Entry 742: FLA Christmas 2024

It was an FLA Christmas for the G & G family this year and a bit of a strange one at that. A random old woman came to stay with us for three days starting on the 23rd, and I never got the full story as to exactly why. I didn't mind except that S's mom was so worried about her that she rarely left her side, which means that she didn't spend as much time with us or the boys as she usually does. Typically when we visit, she'll play cards with us, or take the boys to the pool, or tag along when we go to the arcade or the movies or what have you, but this time she wasn't available for much of that. Also, the old woman, despite living in the same complex as S's parents, slept in their unit with us. There was enough room only because S's sister who was supposed to come as well (with her dog) had to cancel at the last minute. I'm not sure what we would have done, sleeping-wise, if she had come as planned.

As best I can tell, here's what happened. The old woman is the mother of some friends of my in-laws. She's 86, and supposedly cannot take care of herself and basically needs 24-hour supervision. She lives in the complex with her daughter (my in-law's friend and the mother of childhood friends of S's). This daughter, however, went to India for some reason, so she took her mother to Fort Lauderdale to stay with her brother (the old woman's son). But then the brother also had to go to India for some reason and due to a miscommunication he booked his departure for the 23rd, even though his sister wasn't returning until the 26th, leaving a three-day gap in coverage vis-à-vis their enfeebled mother. So, rather than postponing his plans a few days, which to me is the obvious move, he enlisted his twentysomething neighbors (who, I came to learn, don't even know him very well) to drive his mother home from Fort Lauderdale (over 500 miles round-trip!) to stay with us since nobody will be at her home to stay with her.

There are so many things I don't get about this and asking S about them didn't make things any clearer because she didn't know much either. Our conversation went something this.

Me: What is so important in India that this old woman's son couldn't delay his trip a few days?
S: I don't know.
Me: And why does your mom need to watch her 24-7? Couldn't this woman stay at home, and somebody could stop by and check in on her later? I mean, she lives five minutes away, and she's with it mentally. She could call for help if she needs it. I heard your mom having a conversation with her on her cellphone earlier.
S: She needs to use some sort of inhaler in the morning, and she can't make herself meals.
Me: But she looks well put-together, and she moves okay. How does she get dressed and take a shower?
S: I guess she can do those things herself.
Me: So, she can do those things, but she couldn't fix herself some toast or microwave a meal?
S: I don't know. That part doesn't make sense to me either.
Me: None of this makes sense. If she really does need around-the-clock care, then you can't just dump her on your friends, especially when your friends are old themselves. I mean, your dad is basically the same age as her.
S: I know. I just have to let it go or I'll start to get really upset. And that poor couple who drove up from Fort Lauderdale. They don't even really know this woman, and they don't know my parents at all. They just got roped into this out of the blue somehow.
Me: Yeah, I just can't imagine having the audacity to ask random neighbors to drive my mother somewhere five hours away, and then to ask my friends to basically be a hospice nurse for three days over Christmas, while their daughter and grandchildren are in town visiting. And couldn't your parents just have said no?
S: My dad wanted to, but my mom is too nice when it comes to things like this.

And therein lies the rub: too nice, indeed. But that's the thing about too nice -- it often doesn't produce more net niceness, it's just redistributes nicenss in a new way. In this case, the niceness extended to my in-laws' friend was niceness that would have been passed around to others (in the form of attention) but no long could be.

Anyway, I don't want to make it sound like this old woman ruined the entire trip, because that's not the case. She was only there half the time, and she's perfectly pleasant. But having to care for her really stressed out my mother-in-law, which wasn't cool.

Some other trip highlights...

• A lot of S's childhood friends were around, so we had a few group activities, including a sunset cruise around Sarasota Bay. I typically don't love being out on the water like that, because if you get bored or restless, you're just stuck, but this one was pretty fun, and we got some great views. The only problem is that I was quite cold at the end of it because I thought I forgot my sweatshirt. I actually didn't forget it -- it was in the car all along -- but I thought I forgot it, so I didn't bring it on the boat. That might sound weird, but it's not for me. Unfortunately, I do shit like that all the time. Perhaps the most embarrassing was when I called a maintenance man out to fix our fireplace, and the only problem is that the gas knob was turned the wrong way. I got charged $50 to basically get told I'm an idiot. (On a related note, I'm a huge fan of clearly labeled knobs and dials. I usually turn off our water when we go out of town in the winter, and there are two huge arrows printed on the valve handle saying "open" and "close". Why isn't everything like that?)

• Whenever we get together with S's old friends, there is usually this one other tall white guy there who also married into the group. I think people just expect us to get on famously, but we don't really. I mean, he's a very nice guy, but we have different interests, and I find talking to him one-on-one to be a bit of a struggle most the time. He's an older (55-ish) California tech guy, and he's really into the business side of tech (which I have little interest in), and he's always very fashionably dressed and wears a bunch of rings and bracelets and stuff. He's the type of guy who unironically wears a fedora (and pulls it off). He's really into sailing but has no interest in team sports. (He once said the last time he went to a Dodgers game he left before "halftime," and then got a little put out when I poked fun at him for thinking baseball games have halftimes.) Our pop culture interests also aren't aligned. He named his old boat after something from Firefly -- not at all my type of show.
  
  
• He did tell me something cool though. When you sail, you can go multiple times faster than the wind because you are using air pressure to your advantage the same way you do when flying a plane. I never really thought about this before. I guess I just figured it was the wind blowing the boat the same way it blows a leaf around your yard, but that's not actually what's going on. The wind blows across the sails, which (like airplane wings) are shaped in such a way to create a pressure differential, and this differential is what propels the boat. So, sailboats and airplanes (and suction cups) all leverage the same force, air pressure, to work -- like I said, that's cool.
  
  
• Another cool thing on this trip is that we went to Jacksonville to visit S's cousin and his family. He has two daughters, a freshman in college and a sophomore in high school. They took our boys out to the mall for hours, while we older folks sat around and chatted -- or rather they chatted and I watched football. S's family can't help but speak in a Kannada-English mix whenever they are together, which cuts me out of the conversation. Actually, it doesn't really -- I can follow like 90% of it through the English words and the context -- but it gives me a good excuse to zone out, which I often like to do.
  
  
• On the way back, we stopped at some outlet malls, and I got some new sneakers, which I badly needed. They were the second pair I bought in Florida because the first one didn't fit. They felt good in the store, but then when I wore them for the first time after buying them, about 20 minutes into it, they started to really hurt my feet. That's such a terrible feeling, and it was made worse by the fact that we bought them at a mall that was super crowded and wasn't at all close, so returning them would've taken me like half a day. They weren't too expensive, so I just kept them. I used them as my exercise bike shoe because they're on the narrow side (which is why they get uncomfortable), so they fit nicely in the pedal straps. That worked out okay, so maybe it's not a total waste. Plus, as S pointed out, we might not be that far away from Lil' S1 sharing my shoe size. My feet haven't grown since 9th grade.
  
  
• Saw a bunch of movies in Florida. We went to Moana 2 as a family, and it was a complete nothing of a movie. I only saw bits and pieces of the first one, but what I saw was pretty enjoyable and the songs were super catchy. Not so with 2 -- it couldn't have been more forgettable. On Christmas Eve we watched Red One, which was fun, and on Christmas Day we watched the original How the Grinch Stole Christmas! from 1966. I actually don't remember ever seeing it before, but it's good. (You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch might be the greatest diss track of all time.) On the flight over I watched Carry On, which was an adequate dumb plane movie, and then on the way back I started watching Squid Game on a whim. The second season just dropped on Netflix, and I was looking for things to download, so I grabbed the first three episodes of the series. It's so good! I wish I had watched it sooner. Although if I did that, I wouldn't get to watch it now, so I guess it all worked out.

Until next time...

Entry 741: That's A Wrapped

It's amazing how fast we get used to new technology and take it for granted. I got my Spotify end-of-the-year "Wrapped" report the other day (as did every other Spotify user), and it made me think about how much music consumption has changed in my lifetime. I became a cognizant human being during that relatively brief moment in history in which the cassette was the primary musical medium. I had a few tapes as a kid -- e.g., Beastie Boys License to Ill, "Weird Al" Even Worse -- but I didn't have a legit musical collection until the early '90s when CDs had overtaken cassettes. I had hundreds of CDs -- or rather I should say I have hundreds of CDs. They are in my closet right now. I haven't had the nerve to get rid of them.

But I should. I never play them, and they don't bring me any joy (isn't that Marie Kondo's thing?). They just sit in a box and take up storage space. I don't even have any desire to play them. It's not like I'm dreaming of buying a CD player and putting up CD towers in my living room. I just can't pull the trigger on ditching them. It's a nostalgia thing, but only for the CDs themselves -- the physically objects -- not listening to the CDs. Because the truth is, consuming music now is way better. You have everything on demand relatively cheaply, and you don't have to worry about scratches messing up your CDs and trying to buff them out with toothpaste. (Remember that one?) I heard the writer Chuck Klosterman say once that he was incredibly reluctant to move away from CDs, into the streaming world, because he so valued his CD collection, but then one day he made the change and didn't miss his CDs at all. He realized it was listening to the music that he liked, not the way in which he listened. I cosign this sentiment big time, and yet, I still have the box in my closet.

Actually, what I should do is tell S to get rid of them all at some point and just not tell me about it. Then one day I'll say, "Hey, where did all my CDs go?" And she'll tell me she got rid of them three years ago, and I'll shrug my shoulders and get on with my day.

Anyway, here's my Wrapped report.

I listened for approximately 25 minutes a day, which makes sense as I mainly listen on the exercise bike, and I do that two-to-three times a week for about 45 minutes. My top band is the Beatles, which also makes sense since they are the greatest band ever. Nirvana being second is no shocker either, as they might be the second greatest band ever (not really, but maybe to me they are). I'm kinda surprised to see the White Stripes come in third. I very much like them, but I'm not sure they would make my top ten favorite bands, if I made a list (which I might someday, if I ever finish my top-100 TV show list). Dua Lipa and Rihanna are S picks. She likes them, and I don't mind them, so when we're listening to music together it's often one of those two.

As to the top song, "Flagpole Sitta" by Harvey Danger, that's completely due to a one week period where I decided that it would be my karaoke song, so I listened to it like fifty times to get the feel for it. Then I ended up not even going to karaoke, so that was a bit of a waste. It's neither a terrible nor a great song. It's catchy as hell, campy as all get-out, and reminiscent of the early '90s, which is why I thought it would be a good choice for karaoke. Also, it's the type of song I feel I could power through with moxie and showmanship -- that's what I need when singing a song. I cannot carry a tune for the life of me, so I need something kinda silly. Paranoia, paranoia, everybody's comin' to get me, just say you never met me...

The weird one of my song list is "It's No Good" by Depeche Mode. The others make sense -- "Cold Heart (PNAU remix)" I listen to with S, "Kernkraft 400" is a workout song (it's that jock jam almost everybody has heard and almost nobody knows its name), and "Robbery" is a Juice WRLD song often requested by Lil' S2 and his friends when I'm giving them rides places. But "It's No Good," I have no idea how that got to number three. I think it was just a fluke song -- either it just came up a bunch by luck or something in the algorithm thinks I often want to hear the third best song by, like, my 81st favorite band for some reason.

Whatever the case, that's a Wrapped. Until next time...

Entry 740: Cold And Colds

It's finally cold here in DC. That's good in the sense that it's December 7th, so it should be cold. That's bad in that it sucks to go outside. The wind has just been brutal the past few days. It really sneaked up on us, too. A few weeks ago, we were still hitting highs in the low 70s, wearing t-shirts. Now, it's 37 with that little gust icon showing. Next week, it's supposed to get a little a better -- highs in the mid-50s -- but with rain, which might be worse than just the straight-up cold. Then after that I don't care because we are going to visit S's parents in Florida, and it never gets too cold there. That might not seem very Christmas-y, but it kinda is for us. If you take all the Christmases we've had since Australia, I bet we've spent more in warm weather (Australia, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and India) than cold weather (Washington DC, Washington state). Warm-weather Christmases aren't too bad. Plus, I'm getting my fair share of cold-weather quaintness right now. We've got the tree up and the fire on, so I just need some Bing Crosby in my earbuds, and then I'm practically in a Norman Rockwell painting.

Speaking of cold, I came down with a cold earlier this week, and it's a weird one. It's bad enough to completely annoy me and mess up my sleep, but not so bad that I'm laid up in agony. Last Christmas I was quite sick in India -- it was much worse than this -- and it got me wondering what it was that made it worse, symptom-wise. I realized that it was the killer sore throat. This time I don't have that just-swallowed-a-tray-of-hot-coals sensation, and that's why it's just annoying, as opposed to completely oppressive. I do feel pretty lousy when I first wake up in the morning, though. I felt bad enough yesterday to take a sick day from work, but I perked up as the day went along, so instead of work, I assembled my exercise bike which came on Thursday. It was thankfully pretty easy to put together -- much simpler than, like, a dresser from IKEA, because there were almost no small parts. I didn't have to align a half-dozen dowels on particle board with their corresponding notches on a different piece of particle board.

S is not the most sympathetic person in the world when it comes to me being sick. She always wants me to take medicine, but it doesn't do any good. As I've said before: If we had a cure for the common cold, we would have a cure for the common cold. We wouldn't have pharmacy shelves filled with dozens of supposed remedies. When I got conjunctivitis, I didn't pick something out from the pink eye section of CVS. I got a prescription for chloramphenicol,* and it cleared right up.

*I don't actually remember if that's what I got or not. I just Googled conjunctivitis medication, and it was the first one suggested by our AI overlords.

And I've tried a bunch of stuff throughout my life. When I was young my parents used to give me Robitussin, which I thought was disgusting, and something called Triaminic, which I actually liked because it was orange and sweet. Then, as a teenager, I thought menthol rub was a panacea,* until I stopped using it and realized nothing was different. In my twenties, I went through an Airborne phase, and that stuff is total snake oil, before switching to zinc nasal swabs, which didn't work any better.** Now, I'll take things -- Sudafed, NyQuil, and whatnot -- but it's mainly just to appease S. See, I'm not actually trying to be sick just to annoy you. 

*Freshman year of college, I had a tub of the stuff on my nightstand, and my friends saw it, and it become a running joke for the entire trimester for some reason -- probably because we were all 19-year-old dumbasses who made fun of each other for everything.

**A few days before my second ever date with S, I came down with something nasty, and I remember lying in bed mainlining Zicam. I was still kinda sick on the night of our actual date, but I powered through it. I was still just some guy to her at that point, and I was worried that if we had to reschedule it might not happen at all. The next week she got sick, and I played dumb. What? It all worked out in the end.

One thing I do enjoy (for lack of a better word) while I'm sick is a good cough drop. But they go in a different category. I don't think they are actually fighting my sickness. They probably aren't even suppressing my cough. I frequently have to cough while sucking on a cough drop. They just make my throat feel a little bit better for a little while, and there's value in that. I don't believe in a cure for a cold, but I do believe in comfort for a cold. And the beauty of comfort is that you know for sure that it works. It's like this Facebook debate I once wondered into about whether or not dental floss "works." Somebody was saying that there is no evidence that flossing and brushing is any better for your oral health than just brushing alone and that flossing was probably pointless. So, I posted something to the effect of Sometimes I get food stuck in my teeth, and it's annoying, so I floss and get it out, and then it's no longer annoying, so, yeah, flossing definitely works.

Remembering that story reminded me of when social media was actually pretty fun -- like, when it was mostly just bullshitting with your friends and looking at pictures of your nephews. My semi-hot take is that early Facebook was actually pretty close to Mark Zuckerberg's stated goal of bringing people together in a positive way. I really did connect and reconnect with a lot of people -- people I like -- through Facebook, and I used to actually enjoy scrolling through my feed. It felt like a productive use of my time -- or at least it didn't feel like a small part of my soul was exiting my body with every new post I read, like it did toward the end, before I quit for good. There is no better example of enshittification than Facebook in the 2010s.

Alright, it's 10:30 pm, and I still have a mountain of dishes in the sink to attend to. That's all for tonight.

Until next time...

Entry 739: Thanksgiving 2024

Thanksgiving weekend 2024.

I like Thanksgiving quite a bit, although I feel it’s become a prime example of the so-underrated-it's-overrated phenomenon. This is a concept derived in sports in which the general public collectively recognizes the value of a previously overlooked player all at once, and everybody starts talking about how underrated they are, thus, ironically, overrating them in the process. Ben Wallace for the 2000s Pistons is the guy I always think of whenever the topic of so-underrated-it's-overrated comes up. But when it comes to holidays it's Thanksgiving. I feel like I've been hearing recently about how great Thanksgiving is, and how actually it's better than Christmas. But that's a bridge too far me. If Thanksgiving is Ben Wallace, then Christmas is Shaq. Yeah, Thanksgiving is terrific, and on any given year you might have a better Thanksgiving than Christmas, but overall Christmas is the clearly superior holiday, in my opinion.

This particular Thanksgiving was pretty good. It's nice when you have the ultimate thing to give thanks for -- a family you love. I take that for granted so often, and so it is nice to have one day of the year when I am meant to explicitly acknowledge it. It's not just my household family either; it's all my UP family and my in-laws as well. The joke is always that it's hard to get along with family during the holidays, because of the figurative "racist uncle," but he doesn't really exist in my family. We're all mostly aligned in that regard. We have our differences, of course, but they're relatively minor. They often get blown out of proportion, and we fight about them, because that's what people do, but ultimately it's petty stuff that only seems important in the moment because it involves us personally -- the narcissism of small difference, I believe is the saying.

It helps a lot that nobody in my family is hard-core MAGA. That would be tough for me to deal with. I'm not talking about somebody who reluctantly voted for Trump because they are fed up with the Democrats -- I can understand that, even though I don't at all subscribed to it -- I'm talking about people who wear the red hats and go to the rallies and use terms like "cuck" and "libtard" unironically. I can get along with just about anybody, regardless of their politics, but MAGA cultists are where that "just about" comes into play. Ideological extremists are tough hangs for me in general.

It was just five of us this year for Thanksgiving dinner -- me, S, the boys, and S's sister. Lil' S1 and I did all the cooking. I did the turkey, potatoes, and stuffing; he did homemade bread rolls, slow-cooker mac and cheese, and a pumpkin pie. S's sister brought a cranberry, walnut salad, and that rounded out a delicious Thanksgiving meal. Lil' S1 is getting quite good at cooking -- baking in particular. My dad gave him this recipe for bread rolls, and he made them completely by himself. He also did some chocolate chip cookies -- the big fancy kind, not just the little simple ones from a tube -- the next day to take to our friends house that were absolutely delectable. My items came out decently as well. The only thing is that I wish I bought more gravy. I got enough for dinner, but not enough for leftovers, and Thanksgiving leftovers just aren't Thanksgiving leftovers without gravy. I mean, I can pick some up at the grocery store easily enough, but then I actually have to go to the grocery store. Why didn't I just buy like five packets in the first place, just in case? They're only a dollar each, and they keep for a long time. I don't know what I was thinking there.

We watched Christmas Vacation Thanksgiving evening to stay in the holiday spirit. It was my choice but, I must admit, not a very good one. The kids weren't that into it, and neither was I, honestly. About 20 minutes into it, I thought to myself, Oh yeah, that's right, this move isn't actually very funny. The best part is seeing young Juliette Lewis and Johnny Galecki.

The next day we went over to our friends' place, as they do Thanksgiving dinner on Friday, and it was so chaotic it was like a scene out of Christmas Vacation. Actually, it was more like Curb Your Enthusiasm, because our friend's dad was there, and he reminds me of Larry's dad on that show. I spent most my time watching football with him, and he was regaling me with factually suspect stories about Tobin Rote and Bobby Layne, and he kept calling one of the teams we were watching the Oakland Raiders, even though they moved to Las Vegas five years ago. Then there was this little four-year-old there, who was the most hyper kid I've ever seen, and I'm not that far removed from having super hyper kids myself, so I'm definitely not overly impressionable to such a thing. Also, our friends don't have much counter space, and they cooked a huge (delicious) meal, so there was food strewn everywhere about the house -- green bean casserole on a newel post, corn souffle on a book shelf, pumpkin pie on an end table. It was madness, but it was also quite fun.

On Saturday, S's sister took the kids to Wicked, and S and I went shopping in Georgetown. That's not typically an activity I would enjoy, but I actually liked it. It was really cold and crowded, and there was something comforting about seeing everybody bundled up, bouncing around from shop to shop.  It reminded me of going to the Tacoma Mall around Christmas time as a youngster. The Borders Books, in particular, was the place to hang. My friends and I would spend hours there (only half of which was spent looking for parking) contemplating which books and CDs to ask for for Christmas. I've written about the decline of the retails store numerous times on this blog, so it's nice to see they aren't totally dead... yet.

Aright, that's about all I have time for today, so I'll leave you with a YouTube link. Seemingly every holiday season I binge watch something on YouTube. A few years ago it was Ryan George movie pitch videos. This year, it's been The Ricky Gervais Show. I've seen them all before, but it was so long ago, it's like I'm watching them fresh. Also, for a little twist, I watch them as part of a reaction video. There's really no reason for that other than it's just more fun to watch something funny with other people who laughing. The episodes are all brilliant, but this one might be the best.

Until next time...

Entry 738: A Post-Toy Household

So, we are nearing a milestone here at the G&G household. We are getting close to the Era of No Toys. Like most families with young children, over the years, we've accumulated a massive trove of cheap plastic shit made in China. Recently, as the kids have been growing out of that stuff (or, more likely, were never into it in the first place*), we've made efforts to thin it out -- giving away what we can, tossing the rest. And now, prompted by the broken TV mentioned in my last post, we've pretty much cleared it all out. We have a few stuffed animals and the odd Nerf dart gun remaining, but that's about it. It's a brave new world! I'm definitely not sad to see the clutter go, but it is always sad (and happy) to see your kids grow up. Lil' S2 doesn't want his Incredible Hulk action figures anymore -- neither the Marvel Legends nor the Diamond Marvel editions. That's cause to both shed a tear and pump a fist.    

*The number of toys we had that the kids played with for less than, like, a half hour total is staggering and kinda depressing -- so much waste.

We are completely recognizing our toy room. Now, it's going to contain more grown-up toys. We're going to get a new TV and mount it on the wall, and then we're going to put in a pool and/or ping pong table. We've been going back and forth on which one, so I think we might get a combo table. My worry there is that it'll be shoddy because each table will be a little bit compromised in order to make the combination aspect of it work, but, doing a little online shopping, it looks like there are some decent products out there. S saw a three-in-one table that also features air hockey, but I don't trust that. I mean, with air hockey, you have to plug it in and the air has to flow and all that. I just bet it's either not great quality, or it's a lot of work to convert it from one game to the next. Also, the tabletop for air hockey probably takes up quite a bit of space when it's not on. I imagine it must be kinda bulky.

The other thing we have to get is a stationary bike. That's become a must for me. I used to go to the gym in my sister-in-law's apartment complex, but the fob she gave me stopped working, so she gave me a new one, and now that one doesn't work, and I just don't want to deal with it anymore. Plus, I'm tired of traveling there every time I want to work out. As I say that, it sounds kinda silly to me, because it's less than a mile away, but traffic can be quite bad on weekdays in the early evening, which is often when I'm able to go, and then I have to park in a public lot, feed the meter (virtually), and walk a bit to get there. That time adds up when you are a busy, important man like me. What I want is to be able to be like, I got 45 minutes before my next meeting starts, just enough time to bang out a 10-miler, and then just go downstairs and do it.

S has been resistant to the idea of a stationary bike, in part because of the Great Treadmill Debacle of 2022, in part because she wants to put a little couch where the bike would go instead. But I struck a deal with her. She gets to paint two of the walls downstairs, and I get the bike. Those walls have been a point of contention for some time now. They look terrible and are super scuffed up from the kids being so harsh on them -- pushing furniture against them, sticking things to them, and hitting them repeatedly with a football (that one is all Lil' S2). It drives S crazy. Every time she looks at them, some kind of OCD gets triggered, and she obsesses about painting them.

I understand that, but my position is, we still have kids. They still don't know how to not ruin shit. Someday, relatively soon, we can have clean walls, but we're not there yet. So, rather than sink a bunch of time and money into repainting them now, just to get re-annoyed as the kids thrash them again, let's wait a few years, and do it then. It's a good argument, and it kept S at a bay for a little while, but she just kept bringing it up and bringing it up, and it got to the point where I was either going to have to let her do it or have a wife who radiates negative energy every time we hang out in our basement -- and we hang out there a lot. So, it made sense to reach an agreement and at least get something out of it for me.

Also, she says that she's going to paint them herself, because she doesn't want to spend a bunch of money, and it doesn't need to be that good. She just doesn't need something professional quality, just something that isn't covered in scuff marks. I'm not sure what to make of it all. It might be a disaster waiting to happen, but it might not. S frequently embarks on ambitious household projects, and sometimes she pulls them off, like when she went to the hardware store and bought a ratchet set and disassembled a bed, all before I even woke up in the morning. But other times she does not, and then I get dragged into it, and our marriage is put to the test, as we scream at each other while staring at microscopic pictorials, supposedly illustrating how to put a desk together. You gotta flip it! No, the other way! See the long piece has to go with the other long piece! The other other long piece! We shall see what this one will be.

 Until next time...

Entry 737: Valley Girl

I'm experiencing a dilemma at the moment. It's an ongoing dilemma with this blog, and one I've mentioned before. One purpose -- arguably the main purpose -- of this blog is to record what I'm thinking about and feeling at a given moment in my life -- the good, the bad, and the ugly. The problem is that in recent years I've found myself much less inclined to write about the bad and the ugly than I was back in the day. There is already so much of that in the culture -- and it's unlikely to get better anytime soon, given the results of the election -- that I don't want to think about it during my "wind-down" time, and I pretty much only write this blog during my wind-down time. Actually, maybe that's the difference. I used to be able to find moments during the daytime to write, but now, as the kids have gotten older and their activities have taken over more of S and my schedules, I pretty much can only write at night, and that's exactly when I don't want to think about negative shit. Remember my mullet strategy for content consumption: business in the morning, entertainment at night. It's the best way for me to stay informed while also staying sane.

All this is to say, I want to put down my thoughts on the election without actually writing about the election. The compromise I've come up with is to outsource it -- or more accurately to glom on to somebody else's writing about the election that I mostly agree with. There are dozens of "What Went Wrong" pieces out there, and I've undoubtedly consumed more than my fair share of them, but the one that most resonated with me was this one by Sam Harris.

The post is lengthy, but I like it because I broadly agree with his criticisms of both parties. It’s very screed-y, but it’s a screed against both sides, with the Trump side deservedly getting the worst of it. The tl;dr version is that Democrats completely lost their way by putting identity politics over policy (and, perhaps more importantly, messaging) that addresses the concerns people actually have. Although Kamala recognized this, and notably did not run an identity-based campaign, it was too little too late (and she really struggled to explain her past unpopular lefty positions). With that said, she still was the best choice -- the only choice, really -- for people who don't wish to see our country slowly slide into something other than a democracy. That's a point I always want to make: As ineffectual and pious and intolerant as lefty Dems have become, they are still far preferable to a Republican party ruled by Trump. One side concedes elections and believes in the peaceful transfer of power; the other doesn't. You don't need to know much more than that.

One area where I think Harris gets it a bit wrong, however, is that he underplays the role of inflation in the election, in my opinion. It could be none of this identity-politics stuff would have mattered a lick if inflation would not have skyrocketed over the past few years. Covid played a huge part in sweeping Trump out of office; the aftershocks of it brought him back. It could just be as simple as that. The irony is that the US economy on the whole is doing okay right now -- much better than in other countries. So, maybe we need to modify James Carville's famous maxim: it's not It's the economy, stupid; it's It's prices, stupid.

People feel higher prices viscerally, and they don't like them. I know this because I often feel them that way too. I bought a box of Honey Bunches of Oats the other day, and it was $6.99, and my initial impulse was WTF?!, and it's not like I then thought, Well, yeah, but unemployment is low and most people's 401ks are doing well. No, I just thought, That's too expensive -- it should be half that. People have sticker shock -- they've had it the past few years -- and they're punishing parties in charge all over the world because of it. The US, unfortunately, is no exception.

Okay, a few other things before I call it a post...

• I'm reading Moon Unit Zappa's memoir Earth to Moon, and it's getting pretty good. There's actually a tie-in with what I wrote above, as Moon was high school classmates with Sam Harris (and she kinda had a crush on him). The book starts out really slow. The first third of it or so is about her early childhood, and it's like, C'mon, get to the part where you're going on Letterman saying "gag me with a spoon" or Michael J. Fox is setting you up with Woody Harrelson. There are not even many good Frank Zappa stories in it because she didn't know him very well. He was basically an absentee father. He was very often touring, and when he was home, he would sleep all day and work all night, rarely interacting with his children. He only recorded "Valley Girl" with Moon because she put a note under his door saying she wanted to work on something with him, and then he was kinda resentful that it was his biggest commercial hit. I do like the song, though (Moon is the best part).
  
  
• The boys and I watched the Mike Tyson / Jack Paul fight last night, even though it didn't start until after midnight for us. The fight itself was very meh -- turns out a 58-year-old wobbling around a ring for 16 minutes doesn't make for exciting television -- but some of the early fights were exciting, and it was fun to stay up. We were all dying when Tyson's bare butt cheeks made an appearance on the program. (I can't find a good clip to link to, but you can Google it, if you like.) The stream, however, was super glitchy. I constantly had to leave and reenter, and it would take a good ten seconds (or more) to buffer again every time I did. Netflix needs to step up its game if they are going to be a major player in the live content world. They tried to do a live Love is Blind reunion a few seasons ago, and it was an utter failure, and now this shoddy offering. They are doing a Christmas day football game, which I will almost certainly watch, so hopefully they get things worked out by then.
  
  
• Lil' S2 is having his friend JP stay the night, and they broke one of our TVs. It was an accident, and they weren't really being irresponsible -- they were building a little fort, and one of the blankets they were using pulled the TV off its table and onto the floor -- so we weren't that mad about it. But, it was the TV with the PlayStation hooked up to it, so now they don't have video games. So, instead they are playing a fantasy game with Lil' S1. He is, in effect, the dungeon master, and he's leading them through a quest in which football players are the characters -- like NFL players, like Nick Chubb and DK Metcalf. It's kinda adorable. I'm not glad they broke the TV, but I am glad they can't play video games tonight.
  

Until next time...

Entry 736: A Post That Is Only A Little Bit About The Election

Well, the election did not go the way I wanted -- not at all. Don't worry, I'm not going to write much about it here -- not now, anyway. I will at some point, just to get my thoughts down, but we don't need the millionth-and-first "What Went Wrong" blog post of the week. I'm much less despondent than I was eight years ago, so that's good, I guess. I'm not sure why that is, though. Maybe it's because I was ready for it this time. I didn't know for sure that he would win, but it certainly felt more probable than not. This is a stark difference from 2016, when it seemed completely unimaginable to me that he'd actually win... until he did.

I also have a different mindset this time around. The first time I was in a full-on resistance mindset. It seemed to me the best approach was to oppose Trump at every turn. But that proved counterproductive, so now I'm in much more of a ride-it-out mode -- take the L, get on with my life, find joy where I can, and hope my worst fears don't come true. That's the plan. I mean, he can't run again (...hopefully), and although I've heard it said many times by many smart people that there will still be Trumpism after Trump, I'm not sure that it's actually true. You've got Republicans who have a type of right-wing charisma (JD Vance); you've got crazies (Marjorie Taylor Greene); and you've got celebrities. But I don't see anybody out there with the right charisma-crazy-celebrity mix to replace Trump when he's gone. I'm eager to put the "Trumpism without Trump" theory to a test, anyway. 

Another reason that I might be taking it better this time around is because my parents happened to be visiting last week. It's hard to be bummed out when you are around family you love and don't get to see all that often. It was a great visit. They are slowing down, to be sure, but they are still in pretty good health, and most importantly, they still have their wits about them. I have many friends whose folks are in much worse shape or not around at all, so I feel pretty lucky in that regard. It was a lot of fun to see my parents interact with my boys. My dad and Lil' S1 did a lot of cooking/baking together, which was really sweet.

In other news, we finally finished watching The Office as a family -- all nine seasons. The last two, the ones without Michael, were a bit of a slog, but we got through them. Actually, some of Season 8, with Robert California, is legit funny, just because James Spader is such a good actor, but the final season is flat out bad. The stretch where Nellie is the manager and the focal point of the episodes is particularly painful to watch. The series ends decently, but that's only because they completely cater to viewers' nostalgia of the early seasons when the show was actually good. It's a smart move, but you can only really do it for an episode or two.

One thing that struck me during this months-long rewatch is the sheer number of episodes there are of The Office -- nine seasons, about 20-25 episodes a season, that's over 200 episodes. (In fact, there were 201.) I know that that's how most TV shows, especially sitcoms, were way back in the day (2005), but it seems so weird now. With that many episodes, there are bound to be some duds. Upon second viewing, you really notice the we gotta run something shows. They are the worst episodes, and, for some reason, they often involve the characters committing crimes--Michael framing Toby by putting pot in his desk (which was actually Caprese salad); Angela hiring a hit man to maim Oscar for having an affair with her husband; Dwight shooting Stanley with a dart filled with bull tranquilizer. There were more than a few "jump the shark" moments throughout the series.

On the whole, though, great show -- possibly one of my ten favorites of all time. If I ever finish my "Top 100 TV Shows" list, we will know for sure. I don't know if I'll do that, though. I sometimes start things on this blog and then peter out and don't finish them properly.

Speaking of which... Until next time...

  

Entry 735: Indian Wells Wedding

The wedding I mentioned in my last entry came and went. S and I were in attendance, and it was great. The entire trip was great. All the anxiety I felt about leaving the kids instantly melted when the plane touched down in Palm Springs. It was out of sight, out of mind, to be honest. Of course, we checked in on them from time to time, but I didn't worry about them once. My sister-in-law assured me that she had everything under control, and I took her at her word. I mean, it was only five days. And the kids probably would have extended it a bit longer if they could have. Auntie is much more lenient with the screen time and junk food than are the parents.

I went into the trip with the mindset that I was ready to do as much or as little as need be. I figured S would have some girl things to do -- makeup and hair and whatnot -- and she also might get tasked with some last minute logistical issues, being a close friend of the bride, so I might get left on my own or asked to help with said tasks. I was ready to go either way, and I got a mix of each.

Thursday night and Friday morning were the work shifts. E (the bride) wanted to print out a little Polaroid picture of every guest with their table number and dinner order, and then put them in little stands, and then that would be how people would know the seating arrangement. It's a very cool idea, giving people little mementos of the evening (most the pictures were of fun times with E and/or her husband; mine was from when we met up in Tacoma), but it's a lot of work and something that should be done a week and a half, not a day and a half, before the actual wedding. But there was some issue getting the right printer -- one that is compatible with a certain iPhone photo app -- so it got put off to the last moment. And so it got pushed onto E's (and S's) good friend M, and since M was staying in an Airbnb with us, that meant it also got pushed onto us. We put in a good, I'll say, seven hours on it, but we got it done.

It was kinda fun, actually. Well, not fun but satisfying. We had our system down. S and M were doing the hard work, labeling and printing the photos in the app and then sending them to the printer. I was retrieving them, affixing the food sticker (cow, fish, or carrot*), quality-checking them, and sorting them into envelops. In the struggle to get the right printer, we ended up with two printers, and that turned out to be a godsend, as we wouldn't have finished with just one. The main issue is that the battery would run down after a few prints, and it used more juice than the power cable could provide, so even keeping it plugged in all the time didn't work. We would have to print a few, wait a few minutes, print a few more, wait a few more minutes, and so on. Being that there were 170 photos, you can see why it took so long.

*S accidentally put me down for vegetarian, and I was super disappointed, until I realized that I could put any sticker I wanted on my photo, so I put on a beef sticker. I was some sort of brisket, and it was delicious.

The only "mistake" we made is that we organized them by table, but we should have put them in alphabetical order. At the reception, all the photos were put in little stands and placed on a big table at the front of the venue. So, when a guest would come in, they would find their picture and know what dinner table they were at, and then they would put the photo by their dinner plate so the servers knew what meal to serve. But since the photos were organized on the big table by dinner table, guests didn't know where to look for their picture, because they didn't know what dinner table they were at (because that was the entire point of the photos in the first place). If instead the photos would have been sorted on the big table alphabetically, it would have been perfect. But I put that on the wedding planner, not on us. We didn't know the exact system, and we didn't set up the photos on the big table. We printed them up and handed them over. It's out of our hands after that.  

Oh geez, it's 10:30 pm already on a work night (Halloween, and my sister's birthday, as it were), and I've only made it through like a fifth of the trip. I'm gonna have to go lightning round for the rest of it.

• The wedding and reception were wonderful. E is first generation Mexican-American, and her husband was born and raised in Iran, so it was an interesting mix of cultures. They had two ceremonies -- one traditional Catholic and one Persian.
  
  
• There was more dancing at the reception than at any wedding reception I've ever attended, including my own wedding, and we had a lot of dancing at my wedding. It was super fun, but I couldn't keep up. Also, if I'm being totally honest, I didn't love the music. I wanted more jams, and there were some (a good dose of Michael Jackson), but it was mostly Latino music (one side of the aisle would mob the floor) or Persian music (the other side of the aisle would mob the floor). Basically, I wanted more music I knew, which is a lot to ask, being that of the 170 people who attended the wedding, I was probably, like, 150th in importance.
  
  
• After the wedding, S wanted fries, so we went to In-N-Out burger at 12:30 in the morning, and I got a burger and a milkshake. Neither one was that great, to be honest, but it was still fun.
  
  
• On the flight home, I watch a movie called Snack Shack, which I found absolutely delightful. I was expecting a straightforward goofy teen comedy (a la Booksmart, one of my favorites), but it was a bit more heartfelt than that. I'm a sucker for teen stories set in the '90s (Derry Girls) because that's when I was teenager, and I'm a sucker for movies in which young dudes call each other pussies and bitches, but love and stand up for one another when the chips are down (Stand By Me), and Snack Shack falls into the intersection of the sets of such movies, so it's no wonder I liked it.
  
  
• I also watched the documentary Jim and Andy: The Great Beyond. It was weird but worth a watch.
  
  
• Some pics of the greater La Quinta/Indian Wells/Coachella/Palm Springs area, and then I'm out.

 Until next time...

Entry 734: Old Man Strength

Just finished up a 2-V-1* football game. That's when Lil' S2 and his friend JP beat up on me in our basement in the guise of a football game. It's basically just a brawl, and for the most part, I let them win, but every fifth play or so, I'll put them in their place, just to make it interesting, and just to remind them, you're not there yet, kid. You can't beat the old man just yet. Although, "yet" really is the operative word. They are only getting bigger, faster, stronger; and I'm, well, not. It's only a matter of time before our graphs cross--certainly within the next decade.

*This reminds me of a joke from The Onion, in which Thomas Pynchon was suing the makers of a 1983 sci-fi miniseries for the fifth time: V.-V.-V-V.

It's tough to say exactly when, however, because aging is not linear. People typically get older in bursts, not at a constant rate. One of those bursts is usually around 44, and now that I'm 47, I can say that that definitely happened for me. I feel so much older than I did just a few years ago. My body is more achy and recovery takes longer (if it happens at all); I'm slower and less mobile; I have less vim; and physical activity that was once really enjoyable has lost a lot of its appeal. With Lil' S2 and his friend, I've got about 15 minutes in me before I have to call it (okay, next touchdown wins). And I used to love my weekly wrestling class, but now I'm like, Uh... I think I'll do some weight training instead. Rolling around on a mat in physical combat against somebody who's likely to be 15 years my junior doesn't sound like a fun way to spend my time anymore. I can still hold my own, mind you, but the thrill is mostly gone.

One positive byproduct of this, however, is that I'm stronger -- in terms of sheer power -- than I've ever been in my entire life. Lifting weights is a great exercise for late 40s/early 50s people because you can go at your own pace, modify as needed, and keep up with the youngsters. Brute-force lifting ability is usually one of the last things to go. Old man strength is real! I might not be able to sprint 25 yards without blowing out my hamstring, but I can do a 5x5 bench-press workout with 185 pounds without needing a spot.

There are, however, limits to this. Father time is undefeated, as the saying goes. There is a guy at my gym, who I'd peg as early to mid-60s, and he's weak as shit.* I know this because I sometimes lift with him, and he says to me, "I'm weak as shit." He's clearly embarrassed by it, but he shouldn't be. He should be proud that he's still trying at his age. He does this thing that men do sometimes: He uses weights that are clearly too heavy for him because he doesn't want everybody to see him using lighter weights.** But this is incredibly silly, because, it's not like he's just telling people how much he can lift, he's actually doing it, so when he goes too heavy everybody can see that. Failing to press the 15-pound dumbbells is actually less impressive than successfully pressing the 10-pound dumbbells.  

*He reminds of my father-in-law. They both have brown skin, wispy, thinning hair, thick glasses, and are built like a chopstick.

**I've never once seen a woman do this. It's definitely a male ego thing. The instructor made the old man use lighter weights, and he said to me, "Aw, man, I feel like even more of a punk now."

It's also incredibly silly because he's clearly well past his prime, and because nobody cares how much you can lift, anyway. In fact, one of the keys to making progress in weightlifting is being honest with yourself and using weights that you can actually lift properly. If you go too heavy, you can't get the full range of motion nor can you do as many reps as you should, so it's very inefficient. Plus, if you stick with it, you won't be on the light weights forever. Even a mid-60s man who's weak as shit could get stronger. I mean, he's probably not going to go from 10s to 65s (which is what I do for dumbbell press -- no big deal), but he could go from 10s to like 25s.

In other news, this will likely be my last post for a few weeks because S and I are heading out of town for a wedding soon. Her very good friend E is getting married, and it's one of those events of which I want the experience of doing it without actually doing it, if that makes sense. I love E (platonically speaking), but her wedding is occurring at a very inconvenient moment in spacetime for me. It's in Palm Springs, which I've been to almost every year for the past decade, and it's one of the more annoying places in the contiguous United States to get to from DC. I mean, we have three major airports within an hour of our house -- how do none of them have a direct flight? And I always seem to have problems with the connecting flights.

Also, we are currently in the middle of the school year, so we have to do something with the kids. (S's sister has graciously agreed to stay at our house with them.) And, with the election around the corner, it's a time of high anxiety, in general, and there are few things better (worse?) than travel to heighten preexisting anxiety to barely tolerable levels. It definitely doesn't help that S and I will be on the same plane without our children, something that always makes me a uneasy, even though it's completely irrational on several levels. For one thing, I feel completely comfortable driving long distances with S without the kids, and you are much more likely to die in a car crash than a plane crash. For another, I feel comfortable when we fly together as a family, but if our plane was to crash, it would obviously be better if it was just S and I, as opposed to all four of us. So, it makes no sense.

But, actually, it does make sense, because it's about human emotion, not logic, and even for a half-robot like myself, the former can often trump the latter. Emotionally, it's perfectly reasonable to be apprehensive about traveling 600 mph in a relatively small metal tube 40,000 feet in the air. It doesn't matter how dangerous it actually is -- our evolution has not caught up with aviation safety statistics. And it's also perfectly reasonable to feel safer when your family is around you. That's the thing about so many irrational fears. They only look irrational when you zoom in to this particular moment in human history. If you look at the entire timeline of humanity, they make a lot of sense.

Until next time...

Entry 733: Sound Lags And Other Topics

I have a new thing to be annoyed by. When using certain streaming apps on our (supposedly) smart TV, the sound often gets out of sync with the images, so that you see people's mouths move and a few beats later you hear what they are saying -- or, if you are watching live sports, you'll see a great play, and then as everybody is celebrating you'll hear the announcer enthusiastically call the play that you already watched. It's extremely irritating. It especially happens with Peacock, and it gets so bad that by the end of an episode of The Office* the dubbing is worse than on an old Godzilla movie.

*We've been making our way through the series as a family. We are on the final season, and honestly, at this point, it can't end soon enough. It's gotten b-a-a-a-d. It took a big step down when Steve Carell left (how could it not?), but an even more extreme inflection point, I've come to find, is when Catherine Tate joins the cast. Her character is so annoying, and the (many) storylines centered around her are excruciating to watch. Somebody told me that Tate didn't even like her character, which would make sense, although I cannot independently confirm that through my extremely brief internet search.

I've tried to troubleshoot the problem but haven't been able to find a permanent solution. I did learn that it's the in-program commercial breaks that cause it, which could be why we only really see it with certain apps. Netflix, for example, doesn't have these types of ads (at least not with our subscription), so it doesn't happen when we stream from here. Also, if you leave the stream and reenter, it syncs up again, so at least there is a workaround. When I'm streaming football by myself, every half hour or so, when I notice the sound lag has gotten bad, I'll exit the stream and it enter again. It's a bit annoying, but there are plenty of breaks throughout a football game, so it's not like I miss anything. Plus, I frequently watch with the sound off and the game on in the background, so it's a nonissue.

When I watch The Office with the family, however, I don't do the leave-the-stream-and-reentry-it trick, because doing so annoys everybody else. I have no idea how this little hack, that takes literally less than 20 seconds, can annoy them more than the sound being completely out-of-whack, but it does. So, I just live with it. I mean, like I said, the show is pretty terrible now, anyway, so I don't feel like some great watching experience is being sullied.

I've noticed the YouTube app also frequently has a bit of a sound lag -- or at least it used to. I haven't tried it in long time. But I probably should because I don't like watching YouTube through the browser because the pause button for some stupid reason is directly below the start of the status bar. So, if go to hit pause, and miss by a millimeter, you'll hit the start of the status bar instead and reset the video to the beginning of the clip. I guess I have particularly fat fingers because I do this all the time. It's such a stupid layout, and I've noticed that it's not like that in the app. In fact, it might be such a stupid layout specifically because they want you to use the app. I've notice that with other Google products -- they push you toward the app by making the non-app version really annoying to use. Google used to be my default search engine on my iPhone, for example, but then every time I would go to search something -- every single time -- I would get a little pop-up saying that it was better to use their app, and I couldn't figure out how to turn it off. So, I just switched my search engine to Yahoo!. I won't be bullied into switching to the app!*

*Actually, I often will, and what I find, I must admit, is that I usually like the app better. But I'm still resentful when companies make me do it, and so sometimes I'll take a pointless stand against it.

I've been watching a decent amount of YouTube lately, because it's NFL and MLS season, so I will frequently watched extended highlights of Seahawks and Sounders games. I've also been hitting up Love is Kimes, the Love is Blind recap show hosted by my favorite football analysts (who also dabbles in reality TV) Mina Kimes. It's a great show, both Kimes and her cohost, David Dennis, are super funny. I'm not usually into reality TV, but I do enjoy watching Love is Blind with S, and the recap shows are a big reason why. This season has been pretty good too -- lots of fun couples getting engaged, and a few love triangles, including one prominently featuring this rich art dealer who turned into a great reality TV show villain (and who mysteriously left the show).

I feel a bit of compunction sometimes, however, because a big draw to the show is, of course, the drama, which is often caused by other people acting ridiculous. So, you get what I call the "American Movie Effect," in which you feel genuine empathy towards the subjects you're watching, but you are also laughing at their shortcomings, and let's be honest, feeling superior to them. What are the ethics behind this? I've come to the conclusion that it's okay with reality TV, because there is an informed consent in play. At this point, people know what they are getting into when they sign up to be on a reality TV show, and they still do so enthusiastically. I'm okay with being entertained by people taking risks, so long as they are fully informed of and fully consent to such risks. In football, you might get a debilitating injury; in reality TV, you might get mocked by viewers. We all know this by now, and you should only participate in these activities if you are willing to accept these possible negative outcomes.

Alright gotta go. Until next time...

Entry 732: Tryouts

Unfortunately, I got sucked into the VP debate on Tuesday. I didn't set out to watch it and successfully forgot it was even on, but then I turned on the TV to watch a baseball game, and the debate came on mid-discussion point, so I watched a bit to see what they were talking about, and then when I was ready to switch over to the game, one of the teams had scored a bunch of runs and made it a very uninteresting game, so I just watched the rest of the debate, even though I knew it would agitate me.

And it did.

JD Vance was agitating because I find him very smarmy and disingenuous, in general, and especially so when he's "sane-washing" Trump's extreme positions (abortion bans, repealing the ACA, election denial, etc.). And Tim Walz I found agitating because I don't think he did as good as he should have in rebutting Vance and selling himself. A perfect example of this is when he was asked about his apparently untrue statement that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protest. What he should have said is something like, "Yeah, I misspoke. Sometimes when I'm telling an off-the-cuff story I get caught up in the moment and exaggerate a bit. But the gist of that is true. Here's what really happened..." And then he could have gone into a pro-democracy spiel, and used it to pump up Harris and take down Trump. Instead, he gave a rambling personal history that didn't really address the question and I doubt satisfied anybody.

Also, when they were talking about election denial, and Vance was trying to turn it around into a censorship issue, Walz engaged with Vance and gave lame mumbled responses like "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater." I would have liked him to say, "That's a separate issue, and I'm happy to discuss it later, but right now we're talking about election denial, and this clearly makes you uncomfortable, and so you're trying to change the subject..." And then hammered home all the points he wanted to make about January 6. It just wasn't a great performance by Walz. Honestly, I never really got the Tim Walz VP selection, and he looks even more like the wrong choice to me after this debate. He didn't seem adequately prepared or able to rise to the occasion. I would have much rather Harris had chosen Josh Shapiro or even Mayor Pete.

With all that said, Walz was not a disaster by any means. He did make some good points and get in some good soundbites on reproductive rights and Vance's refusal to say Biden won in 2020. So, most of what I wrote above is probably armchair quarterback palaver. The conventional wisdom is the VPs don't matter very much, and I think that probably holds true in this election. From what I gather, not looking at the polls but still kinda looking at the polls, the race has been relatively steady for the past few weeks, and I don't expect that to change before election. I think Kamala has a small -- uncomfortably so -- advantage. If the polls are accurate, she will win narrowly (Biden's states minus Arizona and Georgia). If the polls are underestimating Trump, like they did in both 2016 and 2020, Trump will win similarly to how he did last time. If the polls are underestimating Harris, the way they underestimated Dems in 2022, then she will win comfortably (Biden's states plus North Carolina). I'm hoping for the latter.

Enough about that though... In other news, Lil' S2 is going to try out for the "kids elite" flag football league this winter. If he makes it, we will get the privilege of paying a large chunk of money to take him to two practices and a game every week in the freezing cold (and by "we" I mean "I"). I could joke and say I hope he doesn't make it, but of course I hope he does make it, because football is his favorite thing right now, and he will be very happy if he makes it, and I want my kids to be happy. I think he probably will. He's pretty good -- he's big and strong for his grade (which is somewhat odd because he's younger than most his classmates, and I was skinny and weak at his age), he can throw decently, he can catch really well, and he's smart about tactics and whatnot. The only flaw in his game is that he's not very fast (which does make sense, I've never been particularly fleet of foot), and unfortunately that is a sizeable flaw in football. You can be bad at just about every other aspect of the game and still be good at football if you can run fast. We have a kid like that on our team now. He can't catch or throw well, and he often lines up in the wrong spot, but when we give him the ball and point him toward the end zone, Forrest Gump style, it mostly works out well for us. (He's not slow off the field, however, and I've never once heard his mom say "stupid is as stupid does.")

There's also a decent chance this tryout is more of a "tryout" than a tryout. As mentioned above, this league is not cheap, so there is incentive to keep as many kids as possible. I suspect anybody who comes to a tryout and shows they actually want to be there will make the cut, but I don't know for sure. It was cute, though, Lil' S2 told me he was "nervous" about his tryout, and it took me back to the time when meaningless shit seemed like the most important things in the world. I remember I got cut from the JV junior high football team in 7th grade and was devastated, even though only four kids from my grade made it,* and then I got cut again the next year (very unjustly, I might add), and I legitimately had never felt lower in my entire life. Then I made the varsity team in 9th grade and didn't even really like it.

*One of them died a few years ago under very mysterious circumstances. We were never close, but we were friendly with one another back in the day, and it's just an incredibly tragic story.

It's amusing to think that as children we put such import on things that seem so utterly frivolous now, but the truth is, I miss it. I miss the feeling of things mattering like that. I miss believing everything was on the line and the unabated ecstasy I experienced when things went my way.* I've found it's nearly impossible to recreate that sensation as an adult. Nothing really gives me that same unbridled joy any more. The good things I experience now fall somewhere on a spectrum between relief and satisfaction. On the one end, it's only solace that the bad thing that could have happened didn't (which is what I'll feel in November if Kamala wins). On the other end, it's gratification that I accomplished something cool, like, when, say, I get a crossword puzzle published. I'm happy about it, but it's a contented, job-well-done happiness. It's not an over-the-moon, you-just-single-handedly-diverted-an-asteroid-and-saved-the-entire-world elation. I haven't had that feeling in years, and I doubt I ever will again. 

*A few times I remember feeling this: When our team name got called because we won districts in Odyssey of the Mind; when my high school lacrosse team scored a goal in overtime to beat Lakeside High (Bill Gates' alma mater, incidentally); when I watched Edgar Martinez hit "the double" at my friend JP's house; when I was backstage celebrating with cast mates immediately after a performance of a high school play I was in.  

But this isn't necessarily a bad thing. So many of the pleasures of being young are a direct result of youthful naivete (I know the world isn’t on the line now), and so you should lose them as you get older. I miss aspects of being young, for sure, but I don't lament the loss. That's just part of living a completely life. I mean, I certainly would not want to have the mentality and emotional maturity I had as a schoolboy as a middle-age man. I've already been there; I've already done that. Now, I want to experience the things that old-ish age has to offer -- the wisdom, the autonomy, the comfort in my own skin, the arthritis. Okay, definitely not that last one, but the others are good.                

Until next time...

Entry 731: The Great Subscription Purge of 2024

We performed a recent audit of our subscriptions here at the G & G house and came to the conclusion that we were spending way too much monthly on services we barely use. I recommend every household do this. It's so easy now to sign up for a recurring charge, and then forget about it and continue paying months after you've stopped using it. Just by going through our accounts and toggling a few "auto-renewal" buttons to the "off" positions, we will save like $70 a month. That's not nothing.

I really hate that the subscription model has taken over our economy. It's one that favors the vendor much more than the consumer. I have no problem paying for something that I knowingly purchase and use. What I don't like is being duped into paying for something or having to buy a bunch of stuff I don't want in order to get the one thing that I do want. But this is often what happens when you buy a subscription. That's why I'm not above working the system -- using friends' credentials,* binge-watching during the free-trial period, and in some rare cases watching pirated streams. Although, you have to be careful with that latter one. You have to visit some shady sites in order to do this, and you're bound to get some weird viruses on your computer. I utilized these "shared" streams frequently when I lived in Australia because it was the only way I could watch NFL games without buying some crazy expensive package, but I did so with the knowledge that I would be buying a new laptop when I went back to the States, anyway. Also, toward the end of my time there, it got harder and harder to find these streams, as sites would frequently get shut down, and mainstream blogs started prohibiting users from posting free links in the comments sections.

*I've been streaming cable channels using my parents' cable credentials for over a decade. The beauty of this is that they canceled their cable subscription about four years ago. Their online credentials still work for some reason. Every time I enter them, I'm expecting to see a message telling me they're invalid, but that hasn't happened yet. 

The thing now that really annoys me is how all software has moved to a subscription model. I opened up Microsoft Word today, and I got a message saying: "PRODUCT DEACTIVATED On Tuesday, October 15, 2024, most features of Word will be disabled." This is particularly irritating, as I purchased Office years ago, and I thought I was actually buying it, like, the old way, like, you download it, and install it, and you have it forever. But apparently not, and now they want to charge me $99 a year to reactivate it. I'm not doing it. It's partly out of principle, but more so because I simply don't use the software enough to justify that cost. I might pay $99 if it's a one-time charge (I thought I already did that), but not as a recurring fee. I do use Word sometimes for my crossword puzzles, but I can figure out a different way, or use my work computer, if need be. I usually like to keep a separation between church and state, when it comes to my work and personal computers, but I'll allow an exception if it'll save me $99 a year.

I'm sure companies have done the math and come to the conclusion that subscription models are better for their bottom lines, but certainly not in every case. There have to be people like me who would pay a one-time flat fee, but a not a recurring cost, and so by insisting on subscriptions, you lose the flat fee for those customers. Or people will subscribe for a short period (maybe just the free trial) and then cancel. I did that with the fancy version of Adobe Acrobat. I needed it for a project I was working on, so I subscribed for a month or two and then canceled when I was done, and I haven't needed it since then. Had I purchased the software outright, I would have paid about twice as much, and it would have been sitting on my computer unopened for the past few years.

I think that's the way to gain the edge -- you have to be vigilant about canceling things you aren't getting enough value from them. When we went through and really looked at it, I was surprised by how many services we basically weren't using at all -- MAX, for example. HBO used to be my favorite, but I realized that there is literally nothing on it I watch anymore -- Curb is over; Succession is over; Winning Time got canceled; and their classic shows, The Sopranos, The Wire, Sex & the City, Six Feet Under, etc. are long gone, and nothing has replaced them. Yeah, it would be cool to have access to their back catalog and their movies, but that's not worth a monthly subscription. I could probably rent anything I wanted for a fraction of the price, and if I get a wild hair and decide I wanted to re-binge The Sopranos or something like that. I will just get a free trial and/or buy one month at that time. There's no need to give them a monthly payment right now.

The same is true for Apple TV. Once Ted Lasso ended, we weren't using it at all, so we dumped it. I might have wanted to keep it if it allowed access to all the MLS games, but that's an extra cost on top of the regular monthly fee, so forget it. We also recently got rid of Paramount+*, Slate Plus**, and PlayStation Plus.***

*This is a the classic forgot-to-cancel case. I signed up for a free trial to watch Jack-Ass Forever, but then I kept it for a bit because I could also watch CONCACAF Champions League games, and then a year later, S asked if we could get rid of it, and I'm like, "We still have that!" That's how they get you, and they got me with this one.

**I went to shut off auto-renewal for this, but it had already been shut off. Past me was apparently one step ahead of current me.

***Lil' S1 used this for a while, but then he stopped playing PlayStation altogether for some reason. Lil' S2 only plays the big sports games -- Madden, NBA 2K, and such -- and those don't come with the subscription. Still, they both told me they wanted to keep it, so I said that they could renew it with money they got for their birthdays, and then they didn't want to do it, of course.

And we still have a lot of subscriptions even after that. We have Amazon Prime, which we use frequently, both for the shipping discounts and for the Thursday Night Football. We have Hulu (the basic version) and Netflix because S watches shows on them all the time. We have Peacock because S's sister got it and gave us a profile, and we have Disney+, just because. I'd like to add Disney+ to the purge, to be honest, but S insists it's worth it for the kids, because of all the MCU and Star Wars content and what not. I don't think it is worth it, but I do like having access to the full The Simpsons catalog, so I'm not going to press the issue too much.

There are just too many streaming services now. The joke, of course, is that everybody wishes they could have cable back, but it isn't really about packaging; it's about volume. There's just too much content to consume, and it's spread across too many services. It's not just TV either. The same thing is happening with podcasts and blogs. Everybody wants you to subscribe to their thing -- their Substack or Ghost or Patreon -- and there is so much great content out there, I wish I could do this with everything I like, but I can't. So, I pick out the one or two things I like the best, and then for everything else, I get the free version, or, if there is no free version, I just don't get it at all.

It's a brave new world, and it's so much better than the timid old world in so many ways. In theory, we can consume whatever we want whenever we want. In practice, however, we can't, because everything requires a recurring financial commitment now. And it's hard to figure out what's worth it, and what isn't.

Until next time...

Entry 730: Mosquitoes

Pretty normal week here at the G & G household. There's still some drama going on at Lil' S2's school, but nothing I can't put my head in the sand about. The teacher who responded to the "racial incident" I mentioned in my last entry got put on indefinitely leave, which I don't love for several reasons, one being that now all three of the teachers in his grade are substitutes. His original homeroom teacher, a would-be newcomer to the school, couldn't get certified in time or something like that, so she never even started; his ELA teacher is out on maternity leave (as is the principal); and now his math teacher is out on leave because of the incident. It's not great.

But I'm also not that worried. Maybe I should be, but I take the attitude, He's a smart kid; he'll be fine. Plus, we have the resources to ramp up his education outside of school, if need be. We already enrolled him at this place called Mathnasium, and I'm optimistic he will put more effort into it than he did into guitar.* He's pretty good at math and analytical thinking and shows interest in it, often without even realizing he's doing so. For example, he'll have me twist a solved Rubik's Cube a few times and see if he can put it back in place (which he usually can), or he'll want to count S's hand when we play cribbage (which we've gotten into lately), or he'll study fantasy football numbers (we're in a dads and sons league together) to figure out which players to pick up, or how likely he is to win.

*He took lessons for about six months, but he rarely practiced and clearly didn't like it. That's fine--he tried it out. Not everything is for everybody. I highly suspected that this would be the case, so I was hesitant to spend the money on lessons and equipment in the first place. But, if you can afford to do so, you have to give your kids a chance, at least. That's my philosophy, anyway. It seems like 75% of parenting is spending money on things your kids will immediately want to quit.

I particularly like that he's getting into sports, because it gives us something to do together, and because I'm convinced that that's how I got good at math -- or rather I should say that's how I built the foundation that allowed me to get good at math. I got good at math because I studied it extensively at the college level for like 13 years. But I think I was already primed to develop those skills because I had a basis of analytical thought, cultivated in no small part from studying sports stats. To give a concrete example, I remember once solving a combinatorial problem that keyed off the fact that in every directed graph there must exist a node in which at least half it's adjacent edges are pointing into it. I used this fact without explanation, and the teacher marked me down a tiny bit, saying that it wasn't obviously true. I said it was to me, and when he asked me why, I said, "Not every football team can have a winning record." My love of sports provided me with the intuition to solve the math problem. So, I don't think things like fantasy football and Madden are necessarily a waste of time.

But then again, a bunch of my friends liked sports just as much as I did, and they didn't parlay it into a math degree and a job in R&D, so maybe the causation goes the other way. Maybe it was my proclivity for analytical thought that attracted me to sports stats. Who knows? Who knows anything when it comes to this type of stuff?

All of this is to say, Lil' S2's schooling is not my biggest worry at the moment. My biggest worry at the moment is the potential reelection of Donald Trump, but that's an overarching worry that I'm doing my best not to think about for the next month and half.* One good way to do this, I've found, is to fill my mind with smaller worries, and lately that's been mosquitoes. They've been so bad in our yard this season. We screened in our porch a few years ago, and that's proven to be one of the best investments we've ever made, but there are times when I want to go outside in the yard for longer than 30 seconds, and I cannot do that without slathering on the deet or getting savaged with mosquito bites. The other day I was putting air in my bicycle tires, and they descended upon me like raindrops in a thunderstorm. I don't know what happened. I didn't think they attacked in packs, but this time it was as if I had shaken up a wasps nest. I thought they were a swarm of gnats at first, so I was just kinda casually batting them away, and then I started getting bitten, and I was like oh no! I ran inside, but the damage was already done. I stopped counting after the 25th bite.

*I'm trying to avoid the forecasts this election. In part, this is because they haven't been very reliable the past few elections; in part, it's because it's so close there's nothing really to look at. You can study the polls all you want, or you can just figure it's a coin toss and arrive at the same place with a fraction of the effort. It helps that Nate Silver took his model to Substack and paywalled it, so I can't impulsively look at it.

I've also started noticing random bites on my body when I haven't even gone outside. That's even more infuriating. It's one thing to get bitten when I'm in their territory; it's another to get got in my own house. It turns me into a lunatic. If I see somebody leave the door open for more than two seconds, I scream "Shut the door! Shut the damn door!" like a madman, and I take vengeful glee every time I kill a mosquito. It's not healthy.

I've even developed my own signature method of killing them: I snatch them with one hand, open my fist a tiny bit, no bigger than a pinhole, and run water into it. It might sound overly complicated, but it's not. Most people try to smash them by clapping their hands together, but that's a very low percentage maneuver. When you do that, you create a puff of air that often pushes the mosquito to safety. I have a much higher snatch percentage using one hand. The thing there, however, is that while sometimes you crush them with the snatch, sometimes they stay alive within your hand, even if you squeeze it together tightly. Many a time I've opened my fist, expecting to find a dead mosquito, only to watch the little sucker (literally) fly away. That's why I use the water. Either you wash off their guts or you drown them -- win, win. The other thing you can do is let them land on you and then slap them, but that's risky, because you'll get bitten if you're too late. Also, you can smash them against a wall or a piece of furniture, but obviously they have to be in the right place to do that, and it's pretty gross to splatter them on something light-colored as they often perish in pop of blood.

I saw an advertisement for this thing you plug-in, and it attracts and catches bugs, and I'm going to buy one. I don't know if it will work, but it's worth a try. We also need to spray more, either professionally, or I need to buy the stuff you connect to your hose and do it. One of my dad friends is really into gardening and sustainable ecosystems and whatnot, and he's adamantly against mosquito spraying, but, I dunno, getting swarmed every time I go in my backyard doesn't seem like a proper equilibrium to me. 

Well, I think that's enough for today. Until next time...

Entry 729: Anal Probe

I had my anus probed yesterday. Well, technically, I had my large bowel and distal portions of my small bowel probed -- the anus was merely the adit for the probe -- but you probably get what I'm saying: I had my first colonoscopy yesterday. The colonoscopy is often used as an exaggerated comparison for something extremely unpleasant -- I'd rather get a colonoscopy than watch that movie again -- and I now truly get why. It's terrible. The procedure itself is fine -- you don't even know it happened* -- but the preparation is brutal.

*They knocked me out with propofol, which I best know as the drug that killed Michael Jackson. It's a pretty good drug, actually. It knocked me out cold instantly, but when I woke up twenty minutes later, I was full coherent, if quite groggy.

For three days* before the procedure, you have to be on a special diet, in which you can only eat plain, soft, colorless food. Then one day before the procedure you can't eat much of anything, other than lemon jello and pineapple popsicles, but that's not a concern because you won't feel like eating, anyway. You don't have much of an appetite, when you are ingesting copious amounts of laxative and "pooping" out everything in your body that isn't secured in place. I use the quotes because, after a while, what you are doing can be better described as peeing than pooping. The stuff coming out of you is a yellow liquid, indistinguishable from pee, other than the fact it's coming out of your butt. You are booty-peeing, and you are doing it almost uncontrollably. I was a little worried I was going to wet myself on the way to the clinic. I didn't, but I brought a change of undies, just in case.     

*The clinic where I got my colonoscopy actually said you should start this diet five days before the procedure. But I didn't notice this until it was too late. I was going by a different set of instructions I found somewhere that said three days. So, four days before the procedure, I had a massive Mexican feast and ate a mound of black beans, the worst thing to eat, according to the instructions. It all worked out, though. I think a lot of times doctors' offices pad their instructions a bit knowing people will not follow them perfectly. It's like how they tell you to arrive 45 minutes before your procedure, even though you will almost surely not be called back until well after your appointment time. It's a little annoying, but what's more annoying is how everybody wants you to do a pre-check-in online now. That sounds like a good, time-saving idea, until you get to the appointment and have to fill out a bunch forms giving the same information you already gave online.

But it was all worth it. I don't have colon cancer, and the gastroenterologist didn't even find any polyps. Not that I was worried about it. This was a strictly preventative procedure. I got it because a doctor recommended I get it. I mean, I am 47, and the internet says you should get one by 45, so, if anything, I was a little behind (no pun intended). The best part is that I don't have to get another one for seven to ten years. The second best part is that in the waiting room before the procedure, they were playing "Baby Got Back" by Sir Mix-A-Lot, which I think was coincidental but would be hilarious if it wasn't. Sadly, Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls" did not come on next.

In other news, the listserv for the parents at Lil' S2's school was absolutely blowing up yesterday. There was a "racial incident" that has gotten everybody abuzz. The school has been very guarded when it comes to releasing information, but they did release a statement, and with that, and the report of other parents, we have some understanding of what happened. Some kids were using racial slurs, including (presumably) the n-word, and two teachers responded to this by separating their students into groups by their racial identities. During this exhibition, one of the teachers used the unabbreviated n-word, as part of an explanation. (I believe she said something to the effect of, "You can't be calling each other [n-word]s.) For context, the races of the students involved are unknown,* but both the teachers are Black women.

*We do know Lil' S2 wasn't involved, at all, thankfully.

As you can imagine, this caused a big stir -- it apparently dominated back-to-school night and the local news even did a story on it -- and a lot of people have opinions on it they wish to share. I've not posted anything to the listserv, but my feeling on the matter is: Can't we just move on? Do we really need to expend this much energy on this incident? Like, whatever happened to "just don't do that again"?

With regards to the initial incident, the kids using racial slurs, it's bad, obviously, but, keep in mind, they're 9-years-old. They don't really understand what these things mean, yet, and I find it hard to believe anybody was deeply traumatized by this. If anything, making such a big deal out of it, only makes it worse. The students should be told not to use this type of language, of course, but I struggle to see what will be gained by going beyond this.

With regards to the response by the teachers, it's also not great. Students should never be separated by race. A lot of parents of biracial children chimed in to say they didn't like that their kids were forced to "pick a side," and I get that, but I just can't get that exercised about it. Lil' S2, who is biracial, went to the Asian/Pacific Islander group, because he wanted to be with a few of his friends who are also half-Asian, and I couldn't care less. I also really don't care that the teacher used the unabbreviated n-word. She wasn't calling anybody that; in fact, she was doing the exact opposite. Assuming this was an isolated incident, which I think it was, it would be a shame if anybody got too severely punished over this.

Anyway, the district is now involved, and we will see where it goes. I fear there might be some punitive consequences in the offing. The reason I say this is because I don't think the district wants to set a precedent that it's okay for teachers to use the n-word, even in a non-pejorative manner, because they then must apply this same standard if a non-Black teacher uses it, and I don't know that they want to go down that route. This is a situation in which the social and legal rules are different. The social rule is that it's okay for Black people to use the n-word, in certain circumstances, but not okay for non-Black people to use it, under any circumstances (except maybe if you're the evil white guy in a civil rights movie). The legal rule is that people cannot be punished differently for the same offense because of their race. And a school district has to apply the legal rule or open themselves up to lawsuits.

But maybe I'm wrong. I hope I am. Like I said, I don't want to see anybody involved punished too harshly over this. We need a lot more "just don't do that again" in our society right now.

Until next time...