Musings During Snowpocalypse 2016

WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM MIDNIGHT TONIGHT TO 4 AM CST WEDNESDAY...

* TIMING... A MIXTURE OF RAIN AND SNOW IS LIKELY TO DEVELOP BY EARLY THIS EVENING BEFORE CHANGING OVER TO ALL SNOW TONIGHT. SNOW... HEAVY AT TIMES... WILL CONTINUE INTO TUESDAY BEFORE DIMINISHING LATE TUESDAY EVENING.

* WINDS/VISIBILITY... NORTHERLY WINDS OF 15 TO 25 MPH WITH GUSTS TO 35 MPH ARE EXPECTED THROUGH MOST OF THE DAY ON TUESDAY. THE COMBINATION OF HEAVY SNOW AND STRONG WINDS WILL RESULT IN NEAR BLIZZARD OR INTERMITTENT BLIZZARD-LIKE CONDITIONS... WITH BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW FOR A PROLONGED PERIOD OF TIME. EVEN THOUGH WINDS WILL DIMINISH SOMEWHAT ON TUESDAY NIGHT... AREAS OF BLOWING AND DRIFTING SNOW WILL STILL BE POSSIBLE.

* SNOW ACCUMULATIONS... STORM TOTAL SNOWFALL AMOUNTS UP TO 7 TO 11 INCHES ARE LIKELY... WITH LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS POSSIBLE.

In case you've been hiding under a rock as of late, that's what's going on here right now. It's the first "big snow" of the winter. Yeah, we've had a few smaller snowstorms -- including eight inches over the course of about six hours on Christmas Eve -- but this one was actually predicted a full week in advance, and started getting some major media attention by the middle of last week. 

Despite the totals of "7 to 11 inches" above, the Weather Channel's forecast for my area has it set for 3-5 tonight, 5-8 tomorrow, and another inch tomorrow night. For those of you counting, that's 9-14, not 7-11. Not a small storm by any means, but definitely not the worst I've ever seen (remember, I grew up on top of a mountain in West Virginia -- a foot of snow is nothing to me). 

However, it is something to people here in Omaha. Omaha isn't used to getting really heavy snowstorms -- something this size happens once every 3-5 years or so. Most of the time it's just cold and windy, and while Omaha does get snow, it's usually no more than the 4-6 inch range. This storm -- which they've apparently named "Winter Storm Kayla" got enough attention to where The Weather Channel's Jim Cantore is in Omaha right now to do live reporting on it.

All of this being said...it hasn't started snowing yet. It's not starting until after midnight, apparently -- which is good as they originally thought it would start in the early evening hours.

In the buildup to this storm, I let the wife know that I was going to burn ten hours of my (precious) PTO, and put in for said time off for tomorrow -- on Friday. Even if the storm wasn't that bad, I reasoned, I still could use the "mental health day" that is not having to go to work on a terribly cold, nasty day. Three of the four days I worked last week, I was at least two people as I was filling in for someone else. Two of those days I was in charge of our entire team. Yeah, I need a mental health day, and one that I'm paid for. Now, as the storm approaches and it looks to be every bit as bad as they were calling for last week when they first started running projections, I am glad that I had the foresight to plan ahead.

To those ends I have charged my vape mods, I have prepared new coils and new juices for them so that I can just refill-and-keep-going, and the wife and I made a large shopping trip over the weekend to gather any and all supplies we'd need to be able to sit around the house and wait to be able to leave again.

Mind you, Daisy is a manager at work while I am not -- and she doesn't have the PTO I have (though hers will roll over sooner than mine will based on our hiring dates). She can, however, remotely access most of her important work stuff from home and from her phone, so there's that. It also doesn't help that the work we do is performed on a 24/7 basis, weather or any other factors be damned. Our office building will never close -- there is always at least two people in that building 24/7/365 no matter what. We don't work in a field that can just up and close down its offices for even a day. Doing so would be impossible at best, and would put people's lives in danger at worst. So, uh, we as well as all of our friends and colleagues who work with us are...sort of stuck, and stuck in a difficult place when something like this happens. Based on the timing of the storm, even, it looks like we'll be stuck here inside until at least Thursday morning, as the apartment complex won't be able to fully plow everything out and clear a path to the road out of our parking lot until probably Wednesday afternoon -- and that won't help in the least if the roads are still impassable.

So because of this newfound wealth of free time this week, I figured I'd drop in here and provide a few life updates. 

My parents back east, of course, are still reeling from the major storm that just hit them about a week and a half ago -- a snowstorm that makes this one look like a dusting. When I talked to my mother on the phone last weekend, she let me know that there was almost four feet of snow on the ground at the house. I don't know when they were able to go back to work after that storm, but an email from my mother this morning said that it's all melting off now -- slowly, of course, and that they were out and about all weekend.

Daisy's parents here in town are fine, though both of them are sick right now with what might be the flu, so we stayed in this weekend and did not go over there for our customary, weekly Sunday dinner. Instead, we (and by "we" I mean "mostly the wife") spent the day cleaning, doing laundry, vacuuming, and cooking. She was able to go to work today, as the storm's not hit yet, but as I have Mondays off I was able to relax in the silence of our home, sitting in the chair with one or more cats lounging with me (at one point, I had all three of them) and playing the new Pokemon Mystery Dungeon game on my 2DS. As we'll be stuck inside for the next two days, more than likely, this sort of lounging will likely continue by both of us. 

Don't get me wrong -- I did wash and dry two loads of laundry today, loaded and ran the dishwasher, showered and changed my clothes, and switched out my old tennis shoes with my new ones (which is sort of pointless until I can actually wear them outside, I know). I'll also clean the catbox before bed, on the off-chance that it's not so godafwul in the morning that the maintenance guys do pick up the garbage at 6AM as per the usual. I can almost guarantee that those hopes are in vain, but the box needs to be cleaned anyway. 

I wish I could be in more of a creative mood. I feel almost like I am losing the ability to follow my dreams again, nine years after the last time that happened when I originally started this blog (yes, this thing has been running for almost nine years now). At that time I was working in a grocery store and living in a one-room efficiency apartment in Missouri with my ex-girlfriend and the cats, and I really hated my life and situation. Yes, I had enough money to pay the bills and be able to afford groceries, go out to eat once in a while, splurge on a few things on Amazon or at Target/Kmart/what-have-you...but it was a very unfulfilling existence. I used the term "treading water" a lot, because that's what it felt like I was doing. I wasn't doing anything meaningful with my life; I was just subsisting and surviving on what I had. 

To a large extent, grad school was like that too -- though I had a clear goal and a purpose then as well as afterwards. I was teaching, I became a professor, I was financially responsible and independent, living alone and working to better myself and my station in life, which I was able to do -- I mean, I did find the love of my life, I got out of Kansas, moved to Omaha, got married, got an upgraded vehicle, health insurance, cut down my smoking drastically, stopped drinking almost completely.

However, for the past almost eighteen months or so, since I got the job I'm currently working...I feel like I've been in a holding pattern. Because I don't make enough at this job to pay them, I've suspended my student loans twice -- I have ten months to go before I have no choice but to start repaying them every month (probably until I die). While I have a very happy marriage with Daisy, I no longer feel creative or inspired to do...well, much of anything. I've stopped creating and have begun observing. Consuming, really. I used to be a professor, a well-respected, though bottom-rung professor. I used to have a drive to change people's lives for the better, both through my teaching and through my writing. I was the proverbial light that people were shown as an example to live up to. I didn't want to leave that sort of life -- I did it out of necessity as I couldn't pay my bills sustainably with that career, and nobody was offering me any opportunities at career advancement up the ladder -- promises were made, promises were broken, and nothing came of anything. 

Many months ago I read through my graduate school thesis again -- a collection of poetry, an actual publishable book -- and wondered what happened to the man who wrote it. The poetry in it isn't great by any means, but it is good. I don't know if I could sit down today and write like that again. I mentioned this to Rae afterwards as well -- what happened to that man? Oh, that's right, [super-large multinational corporation I work for now] ate him, and he's no longer with us.

Even as I was re-reading the book, I was thinking to myself that with a fresh set of eyes almost three years later, and some choice edits here and there, I could get said book published as a chapbook or collection in its own right. But the second thought after that was the most depressing one -- that would be work, that would be time, that would take so much devotion that my heart just isn't in it anymore.

Even now my friends from graduate school tag me in posts on Facebook when a poet I liked back then gets something new and amazing published, or when a new journal opens up that wants submissions from people like us...and as sad as it is now, I ignore those posts and frown at them as the comment threads fill up my inbox -- I see them as nuisances. These people are seeing me as the person I used to be, the poet, the artiste. I am not that guy anymore, sadly. I'm not even a professor anymore. I am a corporate cog in a cube farm, forced to dress business casual ("no shirts without collars, and no tennis shoes except on Fridays!"), surrounded by other corporate cogs in other cubes -- some of whom have been there so long their eyes have glazed over and they carry the look of well-worn defeat with them everywhere they go. This isn't how their lives were supposed to go, this isn't where they wanted to be in their forties, fifties, and sixties. These are the people who steal coffee out of the break room because the job doesn't pay them enough to buy their own and because they want to be able to say they actually got something out of that place. These are the people who are intelligent in their own right, but missed a big opportunity here or there -- or five or six in a row -- and had to settle for lower-middle management for a baseline salary just to be able to survive. And sadly, I fit into the latter category. I'm not stealing coffee (mainly because the office coffee is terrible, and most people on my team are now bringing in their own cans of coffee from home) but everything else is pretty much true. I make a live-able wage, yet it would take almost an entire two weeks' paycheck to put new tires on my truck -- something that desperately needs to be done, yet we can't afford to do even on a two-income household with one of us making substantially more than the other because, well, bills.

I shouldn't complain; I did win a $700+ gift basket from this company with an iPad in it at Christmas, after all. Tax-free. And the job isn't a bad job. It is stressful at times and very detail-oriented, but I can do it and I do it very well -- not to toot my own horn here, but I am one of the most well-liked and well-respected individuals in the entire building, the one people come to when they have questions or need to know the process to complete a task, because I'm the one who knows it. And it's not just because my wife is a manager there, either -- most people who know me in a passing fashion had no clue my wife was actually my wife until I told them or until they eventually found out on their own (though both of us having the same last name should have given at least something away). I do take pride in what I do and at times I do genuinely feel like I am helping people. Many fellow employees look upon me as a mentor and/or a father figure of sorts, and I'm okay with that, because when I say something akin to "I got dis" I'm not lying. I have taught many new employees how to do their jobs and how to do them well -- I've actually been training two new ones for the past three weeks or so. I have been in the running for and have interviewed for management positions for at least three different segments/teams within the past several months. But, suffice it to say, I know how the game is played. Keep in mind that the wife worked there for over a year before I did, and it's not like I got special treatment from her once I started -- no, but she did teach me a good chunk of what I know. In turn, I dove in and taught her many things as well...once I learned the nuts and bolts of things, of course. 

Right now, it's shortly before midnight. The storm has started, half-assedly, with light cold rain. Still, nobody can settle on a good range of snow totals. Accuweather has basically thrown up its hands and said "well, could be between 2 and 14 inches." Thanks.

As an aside, I should've gone for a meteorology degree. They had them where I went to grad school. I had several meteorology students in the classes I taught.

Anyway.

Despite my lack of time, creativity, or drive, everything is going somewhat well. I don't have a lot of worries most of the time -- at least none that aren't self-imposed, and for any of you who know me well, you'll realize that's a big deal. I have always been a worrier, mentally hand-wringing over basically anything that's out of my own control. I think in the last six months or so, I've been able to relax quite a bit. I couldn't really tell you why or how, honestly. And I still have the occasional nightmare that will wake me up in a cold sweat, and that nightmare more often than not is over something stupid. Sometimes it's about the cats. Sometimes it's me reliving some shitty part of junior high or high school. Sometimes it's about work. Etc.

For the most part I let things go pretty easily now. I think part of that is maturing and getting older; 33 is, in my mind, officially one's "mid-thirties." Part of it is that I'm so tired and have so many things on my proverbial plate at any given time that anything that's not crisis-worthy I wave off and go "meh" to. Mind you, not all things, but a lot of things that I used to flip out about or get so anxious that I couldn't eat or sleep has now been given the "meh" treatment. Probably some things I shouldn't go "meh" to as well, but I can't force myself to care about everything, folks. It's not that I've gone all zen or anything, but I've learned to let a lot of things (and, sometimes, people) go. Why waste the time or energy? Sit back, have a cup of coffee, take a few long pulls off the high-power vape mod, and give it the finger.

So that's about all I have to say right now, really. Time moves on, as time does, and so do I. I'll keep you updated with the important stuff, of course -- but right now I'm just riding things out to see how they go.

Answers for Questions

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.

New Things

Hi, folks.

I haven't written here in a long time, but that's okay -- I've been waiting for something good, something new to happen that I could share with all of you. Well, several of those things have happened, and since I'm a total procrastinator (and also very busy during any given week) I've been putting off writing about them here.

Oh, believe me, I've thought about it multiple times: hm, I should really document that in the blog, or ooh, this will be fun to write about, but I kept putting it off as there was always something more important or something more pressing to do.

Now, here I sit with an hour or so to kill before I have to go to work, freshly showered and shaved with clean clothing on and a cat at my feet, and I began thinking to myself well, now's as good a time as any. So let's begin.

This past week, I celebrated my first anniversary with my wife, who I have always referred to in this blog as Daisy, and Daisy has changed my life in many ways during the almost three years we've now been together (with, of course, more than a year of being married under our belts now), but I've seen the most changes -- most of them upgrades, actually -- in that past year. No marriage is perfect, of course -- everyone fights and bickers at times, everyone has little things about their partner that drives them up the wall (I'm sure Daisy has a long and detailed list of those things for me), but the good far, far outweighs the bumpy spots by about a 95% / 5% ratio, and there's not many ways I could be happier in my marriage. I'm also pretty sure I speak for both of us when I say this, as well.

We celebrated our wedding anniversary in a rather low-key fashion -- we went out to eat at Uncle Maddio's, and then played games at the Dave & Buster's next door for a few hours. Daisy got a stuffed monkey, and I got two new nerdy coffee mugs and a t-shirt from all of our ticket winnings. Then we came home and went to bed.

This is the smallest, however, of things that have been going on as of late.

Daisy has, throughout the course of our relationship, done everything she can to keep me healthy. That's not just the vegan foods, of course, but in general. Over the course of the past three months or so, I have been to three different types of doctors/specialists for various things, when previously I hadn't been to the doctor for anything since before she and I were a couple.

I'm not a fan of doctors or medical environments, generally speaking -- I don't like being around sick people, I don't like leaving the house and taking some of my downtime to go off and do something I don't see as absolutely essential, and until I got my current job, I had terrible health insurance (or none at all), so visiting any sort of doctors for any ailment would have cleaned out my bank account.

Anyway, in the past three months I have been to the doctor's office once (when I had a nasty case of Influenza-B in March), the dentist twice, and the eye doctor twice -- and I am much better for all of those visits, even if they were/are still expensive even with our insurance.

I got my teeth cleaned at the dentist for the first time since the late '90s. Two weeks later I had two small fillings done, and was told that aside from my broken wisdom teeth (which aren't causing me any pain), my mouth is healthy and in good shape -- especially for someone who hasn't gone to the dentist in close to twenty years. I will have to go back in and get the wisdom teeth taken care of this fall at some point, once I have more PTO at work -- the aforementioned flu wiped me out of about 80% of it.

Two weeks or so after the fillings were done, I was eating a piece of pizza at work and one of those aforementioned wisdom teeth fell out of my goddamned head. It came out in two or three pieces, the largest of which I still keep in my desk at work (as it's interesting to look at). The root of the tooth is still in there, below my gumline, and there was no pain involved -- still no pain involved even now. As the dentist said there was no need for concern unless it abscessed or started causing me pain, and that getting said teeth taken out would be on my own time, as with the way they're situated in my mouth and how they came in (i.e., straight, not causing any other issues) is good, I'll get around to it.

I have still not been billed for my dentist visits, however, even though I got my insurance statement for it. I will have to call the office on Monday to see if they just didn't send me one, or if it got lost in the mail, or what. I meant to do that yesterday, but, y'know, always busy with something.

[Edit: I just sent them an email this afternoon, and will call Monday if I hear nothing back from them by then. Their office is closed now.]

[Further edit: No bill, everything's paid off -- they got back to me quickly.]

After the dentist visits, our next task was to schedule eye appointments.

If you know me, you may already know that my eyes have been bad for years, and have been slowly getting worse. I've worn reading glasses off and on since I was in college, and last summer when I registered the Monte Carlo in Nebraska and switched my Kansas license to a Nebraska license, I barely passed the eye exam in the DMV office -- I was told that I should get to an eye doctor soon.

So, in classic Brandon fashion, I waited a year until my wife dragged me there.

To be fair, I'm not the only one with eye issues -- Daisy's eyesight was getting progressively worse as well, worse to the point where she couldn't read the episode descriptions for series on Netflix when she was sitting 3-5 feet closer to the TV than I was. Daisy has never had eye issues until the past year or two, and as she told me, it was getting to the point where she really couldn't see much of anything clearly. As she drives a lot more than I do (since, y'know, destroyed and junked Monte Carlo and all that), we made it a priority to go get eye appointments/exams together on the day after Memorial Day, as both of us had the day off work.

Both of us needed glasses. Daisy needed them badly. While I can see just fine without mine, reading things across the room and whatnot, Daisy's eyesight was bad enough to the point where I can't imagine what she was actually seeing (or not seeing, as the case may be). The eye doctor told me I'm farsighted with slight astigmatism, and told Daisy that she's nearsighted and that her astigmatism is worse. So, with our new prescriptions for glasses in hand, we picked out frames. The result? Well, here's mine (I'm not sure if she'd want me to post a picture of her in hers, so I'm just showing mine):

Not bad, right?

I opted for light, rounded metal frames instead of the big, bulky plastic ones I had before for my reading glasses, mainly because I wanted something comfortable that wouldn't easily break and wouldn't fuck up my peripheral vision or give me headaches (as the plastic frames sometimes did). These glasses are comfortable, and I wear them about 80% of the time now -- especially at work. I don't need them all the time (I rarely wear them when I'm just here at home bumming around the house), but there is a night-and-day difference in clarity when I'm wearing them versus when I'm not. Daisy, on the other hand, does need hers all the time and she does wear them all the time, since she can actually see now when she has hers on.

So there's that.

However, I've saved the most significant -- well, to me, anyway -- news until last.

About two months ago (give or take), we were informed that our brother-in-law (not the one who performed the ceremony at our wedding, but the other one) had gotten into seminary school. This is his life's calling, and therefore it's important to him and the family, so more power to him, we're happy for him. However, with this came the not-so-great news -- for the family, anyway -- that said seminary school is in Vancouver.

No, not some little town named Vancouver out here in the midwest somewhere, the actual Vancouver. The one in British Columbia. As in, way west and into the great white north of Canada.

O, Canadaaaaa....my home and native laaaaand.....

Ahem.

I know I've written about Daisy's sister's family here a long time ago, and touched on them briefly at best then. Of the three daughters in the family, this one was the middle daughter -- Daisy is the youngest. She also married first, married young, and became deeply religious after marriage. I don't know if she was deeply religious before marriage or not, as I didn't know her then, but suffice to say, she (as well as the rest of the family) is now. She had four children over the span of nine years, all of whom are wonderful little kids -- if a bit rowdy -- and she homeschools them, while her husband (the aforementioned seminary schooler) works in an IT job, I think for hospitals or something. Actually, it's never occurred to me to ask him exactly where he works. It won't matter soon enough anyway, as he'll be the proverbial preacher man.

Because this is a rather sudden development, and because they have four kids, own their house, and own (up until recently) four vehicles, one of which is a huge Suburban, they've had to make some tough decisions on what needs to be kept and gotten rid of, but basically it boils down to "whatever doesn't fit in the truck and the trailer either needs to be put into storage, sold, or otherwise gotten rid of."

This includes the house, of course -- a huge, spacious house with a massive garage and downstairs apartment in a nice neighborhood out in the country about two hours north of here. Believe me, if I wanted to drive back and forth four hours every day for work, I would've already made an offer on it.

So, a few weeks ago, I got a call from my brother-in-law. Actually, all of us did -- me, Daisy, and even Rae -- trying to reach me. I was at work at the time (and he'd had Rae's number from the organization of my bachelor party before the wedding), so I didn't know what was going on. He messaged me on Facebook the next day asking me to call him, so I did.

One of the four vehicles they have/had is a 2002 Chevy Silverado. It's white, banged up, with a lot of miles on it -- it used to be a city works truck before my brother-in-law's father purchased it as a daily driver. Since then, my brother-in-law has been using it as his own daily driver, using it to get him to/from work every day. With the Suburban, they can't take it with them. They wanted to know if I wanted it.

"Yeah, of course I do," I said, jumping at the opportunity. "What sort of work does it need done to it?"

"Not a lot," my brother-in-law said. "It had some engine valve gunk in it a while back, but I think we got that mostly cleared up. Still runs a little rough, though. It has some dents, some rust, the driver-side mirror is broken and bent in -- but it runs and drives, doesn't leak or burn oil, and it's a good little truck. Doesn't have many bells and whistles on it since it was a city truck, but the radio does get AM and FM. I'll get it worked on and tuned up for the little stuff before I turn it over to you."

Truth be told, a truck that's thirteen years old is going to have a lot of little cosmetic things like that wrong with it anyway. Am I concerned about dents, rust, and a broken mirror? Hell no. My Monte Carlo had rust and dents, as well as a host of other things wrong with it. Does the truck start up and run? And it'll get me back and forth to/from work every day somewhat reliably? Sold. No questions, just sold.

"How much do you want for it?" I asked.

"Eh, it's between family," he said. "I'm not going to charge you anything for it. It's not reliable enough for that."

He drives this truck to/from work every day, I thought. That's all I'll be using it for, too.

"I'll at least give you a few hundred bucks for it, if nothing else," I said.

"If you were to pay us for it and then have some major part blow on it in a month or two, I'd feel really guilty. Don't worry about it. Again, it's between family."

"Fair enough," I said, stunned. "I get that."

I really couldn't come up with any other real response. It's not every day I'm offered a free truck.

"Good," he replied. "I'd rather someone get some use out of it, or get something out of it for as long as they can instead of selling it, and I know what happened to your car, so I thought I'd check with you."

"Well I'm glad you did," I said. "I'm very grateful. Thank you."

This entire exchange was at least a month ago now, probably longer. I talked to Daisy about it that night as well:

"I don't feel right not giving him anything for the truck," I said. "I mean, I absolutely understand his logic here, but he's going to take it in for servicing before he turns it over to me. I'm going to at least offer to pay for that, since that'll be a few hundred bucks, more than likely.

"That's fair," Daisy said.

It's a full half-ton Silverado; it's not like it's a little truck like an S-10 or Ranger. Servicing said truck probably won't be cheap. On the plus side, there are a million of those trucks on the roads, some of them much older than this one -- so if anything does blow up on it, parts should be readily available.

The next week, I not only got to see it, but I got to drive it:

(license plate covered for privacy's sake, duh.)

Our brother-in-law made it sound like it was falling apart, and/or wasn't reliable. It's actually in really good shape for a work truck that was a city work truck before it fell into private ownership. You can, however, see the broken driver-side mirror and the dented front quarterpanel right below that. That does look worse in person, but as Daisy replaced the mirror on her Sonata all by herself a few years ago, it shouldn't be that difficult to replace one on a truck.

We'd gone up to their house on Memorial Day weekend in order to help them clean up and pack, help them put stuff in storage, and repaint/tear up the carpet in their master bedroom. During the day of work, myself and the brother-in-law took the truck over to the storage area where they were putting some of their larger stuff that wasn't coming with them. The storage area was maybe three miles away, so it was the perfect opportunity for me to test-drive the truck.

There's just one thing: I'd never driven a truck before.

Cars, yes. Speedy cars, yes. Vans, yes. Never a truck.

Well, no, let me correct myself on that -- the only time I've ever driven a truck, I crashed it into my house in Newton. Backwards.

Yeah.

So, needless to say, I was fairly nervous....

And it drove like a car. No, seriously, a car. The shifter is on the column, which I'll have to get used to, but it handles really easily and mostly smoothly, and it seems just fine (at least when I drove it that day, anyway).

Now for the troubling things I noticed...

The "service engine soon" light was occasionally flashing even in the three miles to the storage unit and the three back. That means there's a misfire, usually caused by at least one bad spark plug or wire. As long as the engine in that truck isn't dumbassedly backward as the one in my Monte Carlo was, that's more than likely a pretty easy/inexpensive fix.

I noticed the battery light was on too -- I don't know if it power-cycles through all of the lights when it fires up or if there's a genuine battery problem, but even if there is one, that's maybe $150 at the most to fix.

The brakes are a little loose -- loose as in, they're not touchy and you have to put the pedal down pretty hard. I don't know if that's a truck thing or if I was just spoiled by the Monte Carlo and Daisy's Sonata. Or if the brakes/pads will need replaced soon. Take your pick, right?

Acceleration from a slow speed to a fast speed, quickly, is really slow and jumpy -- I noticed this when I was trying to make it through the yellow light before it turned red, so I put the hammer down...and there was at least a one-second delay before it recognized it and revved up. That could be attributed to the spark plug problem as well, or the gunked engine valves (also something I can clean out fairly easily).

Aside from that? It's all good. Shit, that's nothing. Free truck. I put up with a lot more from the Monte Carlo over all the years I drove her.

"It's definitely an upgrade," I told the brother-in-law. "Keep in mind I am coming from a car whose radio didn't work, I couldn't lock the doors, I had to push and pull the windows up and down, only had a 25% or so chance of firing up on the first try, no air conditioning, a heater that wouldn't get warm until I drove 20 or so miles, bad defroster, transmission slips, no anti-lock brakes, tires that couldn't keep air, and burned oil and coolant as quickly as if I were pouring said fluids directly into a fire."

The last part is a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.

"I thought you said you never wanted a white vehicle," Daisy said coolly.

"[Daisy]," I said, "Free. FREE. It could be hot pink and I'd drive it if it were still free."

And this is true. I can be sure nobody would steal it or break into it to steal it, that's for damn sure.

All of this being said, I do not have the truck yet. I won't get it for at least another three weeks or so, as that's around the time they're leaving for the great white north. We'll get to see them and spend some time with them first, obviously, but the clock is ticking.

So, that's about all for now. I've been working on this post off and on for many days, so I'm putting it up. I do, however, have more to share, so I'll get on that soon as well...

65 Questions

In lieu of anything else, as I don't really have much time anymore, here's a survey thing. I did it once before, but all (okay, most) of my answers are different now.

Here are the 65 Questions You've Probably Never Been Asked...




1. First thing you wash in the shower?
Uh, usually my chest, I guess?

2. What color is your favorite hoodie?
It's a toss-up; I have a gray Shockers hoodie I really like, but I also have my red Huskers hoodie too. Eh, either one.

3. Would you kiss the last person you kissed again?
As that person is my wife, yes.

4. Do you plan outfits?
Almost religiously.

5. How are you feeling right now?
Full of coffee and dread for another Friday at work.

6. What’s the closest thing to you that's red?
My Adventure Time t-shirt, which is sitting next to me as it's part of my outfit I've planned for tomorrow (again, see question #4).

7. Tell me about the last dream you remember having?
I dreamed I was driving my Monte Carlo. I dream about this a lot. I miss it.

8. Did you meet anybody new today?
Nope; I haven't left the house yet. Unless you count drinking coffee and smoking outside on the porch.

9. What are you craving right now?
A dead-quiet Friday at work, as we're shortstaffed.

10. Do you floss?
When I need to, yes.

11. What comes to mind when I say cabbage?
Vile weed.

12. Are you emotional?
When the situation calls for it, sure.

13. Have you ever counted to 1,000?
I've done this multiple times on the nights I had insomnia.

14. Do you bite into your ice cream or just lick it?
As I generally eat it out of a tub or carton, it's more of a spooning-into-my-face-hole thing.

15. Do you like your hair?
Yes, and I condition and care for it meticulously.

16. Do you like yourself?
No; I am a thoroughly terrible person.

17. Would you go out to eat with George W. Bush?
The man's interesting, I'll give him that. History has been a little kinder to him since he was president.

18. What are you listening to right now?
The hum of my computer and my fingers typing these keystrokes?

19. Are your parents strict?
My mother is, yes; however, I haven't had to worry about parents being strict in nine years now, so....

20. Would you go sky diving?
I absolutely plan to one day.

21. Do you like cottage cheese?
It's one of my favorite foods of all time.

22. Have you ever met a celebrity?
I've met certain people who are famous in certain circles, and have talked to a few famous people over the phone from time to time. I've also messaged back and forth with a few big-name celebrities on Twitter, so if that counts, then yes.

3. Do you rent movies often?
I haven't rented a movie in at least six or seven years. The concept of Netflix and the whole, y'know, actually being able to afford to go see a movie in the theater helps with that.

24. Is there anything sparkly in the room you're in?
Well, my wife's wedding dress is still in here -- across the room from me on her own desk -- but other than that? Nope.

25. How many countries have you visited?
Including this one? One.

26. Have you made a prank phone call?
Many times as a child. Am I proud of this? A little.

27. Ever been on a train?
Many times.

28. Brown or white eggs?
I don't really eat eggs by themselves.

29.Do you have a cell-phone?
Yes, I do.

30. Do you use chap stick?
Only when necessary.

31. Do you own a gun?
Yes.

32. Can you use chopsticks?
Yes. In a sense, anyway.

33. Who are you going to be with tonight?
A bunch of coworkers, in the office, until 11PM.

34. Are you too forgiving?
Not anymore.

35. Ever been in love?
Yes.

36. What is your friend(s) doing tomorrow?
Living their lives, much as I live my own? I haven't a clue.

37. Ever have cream puffs?
Yes.

38. Last time you cried?
It's been months. Probably during a movie. Yes, I know. Shut up.

39. What was the last question you asked?
"Why won't the kid upstairs stop. fucking. screaming?" Seriously, that baby doesn't just "cry," no. It screams like they're beating the kid to death.

40. Favorite time of the year?
Any time where it's about 70, overcast, with a light breeze.

42. Are you sarcastic?
It's one of my best attributes.

43. Have you ever seen The Butterfly Effect?
I own the Blu-ray.

44. Ever walked into a mall?
No. Walked through one while shopping? Yes.

45. Favorite color?
Black.

46. Have you ever slapped someone?
Yes. There are many, many people who need a good hard slap in the face or upside the head. If I were running for president, this would be my platform.

47. Is your hair curly?
I prefer to describe it as "sexually wavy."

48. What was the last CD you bought?
I bought the Breakfast Club soundtrack at Walgreens about a year ago for $3 or so. That counts, right?

49. Do looks matter?
Not as much as you'd think, but yes.

50. Could you ever forgive a cheater?
No. And I never have.

51. Is your phone bill sky high?
For unlimited talk/text/data on my iPhone, through Sprint, it's pretty reasonable.

52. Do you like your life right now?
Not really. I love being married and I love the relationship I have with my wife and her/our family. Everything else can go suck it.

53. Do you sleep with the TV on?
Not anymore, as I no longer have a TV in the bedroom.

54. Can you handle the truth?
Yes.

55. Do you have good vision?
I used to, but not really anymore. I can tell how much my vision has deteriorated just over the past two or three years.

56. Do you hate or dislike more than 3 people?
Oh hell yes. There's probably a twenty (or thirty, being realistic) person list.

57. How often do you talk on the phone?
Every day at work. In my personal life, on my own phone? Mostly only when I have to.

58. The last person you held hands with?
My wife, yesterday, and this is not an unusual occurrence.

59. What are you wearing?
A black and white plaid shirt, blue socks, blue boxers, black jeans, and black dress shoes. Work clothes.

60.What is your favorite animal?
Ron Swanson is my spirit animal. Does that count?

61. Where was your default picture taken?
Default picture? Like, profile picture? I have a different one for every social networking site I use, and they've all been taken at different times/places. The one I use here on Blogger was taken in my old house in Kansas, circa 2011, and edited with my photo editor.

62. Can you hula hoop?
Wouldn't know; I've never tried.

63. Do you have a job?
Yes, I do. And I wish I didn't need it as much as I do.

64. What was the most recent thing you bought?
Last night I gave my coworker a $20 so he could pick me up some Burger King when he walked down there (it's literally next door) to get lunch.

65. Have you ever crawled through a window?
Not in recent memory, but I'm sure I have.


Okay. More updates coming eventually. Maybe. I am really busy and almost never turn on my computer anymore unless absolutely necessary.

Before and After

We got our first big snowstorm this past weekend in Omaha, Winter Storm Linus. I could talk about it, or I could just show you the pictures:

January 31st, around noon-ish:

This is just as the snow was beginning to fall. I call this the "before" picture.


Now, check out February 1, the next morning:

Yeah.

Yeah. That happened.

By the time it was all said and done on Sunday night (shortly before dark), we had pretty close to a foot on the ground. The temperature was low single digits with a 25mph or so wind, as well, so we also got drifting -- significant drifting in a lot of places, actually. I watched no fewer than three people get stuck on the road in front of our place, and very nearly watched a guy in a truck take out a snowbank at the end of our driveway. Of course, it was Super Bowl Sunday, so people were hell-bent on getting their beer and wings. At least, that was my assumption.

As an aside, I didn't watch more than about twenty seconds of the game. No, literally, I watched about twenty seconds of the game. Because of the snow and the poor antenna reception I get for that particular channel, I'd get a few seconds of the game and then the TV would tell me "No Signal" for five minutes. Repeat. After about twenty minutes of this, I just turned off the TV.

Now, two days later, most of the snow remains, yes, but the roads are clear-ish. They're just wet with a little slush on them in places. This is due, in part, to repeated plowings/scrapings/treatings by the Omaha road crews, but it's also because today the sun actually came out for a bit, and it's no longer in the single digits (it's in the mid-20s now). Snow is melting off the roof and falling in big piles on the ground every few minutes, so even when the temperature is actually below freezing by a bit, it's still melting off somewhat.

However, tonight (late night) we're expected to get another 1-3 inches, and tomorrow during the day we're expected to get the same, which is going to snarl everything again. It also won't help that the low temperature tomorrow night is supposed to reach -10. That's ten degrees below zero, and forty-two degrees below the freezing point. I'm not looking forward to it, especially since both Daisy and I have to work the rest of the week -- me starting today (in about an hour), her tomorrow.

Yeah. So I'll keep you posted on what happens, I suppose...

Onward

Life goes on, as life does.

The past few weeks in general have been quiet and (mostly) uneventful. Work has been steady; we'll have our busy days as well as our really quiet ones, and some in-between. The good news for the past week or so is that it's been really unseasonably warm in Omaha -- yesterday the temperature reached 58, and right now it's 50.

The bad news? Well, I'm not sure it can really be classified as bad, but more of the unknown at this point -- our company is being sold to another company, who bought out our contract with our real employer (and not just the building who we work as contractors for -- yeah, it's complicated).

What does this mean for us and our jobs? Well, at the moment, not a whole lot that we can tell. Seniority and pay will roll over into the new company. Our hours will remain the same, our schedules and reporting managers/directors will remain the same, and the job itself that we do every day will remain exactly the same as it is now. As for paid time off and insurance plans/benefits? Yeah, we don't know that yet, but as the company who paid for us won't want to lose a large number of its new employees out of the gate, I'm guessing that it'll remain the same or better. So, really, when the entire process is completed by the end of March, it looks like the only noticeable change we may have to endure is getting new keycards/name badges with our new company name on them.

Personally, I'm in the camp of folks who aren't really worried at all about this transition. I'm also in the camp of folks who would like to see the current dress code disappear (as it's not like we physically see any of the customers we work with, ever). I hate having to actually dress professionally every day for no good reason, and want to be able to wear my normal wardrobe to work. I'd also like to get more holidays off per year -- for example, I want everyone to have Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, Black Friday, MLK Day, President's Day, Columbus Day, etc, off. Currently, those are all days we work. We've already been told that since our benefits package is basically the federally-mandated minimum, those can't get any worse (yeah, I know, right?), but past that there's not a whole lot of further information coming down the pipe.

There are, of course, people who are nervous and are using this interim time to either jump ship or move to a different part of the company. One of our second shift coworkers worked his last day with us yesterday, and another put in his two-week notice as he's accepted another position someplace else. A third will more than likely be switching shifts, a fourth and fifth will be leaving soon as well, and a sixth already switched to another shift. My six months at the job is a month from tomorrow, and it's only after that point when I can apply for, and move around freely within, the company itself -- getting promotions, applying for different positions, etc. Most people there, the ones who care about the job and don't mind the work (even on the stressful days) stay the course, and they are the backbone of our office. Daisy's shift on overnights tends to keep people longer than second shift does, as well, so they're an even stronger backbone and deserve more credit than they get for what they do.

Anyway, so there's that. I will, of course, keep you updated as much as I can on anything that happens within the job, but again, we're really not that concerned. Well, I'm not, anyway.

In other news, no, I do not have a new car yet. I more than likely won't for a while. Daisy and I are saving our money for the time being, and we're attempting to pay down our credit cards as much as possible over the next few months. On the plus side I will be able to pay off one of my cards (my Citi Card) completely by this time next month, and the others are following suit slowly but surely. Daisy is doing the same as much as she can afford to as well, and we're keeping a close eye on our finances since we're obviously trying not to put anything more on those cards than necessary when we're trying to pay them off. Meanwhile, I haven't even cashed the check yet for the Monte Carlo, and won't be able to this weekend when I'm off as banks are closed on Monday for the Martin Luther King holiday. I'm also hoping that as a lot of places are closed on Monday, today at work will be quiet.

But no, no car for me yet. I don't exactly know what I want anyway, and to get something reliable that's relatively new-ish, it will be way out of our price range for a while. Daisy's car is reliable, but even with it being six years old, it would still be about $8k or so used. I don't want to pay even half that for a car. I'd like to pay about a quarter of that, max, for something that will run and has locking doors, a working radio, and heat. That's really all that matters. And an automatic transmission, of course, as I'm not driving stick in this town. Anything we'll be able to afford for me will be at least ten years old unless I get some crazy deal from someone.

On that note, I do have to go wake the wife now, as I start work soon. Cheers, folks.

The Death of the Monte Carlo

The Monte Carlo is no more.

Well, I'm sure it exists. Somewhere, at least. Pieces of her, anyway. Sitting in a lot somewhere as pieces are pulled off, re-sold, re-distributed until there's not much left but a shell.

It is a sad, depressing ending for such a beautiful, powerful vehicle, isn't it?

These are the last photos I have of her, taken on December 31 when the U Pull It truck came to haul her away, writing me a check on the spot for $300. It was more than I was expecting them to offer and more than the scrap metal value of the car (we checked), even though aside from the ignition, that car was far from scrap.

Some of you may be confused, especially any new readers I may have here -- this was my car. My first real car -- paid off, name on the title, insured, and well taken-care-of as much as I reasonably could afford. I bought this car in 2011 for the last $500 of my 2010 tax return when I posted an ad on Craigslist in Newton, Kansas, asking if anyone had a car that would work as a daily driver on trips between Newton and Wichita, had to be an automatic transmission (while I can drive stick, I have not done so in over fifteen years) in decent mechanical shape, and I had $500 to offer. I was contacted by the wife of a family there in town a few miles from my house, who said she had a Monte Carlo that had been in storage for over two years, but her husband had taken it out, fixed it up, and had driven it back from Kansas City (so she knew it was in decent shape).

I made an appointment and went over that afternoon, taking the car for a test drive. I really liked it. My ex, who I was with at the time, told me I probably wasn't going to get a better deal for $500 on something that would actually run and be worth owning, so I bought the car then and there, drove it the two or three miles to get it home, and put plates/insurance on it over the course of the next few days, and customized it to make it my own in the weeks afterwards -- I put two Decepticon stickers on it (one large one on the hood, and a second smaller one on the back glass) as well as an Imperial logo on the opposite side of the back glass, scraping off the obnoxious "Cowgirl Up" sticker that was there when I bought the car.

Mind you, the car wasn't flawless. It'd had at least two previous owners, if not more -- I know this because I purchased it from one of them, and there was a worn-out "Payless Auto Sales, Emporia KS" decal on the trunk, so it was well-used. When I bought it, it had 217,000 miles on it. It had two bad spark plugs and one bad plug wire. The "Service Engine Soon" and "Low Coolant" lights rarely, if ever, went off. The anti-lock brake controller was burned out, so the car itself had normal brakes (something which I absolutely loved, compared to the anti-lock brakes in Daisy's car). It liked to burn off, and occasionally leak, oil -- sometimes to the tune of a quart every three weeks or so. In the hot Kansas summers, the thermostat in the car would get stuck, and it would leak coolant out of the overflow valve onto the pavement (or, just like the oil, slowly burn it off). The radio didn't work for 90% of the time I had the car. The power windows did work (at least the motors for them did), but both windows were off-track. The power locks, while they worked flawlessly, could never be used as I didn't have a door key for the car -- just a key for the ignition. The inside driver-side door handle was broken and would not open the door. The air conditioner, though it did blow cool air, needed a freon recharge when I bought the car, and stopped blowing cool air completely after the first month or two I owned and drove the car. These were just a handful of the small problems the car had, and as you can see, most of them are cosmetic or did not affect the car's daily-driver status, which I put it into almost immediately after purchase.

The following April, the serpentine belt and belt tensioner blew out on me while driving home from work on the interstate at 10:30 PM. That was about $350 to fix, and when it blew out my back tires were dangerously dryrotted as well, so I had those replaced also. That fall, during the middle of the semester, the remaining spark plugs (all but one) blew out, dropping my gas mileage to about eight miles per gallon and slowing the car's acceleration to a crawl -- yet it still ran. I had to drive it like that for a few days before I could get it fixed, as I couldn't just up and not drive back and forth to/from school -- my schedule was hectic. That was another $1100 fix (thank you, student loan money), but the mechanics were able to get the radio working again (for a while; it stopped working again shortly before I moved up here) as well. After that, the car never needed any further service until about two months ago when I replaced the other tires and got another oil change. I made 50-mile-plus round trips in it three to four days a week to teach and attend my classes when I was in grad school, and continued that trend afterwards when I continued to teach for another year. Even in the hottest weather or most bitter cold, the car fired up every time, shifted smoothly, accelerated and decelerated wonderfully, and gave me about 20-22 miles per gallon. Yes, she was occasionally old and whiny. Yes, she did occasionally stall out on me when I pulled into a parking space or if it was muggy/humid and I was in stop-and-go traffic, but even with all of her flaws otherwise, she was a very good car.

I drove the car up here to Omaha from Newton the day after my teaching job had ended in May, in order to move it up here without having to worry about towing it behind a U-Haul. I was quite worried that it would blow a major part on the trip, that driving the car for over five hours straight with the only stops being for gas would finally kill it. It did not; the car gave me a record 23-25 miles per gallon (based on my rough estimates then) and purred like a kitten the entire time, driving as if it were new. It didn't even get close to hot/overheating until I was within a few miles of the parents' house in stop-and-go stoplight rush hour traffic, when it started to warm up a little. Air-cooled, naturally-aspirated engine; can't do much about that when there's no air rushing through it.

I registered the car in Nebraska shortly after the wedding, in June. The Kansas license plate I had on it since 2011 was removed, washed off very well, and hung on the wall in our living room as a reminded of not only the independence that car had given me, but as a symbol of knowing my roots, and knowing all of the places that plate had gone while attached to the back of the car.

Shortly thereafter, during my two weeks of training for my current job, someone broke into the car in our apartment parking lot and stole my old, near-useless GPS out of it. They tried to rip out my (by then) non-working stereo as well, though they weren't able to get it out. I was pissed off as the car is about ten yards from the front door of our building in a relatively well-lit parking lot. No further damage was done, of course, and because of that I didn't really care as much as most people might.

Then, of course, the week before Thanksgiving, the car got broken into in our parking lot at work. In doing so, the thieves not only successfully stole the non-working radio, but tore up the rest of the inside of the car, including bashing open my glove box, destroying the interior lights/controls/rearview mirror, and (the most egregious of all) tearing out my ignition in an attempt to steal the vehicle. Once the wire was cut on the ignition switch, the car wasn't going anywhere as that -- and its key -- is the anti-theft system. As I mentioned when it happened, the first part that they cut off was the key-reader system, as the key has a chip in it. See below:

Without the car's ability to read that security chip, it will not start no matter what. 

That key is also the only actual piece of the car I have left. It now hangs on the wall in the living room under the car's Kansas license plate as a shrine to my lost baby.

Anyway.

With the car rendered undriveable, the next day I had it towed back to our apartment complex, duct-taped the glove box shut so that the light inside wouldn't stay on and drain the battery, and there it sat. For over a month. In that time we got a quote from the best steering column mechanic in town (as the damage was so extensive the entire column and wheel would have to be replaced to render the car driveable again), and the quote was between $300 and $500. The steering column, ignition, and wheel were easy enough to fix and parts were readily available for them, but the problem was that because of that car's security key (again, see above), if we couldn't find a steering column and ignition switch with its own key as well, the car would have to be completely re-keyed -- adding another $150 or so to the repair total.

Even though this car was wonderful, and I viewed it as an extension of myself or like my child, I just couldn't do it. We had the money; we have a savings account for emergencies or unforeseen expenses, but it just wasn't worth it. I paid $500 for the car to begin with, and in the years I owned her, taking care of her cost me another two grand or so just to keep her running and safely on the road. And there was no guarantee that if I paid that much and fixed the car up, the same sort of break in wouldn't happen again or that another major, expensive part (like the transmission, fuel pump, etc) wouldn't blow out the next day, week, or month. I made the very emotional decision to let it go and to sell it for, basically, whatever I could get out of it. I put in for quotes from U Pull It twice, and even paid a month's worth of insurance on it when it was sitting in the parking lot undriveable, but it was Daisy who finally arranged the car's pick up from them on the 30th, while I was at work. On the afternoon of the 31st, in the bitter cold, they came to take away my baby, winching her up onto the flatbed truck you see in the pictures at the top of the page, and hauling her away.

I couldn't watch as they took the car out of the parking lot -- it was bad enough watching the guy pull her up onto the truck, forcefully. He asked me if I had the keys to the car, and I replied I did, but it wouldn't do him any good. I wanted to keep the key anyhow, because (again) it's the only piece of the car I have left. It's like cutting a lock of hair off your dead child to keep forever. At least, it is in my mind.

A few days ago I called Geico to cancel the insurance on the car, since (obviously) I'm not going to keep it ongoing. It was done over the phone in about five minutes, and I was informed that within fourteen days, I'd get a refund check for the amount of insurance I'd paid on but had not used (since I'd re-upped it last month). Said refund is something like $28; I don't remember the exact amount.

The Nebraska plates stayed on the car and went with her; they're useless now anyway, and as I may not have another car before June anyhow (when I'd renew them), it's not like I'd bother to transfer them or to try to get a refund on my registration. It's not worth it. I've also not yet deposited the $300 check from U Pull It that they gave me for the car. It'll go directly into our savings account anyway, because I would somehow, for some reason, be really angry with myself if I put it into our normal bank account and the money for my car went to paying bills or getting groceries.

So, what are our next steps here? Well...

The plan is to pay down all of our credit card bills over the next few months, enough to where we would qualify for a (hopefully small) low interest auto loan, and then to get me a car that's newer and more reliable, safer and possibly big enough to use for child transport (as we will, eventually, have children). That narrows down my selections quite a bit, but I've made it a point to tell Daisy that even though I will take every suggestion and recommendation into consideration, ultimately I and I alone will be the one who selects my next vehicle -- whatever it ends up being. From a security and reliability standpoint, basically anything newer with doors that lock, windows that work, and a good heater is a step up from the Monte Carlo. From a stylistic standpoint, it will be a tough car to beat -- and Daisy knows that as well. That car was basically a vehicular version of me: heavy, old, somewhat dirty and broken in places, covered in nerdy designs, but a workhorse with a heart of gold and a fast engine, always ready for the next challenge. It's going to be very difficult for me to find another vehicle with that much... soul.

So that's where we stand now. I've been working on this post for a few days now, trying to get it right, trying to fill in all of the gaps and make it a fitting tribute. We can resume our normal blogs now, as we did before. And I will be sure to keep everyone updated on my car hunt.

The Christmas and New Year Aftermath

I realize it's been well over a week since I last wrote here, but that's mostly because the past week and a half or so has been fucking nuts, and when you have a job that doesn't actually give you any time off but the days of the actual holidays (Christmas Day and New Year's Day), not only do you have very little time to do anything but work, but your work/sleep cycles and patterns get majorly fucked up as well.

Plus, of course, it's the holidays, so there's all sorts of holiday-ish shit to do.

Ahem. Anyway. Happy New Year, folks. 2015 marks the eighth year that this blog has been in existence, as I started it in August 2007. And 2014 was a strange year for me, with lots of good and lots of bad. It was a year of change and upheaval, as well as a year of many, many stresses. I am not sad to see it go, nor am I (for once) happy to see it go, either. It was simply average for the most part, with the good balancing out the bad.

I'd originally planned to write a further recap of Christmas here in the blog, and tried to several times over the course of this past week, but I never had the time to really do so. I've barely touched my computer in the past week, to be honest with you. If I'm not at work being bored or stressed (you know, depending on the day and all) I'm at home spending time with Daisy or sleeping. There aren't enough waking hours in the day to do everything I want (or need) to do, and as a result, work around the house is piling up and I'm constantly tired.

Of course, this could've been avoided had our workplace actually given us more than the two actual holidays off, y'know, like a lot of companies who care about their workers do.

Anyway. Again.

Christmas was very nice and very quiet; Daisy woke up at 4AM and called the rest of us "lazy bums" (in a joking way, of course) for daring to wake up at 6 or 7. We had breakfast, we had presents, it was nice. Even now, as we go into January, there are still two of Daisy's gifts and one gift for Mama that have not yet arrived. I may have mentioned earlier that I received a postcard from the company I ordered said gifts from telling me that two of them had been backordered and would not be available for 4-6 more weeks. However, the third gift hasn't gotten here yet either, and there are still several more things I've ordered that are still on the way as well. We came home on Christmas night by 6PM, and since Daisy had gotten up so early, she almost immediately went to bed. I spent a few hours completely zoning out playing on my phone and/or 2DS before I joined her, as both of us had to work the next day.

Work, even though it's work, has been really quiet since around my birthday. This is (obviously) due to the holidays, and now that the holidays are over, we should expect a ramped up number of issues again -- probably close to our normal numbers and steadily increasing until we plateau at those normal numbers. Today, I'm working 1-10 instead of my normal shift of 3-12 or 2-11, because I'm gatekeeping this afternoon. This means I woke up early this morning, will be getting a shower soon, and will have to wake the wife by a little after noon so that I can get to work on time.

New Year's Eve was fine, though there's a bigger story behind the events of that day that I'm saving for my next post here. We both had to work on Wednesday night, as we usually do, though as the offices were closed all day yesterday for the 1st, we all got off at midnight. Because of this, our overnight staff worked 2nd shift hours with the rest of us, so we had fifteen people there when, normally, we have about eight to ten. We were so quiet that people who had PTO and wanted to use it were going home early just because there was really nothing to do. I had all of my work actually finished by 8:30, and sat on it for a while in the case that anything would come back to us before we all left (as if anything came back, well, they were SOL until this morning, pretty much). I had a live stream webcam of Times Square running in the background on my work computer, which allowed me to watch the ball drop live and in real time (at 11PM central time, of course). When midnight hit, the power went out in our building as someone on the hill above us quite obviously hit a transformer/power line with one of the thousands of fireworks which were being shot off at midnight. Power was out behind our building and on the other side of the street for a good stretch, but the good thing about our workplace is that it has backup generators.

After that, of course, I don't know what else happened; we came home, ate dinner, and watched Gilmore Girls before going to bed around 3.

In other news, I didn't mention earlier (though I probably should have at some point) that one of my closest friends, Rae, moved to Omaha last week. For those of you who have been reading this blog for a long time, you know that I went to grad school with Rae and the two of us are very close -- I have always regarded the woman as family, as a sister, and she was even in my wedding (in the groom's party, of course). Rae moved here because her boyfriend is here in Omaha and works for the university here, and the distance between them was too great. The plans for her move had been set in motion for many months, almost since our wedding. She solidified those plans earlier in the fall, and she finally made it out here last week -- with her dog in tow, and in a brand new car.

As an aside, at this point I can't help but be a little jealous of anyone with a new car, for obvious reasons.

So she made it to town safely and has spent the past several days unpacking/setting everything up here in Omaha, and yesterday we had lunch with her and her beau (partially to celebrate the new year, partially because we were all off work, but mostly because I missed the hell out of that woman). She seems to be settling in fine and getting used to the Omaha landscape, and it's very nice to finally have one of my own friends here in town with me. If you've never left your hometown, or you otherwise live in reasonably close vicinity of most of your friends and family, it's probably difficult for you to fully understand how hard it is to live in a town/city (or several of them over the course of the past nine years, for me) where you know -- and have no connection with -- anyone. Part of why I was a hermit for so long was choice, yes, but a larger part of it was because I knew virtually nobody in the towns in which I lived after moving here to the midwest. The only friends I've ever had in said towns were people I worked with, and after I would leave said job(s) I would very quickly fall out of contact with those people most of the time and for the most part. Rae is one of the few friends I've kept in regular contact with over the past five years or so now, and one of the closest friends I've ever had. She and Daisy love each other as well, so it's a huge comfort that she's here in town. I don't feel so alone anymore.

In other news, the cold and snow -- with the exception of yesterday and today -- has been unrelenting. It's not so much the snow as it is the cold; the high temperature earlier this week was 5. Five degrees. The low was well below zero. This pattern is supposed to repeat again this weekend as well, with the possibility of more snow tomorrow/tomorrow night. As you probably know, I hate winter and everything about winter, and desperately wish it would go away more quickly so that I can break out the t-shirts and flip-flops again. As it's only January 2, I have serious doubts of that happening anytime soon.

We return to work today, as mentioned before, and our normal work schedules of five days a week continues from now through...Memorial Day? Something like that? I don't think we have any other days off work until then, which is really goddamned depressing. We don't even get Martin Luther King Day off as far as I know, though as it's a Monday neither myself nor Daisy would have to work it anyway.

The Birthday/Christmas Rundown, Part V

Ahem. Anyway.

Work yesterday was relatively quiet. It wasn't dead quiet (we're expecting that for most of the weekend), but it was quiet enough. We had all the help we needed, and each of us had about five or six issues to work on. Compared with double that (or more) on our busy days, yesterday was nice. The building/company is still open today, though Daisy and I are off -- along with probably about half of the daytime employees and four or five of our 2nd and 3rd shifters. Again, I'll remind you that Daisy and I are off only because we took PTO for today, just like we did for my birthday. If I ran a company, I'd never have my employees work on Christmas Eve. But I don't run a company, so....

Last night I came home and ate dinner while Daisy holed herself up in our bedroom to wrap all of the presents she had to wrap -- all of mine (of which, looking under the tree, is an ungodly amount), and the parents' gifts from her/us that I didn't already wrap -- so this morning, I walked out into the living room to see this:

If you don't think that's a lot, consider the fact that we have a seven-foot Christmas tree and note the size of the ornaments on the tree for scale. I...yeah. I don't know what's in about 80% of those packages, as the ones I wrapped are stuffed so far behind them that you can only see one in the picture -- the gift bag on the far right. How we're getting all of these over to the parents' this afternoon is beyond me. It's going to take several trips up and down to even get the stuff loaded into her car -- and that doesn't even take into account the two pies she made last night for tonight's dessert.

Anyway, while she wrapped the gifts, I absolutely passed the fuck out on the chair in the living room. I awoke sometime around 3AM -- when she was still baking pies, mind you -- and shuffled to the bedroom, where I woke up this morning shortly after 8...as she was coming to bed herself. Yeah, the woman stayed up all night baking pies and wrapping presents, and that's after she spent all day yesterday cleaning the house. Completely cleaning it, as in steam-cleaning the carpet in every room and scrubbing down the bathrooms, even. I don't know where she gets the energy for any of that.

I've been told that Daisy needs to be awakened by 2:30 so that we can load everything up and get it over to the parents' before we go to the Christmas Eve church service at 4:30. We did this last year as well, though I'm not sure if I wrote about it here. It was nice, non-denominational, very laid-back and all-accepting. That's the only reason I agreed to it last year, and ended up enjoying it. I'm sure the parents know that I'm a lifelong atheist, but it's not something they ever bring up in conversation (probably because Daisy, at one point, told them not to). But they do know that I put value in family and togetherness, peace and love, above pretty much all other things -- so I'm sure that supersedes any opinions about my views of religion. So, that's our plan for tonight -- get Daisy up in a little more than two hours, load the stuff into the car, drive over to the parents', go to church, come home and eat, and then bed.

My mother seemed surprised when, on the phone yesterday, I told her we'd be spending the night at the parents' so we could get up there on Christmas morning -- until I reminded her that I'm no longer six hours away, but about six minutes (traffic permitting).

Tonight for dinner we're skewing non-traditional, as apparently we're making taco pizza as well as snacky-like foods. I don't know what, however. Tomorrow I don't think we're doing anything special at all food-wise, and of course Daisy and I have to return to work on Friday, so by tomorrow evening we'll be back home anyway. Because we don't want to be anywhere near any sort of retail establishment on Christmas Eve or Day, we stopped at Walmart last night on my way home from work to get a few tiny essentials we needed (cat litter, cigarettes, parsley for cooking today, etc). Anything else can wait until at least Sunday or Monday before we go get it.

The Birthday/Christmas Rundown, Part IV

As mentioned in my scheduling post last weekend, we've now gotten the two big family-interaction days out of the way, and yesterday was our "day of rest." And rest we did, really -- as mentioned before, Daisy has spent most of the past 24-36 hours sleeping (her own count, as of yesterday afternoon, was sixteen hours). I can't say I blame her, really. She never gets the chance to be off work for an extended amount of time, and even gets less of a chance to sleep as much as she wants or needs to.

In between her sleep/wake cycles, my own day yesterday was also restful -- and I was able to get a lot of necessary work done in that time. I wrapped all of the presents I had for her and for the parents, with the exception of her stocking-stuffer things (which I'll put in the actual stocking tomorrow night, I'm guessing). Last night and this morning has been a day to take stock of pretty much everything that's left, which isn't a whole lot:

• All of my/our Christmas cards have been mailed; the last one I sent was to my parents on Friday. We've gotten about four or five in return, and I received one birthday card from my grandmother, but no one else. Which I'm fine with -- most other friends/relatives stopped sending me birthday cards around the time I graduated high school. I know there are at least two or three Christmas cards still on the way from friends and family who have told me they're sending some.
• I was able to do all of the laundry we had in the house; I'll have another load to wash/dry before tomorrow night as I plan to take my bathrobe with me to the parents (it's the warmest garment of clothing I have, and it shields me from the wind and snow when I go smoke outside).
• As mentioned above, all of my presents are wrapped; however, there are at least two gifts for Daisy and one for Mama that has not arrived yet. I checked my log -- two of them I ordered on November 9, and the third I ordered on November 26. Generally my orders come within three weeks or so, but apparently not these ones. One of the gifts for the kids was on backorder over three weeks ago as well, and it's still not here yet either. At this point I have absolutely lost hope that any of them will be here before Christmas -- I have no idea what's taking them so long. 
• I have to work this afternoon. I leave in about forty minutes. I'm waiting to wake up Daisy as, since it's a Tuesday and I'm relatively sure it will be quiet, I don't want to spend any more time there than necessary tonight. In, do my work, take a lunch, do more work, get the hell out. 

However.

I did get the best early Christmas present of my life last night (and no, it wasn't a new car, though that would rank up there pretty close as well). No, my best early Christmas present was that I got an email from my student loan servicer telling me that my paperwork had been processed and that I have officially been granted forbearance on my loans for another year. The forbearance ends on the same day it ended this year, December 10. I also received the paper version in the mail as well to verify. Why is this the best early Christmas present of my life? Well, as my monthly loan payment would have been $524.40, it just saved me about $6300 (a huge chunk of my yearly income) that I can actually put towards things like food and a new car over the course of this next year, and, y'know, actually see something come of that money instead of giving it away.

Some of you may be saying "you'll have to pay it back eventually, Brandon," and to that I say yes, probably, but until I can afford to, those fuckers are getting the middle finger from me. Merry Christmas.

Of course, that confirmation comes way too late now compared to when I needed said confirmation much earlier this month, as if I'd gotten the forbearance when I'd applied for it instead of almost a month later, I'd probably have another car now (of some sort) or I would've been able to get Daisy the present I actually wanted to get her for Christmas -- a new laptop. Which I couldn't get, primarily, because a) the one I was planning to get for her doubled in price on the day I was going to order it, but b) because I had to budget for that loan bullshit.

On that note? Time to go to work.