Entry 795: Life On Hoth

I think I have to take the L with my prediction that last weekend's snowstorm would be "no big deal." I was correct that the snowfall wasn't all that much (about a half foot); I was correct that the snowplows were out in short order*; I was correct that there were no widespread power outages; and I was correct that people would still have access to food and medicine. What I did not foresee was how much the prolonged cold snap would prevent the city from getting back to normal. After the snow fell, we got several hours of sleet that along with the incredibly cold temperatures--I don't think it has gotten above 30 degrees (272.039 kelvin, if you prefer SI units) since the storm hit--turned what was initially a soft powder into a brick-like substance. We're not buried in snow; we're penned in by giant blocks of ice. It's great for building snow forts. It's terrible for making snowballs or, you know, living life.  

*Although people complain about how bad DC is at clearing the streets, I've found it to be exact opposite. We had snowplows come down our street so many times that by the end of it they didn't even have their plows down because there was nothing left to plow. Although, I'm sure it doesn't hurt that we live in the same neighborhood as the mayor. 

So, now, it's a huge headache to get anywhere. For starters, if you didn't already dig your car out when the snow was somewhat soft, you're just stuck now, unless you have access to a pickax, because you can't dig this stuff with a normal shovel. Then, although the roads are mostly clear, they are very narrow pathways between huge berms of ices. You know how when you drive through residential neighborhoods in the city (I'm specifically thinking of Ballard/Phinney Ridge in Seattle), you often have to stop and let cars through coming in the other direction because, even though the streets are technically two-way, there's not enough room for two drivers to fit through with cars parked are both sides of the street? That's how it is right now for most the roads in DC, even some major arterials, and it makes auto travel super slow. And then when you get to where you're going, you have to find a parking space, which was already difficult in this city before half the available slots become repositories for all the snow removed from the other half. Even going to the grocery store late morning on a weekday, when it's usually empty, is a major hassle.

 

And car travel is the best form of transportation. The buses have to go on the same crowded streets as the cars, and they are even bigger, and the metro is only a good option if you happen to live right by a station. If you even live just a few blocks away, then you have to walk, and walking in these conditions ranges from very inconvenient to downright unsafe. You have to bundle up to a ridiculous degree if you are going to be outside for an extended period of time,* and your pedestrian choices are either the middle of the narrow streets next to cars that could hit a patch of ice at any moment, or on top of the slippery uneven frozen snow. My neighborhood is filled will old people who struggle to walk on normal terrain. They are, in effect, trapped in their homes right now.

*Lil' S2 was outside shoveling people's walkways for so long that his feet got a little frostbitten. At least, I think that's what happened. Two of his toes had sores on them and were discolored, but it's possible that they were blisters and that the dye from the fabric of his boots leached onto his skin. Whatever the case, we haven't let him play outside again yet, which he doesn't love. On the plus side, he made like $40.  

School has reopened but did not do so until Thursday and with a delayed start. We didn't have a single full day of school this week. There was much tittle-tattle on the parent chat groups about whether or not school should have reopened, whether or not remote school is an option, and whether or not the city is doing enough to clear the snow. My feelings are yes, no, and yes. School being open right now is the least worst option. This ice world we find ourselves in isn't even starting to thaw until late next week, at the earliest, so waiting until conditions get markedly better will mean many snow days. The district is required by law to offer 180 school days a year, so any time we miss now will have to be made up in the summer, which will be more disruptive.

As for remote learning: hard pass. We found out during COVID that it is almost completely useless, especially for elementary students, and it doesn't address a major concern during snow days, which is that parents often have to work and cannot do so if they also have to supervise their young children who are at home with them. The daycare aspect of school is not some luxury for entitled parents, as it is sometimes portrayed, it is a necessary function of society that we pay for in taxes. I do not in any way want to normalize remote school, even as an alternative to snow days. Honestly, I would rather have my kids run around the neighborhood in the snow with their friends than have them sit at a computer all day pretending to learn. It's healthier for them and easier on me.* 

*Although probably nobody gets frostbitten while remote learning. 

As for the city clearing snow, as I alluded to above, the city seems to be doing pretty much all they can. The problem is that there is simple no place for the snow to go until it melts. When you push it off the street to the side of the street, you take away all the street parking; when you push it off the side of street to the sidewalk, people have nowhere walk; when you push it off the sidewalk into people's yards you block their entryways. You can only pile it so high in the relatively small amount of square-footage that nobody will need to access for the next few weeks.

Also, I'm not in a mood to criticize the city because we had a water main burst on our street yesterday,* and DC Water responded relatively quickly and turned it off, and then a crew came out and worked on it for at least ten hours in the freezing (literally) cold until it was fixed. We went over to the sister-in-law's for the night, so that we could have access to running water (they had to shut it off for our entire street). S and Lil' S2 stayed the night there (Lil' S1 slept over at a friend's house), but I came back around 10 pm, and the water crew was still out. I had to put some white noise on to muffle the noise of construction when I went to sleep after midnight. But I woke up this morning, and they were gone, and we had water. Staying out to the wee hours of the morning in temperatures in the teens to make sure people's water is restored ASAP. That is something to commend. 

*I assume the leak was related to the cold, but I don't know for sure. 

Anyway, people being critical of the government, arguing about remote learning and whether or not schools should be open, anxiety about leaving the house, news of law enforcement officers in Minnesota senselessly killing citizens--I feel a bit like I'm going through COVID lockdowns again. Maybe I should Zoom my friends and we can rewatch Tiger King together.

Until next time... 

Entry 794: Winter Is Coming

The big news here in the DC area, and along much of the Eastern Seaboard, is the winter storm forecasted to strike very early tomorrow morning and wreak havoc on all of us who call the region home. It's really hard to get an accurate assessment of the situation. In large part that's because it hasn't happened yet, and nobody knows with certainty what's going to happen, until it actually happens. In large part, it's because the short-term incentives of pretty much everybody involved are to act as if we are on the verge of a snowy apocalypse. The weather services don't want to be accused of insufficiently alerting the public to the possibility, or understating the potential damage, of a major storm; the media knows sensationalizing the weather is a great way to get cheap clicks; and for the general public, it's something exciting to talk about and something you feel compelled to prepare for. You don't want to be the family who's eating creamed eels and wadded beef because you didn't get to the grocery store in time.*

*I went to our local supermarket yesterday, and parts of it looked like photos of Soviet-era groceries, just huge swaths of empty shelving. But, here's the thing, there was still a ton of food for sale. Like, maybe you couldn't get exactly what you wanted--they were all out of strawberries and grapes and only had the super expensive artisanal yogurt left--but if you needed sustenance, it was available for purchase. Capitalism, baby!

But there is probably a long-term downside to treating every kinds rough weather event as if it's a biblical torrent. Collectively, we become a boy-who-cried-wolf society, where we are ill-prepared for the true disasters. So, that's why I'm going to make a very boring prediction: This storm is going to be no big deal. We are going to get half a foot* of snow tomorrow morning/afternoon, and it will be over by the evening. Things will be closed on Monday (DCPS already has a pre-planned staff day, so kids have it off anyway), but the snow plows will get out, the roads will be cleared, and the city will be moving again by Tuesday. Schools might not reopen, because they are annoyingly cautious about, well, pretty much everything, but they will be Wednesday, and then that'll be that. There are not going to be widespread power outages; old people won't be freezing in their homes; and diabetics won't be deprived of insulin because medical supply trucks can't get into the city. It's just going to be a couple of normal snow days, where parents bundle their kids in whatever snow-appropriate attire they can rummage up (always with mismatched gloves), and everybody goes outside and plays and sleds and frolics for 45 minutes, before returning inside to get warm and drink hot chocolate. The worst part is going to be looking at the banks of dirty snow on the side of the road for the next few weeks. That's my prediction.

*The Weather Channel, which is advertising an "Historic Winter Storm," is saying 5" to 8" of snow anticipated. I assure that is not historic. I was in DC in winter of 2003-2004, when we got, like, two feet of snow, and the city almost completely shut down for over a week. I actually did run out of food and had to trudge several miles to the closest open corner store for some hugely marked up canned goods. Now to be fair, the storm is supposed to be worse in surround areas than in DC proper. But, to be fair in the other direction, there's nothing stopping media from noting this in their coverage.

Of course, I could be wrong about all of this--maybe the storm really will wreak destruction and mayhem--but that's true about everything everybody says. It could always be wrong. That's baked into the cake of all human analysis.

In other news, a weird thing happened the other day, where Lil' S2 and a bunch of his friends walked to Target after school, as they sometimes do, and some random guy told them to "stay safe" and paid for all their snacks for them. Details are very murky because they are being retold by nine- and ten-year-olds--the description of the man is that he had kinda blond curly hair and was maybe Black, maybe white, and maybe mixed--but here's my best guess as to what happened. While walking to Target, Lil' S2 got too close to the road, and some guy honked at him from his car. He happened to be going to Target also, and when he saw the same kids he just honked at in line, he paid for all their snacks on a whim and told them to stay safe -- kinda a life-lesson, imparted wisdom, gesture-y type of thing. If that's the case, it's a little strange, but completely harmless. In fact, I'm a thousand times more frightened by the fact that Lil' S2 was close to the street than I am by some rando paying for their snacks -- and I let him know as much. One thing I am not chill about at all is pedestrian safety with respect to my children. Every time I drive down the major street that bounds our neighborhood, and I see how fast people drive and how distracted they are and how distracted walkers often are,* it sends a shiver up my spine.

*There is one crosswalk in particular that is kinda at a weird angle whereby the pedestrian has to really look backwards over their left shoulder to see if a car is turning right into their area, and they almost never do. In theory, they shouldn't have to--it's their right-of-way--but that's putting way more faith in other people's driving abilities than I have or that I want my loved ones to have. 

As soon as a parent got wind of this incident (one of the moms asked how her son still had money after getting snacks), it spread on the text chains like Crying Jordan. I found that I was somewhat in the minority, in that most parents were super creeped out by the fact that an adult thought it was appropriate to buy things for children he didn't know, regardless of his intention. To be clear, I was a little creeped, but not super creeped out. It went so far as to consider asking the store to view their security footage, but I don't think anybody actually did that. Instead, it was determined that all of our children would be indefinitely forbidden from going to Target after school, which I think is the correct decision.

To be honest, I was never really comfortable with them going to Target. It's right on the border of a part of the city where things get a little shady -- not like City of God shady, but inappropriate for unsupervised fifth graders shady. But they always went in the middle of the day and in a large group and other parents seemed okay with it, so S and I reluctantly agreed to it. Well, now I realize that all the parents thought like me. They were also just going along with it because everybody else was going along with it. So, now it's done, and who knows, maybe this small incident forestalled a much more serious incident that would have occurred if we continued to let them go to Target.

It's a tricky thing, determining how much freedom to give your kids, especially in a big city. I feel pretty safe in our little nook, but there are definitely pockets of DC for which this is not the case, and you can't live your life and avoid all the bad stuff 100% of the time. Part of growing up is learning how to be aware of your surroundings and how to successfully navigate out of potentially dangerous situations. The challenge is that, as a parent, it's not at all obvious how to let your children learn these lessons in an age-appropriate manner. It's a balance, and I think we added a bit too much weight to the "free-range" side of the scale, and now we have to self-correct. If nothing else, it gives me greater piece of mind that they can't go to Target any longer, and that's not something to discount. An anxious worrying parent isn't good for anybody.

Alright, time to go get ready for a birthday party -- our second one in as many weeks. Look at us, social butterflies.

Until next time... 

Entry 793: Well, At Least The Seahawks Won

The Seahawks not only won, they destroyed their arch-rival San Francisco 49ers, 41-6. It was very reminiscent of Super Bowl XLVIII, where they scored within the first 15 seconds and didn't relent until they were up by 35. It was the type of game where if it was between two teams neither of which were "my" team, I probably would have turned it off at halftime due to a lack of drama. But since it was the Seahawks, I watched until the very end (even when it was Drew Lock handing off to Velus Jones) and didn't let my nervous fan guard down until Kenneth Walker scored his second touchdown to make it 34-6.

I'm very glad the 'Hawks won. I needed something to bring my spirits up a bit. The news the past few weeks has gotten me down a bit, and it doesn't look like it's getting better anytime soon. You know what I'm talking about. You've heard all the stories--no need to go into the details here. I don't have much to add, anyway. Instead, I'll talk about other, more fun, things like music.

To that end, I briefly became obsessed with this song "Hail to the King" by the band Avenged Sevenfold. I don't particularly like or dislike the song--it's fine; metal isn't really my thing--but I've been trying to figure out the name of it and who sings it for like six months, and I finally did. I definitely heard it a few times when it first came out like ten years ago, but recently it's been added to my Krav Maga instructor's playlist, so I hear it every time I go to the gym. Not knowing it would bother me so much--Who IS this?--but I would be in the middle of doing a drill, so I couldn't exactly stop and check. Plus, I doubt my instructor would appreciate me trying to look at his phone, anyway. So, then I would make it a point to pick out a few lyrics, so that I could Google them later, but I had a lot of trouble discerning the vocals, and it's really hard to pay attention to a song, when, say, you are doing inside defenses and somebody is throwing punches at your head that you need to deflect. A few times I thought I had something, but I would forget it by the time class was over, or it wouldn't be the actual words, so my searches wouldn't turn up anything useful.

But then, during Wednesday's class, I definitely heard the word "henchmen." It was either "the henchmen come" or "the henchmen call," so I repeated those phrases in my head like a mantra while doing a set of front kicks to a vertical target, and then during a water break I made a note of them in my phone. After class, I Googled it up, and "boom!" I got the result I needed. Finally! I now know the name and artist of a song I don't really care about. I can sleep at night.

Actually, I can't really sleep at night, or at least I couldn't last night, not well. I woke up four or five times throughout the night, including once at 3:30a, and I didn't fall back asleep until about 5:30a. My system was all askew. I ran six miles earlier in the day, which felt great, but also kinda messed me up, and then I had two tall beers later in the evening, and drinking feels more and more like poisoning myself, the older I get, and then I stayed up late and forgot to eat dinner, because I was watching the Seahawks game, so then I polished off, like, three bowls of Honey Nut Cheerios right before I went to bed around 12:30a. So, it's really no wonder I didn't sleep great last night. I brought it on myself.

I had the beers at a friend's 50th birthday party. I probably should have just had one, but I was having fun, and I don't like to think of myself as somebody who can't drink more than one beer anymore, even though that's probably the reality. It was a karaoke party, which was really cool, but it was with a live band, so the set list wasn't huge, and there was no bouncing ball on the lyrics. You just had to figure out where to come in on your own. That made it really tricky. It's also tricky because I have a terrible singing voice, so I have to do songs that are kinda goofy or intentional off-key. My plan was to do the Violent Femmes' "American Music," but they didn't have it, so then I thought about Harvey Danger's "Flagpole Sitta," but they didn't have that either, so I settled on "Ice, Ice Baby." It went fine. I still know all the words and the tempo, but not knowing exactly when to come in made it kinda hard. Also, the vocals were super quiet compared to the instruments, which is not ideal for karaoke... or is it? Maybe that was the plan. Have people come up and have fun singing without embarrassing themselves too much or subjecting other people to their terrible voices, since nobody care really hear them anyway.

We know the guy whose birthday it was because our kids go (or went, rather) to school together, and it was very much a parent party. The stated time was 6:00p-8:00p, and around 7:50p a bunch of people were like, "Time to go relieve the sitter." The birthday boy said to me, "I feel like I should organize an after party, but also... I'm officially old now!" There was no way we staying out any later. S usually goes to sleep around 9:00p, and I had a football game to watch. Also, although our kids are old enough to not need a sitter anymore, we don't like to leave them home alone too long.

Alright, that's all I got for today. Until next time... 

Entry 792: Chaos

The chaos was threefold this week: in the world, the country, and on the homefront. In the latter it was not even on the same scale as the other two, in terms of importance, but it was especially relevant to me because it was mine, and I'm heavily biased toward things that affect me. I'm (not at all) weird that way.

S went away for work -- just a mini-trip, a few days -- but it happens to be on a weekend in which a bunch of things are coming together at once. It also doesn't help that work is quite busy right now. I've been putting in long hours since I got back from vacation. Today, the moment I woke up, at 7:09, I started doing shit -- getting the kids ready and off to school as work items piled up. By 11:00 I was sufficiently agitated, so I stopped, closed my computer,* threw on some workout clothes, and hit the exercise bike for an hour. It was a great stress relief. What I really wanted to do was run on the treadmill. I started doing that again, once in while, and I love it. I go for an hour and crank out six miles -- not a super fast pace, but running for an hour is still running for an hour. It's the best cardio workout around, as far as I'm concerned. But, alas, the only treadmill available to me is in my sister-in-law's apartment building, and although, it's only about a mile away, I didn't have time to go there (or anywhere), so the basement stationary bike it was.

*Actually, I opened a blank PowerPoint presentation and put it into full-screen mode. If I close my computer, or it goes into sleep mode, it disconnects me from the VPN, which can be bad, depending on what I'm doing. So, I've gotten in the habit of not letting it go into sleep mode, which it will do automatically after 15 minutes of inactivity, and I can't change it, because I don't have administrative permissions for the privacy/security settings. I used to to jiggle the mouse every 14 minutes and 55 seconds, like a chump, and then one of my colleagues told me that if you're in a full-screen PowerPoint presentation, your machine will never go to sleep. Totally changed my work life.

After that, I was able to refocus and get a bunch of work done before I had to pick up Lil' S1 from swim practice on the other side of the city. That actually went okay, but I was annoyed because he usually doesn't have practice on Friday, and then last night I got an email saying that he did have it for some reason. So, I had to get him, and I got some pizzas for dinner also, which you think would be easy, but getting takeout is an ordeal with my kids. They never want the same thing -- Lil' S1 wants Chipotle, Lil' S2 wants Chick-fil-A; Lil' S1 doesn't want Domino's, Lil' S2 only wants Domino's; Lil' S1 doesn't like Thai food, Lil' S2 loves Thai food -- and it drives me crazy. I'm like you're getting takeout! Stop complaining! Then they get mad at me because I won't order from two different places. That's totally on S. She'll get them each their own thing, and now they have this bratty sense of entitlement because of it.

Oh, and after I picked up Lil' S1, I had to take him to the comic book store (in rush-hour traffic) to buy a gift for his friend's birthday party tomorrow. To be fair, he did offer to take the Metro home from swim practice and walk to the comic book store and then walk home, but it would've been a 45-minute train ride, and then over a mile walk in the rain, in the dark, with all his school stuff and swim gear and whatever he bought for his friend, at 6:30 at night. I wasn't going to do that to him or to me -- I would be feeling guilty and worrying the entire time.

Anyway... I'm home and chilling now, decompressing, watching a terrible football game (Indiana absolutely running roughshod over Oregon). This is when I wished I drank. I mean, I do drink but only socially, not by myself. We have plenty of alcohol in the house, but I know that if I actually had a drink, I would be regretting it later. I mean, I just ingested about 25 ounces of pizza. I'm probably already pounding the Pepto tonight, anyway. I'll just crack open a seltzer and pretend it's a beer. That's actually more effective than you might think. Just the ritual of opening a can of something and taking swigs off of it can be very relaxing.

In other news, S and I finished Stranger Things, and I absolutely loved the last few episodes. I stand by everything I said in my previous entry. The show's flaws are myriad, and if anything, it got worse toward the end of the season. Instead of everything everybody says being complicated plot explanations or mediocre one-liners, they introduced a new type of trite dialog: The lengthy, cloying relationship-defining talk or heartfelt soliloquy, always delivered in the most dire of circumstances, when there is not time to spare, except for the perfectly timed five-minute lull in the action.

But I'll be damned if it didn't all come together in the end. The story mostly made sense, and was pretty clever, provided you ignore some pretty major plot holes (spoiler alert*). Those kids in Hawkins pulled it off. They saved the world and it was a joy to watch.

*At the end, right before the upside down gets destroyed or collapses or what have you, when all our heroes are in custody of the military, what happened to them after that? How did they get free? Did Dr. Kay and her vengeful minions just let them go after all they did? I mean, Hopper killed, what, 50 soldiers by himself. Once Eleven was out of the picture, the military was like So, you destroyed a bunch of our equipment, stole our vehicles, and annihilated dozens of our colleagues, but, hey, no harm, no foul?  

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

Entry 791: Xmas 2025

We got back last night from a week-long sojourn to Florida to visit the in-laws. It was a nice trip, but a week is about our limit there as a family. I love the warm weather and laid-back atmosphere -- it's a bit disturbing how amenable I am to the lifestyle of an 80-year-old retiree -- but my digestive tract can't take much more than a week. I treat my time down there as something of a culinary rumspringa. I gorge myself on my mother-in-law's delicious Indian food and almost constantly partake in the many snacks on-hand -- crackers, cookies, chocolates, ice cream, mixed nuts, etc. I also drink about a pot of coffee and eat at least three bowls of Honey Bunches of Oats each day. Cereal is one of those things I love, but cut out of my regular diet almost completely, so when I allow myself to eat it, I go way overboard. But there are no free lunches in nature (nor any other mealtime), especially not in middle age, so I pay for my gluttony in the form of a perpetually churning stomach.

The only saving grace is that I also work out a lot during these visits. There's a lot of downtime, and the in-laws have a nice gym in their community center. I hit it up every day we were there this trip, except for one, and on that day I walked nearly 20,000 steps (many while pushing a wheelchair), because we went to Universal Studios. It was a lot of walking, but also a lot of fun. Of the three Orlando theme parks I've been to -- Hollywood Studios and Magic Kingdom being the others -- it's my favorite. It was also, by a huge margin, the most expensive. We decided to shell out and buy the fast passes, which allowed us to use the short lines, and it was totally worth it. We did eight things that required waiting in lines:* the Harry Potter ride, two Simpsons rides, the Mummy ride, the Bourne stunt show, the Minions ride, the ET ride, and the Transformers ride. Without the fast passes, the total wait time at these attractions would have been over eight hours, which is longer than we spent at the park. We maybe could have done half of them, but we would have been fighting and miserable the entire time. The Harry Potter ride alone had a posted wait time of 110 minutes. For us, it was about 15 minutes -- like I said, totally worth it, even if I am embarrassed to say how much four fast passes cost.

*Not including lunch, which was our longest wait time. The kids wanted Luigi's pizza in Simpsons Land, and I told them we should go somewhere else or come back at a different time, because the line was outrageous, but they insisted, so I decided to use it as a teaching moment. I said, "Okay, fine, we'll wait, then." About halfway into it, they were complaining about how long it was taking, and I was like, "See! Told you so! You guys made your bed, now you have to lie in it." The problem, of course, is that I also had to lie in it, because I was still the adult responsible for two hangry kids. We finally got our pizza, which was subpar, and we also got a massive Lard Lad doughnut, which made the experience somewhat tolerable.

The thing about theme parks is that I can take them or leave them. S's mom came with us, and she just sat* and waited for us while we went on the rides. I totally could have done that and been perfectly content (and saved ourselves the money for my fast pass). In fact, I would have done that, but for the fact that I wanted us to have a family experience together, and I'm 25% of the family, more if we go by total mass. And the experience was great, that all worked out, but the rides themselves... I'm just not that into them. I like the roller coasters the best, and I don't even really like roller coasters that much. At least they don't give me a headache, though, and the nausea is temporary. The fake roller coaster ones, where you get in a box and the box shakes as you watch a VR screen spit images at you at a million miles-per-hour, make me so sick the entire time I'm in them. Thankfully, there were only a few of those (The Simpsons and Transformers). The rest were thankfully not extremely headache-inducing, and the Harry Potter ride and the Mummy ride were legit fun. The Bourne Stuntacular was pretty cool too, but even it had an element of "shaky box" to it, as it was a mix between live performance and VR screen.

*Even though she can walk fine, we got her a wheelchair, so that she could sit whenever she got tired and still keep up with us. 

Actually, the thing I liked the best was probably this mini Macy's parade thing they did in the evening right before we left. Just S's mom and I watched it, as S took the kids to the Minions ride (I figured we had already hit our quota for family experiences), and it was cool to see the choreography and stilt-walking. Also, it was festive and sentimental, which I'm becoming more and more of a sucker for the older I get. Although, it's kinda weird because it was all Christmas-themed, but it was two days after Christmas. I guess you get a Christmas grace period until the New Year, but it doesn't quite feel right to me. We need more generic holiday music and paraphernalia for that interim period between Christmas Day and New Year's Day. The party is usually still going, but it feels fake to still be listening to "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" everywhere you go.

Alright, a few pics, and then I'm calling it a post. Until next time... 

[View from a lanai near the in-laws'] 

[A festive house near the in-laws']

 

[Stilt walkers at the parade at Universal Studios; I think they're supposed to be snowflakes]

Entry 790: Sun-Baked Christmases

I was thinking about it, and I think over the last 15 years, since S and I got married, we've experienced more warm Christmases than we have cold Christmases. In 2010, we were in Sydney, Australia, in the heat of summer. In 2023, we were in Mysore, India where it was quite warm, and I have to imagine that of the remaining 13 Christmases most of them were spent in the southern part of US were the temperature was somewhere between "might want to put on a light jacket" and "thank goodness we have AC". Last year, we were in Tampa at the in-laws, and I can remember a Christmas in each of Columbia (SC), Hilton Head, Fort Lauderdale, and Atlanta. On the other hand, I can only remember two Christmases in cold climes -- one at my parents' house in Washington state (where we got a literal white Christmas) and one at home in Washington DC. That leaves four or five unaccounted for Christmases. I'm sure I could figure out where we were in those years by searching this blog, but I don't feel like doing that. My (not super interesting) point is just that sun-baked Christmases are becoming the norm for us.

And so it goes again this year, as we fly out tomorrow for another holiday week in Florida. I like going down there because it's an easy(ish) flight, it's nice to see S's parents, and it's relaxing. It does get a bit boring, but the older I get the higher tolerance I have for that slow-paced lifestyle (and, honestly, I've always had some old-soul in me, in that regard; I've never minded doing nothing too much). The hardest part is that it gets boring for the kids, which means that it's a lot of screen time, or it's a lot of annoying us. But even that gets a little bit better with each trip we take, as they get older and more independent.

Speaking of this trip, I have a lot to do today before we leave. I still need to finish the laundry, pack, clean out the fridge (once we came home to rancid eggplant, and it made the entire kitchen smell for a week, and I vowed to never let that happen again), and take out the trash. I also need to hit the exercise bike -- while watching football, of course. I took a little bit of my year-end bonus and purchased NFL Red Zone for the next few weeks. My Christmas gift to myself, and Lil' S2, I guess, since he will surely enjoy it as well. 

 So, I'm going to get to it all. 

Until next time... 

Entry 789: TV Takes 2025

Last week it was music; this week it is TV. Here is a list, in no particular order, of five TV shows I watched in 2025 with a brief (except for the first one) take on them. I'll do my best not to include any major spoilers.

Stranger Things

When Ted Lasso ran its final episode a few years ago, I wrote a post detailing why and to what extent I disliked the last season. My mom read it, and then she said to me, "I agree with everything you said, but I still liked watching the show." This is where I find myself with Stranger Things after consuming the first half of the final season. I don't think the show is very good anymore, and yet I can't wait for the next batch of episodes to drop. I've coined the acronym ABE (Always Bail Early) for TV watching once a shows starts to go downhill, but I think I have to amend that to U BE (Usually Bail Early), because there are a few programs that I want to stick out until the end, even as they founder to the finish line.

Why do I think Stranger Things is bad now? Many reasons, but first and foremost is that there has been a lot of Eleven on the show this season, and she is simply not a good character anymore. She hasn't been for a while. One of my hot takes is that the series would be better if they martyred her off a long time ago. Her story lines when she's not actively fighting evil are incredibly dull, and her powers often serve as a contrived narrative crutch. Throughout the series she's vacillated between normal girl with no supernatural abilities and all-knowing, all-powerful being. Where precisely she is on that spectrum depends almost exclusively on what's needed to advance the plot at that moment. It doesn't help that she's currently spending all her time with Hopper, who has somehow transformed himself from a real person -- a flawed, troubled recluse -- into an indestructible action-hero. He's now a mix between Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando and Predator, taking out paramilitary warriors with one hand and inhuman monsters with the other.

Hopper's arc is emblematic of another big problem with the show: The plot armor of all the main characters. The only people who die are random townspeople/military personale and newly introduced sacrificial lambs -- Bob, Billy, Eddie, etc.* This has two knock-on effects that make the show less intriguing than it could be: 1) The many battles between our heroes and Vecna's minions feel super low-stakes and not very interesting; 2) the cast gets bloated to the point that characters have to be hidden away (sometimes literally) for large swaths of the season to make the scripts manageable. At this point, the show runners are pot committed to El -- they missed their opportunity to write her off -- but there are definitely some characters we (or at least I) could do without: Jonathan (really? the love triangle with Steve and Nancy, again?), Murray (completely superfluous), and Max (good character, but they clearly didn't know what to do with her this season), to name a few.

*And Barb. Remember poor awkward Barb? 

The sheer size of the cast means screen time is at a premium, and the writers seem to have dealt with this by having almost all the dialog on the show be comprised of characters taking turns explain convoluted plot points to each other (and thus the audience). First, Will is up to tell us all about how being possessed by Vecna is currently affecting him. Then, Mike will expound upon what it all means. Next, Henderson will lay out why that's a problem they have to solve. Then, Nancy will formulate a plan, and so on and so forth. It's not so much dialog, as it is serial explanatory monologues. Well, it's that and Easter egg reference to things from the '80s (which admittedly I'm a sucker for). There is very little actual character development, and what there is often feels forced and pandering. Also, the plans they make are unrealistically complex to the nth degree. They would be logistically impossible to pull off in one reality, let alone multiple realities. They are also often ethically dubious, to say the least. If your best idea involves drugging, kidnapping, and detaining an innocent family, you might want to go back to the drawing board (this goes for both the characters and the writers).

With all that said, I still want to watch. I still want to spend time with Steve and Robin and Joyce. I want to watch evil Linda Hamilton get her comeuppance and eviller Henry be vanquished once and for all. I'm still intrigued. I'm barely in, but I am, in fact, still in.

Pluribus

I don't know if this show is the masterpiece some say it is, but I do like it quite a bit so far. There are a lot of ethical/philosophical questions that its premise brings to the surface, and I've heard these explored on various podcasts. But something I was thinking about that I haven't heard anybody else dissect is that this show is an excellent critique of modern liberalism. The protagonist is mostly correct -- she has a strong moral position -- but she's so unappealing in how she expresses her views that she can't bring the people whose help she needs over to her side. She's self-righteous and condescending and hypocritical and unwilling to meet people where they are at. Instead of trying to win people over by listening to what they want and finding common ground, she presents her position as if it's gospel, and then acts as if everybody else is morally degenerate when they aren't completely on board with her. I don't think Vince Gilligan consciously wrote Carol Sturka to embody the flaws of liberalism today, but he knocked it out of the park if he did.

The Middle

My family growing up wasn't in disarray to the same degree as the Hecks, but a lot on the show definitely rings true -- the messy house, the overgrown yard, the beater car. We watched this one as a family, and we all really enjoyed it. It goes on a bit too long (nine seasons), but it never really jumps the shark. It's solidly good-not-great pretty much from start to finish. I didn't love Sue's arc, however. She went from being my favorite character in the early seasons to my least favorite in the middle (as it were). They just made her too much of a cringey loser in high school. In college she got better, and we got more Brad, who surpassed her as my favorite character. Actually, now that I think about it, Frankie was my favorite character all along.

White Lotus

The worst of the three seasons, in my opinion, by a large margin. One and two are basically tied (I give a slight nod to two), and then three is way below them. I still liked it, and I'm still in on the series and eagerly awaiting Season 4 (en France), but I can't deny that Season 3 had some major flaws and was far below the high bar Mike White set for himself. I could easily write another 10,000 words on what exactly I didn't like about Season 3, but I don't have time for that right now, and you probably don't either. So, let's move on.

The Chair Company

Weird and hilarious, but I didn't like ending. It was too abrupt. I don't think Tim Robinson knows how to end things. This is something I've noticed in his skits on I Think You Should Leave. I will be watching a sketch by myself, literally laughing out loud, wondering where it's is going next, and then it just ends.

Until next time...