
  
• I was listening to a podcast the other day on free will and the uncertainty of the future, and my big takeaway is that the "free will is an illusion" position is a very weird one to hold. I don't mean it's weird in the sense that the subject is weird (although it clearly is). I mean it's weird that smart people, some scientists even, earnestly believe this to be the case and try to convince others of it. To be clear, I've seen any good proof on free will one or the other, but if I had to pick, I would plant my flag on the "free will exists" side. The way I see it, the closest thing we have to evidence on the matter is our own experience, and our own experience clearly points to free will. I'm choosing to type this, after all.
  
  Could this choice be an illusion? Sure, the same why we could be in the Matrix or a simulation or Tommy Westphall's snow globe, but I think it's weird to believe those things as well. It's also possible that everything was predetermined at the Big Bang, and we think what we think simply because the atoms in our head are aligned in a certain way, and they couldn't be aligned any other way, just like dust in outer space couldn't be aligned any other way then how it is at this exact moment. It's just where the immutable physical laws of the cosmos put things. But my retort to that is: Why can we think then? Why aren't we moving through the universe completely unaware of our existence the same way space dust (seemingly) is. Consciousness is a very high hurdle for the free will illusionist to overcome, in my opinion, as if we have something as unexplainable as consciousness (and we do--I am very sure of that), then we can have free will too. So, I believe in free will. After all, what choice do I have?*
  
  *Not my line--I heard somebody else say it--but I love it.
  
  
• Lastly, RIP to my parents' close friend MB, who died today. It was no surprise--she had had health problems for years, and her family told her friends that this was probably happening very soon--but it's still sad. I hadn't seen her in decades, but I have fond memories of going over to her and her family's house as a kid. They lived on a decent sized plot of land surrounded by apple trees, and they would have an annual apple harvest party. Everybody would come over and pick apples to be pressed and come home with gallons of apple cider. I used to just run around there with all the other kids doing whatever it was we did after we got bored picking apples. I honestly don't remember--football? hide and seek? capture the flag? Not sure. But I am sure I had fun.

Until next time... 

Entry 819: Ten Movies I Watched While Traveling

One thing about going from DC to Frankfurt to Paris back to Frankfurt to Bangalore to Shimoga back to Bangalore back to Frankfurt to Philadelphia back to DC is that you have a lot of transit time in which you can watch movies. I saw ten movies total, and that's not including the first half of the The Dink, which I was watching with Lil' S2 and S until our internet connection unexpectedly dropped, and we never got around to finishing it. (Nobody was all that broken up about it.) These were all movies I had not seen before, and below is my review of each of them in reverse order of how good I thought they were.

10. Don't Say Good Luck 

That this movie is last on my list tells you that it's a very strong list, as this wasn't a terrible film. The main reason I didn't particularly enjoy it, isn't its fault; it's Netflix's. It came up on my profile as a comedy, but it's not a comedy. It's also not a "musical teen drama" as Wikipedia says. It's a drama about a teenage girl in a musical. There are very few laughs in it, which was a problem for me, as when I put it on I wanted to laugh. I was in the mood for something not-so-serious, and so when I saw a comedy starring Adam Sandler's daughter, I had something like Booksmart in mind and thought to myself, Ooh, this could be perfect. Then, in the opening scene, you learn the main character's mom is dying of cancer, and it was like, Wait... what?! This isn't what I wanted at all!

9. Spider-Man: Brand New Day

We watched this in India on the big screen. We couldn't have carried on with our vacation in peace if we didn't. No matter what we were doing on a given day, Lil' S2 bothered us about going to see the new Spider-Man. Stuck at the airport in Frankfurt: "If we don't go to India, can we at least see the new Spider-Man?" On the train to Paris: "Oh, when we get there, can we see the new Spider-Man?" On top of the Arc de Triomphe: "When we get down, can we see the new Spider-Man?" We put him off by saying we wanted to take his 13-year-old cousin in India with us, which was true, so then once we got there we had to follow through on that.

As for the movie itself, it was a slight step-up from the usual formulaic, forgettable superhero film. I mean, I saw it several weeks ago, and I still remember the major plot points, which is something. Every other time I saw one of the Spider-Man movies--and I think I've somehow seen them all now--I forgot major portions of the story the second I left the theater. So, Brand New Day at least clears the very low bar of "I can tell you what happens."

8. Obsession

Like Don't Say Good Luck, this one suffers from a genre problem for me. Unlike Don't Say Good Luck, it's on me, as this one is clearly categorized as a horror movie, and I just didn't realize that when I rented it. (I just heard it was a good movie.) Then after I rented it, I had to watch it, lest I pay $4.99 for nothing. This is not a bad movie--it's quite good actually--it's just that I don't really appreciate horror films, unless I'm in the right setting, and that setting is not in an airplane seat watching by myself on a small screen. I need to be with people to get the most out of a horror movie. That's probably why I don't watch them very much anymore. S doesn't like them, and Lil' S1 thinks the live action Grinch is too scary, so he's out. That leaves Lil' S2, and although I'm very lenient on the movies my kids consume, making my 11-year-old child my horror movie watching partner is a bridge too far. I mean, who am I Mark Borchardt?

So, sorry Obsession, you're a fine film, I just didn't consume you correctly.

7. Yesterday

I found this movie delightful because I love the Beatles, and I find pretty much anything associated with the Beatles delightful, but it has a plot flaw that I couldn't get past. The premise of the film is that a struggling singer-songwriter* wakes up one day in world where the Beatles don't exist, but he still remembers them and all their songs. He then starts playing their songs as if they are his own and gets famous, and then the movie is basically about his internal conflict of living this lie (with a cute girl in the mix, of course).

*Played by Himesh Patel in his much less buff, pre-Odyssey body. 

But here's the thing: If these songs only exist in a world in which they are in your head, aren't they rightfully your songs? I mean, whose else are they? And I just kept thinking, Why doesn't he tell the truth? Just say, "Something weird happened, and I have all these amazing songs in my head from a band nobody else seems to remember but me." That's what I would do, and then I could ethically take credit (and money) for the Beatles' music. Nobody would believe me, and they would probably think it was a ridiculously pretentious act, but it would clear my conscience. Plus, I would still be performing, and inevitably changing, the songs (no cover sounds exactly like its original), so they would still very much be my songs. Plus, plus, maybe I would start to think that the Beatles never existed, even in my world, and I was some sort of touched musical genius. I mean, this is less crazy than the alternative, if you think about it.

So, overall, fun movie with a very flawed plot.

6. Bridesmaids

Now this is the silly female-led comedy I was looking for--very solid. One problem is that the funniest part (to me) came within the first five minutes of the movie, so it didn't quite live up to the high bar it set for itself early on, but still, it made me laugh, and it made two-hours of a nine-hour flight go by relatively quickly. So, well done there.

5. The Power of the Dog

A good movie that is not a great movie. The performances are really strong--Benedict Cumberbatch and the kid Kodi Smit-McPhee are both great; Kirsten Dunst is great; and Jesse Plemons is great, as always--but there was something about the character development of Smit-McPhee's Peter that I found lacking. The film is apparently based on a novel, so they probably had to cut out some of the backstory, and maybe they cut out a bit too much.

An interesting fact about this movie is that it is one of three movies for which a woman won the Best Director Oscar. Once, I was in a trivia competition, and my team was leading, and the final question was to name these three women directors. We knew Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker) and Chloé Zhao (Nomadland), but we did not know Jane Campion (The Power of the Dog). Thankfully, nobody else did either, except for my sometimes trivia teammate/sometimes trivia rival N, but nobody on his team trusted him, so we still won.

4. Scarface

A classic I had never seen. Really good movie. I kept waiting for the line "Say hello to my little friend!" and I waited a long time, as it doesn't happen until the very end. I didn't watch a lot of the famous gangster movies--Scarface, Goodfellas, Casino, etc.--the first time around (I think I was a little too young), so now that I've been catching up on them, I'm struck by how many of the actors were later on either The Sopranos or Breaking Bad. In Scarface, we've got a young Don Eladio and a younger Héctor Salamanca and "Feech". We've also got Michelle Pfeiffer at her apex. Once I was at Sherry's with my high school girlfriend, and an old woman came up to our booth and said to her, "You are a dead-ringer for a young Michelle Pfeiffer." I was like, Yeah, right, if only... 

3. Marty Supreme

This one has been available to stream for free for some time, but I was really resistant to it for some reason (possibly the 150 minute run-time). I shouldn't have been. It's tremendous--an absolute tour de force by Timothée Chalamet. I heard that he campaigned hard for himself to win the Best Actor Oscar, and I can see why. He should have won, and I say that having no idea who actually did win. (Fact check: It was Michael B. Jordan for Sinners, which I haven't seen yet; see my spiel on horror movies above.) The Shark Tank guy was also good, as was Gwyneth Paltrow. She's easy to make fun of, because her Goop company is so ridiculous and she says things like "conscious uncoupling," seemingly in earnest,* but as an actress, I don't think I've ever seen a bad performance from her.

*It's possible she's just an Andy Kaufman-esque comedian, and the joke is actually on all of us. Her line "I'd rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a can" is genuinely funny, as is her doubling down on it. The problem is that I've read articles and blog posts from real medical professionals who aver that a lot of her Goop stuff is not just harmless campy fun, but rather junk science that can do people harm. 

2. Wild at Heart

Now, this is precisely the type of film I want to see on a long flight. I'm strapped into a small chair, in a metal tube, with 199 other people, hurtling across the planet at 600 mph, 35,000 feet in the air. Let's get weird. And who does weird better than David Lynch? I've seen a lot of his stuff, and it ranges from quite bizarre but coherent (Twin Peaks) to completely unintelligible (Inland Empire). Wild at Heart is in the former camp, which I appreciate. I like the surreality of Lynch's work, but I need there to actually be some semblance of a storyline, or I start getting bored. It's like staring at a piece of abstract art. It's fine to do for two minutes, but not for two hours (and even within two minutes my mind would start to wander).

And speaking of actors who get made fun of a lot, but who can be legitimately brilliant: Nic Cage. Say what you will about the man, but he's got range. I saw him in a movie called Dream Scenario recently, and he is really good playing a character who couldn't be more opposite than Sailor Ripley in Wild at Heart. And he's excellent in this film too. (So is Laura Dern. So is Willem Dafoe.) David Lynch isn't for everybody, so I'm always hesitant to recommend him, but if you like his style and somehow haven't seen this one yet, you should see it... on an airplane. However, I suggest positioning your device in such a way that the other passengers can't see it. That was the one problem with watching this movie in a public setting--it's basically one long continuous sex scene with some breaks for dialogue and action.

1. The Odyssey

One of the days we were in Bangalore, S went shopping with her cousin and mom and took the kids with her. Her cousin's husband was at work, so it was just me on my own. As it just so happens there is an IMAX* theater in the same building as our hotel, so I went to see The Odyssey. I loved it. As a movie, it's pretty good; as a spectacle, it's tremendous. The cyclops scene on the big screen is amazing; the Trojan horse scene on the big screen is amazing; every scene with Charlize Theron on the big screen is amazing. I was enrapted the entire film. It was two hours and 52 minutes, and I could have watched more. One of my steadfast beliefs is that everything is too long, but this was an exception. It could have been four hours, and I would have been into it still. Of course, it helps that in India they take a ten minute intermission during long movies. I love that, and I hope it comes to the States sometimes soon. I don't have to be in the position of choosing between a bursting bladder and missing a possibly an awesome scene. 

*I think it was an actual IMAX theater too, although I'm not 100% sure. I did a deep dive the other day on the difference between IMAX and "LieMax," but it's all dependent on aspect ratio and film gauge and technical stuff like that. My main takeaway: If you see a movie on a giant screen, with huge speakers, and it looks and sounds cool, what difference does it make?  

Alright, that's enough for today. Until next time... 

Entry 815: Independence Day 2026 Top Fives

It's a holiday weekend across the country with some big festivities on tap here in our national capital. I, however, will be avoiding such festivities like the coronavirus in 2020 (hopefully more successfully). I will spend the weekend cooped up in my basement streaming TV shows, movies, and soccer with my family, lifting weights, and working on crossword puzzles. I have little desire to spend the day outside in triple-digit temperatures, where the only relief from the heat will come from scattered thunderstorms, and I have even less desire to partake in the de facto MAGA rally that will completely spoil what could be and should be a nonpartisan celebration of our country's 250th birthday. Sometimes I wish we lived closer to to all the action in DC. Days like today, I am very glad that we do not.

One thing I will almost certainly do this weekend is finish the Hulu series High Fidelity. Even though it dropped over six years ago, I didn't know there was such a show until last week. (Perhaps the biggest problem with TV these days is that there is too much of it, and it's scattered across the various streaming services, so it's hard to find.) I heard somebody mention the show on a podcast and give the "hot take" that it's better than the movie. I like the movie quite a bit, so I started watching the show half out of curiosity and half out of a desire to prove the podcaster wrong. I'm now eight episodes in, and I must admit, I agree with the take: The TV show is better.

Why is it better? I'm not sure exactly--I just like it more. I think it's because the characters are a little bit more likeable. In the movie they are all very amusing, but that's in part because they are all kinda dicks (and not just the one named Dick). In the show, you--or at least I--can sympathize with the characters more, especially the main character Rob, played beautifully by Zoë Kravitz (who is quite beautiful). She's more messy and goofy, but goodhearted, whereas John Cusack's Rob in the film is more self-serious and egotistical. I would rather spend my time with the former than the latter. Although, it's possible that one is better suited to a 10-episode series,* and one is better suited to a two-hour movie. So, I guess, my conclusion is that they are both great, and it probably doesn't make sense to compare them.

*There is only one season, which makes me sad. I hate it when shows go on too long, but it also sucks when they don't go on long enough. At least give me two or three seasons at Championship Vinyl.

One thing I love about both High Fidelity's is the top-five lists. I love making rankings for stupid things. In that vein, here are my top five Independence Days.

Top 5 July 4ths of My Life

5. 2004. It was my first month back in DC for grad school. I went up to West Chester, PA to visit some pals. I don't remember the details, but for some reason it was just me and two of my girl friends. Note the space between "girl" and "friends." Neither of them was my girlfriend (I was single at the time), and in fact they both had boyfriends that I was friends with. I also don't remember what we did, but I do remember it was fun.

4. 1986. I'm guessing on the year here, and it might not have been exactly July 4th, but it was a fireworks game for the Tacoma Tigers at Cheney Stadium. The Tigers pounded their opponent, scoring over 20 runs, which the stadium couldn't display on its old-school scoreboard, because the ten's digit could only be 0 or 1. There were so many people trying to come throughout the game that they let fans sit on the warning track for the last few innings (that sounds crazy, but I swear it happened). I didn't love that, being a little baseball purist, but it couldn't spoil the evening. The Tigers won big, and everybody oohed and aahed at the sky explosions afterwards.

3. 2007. I went to my aunt's and uncle's vacation house on Chautauqua Lake for a makeshift family reunion. I was the only one there from my immediately family, and I saw a bunch of cousins and aunts and uncles that I hadn't seen in decades. I also saw my grandma for the last time. The night of the 4th, we all sat around the campfire, and watched the lights. As I recall, in lieu of fireworks, everybody put up lights on their docks, and it was a spectacular visual. It's funny, if this event happened a few years later I would have dozens of pictures from it, but it went down just before the widespread adoption of the camera phone, so I don't have any. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I'm not sure.

As a somewhat related aside, I was thinking the other day about how it's weird that almost everything that happens today is recorded on camera in someway, when the first 4.5 billion years of Earth elapsed with nothing being recorded on camera. But then I thought, well, what if it was? Who's to say some alien species hasn't been recording our planet clandestinely from afar using super advanced technology? What if they came here and showed us a documentary they made of all of human history? How cool would that be? I mean, it probably wouldn't outsell Aquaman 851 at the box office, but it would still be awesome.

2. 2005. I was dating a grad student in the English department, and we got a little motley crew together of literature and math folks to go to the fireworks show on the National Mall. This was back when we could all enjoy things together, and it didn't matter who was president--like, I didn't even think about what somebody's politics was when I met them, and it was glorious. In retrospect, I took that for granted. Anyway, things didn't last too long between me and the lit chick (I broke up with her*), but we had some fun times together, and this night was one of them. It just felt cool being out in the city with a group of weird, smart, young people. 

*That's an homage to High Fidelity, by the way. I'm not bragging about it. Breakups are the worst, regardless of which side you are on. 

1. 1988. I'm just picking a random year from my childhood, because so many of my preteen 4ths have blended together in my mind. We used to go over to our family friends' house and eat barbecue and run through the sprinkler and light off fireworks. The parents let us kids light them, which is something I don't think would fly today. It was pretty safe--we would set a firework carefully on the ground, light the fuse with a punk, and then hightail it to safety--but I still don't think parents of my generation would let their kids do that. The other thing you have to keep in mind is that this was in the rainy Puget Sound region before climate change totally fried the world, so the fire risk was not as high as it is in other places of the country today. And it was fun! I loved those days, which is why this is number 1 on my list.

I just realized that I left off several July 4ths spent at my buddy DK's lake house. We had some wild times there, and I probably should bump something above to add one of them to the list. But I don't have time to do that, so they get honorable mention here. Plus, they got legit dangerous at times. I'm surprised nobody Jason Pierre-Pauled themselves.

Until next time... 

Entry 813: Father's Day 2026

I have the house to myself on this Father's Day 2026. S is riding with another mom to take Lil' S2 and a few of his pals to sleepaway camp, and Lil' S1 is spending the day at a cabin or a farm or something like that. The parents of one of his friends from school rented a house in a rural area and welcomed some other folks to join them. They actually invited our entire family, and I suspect we would have all gone if today wasn't also check-in day for Lil' S2's camp. But I didn't really want to go without S, so we arranged for another family to take Lil' S1 with them.

It was a tough call on my part. I certainly didn't love the idea of spending an entire day out in the boonies with people I barely know (especially with an entire day to myself as the alternative), but I also don't want to be the dude who grows old and withers away in his mancave with no friends around, because he didn't cultivate any new relationships when he had the chance. And I know I'm not good at taking the initiative to plan social events, so, as a general principle, I try to not turn down invitations. But there are exceptions, and those exceptions apparently including making small talk for hours on end while Lil' S1 leads a D&D campaign in the other room. So, I decided I would leave it up to Lil' S1. I laid out three scenarios and presented each of them neutrally, so as to not influence his choice: 1) neither of us go; 2) we both go; 3) just he goes. He immediately picked 3. It was so quick, in fact, that I would have been offended if that wasn't the answer I was hoping for.

Setting aside my own preferences for a minute, he's at a tricky age where it's not at all obvious, as a parent, what events you should and should not attend with him. Young teenagers pretty much always act as if they don't want their folks around--and they often say as much--but sometimes they really do want you there, or at least they appreciate that you are there. And then even if they genuinely don't want you there, is it something that you still need to go to for supervision? That's a consideration also. Lil' S1 and his friends are pretty independent, which is wonderful, and they also have access to an extensive public transportation system, which is also wonderful, but they aren't quite old enough to do everything they want and go everywhere they want without a chaperone at least in the vicinity. This becomes especially apparent when Lil' S1 tells us he is going to go somewhere, and we have a conversation much like the following.

Lil' S1: Hey, I'm going to [event] with [friends].
Us: Okay, well, how are you getting there.
Lil' S1: Metro.
Us: What stop is the event on?
Lil' S1: I'm not sure exactly yet.
Us: Okay, well, what time are you going?
Lil' S1: [Friend] is coming over here at 1:00, and then we are going to go and meet [other friend].
Us: 1:00? You know it's 12:30  now, right?
Lil' S1: Yes.
Us: And [friend] is coming over here, right now, even though the place you are going is the exact opposite direction for him as our house?
Lil' S1: Yes.
Us: Okay, where and when are you meeting [other friend].
Lil' S1: Not sure exactly. We'll text each other.
Us: You know phones don't always get service on the Metro, right? Do you have a backup plan if you can't get a hold of each other?
Lil' S1: No
Us: And don't forget, you have [some other obligation] at 3:00. Are you going to be able to do all this and get home in two hours?
Lil' S1: Yes.
Us: And your friends' parents, they're all okay with this?
Lil' S1: Yes, they all already said it's okay.
[*Buzz, buzz* Text from other parents]: Hey do you guys have any idea what's going with [event]? Apparently they are supposed to meet in a half hour, and this is the first I'm hearing of it lol.

And scene...

In other news, we are on the final episode of Modern Family, which means we are going to need a new sitcom to watch pretty soon as a family. Overall, it was a good series, but like almost every TV show I've ever seen that was more than like five seasons, it drastically dropped in quality in its latter half. In fact, I can pinpoint the moment I realized that it had completely jumped the shark, or should I say, moved the piano.

Season 9, Episode 15: Cam and Mitchell are throwing a party at their house to celebrate Mitchell's new job as a high-pay, high-power attorney for a well-known billionaire. To rub their newfound success in their friends' faces a little bit, they buy a piano for their living room. Midway through the party, however, they learn that Mitchell's new boss was involved in fraud or something like that, and so Mitchell doesn't have the job anymore. They don't want their friends to know this, so Cam takes all their phones under the pretense of being more present in the moment. They also can no longer afford the piano, so they want to return it, but they can only get their money back if they return it that very day. So, Cam lures all their friends into the bathroom and takes the handle off the door, which somehow "accidentally" locks them in. Then, the next scene, as they "fix" the lock and all their friends come out, the piano is gone, and in its place is a stack of boxes under a giant blanket in the shape of a piano.

What...?

How did that happen? How long were their friends locked in the bathroom? The piano movers weren't even there yet, and it would take several people at least like an hour to move this thing once they arrived. Then it would probably take another hour or so to find and move all the boxes to set up the fake piano after they left. How long are we supposed to believe this group of people were trapped in a small bathroom (and what kind of psychos would lock people up like this)? At some point, the detainees are climbing out the window or forcing the door open. And also how could they possibly move a piano and a bunch of boxes without somebody in the bathroom hearing what is going on? The bathroom is adjacent to the living room. A normal bathroom door could not come close to stifling such sounds. 

Then, to make things even more inane, after the are let friends out, they all ask Cam to play something on the piano, so he pretends that his electronic keyboard is the piano keys and plays with the blanket still on. Amazingly, nobody peeked under the blanket or wondered why his playing sounded like an electronic keyboard and not an actual piano. The whole thing is a set up for Mitchell's sister Claire to lie on the fake piano, jazz singer style, and fall through the boxes thus revealing the whole charade, and that is kinda funny, I guess, but you can set that up so much better. The whole thing is so stupid, and not in a funny stupid comedy type of way, but in an I actually feel like watching this has made me stupider type of way.

The thing is, obviously you have to suspend your disbelief with any work of fiction, but you also have to be able to relate to what's going on. "It's funny because it's true" is a comedy cliché for a reason, and it's especially resonant for a show in which sympathizing with the characters is the main source of the comedy. Phil and Claire talking to their hot divorcee neighbor--funny! Phil and his father flipping their car--not very funny!

Although, that latter scene did send me down a Fred Willard rabbit hole. His character dies at the end of the episode, and it seemed the writers shoehorned it in, which made me wonder if it's because he died in real life, and I think that's what happened, as the dates seem to line up. Then I started reading Willard's list of TV appearances, and it is insane how many small-to-medium-ish parts this guy played throughout his career. He might be up there for greatest TV character actor of all time. Here's a list of shows he was on that is about a fifth of the size of the one on his Wikipedia page, as I'm omitting shows I've never heard of. It also doesn't include any of his movie roles (e.g., This is Spinal Tap, Best in Show)

• The Bob Newhart Show
• Laverne & Shirley
• SNL
• The Love Boat
• SCTV
• Trapper John, M.D.
• The Golden Girls
• Married... with Children
• The Ben Stiller Show
• Family Matters
• Murphy Brown
• Roseanne
• Friends
• Clueless
• Sister, Sister
• Lois & Clark
• Saved by the Bell
• Muppets Tonight
• The Weird Al Show
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch
• Two Guys and a Girl
• Mad About You
• The Simpsons
• Just Shoot Me!
• Ladies Man
• The Hughleys
• Ally McBeal
• Undeclared
• King of the Hull
• Hey Arnold!
• Family Guy 
• That '70s Show
• Everybody Loves Raymond
• The Drew Carey Show
• The Batman
• The Boondocks
• Everybody Hates Chris
• Wizards of Waverly Place
• Modern Family
• Castle
• Important Things with Demetri Martin 
• Chuck
• Funny or Die Presents
• The Closer
• Raising Hope
• Hot in Cleveland
• The Cleveland Show
• Community
• New Girl
• I Think You Should Leave
• Space Force 

That is a ridiculous résumé. I'm more than six years late on this, but RIP Fred Willard, you were a national treasure.*

Well, that's all for now. Happy Father's Day to those who celebrate fake holidays.

Until next time...

*He was also in something called Easy to Assemble, a web series featuring Illeana Douglas sponsored by Ikea... WTF?! Jeff Goldblum and Keanu Reaves were also in it... double WTF?!  

Entry 810: Running Out The School Year Clock

The end of the school year is nigh, and it feels like a year's worth of events have been saved up for the next two weeks. With Lil' S2 it's the worst because his school is so noncommunicative. Like, he'll tell me on a Thursday evening that he needs $80 in cash by tomorrow morning for a field trip, and I'm like, What? I haven't heard of this? And then I start panicking a little bit, thinking I dropped the ball on something. That is, until my phone starts pinging with a hundred messages from the parents' WhatsApp group, and everybody is asking what the deal with the field trip is and why hasn't anybody heard of it. Inevitably, somebody will post a screenshot from a Class Dojo message from a random teacher's aide, but almost nobody saw it, because Class Dojo sends you roughly 50 alerts a day and 45 of them are trying to get you to upgrade to the paid version.

I'm sure that just about every parent complains about their kid's school to some degree, but Lil' S2's has been plagued by some serious dysfunction, like to the point that the principal resigned earlier this week, perhaps to avoid being fired. I won't get into the details, in part because I don't feel completely informed on them--I mean, nobody is, that's a huge part of the problem--but I've been especially tuned out to it all. We've got a month left, and then that's it--we're done with elementary school for good. I'm just trying to coast to the finish line, and once we get there: not my monkeys, not my circus.

Although, I will say one thing on the matter because it's kinda funny. There was a parents-only Zoom meeting a few weeks ago to discuss the state of the school and the current leadership. I didn't attend, but apparently a "parent" named "Patrick" did, and in the chat, "he" was stridently defending the administration and arguing with parents who were expressing misgivings. Given my quote marks, you can probably see where this is going. Patrick was not, in fact, a school parent, but rather its assistant principal. Her name isn't Patrick*, and apparently she isn't very good at covering her tracks on the internet (also, all the parents know each other, and they were like, Who is this Patrick person we've never heard of?). She was immediately put on leave after this came to light, and I will be shocked if she's back at the school next year.

*This was not actually her fake name. I'm using a pseudonym for a pseudonym. 

So, like I said, we're just trying to ride out the next few weeks, and also like I said, there's a lot to ride out. Over the past three days we had a talent show, two sleepovers, a birthday party, two baseball practices, a baseball game, and today we have volunteering, an exhibition project, and a flag football game, and that's just Lil' S2. With his brother, you can toss in two D&D sessions*, a sleepover, cookie baking for some reason, a programming internship, and a friend's dance recital. It's too much. I mean, it's literally too much, so we had to make cuts. We said no to Saturday night sleepovers (actually Lil' S1 preemptively said no to his friend because he knew he had a lot to do, while Lil' S2 was very grumpy about it), and we skipped all the baseball stuff. 

*In which no D&D is actually played. They used to play, but they stopped for some reason, and now they just hang out, but everybody still calls it D&D.  

Speaking of baseball, there's a good chance Lil' S2's career in the sport is over. It's the playoffs right now, and the team isn't very good (1-10 record), so if they lose, which is likely, they're out, and that's the season. He says he doesn't want to play again in the fall, and if he doesn't play in the fall, he's not going to be good enough to play in the Spring when he would age into a higher league. He's actually been improving a bit, and if he practiced, like at all, he could be half-decent, but he shows little interest in practice. So, I don't feel bad about him not going to the game today. He's not one of the better players on the team, so we're not letting anybody down by missing it. In flag football, he's currently our only quarterback (our other one broke his finger and is out for the season), and we're trying to repeat as league champion, so it would be a big deal if he had to miss a playoff game. In baseball, it might even be better for the team if he doesn't go, as then his spot in the batting order will get skipped, and, even though he's been improving, he still usually makes an out. I don't think his coach was too broken up about it when he saw we RSVP'd "no".

To completely shift topics, I randomly watched Fargo the other night, and it's so damn good. I hadn't seen it since it came out 30 years ago, so I'd forgotten a lot of it. I wish they still made movies like this*--no CGI, no superheros, no talking animated animals, just a great script, great performances, and a runtime under 100 minutes. That last one is key. Everything is just too damn long now. I thought about watching Marty Supreme instead but it's two and a half hours--for a ping-pong movie? Why? I mean, I haven't seen it yet, but still I ask, why? 

*One thing to consider is that I think a lot of would-be movies are now turned into prestige TV shows, and a lot of them are really good, so that's cool. But still, I wish these great shows were being created in addition to great films, instead of in place of them.  

Alright, times up. Until next time... 

Entry 807: Airbags Deployed

Scary moment Friday evening. I was at home and had just gotten out of the shower and noticed there was an alert from the Tesla app on my phone. I didn't have my glasses on so I couldn't make out what it said, but I didn't think much of it. We frequently get Tesla updates on our phones for unimportant things, like "Update available" and "Your car cabin is now at the desired temperature" and whatnot. Plus S had the car, so I figured whatever it was, it probably didn't apply to me anyway.

Not thinking anything was out of the ordinary, I got dressed at a normal pace and put my glasses on and noticed that the alert was written in a much more attention-grabbing manner than usual. I don't remember if it was all caps or a font change or the use of scarier icons, but something about it made me think: You need to read this now. So, I did, and my heart sank a bit when I processed what it said: ACCIDENT DETECT, AIRBAGS DEPLOYED, 911 CALLED. That's scary, obviously, but it was slightly less scary than it might seem because I had another alert on my phone telling me I had missed a call from S, and that one came in after the one from Tesla. So, I figured, S had to be alright, at least somewhat, or else she couldn't have called me.

That's something, but it's not a lot, so I called S, but it went through to voicemail. I then sent a text but didn't have the patience to wait a reasonable time for a reply. I could see where the car was on the app, and it was only a few miles away, so I told Lil' S1 I was leaving, without saying why--no need to get everybody scared for no reason--and set off in S's direction. Thankfully, S called me before I got too far and explained what happened. She felt completely fine, which was the first point of order--the airbag had done its job--but she was audibly shaken, understandably so. She was going through a very busy intersection, with a green light giving her the right-of-way, and somebody turned left into her path, and she smashed into him. It was completely the other person's fault (as indicated on the police report). He was making a left and didn't yield to oncoming traffic. He is also 78-years-old and was in a different accident just a month ago, so I hope he's done driving now. First, I hope he's okay--it's unclear to S exactly what condition he was in after the crash--and then I hope he's done driving.

S told me to go back home and wait for her to call for a ride home. She said she still had to talk with the police (very helpful and kind, by her account) and wait for the tow truck. I said I would come out there to help with that, but she said that there wasn't much more to do, and she didn't want the kids to be alone. (Lil' S2 was about to return from baseball practice.) They're fine to be by themselves for a bit--we leave them home alone frequently--but I think in the state she was in the thought of her children being home alone really stressed her out, so I turned around and came back home. I thought about calling her sister to stay with the kids, but I didn't want to needlessly freak her out, and I also didn't want to introduce more logistics into the situation.

I got home about the same time as Lil' S2, so I told the kids what happened, and then S called about a half hour later and said she was ready to be picked up. Lil' S2 wanted to go with me because he wanted to see the smashed up car, but I told him it was already towed away, and then he wasn't as interested. When I went to pick up S, I had to make the same left turn as the other driver, and it's not a great turn. There's no left arrow, and they really need a left arrow. It did cross through my head, how ironic it would be if I replicated the accident picking up S from her accident, but of course I didn't do that.

Even though S wasn't feeling any physical effects from the crash, I took her to urgent care, per the recommendation of the paramedic who came to the scene. He said your adrenaline can mask your injuries in the immediate aftermath of an intense situation. Thankfully, however, all the tests came back clean, and the clinic is very close to where S's sister lives, so S called her, and she was able to come and keep S company.

Our car did not get the same clean bill of health. There's a good chance it's gone for good. I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, it's a really good car. It's an EV, and I've grown accustom to how easy it is. Everything just works. Also, it kept S safe and automatically called 911--that's pretty cool. On the other hand, we bought it right before Elon's full-on heel turn, and I've never felt good about it. So, I'll be fine either way, which is good, because I don't have any control over it. 

Alright, that's all for now. Oh wait, one other observation, I've noticed that if you tell people that you (or in this case your spouse) got into a car accident, they will listen very sweetly and very genuinely, and then they will tell you all about the worst car accident they've ever been in. I'm about 10/10 with this so far.

Alright, now that's really all. Until next time... 

 

Entry 806: Baseball Parenting And The Kentucky Derby

I have a few minutes alone on a weekend in the middle of the day, which is a total rarity. Lil' S1 is walking to a friend's house to play some D&D (he's not the dungeon master in this campaign, which is nice, as if he was, he would have to bring a bunch of heavy manuals and would probably hit me up for a ride), and S took Lil' S2 to his baseball game. Typically sports are my milieu, but S volunteered to do it, and I let her because Lil' S2's baseball games can be kinda brutal. His team is terrible--they haven't won a game all season--and he's not very good himself. He can't hit, because he never practices (and hitting a baseball is something you need to practice to be able to do at all competently), and he shows little interest in pitching, even though he could probably be decent at it with a little focus. He just doesn't seem to actually like playing baseball, and he's only on the team to goof off with friends, which is fine, I suppose, at his age, but baseball is a rough sport for parents if your child isn't really into it. You sit around for hours, usually on uncomfortable bleachers, watching your kid stand in the field, hoping the ball doesn't get hit to them (although Lil' S2 isn't a terrible fielder; I wouldn't say he's good, but he's not terrible), and then when they come up to bat, you steel yourself for what is almost guaranteed to be a strikeout. It's not at all enjoyable, so I took S up on her offer to handle baseball duties this morning.

S is leaving next week on a work trip, a longer one than usual, which is why she volunteered (if you were wondering). She feels guilty about leaving and tries to take on more of the parenting responsibility before she goes. I appreciate it, but in theory much more so than in practice. For one thing, it's completely unnecessary, as far as I'm concerned. She already does more than enough, while she's in town, and she's leaving for work, for money, which everybody in the family benefits from, including me. For another thing, it doesn't really work. I don't actually get much of break. I mean, I do, around the edges, like maybe I get out of the things I dislike the most, but they just get replaced with other responsibilities. For example, this morning I had to take Lil' S1 to get his haircut during his brother's game (a more laborious task than it might sound), and that's something that S would normally do, because I would be at baseball. 

Also, there is an element of want-to or feel-obligated-to with your kids that you can't turn off just because your spouse is willing to do more. Sometimes I want to take the kids places, or I would rather help out than sit there and do nothing, even if S says it's okay if I sit there and do nothing, because it makes me feel like a deadbeat dad if I sit there and do nothing, and I don't want to feel like a deadbeat dad. The only way you can really get away from parenting is to literally get away from it, to go somewhere away from home. And even then you're likely to get bombarded with text messages saying somebody wants permission for more Netflix time.

In other news, time just jumped, and it is now late evening as I write this. Lil' S2's baseball game is long over. His team lost 18-4, but he told me he got a "hit," which means he made an out, but not a strikeout. He made contact and put the ball in the play. It was a ground out to first, apparently, but still, that's progress. I think that's the first time he hit a fair ball all season. 

We went to a Kentucky Derby party at a friend's house today. It was fun, but I got a bit of a stomachache from it. I guess eating fried chicken and drinking mint juleps can do that to you. I had two mint juleps, and I probably should've quit after one, not because of the alcohol, but because of the syrup. Well, it was both, really. Somebody else made me the first one, and it was very good and proportional. But then I made the second one, and I suck at making drinks, so I put in too much syrup, and then I tried to even it out by putting in more bourbon, which meant I now just had a giant sugary (but still strong) drink, and I felt compelled to finish it because I always feel compelled to finish my drinks.  

In general, derby parties are pretty fun. You can get there before the race, hang out and eat and drink for a bit, and then watch the race, which is only two minutes, and everybody gets super into it, and has this intense experience together, and then you go home. Our friend does a big betting pool every year also, which makes it even better. I very much loathe the pervasiveness of gambling into all facets of sport, but some betting is fun. Like, if everybody is throwing $5 into a pot once a year on a big race at the center of a social event, then that's good. If you're compulsively tapping away on an app, alone in your apartment, betting your rent money, unmotivated to do anything else, then that's bad. Context matters.

I didn't win big tonight, sadly. Horses were drawn randomly and mine was a 75-1 shot going into the race. That means the oddsmakers thought it had about a 1.3% chance of winning, and it showed, as early on it was in the back of the pack. But then it made a furious push and was in the lead down the final stretch, before getting passed by two horses that were even further back and coming in third. Pretty good for a horse with such low odds, but not good enough to claim a winner-take-all pot. My horse's name was Ocelli, which is the plural of ocellus, the eyespot of a peacock. I told this to the woman sitting next to me at the party, and her reply was, "How do you know that?" which was exactly the response I was going for.

Until next time... 

Entry 805: School Daze

I thought the title for this entry was an homage to a 2001 stoner movie starring Method Man and Redman, but it turns out that movie is called How High. School Daze is a Spike Lee joint from the late '80s starring Laurence Fishburne. I've never seen either film. The latter apparently is a musical comedy-drama based in part on Lee's own college experiences at Morehouse. As for the former, well, I'll just quote Wikipedia directly:

The film follows two cannabis users who gain admission to Harvard University with the supernatural help of a deceased friend whose ashes were used to fertilize a marijuana plant. 

I now want to see this film. It has strong funny-in-a-campy-sort-of-way vibe to it. I don't know why, but for some reason, the first thing that popped into my head for comparison is Weird Science, and as I recall I thought that movie was entertaining even when I rewatched it as an adult.

Anyway...

The end of the school year isn't quite nigh, but it's in sight. It's a bigger deal this year than usual, as each of my kids will be graduating to a new phase of life. Lil' S1 will be done with middle school and moving on to high school in the fall. Lil' S2 will be starting middle school and leaving elementary school. For S and I, this means we are just about done, officially, with the little-kid stage of parenting. The annual elementary school gala is tonight--it would be the final one for us--but we aren't even going. S's friend came into town from Boston to visit, so she doesn't want to go, and I would maybe go stag, but I got invited to dinner with some puzzle people, so I'm going to go to that instead. I'm not really that bummed about missing our last gala. It's a fun event, but we typically just talk to the same people we see all the time anyway.

The big topic of discussion in our household at the moment is where Lil' S1 is going to go to high school: his current private school or the in-zone public school. I want the public school, but I think I'm going to lose this one. Although Lil' S1 showed a willingness, a desire even, to switch to the public school earlier this year, he has become pretty resolute recently in his wish to stay at his current school. S is mostly with me, in that she wants him to go to the public school, but if he really doesn't want to go--and it seems he doesn't--then it changes things. As she put it to me, "I want him to want to go there."

So, I think the fear of the unknown will be too great, and she will ultimately push to keep him where he is, and then I'll have to fold or face two people mad at me in my family. I'll probably fold. Also, it's honestly not a huge capitulation on my part. I think he will be fine at either school. I hate paying tuition to an institution that I don't think it is that great, but if I don't look at our bank statements, it's not that bad. The thing is, I just don't know what we get from this private school that is worth the money. I guess from my perspective I have to tell myself that's it's for family harmony, marital bliss, peace of mind, and those things are worth whatever you can afford to pay for them.

Speaking of Lil' S1's school, there was an "incident" this past week that caused quite the hullabaloo among this little community. What happened is some teachers were trying to come up with groups for a grade-wide project, and they wanted to match kids with other kids with whom they would work well. To do this, they created a spreadsheet with the kids' names and some information about them--their race, their interests, their friend groups, etc.--and in so doing, they used informal, somewhat disparaging language about the students. Then they accidentally saved this document to a drive to which students have access (doh!). A few kids saw it, took screenshots, and showed it to their parents, and then all hell broke loose.

There were really only two demeaning descriptions in the doc--the teachers characterized somebody as a "mean girl" and said another kid was "small and very ADHD" (and even that is more infelicitous than pejorative)--but that was enough to set off an email chain of seemingly infinite length, prompt an open letter to the school, and lead to not one, but two Zoom meetings--one with the school administration and a parents-only prep before that.

What exactly got resolved? I'm not sure. I don't think anybody got fired or disciplined, but maybe that's coming. Hopefully nobody loses their job over this. It doesn't rise anywhere close to that level, in my opinion. This is more like an-apologize-and-move-on type of thing. My big takeaway is that everybody should be under the assumption that anything they write to anybody online could be made public at some point, and so they should act accordingly. I don't really care that the teachers sometimes categorize their students in less than flattering ways (they're humans and that's how humans communicate), but it shows terrible judgement to put this down in writing. That should be the lesson for the kids: Every time you send a text or an email or share a document or otherwise communicate in a way that leaves a record, you have to think, "What would happen if this gets out?" If the answer is, "It would lead to public humiliation for me and possibly be cause for discipline from my employers," then maybe don't send it. 

On that note, until next time... 

 

Entry 798: What Can't DG Complain About?

I used to listen daily to The Adam Carolla Show. I haven't listened in, jeez, probably over a decade now, because it got way too repetitive. This happens to pretty much all podcasts, by they way, in which the hosts' pontifications about their personal lives are central aspects of the show. An individual person only has so many stories and so many jokes and so many stories to set up those so many jokes, and if you listen for long enough, you get to the point where it's like, Do I really need to listen to Adam do his bit on canned cranberry sauce for the one millionth time? And then you hit unsubscribed. This also happened to me with Sarah Silverman's podcast, and it preemptively happened with Dax Shepard's. My sister-in-law told me how good it was, so I was thinking of adding it to my rotation, but then a few months later she said she stopped listening, because he just told the same stories and jokes over and over, so I decided against it.

But one of the bits I used to really like on ACS was "What Can't Adam Complain About?" where Adam's producer would throw out a topic, and he would find something about it he didn't like and then just riff on it for a few minutes. I always thought I would be good at this segment because I'm a world class complainer. It's one of my finer qualities. Although, I get the feeling S doesn't feel that way about it. In fact, she seems to be more annoyed by my constant carping than amused. Fine art always goes over some people's heads.

Here's a sample from my latest list of complaints.

Microsoft Office Licenses
One of my least favorite technology trends is the nearly universal adoption of the software subscription model. You can't just buy software now and have it forever. You have to, in effect, buy it over and over again every year. My personal Microsoft Office subscription lapsed recently, but that's okay, because I found out that at my company, we can use our work license on up to five machines, including personal computers. So, I registered Microsoft Office through work on my laptop, and all was well. 

Until I tried to save something. Turns out Microsoft is so fucking petty, they won't let me save any Office documents to my laptop or personal One Drive account, and the documents that are already saved there are read-only. I have to use my work drive, even when I'm using my laptop. It's not the end of the world, but it is irritating, and it's like why? I'm not renewing, so they're going to punish me by making their product more annoying? If anything, that makes me want to get a Mac. It doesn't seem like the greatest business strategy to me.

The worst part about it is that I like to keep work and personal things separate. But I think that's already a losing battle. I started using my personal phone (the only phone I have) to authenticate certain work credentials a long time ago, and I just discovered it's easier to schedule work meetings through my phone than on my work laptop. The work/personal firewall as already been breached. Also, we get most our revenue at my company by selling software as a service, including subscriptions, so, yeah...

AI
I'm not going to complain about AI, so much as I am AI mania. AI itself is fine, but it's just that, fine. It's not the godlike omnipotence it's being hyped as. Maybe it will get there someday, maybe someday relatively soon, but can we pump the brakes a little until it does? We're now at a point were every company has to put the term AI in their mission statements just to seem relevant; everybody looking for a job has to tout their AI credentials (even if they don't really have any); and seemingly every podcast has to be about what AI holds for the future of whatever field the podcast deals in. I'm now kinda rooting for AI to render human thought completely obsolete within the next few decades, as if it doesn't, we are presently wasting a whole lot of time discussing how it is going to do so. 

Personally, I like using AI as a check on me. We use it at work for code review to identify potential issues and like ten percent of the time it finds something that requires a fix. It's rarely something major, but still it's legitimately helpful. What I don't find AI useful for is how it's being marketed, as a creator whose product I'm supposed to check. For work, I had to take these AI training modules, and they were very pro AI, but also very insistent that AI was only going to augment human labor, not replace it, so they would say things like: You can use AI to draft emails, because that's something AI is very good at doing very quickly! But then it's your job to make sure your message conveys all the information you want and that the tone is appropriate for the intended audience. That's something that requires a human touch! And I was thinking to myself, that "human touch" is what I spend 95% of my time on when writing an email, particularly getting the tone right. The longer I watched, the more I thought to myself that AI sounds a lot like a bad employee whose work you constantly have to monitor.

Of course, it will get better. That's the obvious retort to all this. But how much better and how quickly? And is better actually better? Right now AI tells you things that are obviously incorrect*, and so you know not to believe it. But if it told you things that looked correct, but still weren't, it could be more harmful. Like, if using AI becomes finding the needles that are its errors in a haystack of content, is that better? For me, it's more efficient to build the haystack myself and keep the needles out along a way. (And then an AI can check if I succeeded or not.) But maybe I'm just getting old--this century's version of the guy who looks up things in the encyclopedia because he insists it's faster than googling them. That's definitely a possibility, and I'm mostly okay with it. 

*Case in point, I googled "colleges with presidents and a super bowl winning quarterbacks," and this is the result that the AI gave me. It did get 1-3 correct, which is impressive, but neither Franklin Pierce nor Matt Ryan went to Harvard, and the notion of Mitchell Trubisky winning a Super Bowl is patently absurd to anybody who follows the NFL at all.

 

 

Back to the Future:
As I mentioned in a previous entry, we recently cranked out the Back to the Future trilogy. I like it quite a bit, but something about it rubbed me the wrong way this time around. It's not any of the evident time-travel paradoxes, or the fact that the successful McFlys at the end of the movie live in the same house as the dysfunctional McFlys at the beginning (including Marty's brother, even though he's portrayed as somebody who could afford his own place), or the weirdness of Doc's best friend being a teenage boy. It's none of that. It's the contrived plot point that Marty's Achilles' heel is being called chicken.

I remembered this from the first time I saw the movies, way back when, but I didn't remember the back story, and then when we watched them this time around, I realize there is no back story. They just invented it out of thin air. In Part II, Griff Tannen calls Marty chicken, and he reacts to it as if it's an established part of the canon that he has a pathological aversion to this, but it's not. It's not even alluded to in the first movie. Then, future Marty gets fired from his job after getting goaded into a shady scheme by getting called chicken, and future Jennifer tells their kids, something to the effect of, "You know your father's one weakness is being called chicken." And it's like, Oh, okay, I guess this is a thing that the audience is supposed to know now.

It's pretty weak character development, to be honest, and I don't see why it's necessary to the story. Surely, the movie makers could have come up with a different way to make Marty's future go south. Also, in the scene in which he doesn't get baited into racing Flea ("Needles"), and thus avoids his life-altering accident, why does he gun it backwards and do a half-donut, instead of not moving at all, or just going forward at the speed limit in a safe manner? What Marty does actually seems more dangerous to me than racing forward.

Anyway, this has been "What Can't DG Complain About?"

Until next time... 

Entry 797: You Complete Me

Some good things happening here in my world right now and some bad things. The Seahawks won the Super Bowl in dominating fashion, and I've very much enjoyed basking in the success of my favorite professional sports team (tied with the Mariners). Every night since Sunday, before I've gone to sleep, I've watched some sort of highlight or game video on YouTube from the Seahawks' championship season. Last night, I watched the final quarter of the NFC Championship Game against the Rams. There are no points scored in it, but it's a great watch nevertheless. It's basically only two series. The Rams go on a long time-consuming drive that ends inside the Seattle ten-yard line, when the "Dark Side" D gets a beautiful, fortuitous fourth-down stop. And then the Seahawks take over and effectively run out the clock, getting clutch first down after clutch first down. It's a joy to watch, even though I know what's going to happen. In fact, it's a joy largely because I know what is going to happening. That I know that this is what propels them to the Lombardi Trophy is what makes it fun. Had they lost the game or been defeated in the Super Bowl, I wouldn't be watching at all.

In other good news, the snow is finally starting to melt here. There is still a ton of it, and it's still annoying, but the streets are a little bit wider, and I can see large pockets of green on my lawn.

But there is bad news also: Our president is still a megalomaniac, who is making life worse for pretty much everybody, including many who voted for him, and his abhorrent policies concerning immigration enforcement have put us on the verge of another prolonged government shutdown. As with the first one, just a few months ago, I think the Democrats are correct on the issue but wrong on the tactics. Dems don't want to fund ICE without reforms, which I totally understand and completely cosign, so they are refusing to allow the funding for DHS to go through, since ICE is a part of DHS. The problem is that DHS has like 20 agencies under its milieu, including essential services like FEMA and TSA, and these are currently not being funded. What's more is that, as I understand it, ICE got a special carve out of funding in that Big Beautiful Bill, so it has the money to operate without restraint for the foreseeable future. So, basically, a shutdown will disrupt the good parts of DHS, while the worst part of it carries on unfettered. Maybe I'm missing something, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Anyway...

It's a four day weekend for both our children. This is a bit annoying, given how much school they missed due to the snow, but at least DCPS did something for which I've been advocating for years. They scrapped some administration days and turned them into a school days. We don't have parent-teacher conferences now, but I'd rather that be the case than have to tack on a days of school the week after "graduation" (this is Lil' S2's last year in elementary school) when a lot of kids will already be at camp or on vacation. It does beg the question: Why doesn't the district build these flex days into the schedule from the get-go, instead of adding them on the fly, being that we get at least one heavy snowfall pretty much every year? I still don't know the answer to that. But I at least give DCPS a half star for making a smart adjustment.

Actually, there is some drama at Lil' S2's school right now. A contingent of teachers are unhappy with the administration--they don't feel supported and empowered--and they have rallied some parents to advocate on their behalf. There is a letter to the chancellor going around on the message boards that a bunch of parents are signing. I think S might have signed it (or is going to sign it), mainly because her friend asked her to. Personally, I'm staying out of it. In four months, we will be done with this school, and so I don't feel super invested in the matter. I also don't want to just support the teachers reflexively (I'm admittedly still bitter about their reluctance to return during Covid lockdowns, even after getting moved to the front of the line for vaccines, even after it became clear that children weren't great vectors for the disease), and I'm not sure if it really is "the teachers" or just "a few teachers." One of the parents in a group chat I'm in is also a teacher at the school, and she posted something in defense of the administration, which definitely gave me pause about the whole thing. Basically, I would want to do some research and get all the facts and opinions before signing onto anything, and that seems like entirely too much work to me considering I won't have any kids at the school by the time I'm done. As long as teachers at the school don't start striking, I'm just gonna ride this one out.

Abruptly changing topics, it was Valentine's Day yesterday, and last night was one of those increasingly rare weekend evenings in which both of our kids are home and don't have any friends over, so we decided to have family movie night and settled on the 1996 romantic comedy Jerry Maguire. And by "settled on," I mean S and I decided that that's what we wanted to watch and cajoled the boys into watching it with us. Lil' S1 lasted about 15 minutes ("I didn't even want to watch it in the first place."); Lil' S2 made it about an hour ("This is boring. There's hardly any football in it."). So, we turned it off and watched a couple episodes of Modern Family instead.

S and I are intent on finishing it, though. We both forgot how good it is. It's nearly a ten of ten on the rewatchability scale. Every character in it is almost perfectly crafted and acted. Jerry and Dorothy couldn't be more charming as the leads; the little kid Ray is just as adorable as you remember ("The human head weighs eight pounds."); Rod and his wife are super likeable and funny; Jay Mohr is great as the movie's only real villain; and Bonnie Hunt is brilliant as Dorothy's sister (real appreciated her performance this time around). We still have about 40 minutes left in the movie, and hopefully we get a quiet time to finish it tonight--preferably before 8p. If it's any later, there is a real risk of S falling asleep during it, and then it will be like that one Valentine's day, many years ago, when S was pregnant and went to bed at like 7:30, so I celebrated alone by eating a heart-sharped piece of cake, drinking sparkling cider, and binge watching Friday Night Lights. Oh well, Valentine's Day proper is already over, and it's fake holiday, anyway.

Until next time... 

Entry 796: A Running Diary Of My Weekend

Friday 

4:00p: I'm frantically trying to finish work and hop on the stationary bike. I'm itching for a good workout, and if I don't start soon, things are going to get tricky. S was away for work all week, and I can see on the Find My app that she's landed and is in a car on the way home. If I'm already in the middle of my workout when she gets here then everything will be fine. If I haven't started it yet, then I'm going to have to talk (or more likely listen) to her for a sufficient amount of time, so as to not seem like an uncaring spouse, and that's going to push back my workout, and then the kids are going to come home, and then we're gonna have to do dinner, and so on and so forth.

4:15p: Lil' S2 calls, and he wants some friends to come over after school. It's fine with me, but I have to clear it with S first, so I call her, and she says it's okay, but she doesn't want them to walk home because of the icy conditions. I call Lil' S2 back and tell him that it's fine with us, but he has to clear it with his friend's mother because it's her turn to drive. (We have a carpool for when they can't walk.) 

4:20p: I remember that I forgot to cook something for dinner, and if I don't get something started, the kids are going to bother me about getting carryout, and it's always incredibly annoying to get them carryout on Friday because traffic is so bad and last time we did delivery it was like $60 for the two of them, so I don't want to do that, nor do I want to fight about it, so I gotta have an established alternative. I throw some chicken in the pressure cooker and rice in the rice cooker and go to put on my workout clothes.

4:25p: S comes home. I didn't make it. What's worse is that I have a bunch of missed calls on my phone from Lil' S2 and a bunch of texts from his friends' mom. She didn't have room in the car for everybody who was coming over because her son neglected to tell her that he had not only Lil' S2 with him but two other kids as well. So, unable to get a hold of me, Lil' S2 and his friends started walking home, and S is not happy when she hears this, and she leaves to pick them up, even though she literally just walked through the door after traveling for the last 15 hours. I offer to pick them up instead, but I do so halfheartedly (for one thing, I'm in a t-shirt and shorts; for another, I don't really mind them walking), and I'm pretty sure S picks up on that.

4:27p: I shut myself off in the guest room where our stationary bike is, put in my earbuds, crank up the volume (my iPhone now warns me that it might be too loud), and start pedaling. I don't think S will be annoyed with me for going AWOL for an hour or so. I was alone with the kids for a week--and it was not an easy week!--so I think I have some relationship capital built up in my favor.

5:30p: S isn't annoyed at all, and she tells me all about her trip. I pretend to be very interested, and she pretends to not know that I'm actually only mildly interested. That's a happy marriage in action right there.

6:30p: I eat chicken and rice casserole for dinner.

7:30p: I watch two episodes of Modern Family with S and the boys. Lil' S1 takes so long to get ready to watch the show for some reason. We're all waiting for him, and I yell that if he takes any longer, we're going to be watching Ancient Family instead. It's a solid 6 of a joke.

8:30p: Lil' S2 has gotten into Rubik's cubing again, so he has me time him on his solves. His fastest is 45 seconds, which is legit impressive. The thing is, he uses the same algorithm I do, but I struggle to get below two minutes.

10:30p: I listen to a podcast and solve a crossword contest puzzle with a meta theme. I crack the meta very quickly and submit my answer. If I'm correct (and I'm confident I am; it's one of those things where you know it when you get it), and my name is selected at random, then I will win some sweet crossword puzzle merch. I've gotten the right answer in this contest probably 20 times over the past few years and never won it. One of these days...

11:45p: I get in bed to sleep, but S is in the middle of the mattress, so I have to try to push her over without her waking up. I'm somewhat successful. I get her to move a few inches and decide not to push it (or her) any further, even though I'm still kinda cramped.

Saturday

8:45a: I wake up and Lil' S1 is making pancakes. Although I typically don't eat breakfast, I make an exception because it's a family thing, and pancakes are delicious. It's a good decision on my part. The mix of butter and maple syrup on a warm fluffy pancake, washed down with some coffee, is an almost unbeatable breakfast combination.

1:00p: Lil' S1 has some friends come to play D&D and socialize in the way nerdy 8th graders socialize. Lil' S2, S, and I watch Back to the Future Part III to finish up the trilogy. It still holds up for the most part. The very end is kinda corny. I wish they would have handled it differently, but whatever. I ask Lil' S2 to rank the three films, and he says II, I, III. That's probably what I would have said as a child also. The future scenes in II are cool when you're a kid. As an adult, however, I think II is the worst of them. It goes I, a massive gap, III, a little gap, II. 

3:30p: Needing to do something physical and to charge our EV, I decide to clear a path in our driveway to the charger. I didn't do it before, which was a mistake, as now there is about six feet of solid, inches-thick ice that needs to be excavated before our car can get close enough to be reached by the charging cable. I have to use two shovels to do the job-- a long gardening spade with a triangular head to cut through the ice and a big flat snow shovel to scoop it up. It's very satisfying work--one of those jobs where initially you think there is no way you are ever going to get through it, but you just start chipping away (literally, in this case) and get lost in your thoughts (S needed my phone, so I wasn't listening to a podcast, as I usually would), and then you look up, and think to yourself Goddamn, I'm like halfway done already! The cold is absolutely brutal, with the whipping winds it feels like it's subzero, but I keep warm by bundling up. I do two things that are huge in this regard: 1) Wear a scarf and wrap it tightly from the bottom of my neck to my eyes, so that almost my entire face is covered; 2) Put one of those hard-warmers with the little pellets that you shake up in my pocket and grab it from time-to-time. Even with two pairs of gloves on, it's my hands that tend to get unbearably cold, so the hand-warmer was crucial.

4:00p: S needs my phone because she's switching us to a much cheaper plan. She gets her and Lil' S1's phones switched successfully and is very proud of herself for doing so, which I know because she mentions about five times how proud of herself she is. Hey, I get it. Navigating all that customer service stuff totally sucks. The only problem is that we can't switch Lil' S2's watch to the new plan because they don't offer standalone service for watches. You have to tie it to a phone, which we don't want to do. This also means we can't switch my phone yet, as all the passwords and stuff for our old account are on my phone. The solution is probably to break down and get Lil' S2 a phone. I guess we just embrace the dark side.

7:00p: Both the boys go to friends' houses for sleepovers, giving S and I a night to ourselves. We turn on a fire and enjoy some kid-free time, by which I mean we sit next to each other on the sofa while she watches something on her iPad, and I listen to a podcast and play NYT games.

10:00p: Remembering that the Super Bowl is tomorrow and that I'm going to be done with football for a while once it ends (especially if the Seahawks lose), I decide to watch a Super Bowl from my childhood. I settle on Super Bowl XXII, Washington 42, Denver 10. It's not a very close game, but it's a fun one, and you only really need to watch the second quarter. Washington fell behind early 10-0 after the first quarter, and then rattled off five straight touchdowns to take a 35-10 lead into halftime. It's pretty remarkable to watch. It's one of the greatest "flip the script" games of all time.

Sunday

8:30a: I wake up and spend most the morning doing chores--laundry, trash, and the like. I want to do a workout this afternoon, and this evening I'll be watching the Super Bowl, of course, so I gotta get all the boring stuff out of the way first. Plus, S took the boys "volunteering" (dropping off meals to elderly people), so I don't want to look like a slacker.

1:00p: Everybody returns home, and S is grumbling because the kids were bickering a bit while doing their volunteering. It sounds like pretty standard sibling stuff to me. They both want to make cookies for the Super Bowl tonight, but Lil' S2 refuses to work with Lil' S1, so they're each making their own batch. It's one of those things where Lil' S1 is actually a very good baker, and Lil' S2 doesn't like his older brother having that over him (even though it's only over him in his own mind), so he wants to prove that he can bake cookies on his own, even though he can't yet. It leads to a pretty funny exchange, with Lil' S2 looking at his iPad and Lil' S1 looking over his shoulder.

Lil' S1: Are you just googling "cookie dough"? I have a sugar cookie recipe you can use in my cookbook.
Lil' S2: I don't want sugar cookies. I want cookie dough.
Lil' S1: What do you mean you want cookie dough? All cookies are made from cookie dough, even sugar cookies.
Lil' S2: Yeah, but I don't want sugar cookies. I want chocolate chip cookies.
Lil' S1: Okay, then google "chocolate chip cookie recipes." You can't just google "cookie dough." [Turning to S and I and chuckling.] He was just googling "cooking dough."
Lil' S2: Just go away! I don't need your help! I can do it myself!

2:30p: Another funny quote from Lil' S1 involving food: "No thanks, I'll make it myself. I watch a lot of grilled cheese sandwich videos." 

4:00p: We are going to a friend's house for the Super Bowl tonight, and it's not a Seahawk-centric thing. It's just a normal, nonpartisan Super Bowl party. A lot of hardcore fans don't like going to parties with non-fans, because there are so many distractions around, but I actually prefer it specifically because of the distractions. It reminds me that sports fandom is supposed to be fun and social and that it actually doesn't matter to my life who wins. I do, however, download the Peacock app on my phone and log in with my sister-in-law's credentials. This way I'll always have access to the game. We usually leave this party at halftime, because the Super Bowl is on too late on the East Coast (why not a 4:25p start time like regular season games?), but the hosts like to do this raffle thing with all the kids during halftime, and so by the time we actually get home, the game is well into the third quarter. When it's two teams I don't care about, this is fine, but with the Seahawks, I might want to have S drive and watch in the car.

10:30p: Seahawks win the Super Bowl 29-13. Hell yeah!

 Until next time...