Hello, everyone.
I think I wrote the least here in 2015 compared to all other years this blog has been open and active. Truth be told, as I've said before...well, I've been pretty damn busy living life. Not the good kind of living life, mind you, the kind where people go off on vacations to faraway lands (though, uh, that did happen) but the day-to-day, taking care of business, eating, sleeping, showering, etc. As it's 2016 now, though, I figured I'd give a rundown of some answers to questions I'm sure many of you who aren't in contact with me very often have for me. So, that's what this blog post is about more than anything else.
1. Yes, the wife and I -- as well as the cats -- are perfectly fine. We're still living in Omaha, we're still in the same large apartment we've been in since shortly before our wedding, and both of us are in overall good health.
2. Everyone in the family is fine too, both on my side and hers.
3. I did procure the truck, as mentioned in my last post here, and it has become my daily driver with few, if any, significant issues. It runs well, it has a warm heater and ice cold air, and for a full-size V8 it does pretty well on gas mileage, especially as the only real driving I've done in it is from home to work and back. However, due to the holidays and time off during said holidays, I haven't driven it anywhere in close to two weeks. I'll be taking it out tomorrow morning to go to work, and that'll be the first time I've driven it since before Christmas.
4. Yes, I did say tomorrow morning. In October -- while we are still with the same company and doing roughly the same jobs -- the wife and I both moved to dayshift hours. I work four tens, Tuesday through Friday, and she works a normal Monday through Friday schedule. It's different, but not incredibly so. The best part about it is that I still have a day during the week to myself (it's Monday, now) and that during the latter half of the football season, I had Saturdays off. We're on different teams now, taking care of different issues than before, but the jobs themselves are largely the same for both of us.
5. Yes, we have seen Star Wars. We went last weekend. Best movie I saw all year, and that's all I'll say about it as I'm not going to be one of those fucks who spoils plot points and gives away details.
6. No, the wife and I do not have any children yet, nor are we currently expecting any.
7. If that changes, however, we'll probably have to trade up my truck for an SUV or a van. I hate vans, so....
8. Over the holidays, the wife (and most of her family) were knocked flat on their proverbial asses by some godawful almost-flu sickness. I say "almost-flu" because the wife went to the doctor (after being sick for nine days straight and getting progressively worse almost by the day) and they gave her a flu test -- which told her she didn't have the flu. Dad and I remained mostly unaffected, though shortly before the new year I got a pretty evil (though not severe) head/chest cold that wasn't pleasant -- one that I'm still recovering from now, slowly. I am mostly okay now, and Daisy has mostly recovered from her own sickness -- but today is the first full day of work she's been able to do since the 22nd of December or so.
9. Daisy has purchased a high-end Nikon camera and is attempting to start a photography business as a second job. She took high-res photos for our office Christmas party and has now done headshots and the like for several friends as well in order to help build a portfolio. One or two weddings a month (or something along those lines) at reasonable rates would help us greatly out of the whole living paycheck-to-paycheck thing. As my lovely wife has a really good photographic eye, I am sure she could make it a full-time profession if she so chose -- and that would eliminate a lot of stress from her daily life.
10. I was able to get my student loans postponed for another year -- the last year I'll be able to do so. This means that me, Daisy, or both of us will have to get better jobs by December 2016 or that whole "paycheck-to-paycheck" thing will very quickly become unsustainable.
11. I am delighted to say that I am slowly weaning myself off cigarettes and have moved on to vaping. Yes, I do still smoke -- but I have cut down on the amount of cigarettes I smoke per day/week/etc drastically, to the point where a pack will now last me about three days instead of one. The wife bought me a 60w mod for an early birthday present, which I used for close to a month before it started shorting out on me and finally stopped working almost completely. I have since purchased two other mods (one 40w, one 80w), two more tanks, and close to twenty different types of e-juice, and can confidently say that this is probably what will get me to quit smoking completely -- if anything will. And, as a bonus, I can vape inside, instead of needing to go out into the cold to get my fix. Unless I'm at work, of course, where inside vaping is still prohibited. As I'm not an asshole, I don't vape inside in public places either (like the grocery store or post office or what-have-you). I do it in the car, though. It doesn't bother Daisy, and because I vape mostly vanilla, caramel, or coffee-based juices, the resulting vapor smells wonderful most of the time.
That's about all that's going on that I can talk about in relatively short little updates.
Christmas went well with the family, as well as could be expected with both Daisy and her mother very sick with whatever it was they had (Mama is still sick now, though she's slowly getting better). Daisy's sister and our brother-in-law, the man who performed our wedding ceremony, were in town from Denver with their three boys, and we had a nice family Christmas. I got Daisy many things, including several games for her Wii -- which we set up in the living room a few months ago -- and some clothing and socks she needed. Daisy, in turn, got me the one thing I've been wanting for several years -- an inexpensive record player, upon which I spun two of my favorite records this morning -- ABBA's Gold Collection.
Don't you judge me.
I'll be getting other records soon as well, once I can afford them and am not worried about balancing our checkbook and getting the bills paid on time and the like. She also got me Sgt. Pepper's and the Ghostbusters soundtrack, both of which I had specifically requested.
She got me many other things as well, including Darth Vader's lightsaber (the really expensive, adult-collector Black Series one) for my birthday, as well as a few sweaters, a new calendar, a mug-and-brush shaving kit (the one I've been using has the bristles falling out of the brush as I've used it for close to ten years now) and some games for both the Wii and my PC.
The time since Christmas has been spent around the house as much as possible with both of us attempting to recover from our respective sicknesses. I've had a sinus headache for most of the day today as my immune system is still trying to clear out the onslaught of neon-green mucus indicative of a sinus infection, and the wife has been immersing herself both in New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Mario Kart Wii, which we each got one another for Christmas while she's been trying to feel better. We've visited with the parents a few times, we've gone grocery shopping twice, and we did go see Star Wars last weekend -- but aside from that we've barely left the house. I had to work two days last week leading up to the New Year, but starting tomorrow I'm back on the normal grind as always, a grind that (as I mentioned previously above) the wife started back on today. Now that the holidays are over and we're into January, it tends to be a rather depressing and long ongoing time of the year in our job(s) as there are no paid holidays coming up for anything (I'm pretty sure MLK Jr. Day is business as usual for us) and it's almost constantly cold and snowy -- we got a big snowstorm of 8+ inches on the morning of Christmas Eve, and another 4 or so inches a week ago today. I hate the winter, I hate the cold, and I hate the snow, so forcing myself to go out in it every day before it's fully light outside and to return home when it's been fully dark outside for close to two hours is, on many levels, really sad and depressing. But that's life, you know? I won't work this job forever, and neither will Daisy.
That's about all that's going on right now. I've covered most of the pertinent things. But I will say that it does feel good to write here again. It's like coming back home.
