Partners, Part II

The other big thing that's happened as of late is that the wife and I have become part-founders and part-owners of a startup business.

This has been in the works for some time; the company consists of six people -- my boss at my day job, my former boss at my day job (yeah, figure that one out), my coworker who had breast cancer (mentioned in my last few posts), a friend of my boss, the wife, and myself. We all have positions and titles, though some of them are more honorary than others.

I am the Senior Content Editor for the website and the Youtube channel/some of the social media stuff (sparingly these days, though I helped get most of it off the ground for my boss, who has never had any experience with social media of any sort), and help run stuff in the background like merchandise, some sparse marketing, etc. Until the business really gets some strong legs under it, I've sort of been a jack of all trades, helping out on anything and everything I can. This makes me writer, editor, idea man, pitchperson, and overall consultant on damn near everything.

Oh, and I also designed the logo. The original logo, anyway, which was slightly altered into the current/final one.

The wife is the Senior Social Media Consultant; she's in charge of the Instagram and Twitter, as well as some of the overall website design stuff and a bit of the marketing/how we present the company to the public-type stuff. Anyone who knows Daisy knows that she is very passionate, strong-willed and opinionated, and she makes herself heard during team meetings. She was originally somewhat lukewarm on the idea, and at times can get frustrated. It is at those times I remind her that between the two of us, we own a full third of the company -- far from a "controlling share," so to speak, but we're important.

My former boss and friend of current boss are drivers for the company. More details will come on that as we get to it.

My now-in-remission friend/coworker has a few roles within the company, but she's settling into the online advertising side of it -- Google Ads/adwords, SEO, ad campaigns, and other promotions. She is also the pretty face of the company for photos and videos, something that will more than likely continue into the future.

Finally, my boss is the mastermind behind everything ("Supreme Overlord," as I frequently refer to him). It's his vision, his plan, and while we're all owners/partners, it's his devotion to the business/project that moves everything forward.

All of this has been a long buildup coming. We began kicking around ideas late last year, which became a solidified idea after Christmas, which became weekly business structuring bridge calls (which still continue to this day and will for the foreseeable future), then a soft launch of the website in March...and well, between then and now we've continued to get bigger and bigger.

How much money has this gained us so far?

Well, um, year to date? Nothing. Yet.

After nearly six months of work, I just signed my contract tonight, making me officially a partner and part-owner. The paperwork took a long time to put together for everyone, and thus far only half of us have signed it (as it was just sent over this past week). The wife hasn't even signed it all yet. Projected earnings for phase 1 of the company plan has us each sitting at about $500 a month extra cash in our pockets with another $500 invested directly back into the company before it even hits our payroll. It's a rather simplified plan that should work well and will begin paying out pretty well once all balls are rolling. Is it "buy a Mercedes and quit my day job" money? No, nor will it be for any of us for some time. I don't expect any payroll checks to be cut for any of us before the end of the year, but there are some perks to be had in the meantime -- the boss takes us out to expensive "business lunches" or a "business dinner" about once a month or so, in thanks for the work we've all put in thus far. So, there's that.

In the past it's been hard at times to function as part of a team -- I am very much a born leader, type A personality, and I'm much more accustomed to directing people to do things and making them do those things, either through inspiration, manipulation, or (in rare cases) force. I don't necessarily like confrontation -- though I totally don't shy away from it -- but I wouldn't call myself aggressive. I am a Slytherin; I am cunning, plotting, planning, and a "my wish is your command" (instead of the other way around) type of person. Yet, for all of those personality traits, I have no problems working with this team. All six of us have worked together in the past for our day job for the mega-conglomerate telecom corporation, or we still do (four of the six of us still work there, including me). We keep our jobs and interpersonal relationships separate from the project, for the most part. For the company we are all equals -- equal partners, equal influences, all of us with our own responsibilities. That is not the case in our day jobs' program structure -- and certainly not the case for those of us who no longer work there.

But. For the moment, it is what it is. I'm fine with helping out, I'm fine with being contracted and a part owner of a company that isn't yet making any real money -- like any startup, it takes a while. And time will tell whether this one gets off the ground the way we'd like it to. As I told the wife, if it does, we're two of the founders, and we got in on the ground floor.

The other big news is our house hunt.

As I alluded to in my last post here, we have gone month-to-month on our lease in this apartment, primarily because we want and need to move out of this place and into a house.

I rented the house in Newton for five years total, both with my ex as well as living alone for the three years before I moved up here and married Daisy. Living alone in a full-sized house did a few things for me -- for one, it made me a bit stir-crazy when the only other living beings I could talk to were the cats (who, sadly, do not talk back), but for two, it was a learning experience in knowing everything I absolutely do not want when it comes to purchasing a house to live in.

In the past three months, in this apartment, this series of events has taken place, in this order:

1. Water leaked from the bathtub in the apartment above us down between the walls in our laundry room, for weeks on end, until the walls began bleeding water and caved in. After three different repairs, the final one being a brand new pipe upstairs and a 3x4 foot chunk of the actual laundry room wall being torn out and replaced (over the span of close to three weeks) it was fixed.

2. The apartment above us clogged the shower drain in the master bathroom, which caused all of their shower/drain/wastewater to back up into our shower as well, multiple times. After three plumbers' visits and snaking the pipes with heavy duty equipment, and installation of a new valve in our own shower (after it backed up so much that it overflowed our shower and onto the floor) -- over the span of about two or three more weeks, it was fixed.

3. The built-in microwave above our stove fried itself mid-vegetables and completely stopped working. It took two weeks for the maintenance team to order a new one, get it to arrive, remove the old one, and install the new one.

4. Mid-cycle, the dishwasher died two weeks ago tonight. It left itself full of water, which would not drain -- the wife and I had to manually drain what we could and soak up the rest of the water with towels (thankfully, the wife did this one night when I was at work, because I was about to lose my fucking mind at this point over something else in this apartment breaking). The maintenance people came to look at it three different times before finally agreeing to replace it. The new one gets installed tomorrow.

5. The air conditioner died not once or twice, but three times over the course of last weekend. The first time, the furnace fan motor died. It was removed by maintenance, rebuilt, and replaced. The second time, the rebuilt motor blew some of the wiring. It was repaired and was much quieter. The third time it died, a capacitor of some sort was added to keep it running when it tried to kick off when it wasn't supposed to (it was explained to us, poorly, that the added part was some sort of fuse-like device). The fourth time it didn't die, but the condensation pipe from the AC wasn't properly connected, leading water to drip down onto the electronics and make loud electrical crackling noises every time it kicked on, which was a bad thing -- maintenance came at midnight on a Sunday night and fixed it. Luckily I was off work. Since then it's been running fine.

Yes folks, this was over the short span of three months, and all of this has happened since and after we decided to not renew our lease and pursue the purchase of a house.

"We need to get the fuck out of here," I told Daisy, "because the next thing to go will either be the toilet, tub, stove or the refrigerator."

The toilet and tub have both been repaired on occasion in the past, I might add.

Again, I lived in that house in Kansas for five long, uncomfortable years, and never did it have so many major things go wrong with it that this place has had go wrong in the past three months. The most I had to worry about there was the occasional drain backup in the basement and the brown recluse spider population.

To those ends, we've been aggressively pursuing houses to purchase here in Omaha, and have acquired a realtor and everything. We've looked at probably ten houses so far, but the market is terrible for homebuyers right now -- we made a serious offer on a house about a week and a half ago, offering $7500 above the owners' asking price in order to be competitive and help secure it, and our offer was very quickly and soundly rejected for a better one. That is how terrible the market is right now, folks -- houses routinely sell for far higher than the list price due to competition, and while Daisy and I do fine, we're not liquid enough to make exorbitant offers outside of a fairly fixed price range, no matter what we've been pre-approved for.

We made a fair offer on another house tonight, or we will once the paperwork is processed tomorrow/Monday. It's a house that's been on the market awhile and the owners are looking to sell it sooner rather than later, by the way it sounds, out of moderate desperation and no offers that we know of (normally houses sell in less than 24 hours in Omaha). It is delightfully retro, in a good neighborhood, and is huge. We probably won't get it either, but we've also left ourselves wiggle room for negotiation and counter-offers from the sellers.

It is very hard to not get discouraged, truthfully. There are many parts of Omaha I would never want to live in, and just as many houses that are selling for large amounts of money that look like rat nests. We've seen a few of them.

So it goes, though. So it goes.

I'll keep all apprised.

Partners, Part I

The last few months have indeed been long.

I suppose I should update you on the stuff I covered last time first.

My friend/coworker with stage 2 breast cancer has officially been in remission now for about two months, roughly. She had a double mastectomy and is currently installed with what they call tissue expanders so that in a few weeks, she can have implants (I call them "fakies") installed. We saw her today, for reasons I'll get to later, and she's looking and feeling better than I've seen since before her first surgery. We're expecting her return to work, fully recovered, in mid-June.

Meanwhile, I have had two subsequent blood draws to check the testosterone levels in my blood after treatment. It should have only been one, but the first time they stuck me three times, with larger needles each time, and couldn't get any blood out of me. Like, at all. After the second stick I came very close to fainting and required the wife to physically hold me up, and after that I still went forward and asked them do try a final time, since, y'know, I was already there and all. They failed the third time as well, and we decided to reschedule.

The rescheduled visit was last week, and after leaving a healthy bruise on my hand (which is still there, by the way) they got the blood they needed and confirmed that no, the testosterone treatment wasn't doing a damn thing (which I believe I could've told them as I felt no difference at all). They then proceeded to double my dosage and I now have to rub in two packets of alcohol-jizz all over myself every day. Joy. We'll see if that helps any, honestly. My next bloodwork is scheduled for the fall sometime -- they haven't forwarded along a date yet.

As for the weight loss goals for myself and the wife, we've been on the keto diet since the end of April, and I've lost close to 20 pounds thus far. I've been very strictly sticking to it, or at least my version of it -- less than 50 net carbs per day. Most people call that "low-carb," as hardcore keto is supposed to be 20 or less, but 20 or less is near impossible to be honest with you, no matter what you're eating (or not eating). I can eat some steamed broccoli and cauliflower and be at 12-15 right there, for example. So, even though I limit myself to 50, I try to pay close attention to it and sometimes remain below or around 30 for any given day. Weekends are different and I structure how I eat differently, but I have still never gone over 50 the entire time I've been on the diet.

Daisy is more lax with it and has fallen off the keto wagon once or twice, so she has been easing herself back into it this past week and starting today is 100% keto again.

So, you may be asking, what do you eat?

My daily diet consists of steamed vegetables (usually broccoli/cauliflower or California blend, which adds carrots to that -- or green beans, etc etc), two lettuce or low-carb (3g) tortilla wraps with meats, cheeses, and mayo or sriracha (0-3g per serving of each item), pork rinds (0 carbs), protein shakes (1-3g each), and what has become my newest obsession...string cheese of all sorts.

Keto is all about watching and counting/limiting net carbs -- meaning the carbs in any given food after accounting for fiber. If, for example, a tortilla has 14g carbs, but 8g of that is dietary fiber, then you subtract that and your carb count is 6g.

What can't I eat? Well, most of that should be obvious at this point: no sugars, non-diet sodas, potato or corn products, rice, pastas, breads, cookies, crackers, cakes, etc. Most condiments are a no-no, most herbs and spices are okay for the most part. There are ways around the carbs, of course, and substitutions for most things -- for example, the low-carb tortillas I mentioned above in place of bread.

Aside from that, I can eat most of my normal diet. Meats and cheeses are exceedingly low carb, if not zero-carb foods. I eat a lot of salads and steamed vegetables, as mentioned above. I eat the pork rinds in place of chips -- as much as the wife hates the mere thought of them, they are what's kept me on the diet this long. Lean meats are good and filled with protein, so I've been buying a lot of boneless skinless chicken breasts, marinating them in something low carb (this week it was liquid smoke and zero-carb Greek dressing) and then baking them all at once/bagging them individually for quick and easy meal prep when I get off work in the mornings. I love the steamed vegetables (always have) as well as the string cheese -- good lord there are so many tasty varieties of string cheese out there, folks.

I have not been left hungry or wanting for anything else...well, pretty much ever since I've been on this diet. It has not been hard for me at all, and again, I've dropped almost 20 pounds since I started the diet. I thought it would be much more difficult for me than it has been, but it's been fairly effortless.

For the wife it's harder, as she is vegan and doesn't eat the meats/cheeses/etc as I do, so she has to come up with creative solutions. As such, she eats a lot of coconut-based products as coconut fats are supposed to be really good for you on this diet, as well as MCT oil blended into our smoothies or spooned into coffee. Butter is fine on keto, but vegan butter is better, and salt and pepper on anything can make a world of difference in flavor.

So, we'll see what happens. I plan to stay on the diet pretty much indefinitely, gradually adding in a rare-and-appropriate cheat day in once or twice a month once I get well below some goals I've set for myself. If I can get down below where I want to be (300 before the end of the year) I'll reassess at that time whether I want it to be a continual, indefinite thing, but we'll get to that as we get to it. I really just want to feel normal again. And, slowly, I'm getting there.

Let's see, what else did I talk about last time?

Our financial situation seems to be much better than it was before. We've paid down a lot of debt through some creative and otherwise penny-pinching means, and due to some ongoing and very frustrating maintenance issues with this apartment and building as a whole, our goal for the end of summer is to get the fuck out of here and into a house.

Not a rental house, mind you, but a full-on purchase-and-own-the-sumbitch house. 

Our lease expired at the end of April, and we went to a month-to-month plan (the maintenance issues with this place were already in full swing at that time and that's an entire other story for a different time). The month-to-month plan bumped up our monthly rent by a considerable amount and we just need out, as I've seen many a mortgage payment for less than what we're paying to live in this apartment. We will find something and have been looking, of course, which in itself is almost a full time job (hey, I guess that's why realtors exist, right?). It's been a slow process -- houses we can afford will come on the market and sell in literally a single day, and neither of us are the type of people who want to drive 30 minutes or more one way to go to/from work, as I did in Newton, so we're mostly confined to Omaha city limits. That long distance driving shit was hard and expensive enough with the Monte Carlo -- with a V8 Silverado with bad tires, it would be impossible.  

I told the wife I have but a small list of hard-no's and absolute requirements for any house we'd purchase:

1. It needs a damned driveway -- I am not doing this on-street parking horseshit. A garage is preferable but that generally jacks up the price.
2. The basement/laundry room must be finished and/or actually neat -- it can't look like a rape room or spider haven. No exposed cinderblock walls, no drop ceilings if possible, no exposed piping and wiring. It makes an otherwise beautiful place look like a shoddy facade.
3. Nowhere we're going to get shot or stabbed or would have to worry about our cars getting broken into in our own driveway.
4. Tub showers only, if possible. I cannot stand stall showers with sliding or swing doors. I need a full tub and a curtain.
5. Central air.

I'd actually prefer a ranch-style house with no basement and a firm foundation, but no basement in Nebraska is asking for trouble during tornado season. We have been lucky so far this year but in the spring and summer here, luck can change in the span of a week. It is also far easier to clean and organize a house that's all on one level, and if it's a small place that means I have an excuse to throw out a lot of my old junk I have cluttering up the place.

So that's about all for now, folks. I'll keep you all updated, sporadically at best I'm sure. 

Thirty-five

Hello, all.

So here I am, back again with what appears to be my quarterly review of sorts.

Since my last writing, the holidays have come and gone, and with them another birthday. I'm 35 now, a fact that isn't lost on me in the least. Age 35 seems to be some sort of lifetime milestone for me, at least internally. I consider myself middle aged now, simply because, well, I don't expect to live much past 70. I've yet to see the full extent of the longevity of the other men in my family, both on my father's and mother's side -- mainly because most of them are still alive (barring the ones who died young from unnatural causes like drowning and suicide and the like).

Yeah, that's a thing. Blood relatives, anyway, at least. Marrying into my family seems to be curseless, but it's the ones who are all related by blood who have bizarre shit happen to them. Go figure.

Truthfully, as I mentioned in my last update, I've come face to face with mortality a lot over the course of the past year or so, and in between the last update and now, it has only gotten more poignant.

One of the guys I worked with (not one who reported to me, but reported to my colleague), drove himself to the hospital one night after work and dropped dead in the doorway of the ER. We didn't find out until two days later. Needless to say, we were pretty shaken up by the event. No service, no funeral -- straight into the ground ASAP after he died, too. None of us ever heard anything else from his family. I assume they came to get his stuff he left at work and never told anyone else anything.

Another close friend at work, and one who does report to me, found out she had stage 2 breast cancer around the same time. She had it removed and came back to work a month later, but she still has a pretty long road to recovery, interspersed with more time off when she needs to take it for subsequent recovery steps. There's a benefit for her next month that the wife and I -- as well as most other people at work -- will be attending and donating to. Daisy and I have offered our assistance in any way we can as well, even going so far as to offer to cook meals for her and her family and take them over to the house, etc. She's doing well and is incredibly optimistic given her situation, and that's a good thing.

So yes, my 35th birthday came and went, punctuated by little events here and there. Christmas and New Year's came and went, and now it's the long, cold slog to spring with no more holidays to look forward to and no time off work until Memorial Day -- which I will more than likely end up working, as our wedding anniversary doesn't fall over Memorial Day weekend this year.

Daisy's parents always make a big deal out of any of the kids' birthdays (kids including Daisy, her sisters, and their husbands -- including me -- as well as all of their children). This year I requested we not make a big deal of mine, so we didn't -- though it wasn't exactly because I didn't want to, but because of time constraints. Daisy's oldest sister, her husband, and their three boys were in town over Christmas, leaving a few days later, and since they left, Mama has had the flu. Or she thinks it's the flu, we don't know as we have classified their home as a Class III Biohazard area and are staying far away until she's better. After taking time off around my birthday and Christmas I have no more PTO to spare and certainly can't afford to get sick, that's for damn sure.

On my birthday, the wife got me Luke Skywalker's lightsaber and we went to see The Last Jedi. I won't ruin the movie for any of you who haven't seen it yet, but I wasn't exactly a fan, while Daisy loved it and she hates Star Wars. So meh. December 20 was a gorgeous sunny day of almost fifty degrees (it had been in the 60s not even a week prior as well), and we ended it with a dinner at Red Robin.

Over the course of the next few days we got our first measurable snow of the winter, and the temperature dropped dramatically. By Christmas it was in the single digits with howling wind and blowing snow, and between Christmas and the New Year it dropped close to -20, if not colder -- actual temperature. I believe on New Year's Eve (which I took off work) it was snowing and -14 outside. Since then it has snowed more, with more on the way, though the temperature has slowly crept back up into the double digits on the positive side again. This week we could even see highs in the 40s, which is positively balmy compared to the icy tundra we've had to slog through as of late.

We did nothing to celebrate the New Year, by the way, aside from watch Ryan Seacrest drop the ball. It was too cold outside to move, let alone think about leaving the house. I had worked the 26th and 27th, and had taken the 31st on PTO -- I took particular pride in the fact that between December 27 and the night of January 1 (when I returned to work) I hadn't left the house once. I still take pride in that.

Another interesting development since the last time I wrote here is that I am now on testosterone therapy.

Upon our physicals in early November, the wife wanted me to have a testosterone screening done in my normal bloodwork, as I have almost no energy, my body feels like it's falling apart, I can no longer lose weight, my sex drive has plummeted, etc. So, they performed the test and confirmed that I did have low testosterone, but they couldn't prescribe replacement therapy until they did a second test a month later to confirm that it was still low.

So, a month later at the beginning of December, on a cold Friday morning at 7AM, we went back to the doctor to have them do a second blood draw to confirm. This time it was almost off-the-scale low, 40 points lower than the November test. After some finagling with the insurance people that took the better part of a week to sort out, I picked up my first box of testosterone replacement gel.

Yes, gel. It comes in a little pouch about the same size of an eyeglasses wipe, a pouch that I have to tear open and squirt out about a silver-dollar-sized dollop of what feels like and smells like hand sanitizer onto my hand, which I in turn have to rub/massage into my arm/bicep/shoulder once a day (after showering) and immediately wash my hands afterwards. It's clear, it's cold, it's slimy (sometimes so thin that it runs down my arm and I have to scoop it up/catch it/rub it in) and it is an absolute pain in the ass.

Because of this, the wife called the insurance company to see if they would cover the patch, which is like a nicotine patch but with testosterone. They will not. Without insurance the patch is $400-500 a month. The goopy gel shit, with insurance, is $10. You do the math.

I'm a little more than halfway through my first month of it and have noticed no effect whatsoever in how I feel. The literature says anywhere between two weeks and two months and you'll see some effect/will feel it, etc, somesuch bullshit like that. I remain cautiously optimistic, but yeah, overall it just feels like I'm rubbing cold alcohol-smelling jizz on my arm every day. Maybe I'll see if I can get a prescription for HGH next. That's right, human growth hormone. Because fuck it, why not?

To those ends, however, I am beginning to track any weight loss I experience over the course of 2018. So is the wife. We have a chalkboard in the hallway on which we shall write our weight every two weeks from now through the end of the year. I am 376.4 pounds, larger than I've ever been in my life, and while some of it is my metabolism slowing down a great deal because I'm getting older, some of it is also the fact that I quit smoking almost two years ago now, I eat like an asshole, work overnights, and have low testosterone. By the end of the year, my goal is to be below 300 again -- something that I haven't been in close to ten years at this point. The lowest I've ever gone in my adult life is 260 or so. When I met Daisy I was around 290ish. I'll never be a thin dude, but I would like at least to not be a horribly fat one who has trouble moving and wears sweatpants everywhere (spoiler: that's who I've become now). I'd also like to perhaps not die of a heart attack or stroke in the next few years and become a statistic. I also don't want to contract diabetes or start growing fungi in weird places.

By the way, the rest of my bloodwork was fine -- in fact, I'm healthy as a horse if my bloodwork, cholesterol, and blood pressure has anything to say about it, which is frankly shocking. Not even pre-diabetes, nothing of note to share.

Of course, the world keeps getting worse and we could all be killed in a nuclear war in six weeks anyway, so in the grand scheme of things, does any of it matter?

I suppose perhaps the testosterone supplements have done one thing, at least -- I am no longer extremely, cripplingly depressed. Which, if you haven't been paying attention, I have been for about three years now. Off and on, anyway. More on than off. For the most part, the depression has gone away. I am still frustrated and dissatisfied with life, but for the most part it's manageable and fleeting. I also find that I'm way more emotional than I used to be before as well -- I cry at sad/happy parts in movies way more than before, for example. It just hits me someplace and the tears start flowing, as if I cannot control them no matter what. It is bizarre and unexpected.

As for other things going on in life, the wife and I were both able to get on income-based repayment plans for our student loans -- they cut my monthly payments by more than 2/3 and cut hers in half. This means, surprise, we'll have more money to actually save and put to use for the things we need it for. This includes a possible new vehicle for one of us as well as a possible down payment on a house, but we're not getting ahead of ourselves any more than necessary -- first we must pay down some of our credit card debt and create a little more breathing space than we currently have. It's not that what we have now is bad, but it'll help. We've been putting a little money into savings with every paycheck we get, with the intention to continue doing so as much as humanly possible. We may not be able to do it every check, but most times we can and will.

That's about all there is to tell for now. I'm sure I will update again at some point once I have more to share.

Wild Bushman

Hi, everyone.

One would think that with the amount of time I have now on the nights I'm off during the week, much like ten years ago when I started this blog, I would be better at updating it. That is not the case.

My overnight management job has taken over my life. Even on my days off most of the time I am dead tired or swamped with stuff to do around the house -- laundry, dishes, cleaning the cat boxes, grocery shopping, etc. I have become the epitome of the middle class worker in middle management who's constantly exhausted and disheveled. That's just how it works, I suppose.

To be fair, the wife has attempted to help me get out of that job (because she did -- a year ago today, actually), to get a better one somewhere, and I've been looking as well. However, it's not that easy. While there are thousands of jobs in Omaha, not all of them can I do nor would I want to do or drive half an hour every morning or evening to get to -- especially not in the winter, and especially not when pieces are rusting off of my truck. Yeah, because that's a thing too.

Truck is old, so I can't complain that much. I also don't drive it that often, as I still don't have the money to replace the tires, and Omaha is entering its rainy season -- which means I'd hydroplane everywhere. I named it "Whitey" so that when it finally dies, I can say I did my part to kill Whitey. I will eventually get new tires on it and get the work done to it that needs to be done, or I won't and I'll just get something else. I long ago gave up on the dream of owning a brand new vehicle -- right now I just want something that runs and isn't falling apart, and I've only got one of those two things.

Truthfully, my job isn't bad. I actually really enjoy it, and very much enjoy being part of the leadership team there. I've got great friends and colleagues in that building, I feel like I'm making a difference, and I feel needed/wanted/respected. Well, by most folks, anyway. The job itself has changed since I started working there (going on four years now, passed my 3rd anniversary a few months back), and in doing so, it's gotten more difficult. It's definitely one of those "sometimes absolutely hate it while you're there" jobs that get better from an outside perspective on your days off. I did eventually get my back pay from being an interim manager as well -- almost a year later, but I got it.

Let's see, what else is going on in my life?

The wife and I are doing well, moving towards our fourth year of marriage. All four of our parents are alive and doing well, and now all four of them are officially retired as well (reminding me yet again of my mortality and how all of us are getting older). Our nieces and nephews are getting older, bigger, more intelligent. Every time we see them -- granted, half of them live in Canada now -- I am surprised how much they've grown. I think that's something everyone comes to eventually as they get older, as well.

Do I think I'm wiser now that I've gotten older and have settled into the life I have? Eh, not really. I'm still me. I still wear rock-n-roll and nerdy t-shirts, I still wear cargo shorts and flip-flops until it's so cold my feet will turn blue, I still grow my hair and beard out so I either look like a dirty hippie or a wild bushman (I actually need to trim up and groom the beard today), and I still have a collection of hipsterish eyeglasses that I use to further accessorize my look by the day. I haven't been to the eye doctor in over two years to see if I need an updated prescription, but I should probably go.

Over Labor Day last month, the wife and I drove out to West Virginia to visit family and friends. We were only there three or four days, but as the last time I'd seen my parents was at our wedding, and the last time I'd actually visited home was five years ago, we figured it was time. My parents are getting older, have a beach house in North Carolina, and plan to fully migrate there soon for their retirement years. As such, part of the trip was to gather whatever I wanted to save from the house and bring it back with us (which is why we drove versus flying out there). Plus, driving there and back allowed us to stop at not just one, but two different White Castles and one of the six remaining Rax Roast Beef restaurants -- as well as a few vegan destinations of the wife's choosing, for balance and compromise.

The second reason we went back home is much more somber -- my grandmother is 90, and is in a nursing home as she gets closer to the end of her life due to old age as well as congestive heart failure. I planned the trip to see her before she dies, as she (as well as the rest of my family) already knows that when she goes, I won't be able to just drop everything and fly home for the funeral. This was the compromise -- seeing her while she was still alive and could actually appreciate my visit, and allowing her to finally meet and spend some time with the wife.

Those of you who know me well know that, to me, family comes first. It always has, it always will. When I told my Director about my grandmother's condition, as well as about how I hadn't been home to visit in five years, he told me "Put in the PTO now, I approve, go." I didn't get to see all of my family while I was out there, but I saw some of them. There just wasn't enough time or energy. I saw a few friends as well, but not nearly as many as I wish I could have. To be fair, most of them have their own lives and are either buried in them too much to see us or they're no longer living in the state, and that's okay. I'm not royalty, I don't expect a parade of well wishers or onlookers to pay their respects and kiss my ring -- I understand other people have priorities. We did what we could to be conciliatory and work with everyone, and sometimes plans fell through. My old iPhone 5c got a workout while we were out there trying to get with everyone.

We were tired and frazzled by the time we returned to Omaha, but overall it was a very good trip. Daisy, who had never been to West Virginia before aside from a quick drive-through while traveling, got to see where I came from and experience my home as I always wanted her to see it -- the real West Virginia, unfettered by the stereotypes and financial problems the state itself carries with it. I love my home state, but I would never want to live there again. We drove up and down mountains, got to eat at the local places I've wanted her to be able to experience for years, and most importantly, she got to spend some real quality time with my family. While leaving again made me sad, it was also a good feeling -- a feeling that in my life, I've moved onward and upward. I'm no longer hobbled by or ashamed of where I come from.

We came home with my entire comic collection and my guitars/amplifier in tow, weighing down the car. There are still a few boxes in the trunk of the car I need to bring upstairs (not that I necessarily have anywhere to put them) that we'll bring in eventually, but yeah. Apparently I left way, way too much stuff back home, and thinking of what I actually brought with me eleven years ago when I moved out here and how little of that stuff I still have left today, it's actually sort of funny.

In other news, I did finally bite the somewhat expensive bullet and upgrade to an iPhone 7 after our return from West Virginia. Daisy asked me if I wanted to do it before we left, and I was like "Psh, no, what if it gets lost or broken on the trip? Screw it, I'll use the old one until we're back." And that's exactly what I did -- I waited until we returned home, waited for the day the iPhone 8 went on sale, and at that point immediately got a 7 as it would be the cheapest it would ever get. In doing so, I saved myself about $25 a month in charges from Sprint. Activating it was a pain in the ass, as was getting all of my info and files from the old one to the new one (something I still have to do for my pictures), but I actually have a phone that isn't four years old now, so there's that.

And yes, as soon as it came out of the box it immediately went into an OtterBox case I'd ordered and had arrive in advance. This means that nobody can see its pretty rose gold finish (because, yes, I'm that kind of fancy boy), but eh, it means it's protected. I may eventually get an opaque case for it (like the wife has for her Galaxy S6, another phone rapidly reaching its end-of-useful-life), but right now I'm fine with the hardshell black OtterBox. The 7 is longer and wider than my 5c, but it's thinner. It feels different in the hand and in my pocket -- I'm not completely used to it yet, and I'm really paranoid I'm going to crack the screen just from it being in my pocket and the accompanying leg movement. So far, so good though.

I still haven't smoked -- I no longer feel the craving or want for a cigarette and haven't in about six months or more. I am still vaping, however, though I've even cut down on that quite a bit. Mainly because, well, juice costs money that I'd rather spend on nerdy t-shirts and shaving equipment (no joke there -- I've fallen down the rabbit hole on Amazon for fancy shave butters/creams/aftershaves). I don't know exactly how long it's been that I've been a non-smoker, but I know it was April of last year, so 18 months or so, roughly.

I couldn't vape in the house in West Virginia, however, because it would harm the parents' parrot. Yes, they have a parrot, because, well...honestly that shouldn't surprise anyone knowing the type of family I come from, so we'll move on.

Not much else going on; life continues as normal, as it always has.

Above: me and my grandmother, Labor Day 2017.

My Piece

No, I'm not talking about my penis.

Hi there everyone. It's been a long time.

Truthfully over the past ten months I've come to this blog several times to try to write something, only to get interrupted in the middle of it, lose interest, and come back to it a few weeks later to see what I was going to post no longer applies.

Some updates that are relevant for those of you paying attention:

Yes, I am still vaping. I have not had a physical cigarette since June or so, and have only smoked 1.5 cigarettes since I quit last April. One of those was a luxury Nat Sherman cigarette one of my friends had at a wine-and-music event last summer, and the other was one a friend gave me at work last fall -- that made me sick, but I was so stressed out at my job I needed something to kill it.

I do my part to educate people on the benefits of vaping and to dispel the stigma of it, and have gotten a few friends who were previously smoking to start vaping instead as a means to quit the cigarettes. I have about ten devices, numerous tanks and atomizers, and about thirty different flavors of juice. It has become quite the hobby, and sometimes an expensive one, though in the long run it is much cheaper than cigarettes, with the benefits far outweighing the costs.

Speaking of outweighing the costs, the downside is that since I quit smoking, I have gained about 50 pounds in the past ten months -- putting me back up above my college weight and making me feel like a supremely fat fuck. As such I have had to purchase a lot of new clothing that will actually fit me and donate a lot of what no longer does. Weight gain is a very common side-effect of quitting smoking, because suddenly one gets an appetite again. And because the winters in Nebraska suck and are usually really cold and snowy, I feel even more lethargic than usual -- so I have no energy to get up, get out of the house, and be active. That's a problem. The wife and I plan to start an exercise regimen once everything thaws out for good this spring, the temperatures get to be tolerable outside (consistently, anyway), and the days get longer.

I still drive my Silverado -- haven't done anything to it physically or upkeep-wise since I got it from our brother-in-law (aside from put a Team Instinct sticker in the back window -- yes, the wife and I play Pokemon GO, I'm level 26 now, she's 25). It desperately needs new tires, which I'm sort of half-assed saving for as it'll be about $800. Because of this it won't really go anywhere in the Nebraska winter and we take the wife's car most places -- I take the truck to work and back if there's no snow/ice on the roads, and that's about it.

My student loans can be put off no longer and are now due every month on the 11th -- to the tune of over $600. To put that in perspective, I pay more on my student loans every month than I paid for rent every month in my house in Kansas -- by a substantial amount. This is, of course, a shit situation, but it can't be avoided. That's also part of why it's very difficult to try to afford tires for the truck, and means the wife and I have to very tightly budget everything now, to the point where we are afforded very few luxuries.

That's fine, I suppose -- I have learned to save quite a bit of money on household stuff by getting it directly from Amazon, shipped to my door. About the only things I don't get on Amazon these days are perishable foodstuffs that they wouldn't really be able to mail. Almost everything else is purchased and is delivered to us a few times a week, depending on what's ordered. Carrying cat litter, paper towels, toilet paper, laundry detergent, etc etc in from the car is a thing of the past.

The cats are fine, by the way -- they're all turning ten this year. The girls like to sleep and eat, and Pete likes to be a bastard the same as usual. If there's been one constant in my life over the past ten years it's been those little furry buttholes.

I did pass the milestone of ten years living in the midwest around Thanksgiving or so, and barely gave it a second thought. It's so long ago now. Hell, Daisy and I have been married almost three years. Our bills are getting paid, we have food in the house, the lights are on, and the years just go by. Milestones are generally for the sentimental, and I'm more of a nihilist than anything else.

No, we do not have a child yet. It is one of our long term goals, as is getting out of this apartment and into a house of our own. In the time since we've been married, both of Daisy's sisters have each had another child -- the latest being a new niece born right around Christmas. Meh. We'll either have kids eventually or we won't. We'd like to, but given our monetary situation and lack of time as it is, honestly it's on the back burner at this point.

I suppose I should mention that Daisy acquired a new job last fall; she is now working for a bank. This means she has much better hours and all state/federal holidays off. Her pay is about the same, however. She likes it much better than working overnights (and then, later, during the day) as a shift manager for a gigantic telecommunications corporation, as she did before.

I also got a new job -- I'm working overnights as a shift manager for a gigantic telecommunications corporation.

Surprisingly enough, these two occurrences are not related.

In August I (finally) got promoted to Area Manager on dayshift, leading one of the top teams in the building, when my superior was moved to a different segment. After being an interim over that team for three months, one of our overnight managers moved to Dallas around the same time some restructuring was done with the teams on dayshift and my team/position was eliminated. As they needed someone to fill the spot on overnights and I already knew and had worked with all of the After Hours people previously (I started on After Hours in that place before moving to days, as you may recall), I volunteered to take the third shift position as an interim with the full promotion being awarded to me once the dust settled and leadership decided who would be moved to my team -- and they agreed. I started the overnight position (8pm to 7am four days a week) in October and received the official promotion to Area Manager during the first week of November. I am still hourly as of right now, which is a good thing for many reasons -- for one, it means I can still get any and all overtime offered to me, and for two it means that when my work day ends, it ends. My move to salary was postponed indefinitely when the federal edict on overtime got overturned/erased back in December, and while there is still plans to get me over to the salaried payscale, I'd rather not hurry it when I'm getting 4-6 hours of sweet, sweet overtime every week.

The downside is that I was supposed to be awarded back pay for my interim months and that's on record (it was part of my hiring documentation), and that has not come through yet over four months later. I've been told it's coming and is being taken care of, but as of late my inquiries about it -- as well as inquiries about becoming salaried -- have gone unanswered. 

As an aside, I really like working overnights. I work Sunday through Wednesday, I work with a group of people I've known and trusted for years (as well as a Director who is awesome and actively cares about the job and his employees), and while overnights does deal with a fair amount of bullshit and stupidity, it's way less than I had to deal with when I was on dayshift in that place. For the most part, I believe I am wanted, needed, and respected -- as well as appreciated when the shit hits the fan -- and right now, that's really good enough for me. Because of my experience and tenure, as well as the fact that there's a shift differential and I am a valued employee, I got something around a 25% pay raise in my promotion as well. Swimmin' pools, movie stars money.

Well, not really. But it's nice to be making more than I did before. Really, the extra pay goes almost directly to my student loans with little, if any, left over. So I sort of break even.

My overnights schedule doesn't really intersect with the wife's day schedule, though -- that's a bit of a downside. However, it does mean we get to share evenings and weekends together. She works a normal day schedule to 8-5. I get home at 7am, spend some time with her as she gets ready, go to bed when she goes to work, and wake up an hour or three before she gets home. We spend the evening together and then I go back to work at 8. This repeats for four days, and then Thursday/Friday/Saturday nights (not to mention Saturday day most of the time) we spend together and get our quality time -- with the benefit that I still get some decompression time to myself in the overnights as long as I stay on my normal sleeping schedule. Lately, that time has been spent watching Netflix and/or playing a video game to turn off my brain.

Another downside is that, especially during the winter months, my energy levels are at all-time lows. I get up in the evenings and need to pound coffee to wake myself up for the night shift, and I can't really eat or I'll get all groggy and even weaker. If I wake up in a bad mood or I have anything else happening that stresses me out, I carry that mindset into the entire night because I'm being forced to wake up and deal with it. Daisy long ago realized that it's generally a bad idea to try to have serious conversations with me in the first hour or two that I'm awake, because in that time I am a vile, horrific person. I really can't help it, and I've done all I can to curb it -- but it's chemical/biological more than anything else as it's usually caused by me not having any caffeine or nicotine in my system. I am not a "get up and go" type of person -- it's a slow roll.

Anyway, it's probably time I get to the overall point of this post, and why I wanted to start writing it in the first place: we have a new president.

I have tried to stay as silent as possible on the subject of Donald Trump. Really I have. I don't talk much about it on social media, and truthfully I am so sick of there being no news anymore but Trump news, anywhere, to the point where I've stopped paying attention to most news in general because I just can't take it. Please, news sources, anything but something else about Trump. There is more happening in the world, I know it -- please report that instead.

But, since we're now stuck with Trump, I suppose here's my two cents.

I never thought my country could be so stupid.

I never thought my country would allow what is currently happening, as a whole, to happen.

I never thought my country would see injustice, blatant violations of the constitution and civil rights, the closing of our borders and the slow-roll of a burgeoning police state coming to power all happening and do little else but some "we're upset and don't like this" protests and sharing stories on social media outlets before moving on to more pictures of cats.

I never thought I would see such a complacent "oh well, what can we do?" society form, instead of throngs of people taking to the streets with pitchforks and torches. 

I've never seen a more milquetoast reaction to our rights, powers, and privileges as the people of the United States being stripped away one by one. And to those people saying "well, he's only in there four years," they're not seeing the big picture. The actions he's taking will set back our society's progress by fifty years or more as people keep getting dumber and more complacent.

I once thought, optimistically, that we would see the formation of Starfleet in my lifetime. A real Starfleet, ex astris, scientia -- from the stars, knowledge -- a unification of Earth's ideologies gathered for the common goal of exploration and settlement, the broadening of our knowledge and cultures and experiences for the benefit of the planet, the species, as a whole. I now know that will never happen, not as long as I'm alive, not as long as it's not made a priority and the number one goal of our planet.

It was a lofty goal, to be sure, but it is one I could've seen coming together within 20-40 years if, say, Bernie Sanders had won the presidency.

Now we have Voldemort and his death eaters in the White House, leading the most powerful country on the planet and systematically dismantling all the progress the past several decades of sane, rational leaders have made. We rational, intelligent Slytherins disowned Donald Trump long ago, much as I'm sure not every Slytherin (or even most of them) supported Voldemort.

I know I'm making a lot of pop-culture references here, but bear with me.

For the record, even though I voted for her, I don't think Hillary Clinton would've been much better. I didn't want to vote for her, I wanted to vote against idiocy. My man was always Bernie Sanders from the beginning of the actual race, and I think there was a lot of shady or otherwise underhanded shit Hillary did to basically steal the nomination -- for a job she couldn't win. She couldn't win it eight years ago and she won't win it four years from now. Also note how deafeningly silent she's been since she lost the election, too.

Then again, with the exception of Barack Obama, I have a history of voting for losing candidates. I was a month too young to vote in the 2000 election, but I would've voted for Al Gore. In 2004 I backed John Kerry to get Bush out of office. Both of those elections failed spectacularly.

That's also not to say that there aren't some of Trump's policies I agree with -- there are, they're just very few and far between. For example, I do believe strongly in bringing jobs back to America and penalizing American companies who outsource or build factories in other countries to ship products back to us. Hell no; build those factories here, put those jobs here. Working in telecom has shown me the evils of outsourcing as many of the best technicians I previously worked with had their jobs outsourced to Asia or the south pacific. And let me tell you, I'll gladly pay $50 more for an iPhone or laptop if I know it was built here in the states. I want to see the best cars in the world built in America again.

I believe very strongly in rebuilding the infrastructure of this country -- hospitals, airports, roads, bridges, our electrical grid and other power plants, schools, universities, and the like, from the bottom up. I want to see people at work making this country a better place -- but that also comes with paying people what they're worth. Teachers, professors, cops, firemen, public works people, etc -- all of them need a liveable wage. All of us do, but start with the people who shape society more than anyone else and keep it running.

I also disagree with a lot of what's happening, obviously. "Building the wall" is a really stupid, dumbfuck idea that won't make this country any safer overall and will bankrupt our treasury. The travel ban isn't helping either. There's a lot of immigration policy I disagree with most liberals on, but I definitely agree that the wall and the travel ban are both really dumb. For the record, I don't support the ICE raids that are happening in a ton of different states right now either. I support it on paper, but putting that into practice like the Kool-Aid man smashing through the walls of workplaces, arresting illegals, and leaving homes where kids don't know if they're going to have parents to come home to after school is holy shit level fascism.

The bad part is that it's all going to get worse before it gets better, until there's some sort of actual revolution in this country. And given the complacency of the populace thus far, I fear that will never happen. If it does, I also fear that the revolution will be quelled so quickly and the leaders quickly condemned as crackpots by the media that anyone else will fear to make any more waves. It is by complacency and by the hands of those who sit there and do nothing that this country will meet its end -- and I am sure there's no shortage of other societies around the world who will be happy to see us crumble and fall apart when we do.

So, on that happy note, I'm going to end this post. I've said all I need to say on the subject.

In two days it's Valentine's Day. I proposed to my wife on Valentine's Day four years ago. This year it's the "kitchen gifts" anniversary, apparently, as I've gotten her a few gifts that she's wanted for a while. Life goes on, right?

The Helper

By 5:15 PM tomorrow night, it'll be a full two weeks for me without cigarettes.

I'm fine. The cravings hit a peak last week, into the weekend, before basically going away almost completely. Most of the time now I don't even think about it. And even being around people at work who are still smoking doesn't bother me.

It's exceedingly weird.

No, really. It's really strange that I don't have the urge to get up in the morning, go out on the porch, smoke two or three cigarettes, and then actually start my day. That doesn't happen anymore. I get up, make some coffee, check my phone, sit on the couch and vape for a while (sometimes I won't even touch the vape until I've been up for 40 minutes or so) and then go get dressed for work.

When I'm at home on the weekends my sleep schedule is so messed up anyhow that I'm never sure when I'm going to bed or getting up, so obviously it's a bit different. Still, there are very few times where I ever just absolutely crave a cigarette anymore. The vapes have taken care of that.

I mentioned before that I've pretty much settled on my rotation of vape juices that I cycle through, with the exception of some limited edition flavors or promotional ones (meaning, flavors I get for free or have gotten in promotional deals, flavors I've only purchased because of free shipping on an order with other stuff, etc), and I think keeping a regular rotation helps a lot. Changing it up too much or having a new flavor every week messes with me, and I've found that while I'll like to vape a tankful of a flavor to try it, I get really tired of it after that -- if I've ordered a big bottle of it, it'll just sit there until I want it again or until I give it away. I've spent entirely too much money on vape shit in the past several months only out of sheer curiosity, and as part of the goal is to stop spending as much money on this stuff, I really need to scale it back.

So, I have my stable of pretty regular flavors. Every once in a while I'll rotate one out and rotate another one in -- for example, for a month or so I really liked Fruit Hoops (read: Froot Loops cereal flavor), but got burnt out on it. I rotated it out and replaced it with something else, just to keep it interesting. I like routine, but too much routine makes it all boring, and if it's boring I'm likely to go back to cigarettes just out of habit. Part of what's keeping me off them is the excitement of new things, new parts, mods and flavors -- the hobby aspect of it all. And there are indeed ways to do that cheaply that doesn't involve me spending $50-100 a week on new things, as I never spent that much on cigarettes (thank fuck). Having ordered two more backup tanks this weekend, and waiting for two more and two boxes of coils to arrive, I think I'm pretty much done for the next several months when it comes to hardware -- I even gave one of my mods to a friend at work when he broke his and broke his tank. He gave me a $10 bill, two 12-packs of soda, and a bottle of juice in trade and still got the better deal, but I don't care because I like helping people. I like being the helper.

The wife and family are still very proud of me, by the way. I'm glad they are. The positive feedback helps out a lot. My wife is extremely happy I'm no longer smoking. Of course, not having to stop at the gas station every 3-4 days for more cigarettes is nice too, and not having to spend money on them out of pocket is great as well (though that savings is, again, pretty much negated by all of the vape stuff I get). I need to fill the truck up with gas this week, and it'll be the first time I've done so without going inside for cigarettes. It's bizarre.

The truck is still going strong, by the way. No issues with it yet, though I do still need to get new tires and get it tuned up (oil change, spark plug checks, etc). Chevrolets are workhorses -- I know that from the years of owning the Monte Carlo. As long as it's in one piece, it'll run -- and nothing's started falling off of it yet. When the relatives come into town over the summer (whenever that will be), I can't wait to show them that it's still going and still running strong...ahem, provided that it doesn't blow up on me now that I've said that. I'll renew the registration and plates in July, around the time they'll be here.

The wife and I have to renew our lease here in the next week as well. I say "in the next week" because, well, it runs out at the end of the month, and while we let the complex know our intentions to renew (we had to do so by the 1st of this month), they have to schedule a time to have us come up and sign the paperwork. They have not yet done that, so in the morning I will be calling the office to tell them "hey, we need to do this, when's the best day/time for you, 'cause we both work weird hours and will probably have to do it on our lunch break" or something like that. It takes about fifteen minutes at the most, but it's still a relative pain in the ass.

It's a payday Friday this coming week, so I have bills that are coming due that will have to be paid in addition to our rent -- as does the wife. Still, as we go deep into the spring, it appears that most crises are settling down and we're able to get out from under a lot of the stuff we've been paying on for a while now, with the exception of our taxes. I don't know if I've mentioned it here in recent weeks (and right now, frankly, I'm too lazy to care/check if I have) but we owed a shitload of money in taxes this year...all because on my own W4s with our company, they had me marked down for two federal exemptions for no reason. That's not something that can be changed retroactively, and we didn't figure it out until we got our taxes ready this spring. I cannot tell you how absolutely batshit pissed I was, especially as getting a decent-sized refund would've let us pay down some credit cards and would've paid for the aforementioned new tires on my truck. The taxes are paid, thanks to having high-limit credit cards with 0% interest for eighteen months, but we're both very angry. I went in and changed my W4 to zero exemptions shortly after we found out what had happened, as if I didn't we would probably owe again for 2016. Fuck it, let 'em take out all the taxes they want now so when this time rolls back around next year, we don't have to worry about it.

The weeks pass by quickly, and the weekends even faster. Soon, we will be coming up on our second wedding anniversary at the end of May, and both myself and the wife have requested the day off of work so that we can get an extended weekend. We do not have any plans, at least not yet -- the parents asked us last night if we were going anywhere or doing anything. We had to laugh at that to a certain extent, as it's so rare for us to ever go anywhere or do anything we don't have to or that isn't required by law. Shit, there are at least five large boxes and ten giveaway clothing bags for Goodwill (or a similar charity) which have been sitting here in the spare room with me since we moved into this apartment in 2014. The wife's wedding dress is in the exact same spot she left it when she took it off on our wedding night.

I've already purchased and gifted the wife's anniversary present to her -- I bought her the high-end expensive replica of Hermione Granger's wand. I had asked previously and she claimed Hermione was her favorite character in the entire Harry Potter series, so okay. I have several favorite characters, most of whom die quickly (some offscreen, even -- what a tragedy). However, the wand that called out to me was the wand of Narcissa Malfoy, Draco's mother.

I ordered that wand for myself, and during play-fighting with the wife and her wand, it broke in half. Very quickly. Fuck. I ended up getting Snape's wand, so both of us have wands now. The object is to take photos with them for our anniversary. Because we're nerds like that.

The broken wand? Added to the pile of clutter.

"We're cleaning on Saturday," the wife told me matter-of-factly when she came into the spare room a few moments ago on her way to bed.

To be fair, the house is a mess -- it needs a good vacuuming and steam-cleaning of the carpets, a good dusting, a good scrubdown of the bathroom and kitchen, including the floors -- etc etc. I have Mondays off, so a good chunk of the day every Monday is me doing upkeep on the house as much as I can reasonably do based on time and energy levels -- reorganizing the kitchen, doing all the laundry and putting it away, washing the bedsheets, cleaning the cat box and sweeping out the cat room, etc. That's hard to do if I'm not feeling well or if I sleep late, however. And some Mondays I don't even have the energy to mess with a lot at all -- or I want to decompress and play video games and listen to podcasts and let the entire world just go away for a bit. Because, of course, I have those weeks too.

Will keep you posted on any happenings, of course. However, now's the time for me to go to bed as I've been up way too late as it is.

The Last of the Cigarettes, Part II

At 5:15 PM tonight (central time), I will have gone a full seven days without a cigarette.

It's hard sometimes; this weekend was especially difficult as the craving for cigarettes was almost too much to bear at times. I'm not sure if I can describe why, really, aside from the fact that on weekends, when I'm off work, I have the time and ability to smoke if I want to, when during the normal week I do not. During the work week, I'd have to get up from my desk, go downstairs, go outside, smoke, come inside, wash my hands, go back to work. Or, conversely, I could only go outside on my deck and smoke when I was at home, could only do it in my own private time and I would have to meter out that time for it -- only when I had the time or energy to do it, and only when it wasn't interrupting something else (like shower time, sleep time, etc).

Up until this week, I didn't realize how much of my actual day was taken up by me being outside with a cigarette in my hand or on my lips. It's a fair chunk of time, I realized, that I was basically locking myself outside to take part in this nasty habit. I don't have to worry about that with vaping, as I do that indoors anywhere I want, anytime, unless I'm at work or in a public place (like a store or restaurant). Sadly, we're not allowed to vape at our desks in the office. If we could, I'd get so much more work accomplished as I'd only have to get up to go to the bathroom or grab another cup of coffee from the break room.

In the mornings now, I make my coffee at home and sit in the living room with the cats, who usually look at me funny, with my vape mod in my hand. I vape as much as is necessary, then I get up, go get dressed, and go to work.

As for health or energy effects, I really notice no differences.

I don't notice any difference in my ability to breathe, or any real difference in my allergies. The wife says I don't cough nearly as much now, but I remind her that my cough wasn't so much from smoking, but from my allergies, and that I still cough occasionally on vape (especially if I take too large a hit or have the watts turned up too high on one of my mods).

I don't have any more or less energy. I don't sleep any better or worse. My libido is the same. My bowels are regular. I don't feel dehydrated or over-hydrated. For all intents and purposes, everything's pretty much the same.

Except my ability to smell -- which has definitely come back quite a bit, even in a week's time. I have noticed that. Smokers basically have an incredibly dulled sense of smell and taste. My taste is normal, but my sense of smell has indeed increased now that I'm off the cigarettes -- which is good, at least.

People have told me the first week is and will be the hardest of all, and while I understand that, the vast majority of the time I've felt...well, normal. I have had cravings from time to time, but vaping for a bit does tend to lessen or eliminate those. Sometimes the cravings are quite bad, quite strong, to the point where I pace back and forth and want to pull my hair out. But they do, eventually, go away. Keeping busy helps -- finding something to occupy my mind, even if it's playing a game on my phone for a few minutes or reading a news article -- will make it ease off somewhat.

"I can't promise I'll never smoke again," I told the wife. "I can't say that I'll never go to the store and pick up a pack of smokes when and if I want them."

I am correct in saying this; I can make no absolute promises that I'm not sure I can keep. In the short run -- I've only been a non-smoker for a week -- I can deal with it, stay off the cigarettes, compartmentalize and vape a lot more to make up for it, but in the long run? I don't know, I can't promise anything. I can only take it day by day, one week at a time. As the days go on, the cravings do get worse -- I won't lie. It's either going to come to the point where I can push through them and ignore them long enough to where they go away, or I can't.

On some level, I think I'm going into a psychological or physiological panic mode. I have smoked for so long that when I stop, even with vaping, everything inside me panics at full throttle. I hear those little voices inside my head (not schizophrenic ones, but more like the devil on my shoulder) telling me things like how long can you do this? or do you even know who you are without cigarettes? do you like that person? are you even the SAME person? And I honestly don't know how to answer those questions.

I know the answer to the last one, at least, if I don't have some sort of nicotine replacement to get me off the cigarettes, and the answer is an absolute no, I am not the same person.

I know the answer because the last time I had to quit smoking it was not because I wanted to, but because I had zero money to do so. I had just moved to Kansas, the ex had just entered grad school and I was jobless and unable to even get the local sub shop to hire me, much less able to get a job anywhere else, and I had $3 in my bank account when a pack of cigarettes at the time was about $4. My mind was foggy. I couldn't sleep well. I was having cold sweats off and on, and was almost constantly constipated. I was a terrible, evil person to be around at any time for any reason, and was very close to having an absolute psychotic break. When I finally was able to get a pack of cigarettes again after a few weeks, once the ex got her first paychecks and we could afford to go to the grocery store again, I smoked through three of them in rapid succession and cannot describe or put into words the sense of euphoria and bliss I felt, and all was well again -- I was, once more, myself, in the span of ten minutes or so. It was an immediate night and day difference.

That's the hold cigarettes have on me. I'm sure if you are or have ever been an addict for anything, you understand what I'm taking about.

I've been a smoker for all of my adult life, and this is the first time I've ever quit willingly and made the choice to do so. I mean, the vapes absolutely are the only things helping me to do it, yes, but that only goes so far -- the rest is willpower. The rest is me wanting to be done. And the funny thing about willpower is that I have a bunch of it when I have my vape in front of me and accessible, but have absolutely none of it when I don't or when the vape doesn't seem to be working the way it needs to.

For as much as I do not care what people think of me in most situations, however, the same does not hold true when I'm trying to stay off the cigarettes. I have purposely not mentioned anything on my personal Facebook page about me quitting, nor will I make a big deal about it to anyone but close friends and family (namely, the wife and her parents, and very few others). This is because, in the case that I do fail, with the more people who know the more I will be judged and the more I'll have to admit to my shortcomings. I'm a Slytherin; we don't like admitting our shortcomings. Ever. And I do not take criticism of any sort well -- I never have. I don't want anyone to have expectations of me that I fail to live up to. I don't want people to look at me down their noses and think (or say) "oh, so he's not perfect, he is fallible." My choices, as well as my abilities or inabilities to complete my goals, are mine and mine alone -- I refuse to be judged poorly for them by anyone.

I will, of course, keep everyone updated on what happens and how I feel.

The Last of the Cigarettes

I mentioned a few posts back in my blog that I am vaping now. I am, as they say, one of those vaper people.

I am okay with being identified this way.

I smoked cigarettes for over fifteen years. I am sure, over that time, that they contributed to a decline in overall general health for me. I was a pack a day smoker, or more, for all of that time -- sometimes, in college, it was two packs a day.

As an early birthday present in December, the wife said she would be more than happy to help me quit by switching over to vaping/vape devices. She told me to pick out a kit, pick out any accessories I would need, and she would get it for me -- order it online right then and there -- as she wanted me to get something I wanted and to be happy.

Mind you, I'd tried vaping before, about three years prior -- I'd had an electronic cigarette, one of the little tobacco-flavored ones, which was fine -- but it was not a cigarette. I used it off and on, and then used some of the disposable ones (which would run out of charge/flavor juice inside too quickly and go dead), before getting a little eGo battery starter kit with some high-nicotine (18mg) "Turkish Tobacco" juice. I liked it, but it made me cough and hurt my throat. I went down to 9mg nicotine a short while later, got a fruity-flavored juice in a new tank, and it did the same thing -- plus the tank leaked everywhere no matter what I did. I gave up on it and went back to cigarettes full-time as it had made me somewhat frustrated.

In the interim between that time and four months ago when I dove back in, the vaping market -- no, the vaping culture -- exploded. Different companies began producing different juices, setups (known as "mods") and tanks -- all of which was foreign to me. I saw friends and co-workers carrying around large mechanical mods made of stainless steel and/or copper, mods that looked like lightsabers or sonic screwdrivers. I saw them taking deep breaths from their devices and watched them exhale full-on clouds from their lungs, enough to fill rooms and fog up car interiors or windows. I was fascinated, if only in a morbid-curiosity sort of way -- if these people could get off the cigarettes with these electronic things, why couldn't I?

So I consulted with these friends and coworkers for advice -- what's the best juice? what's the best "bang for the buck" when it comes to mods? how much nicotine should I use? what is your favorite tank and/or setup, and why? I pooled as much information together as I could about all sorts of things I had previously no clue about. I asked for suggestions, for websites to purchase materials from, for reviews, for every bit of input I could get.

Finally, after a few weeks, I just let the wife pick out a mod kit for me after giving her some basic requirements of what I thought I would need. She picked an Eleaf 60w iStick, a good basic device that wasn't too weak and wasn't too powerful, and was a good base starter kit. She also made sure I had two rechargeable batteries (the mod only needed one, so I'd have a spare), a wall charger for said batteries, and a battery case. Once it all arrived, I went to one of the local vape shops here in town and purchased a bottle of The Milkman, a favorite flavor of one of my coworkers, and went to town on it. Proverbially, of course.

I liked it. I liked it a lot. But, at the time, it was simply a novelty more than anything else -- a "hey guys, look at me, being one of the cool kids now" and, I definitely want to stress, it was not a cigarette. It helped, and helped a lot, but it was definitely not a cigarette.

Still, I was able to cut back on my smoking by a decent amount. I vaped through the first bottle of The Milkman pretty quickly, and immediately ordered two more bottles from VaporDNA, who shipped them out quickly and painlessly. I acquired a few more bottles of different flavors from my friends, and found Vape Wild, the site I now use for all of my juice purchases, to sell great juices in large quantities for unbelievable prices. I began ordering sample packs and larger bottles of single flavors almost in bulk, spending $35-50 every two weeks or so on all of the juices I wanted to taste and to try.

And then, shortly after Christmas, the worst thing ever happened to a new vaper: my mod stopped working. I switched out tanks to my backup tank, still nothing. I switched coils in both tanks, fiddled with the connectors, even used stabilizer O-rings to make sure everything was connected properly -- still nothing. The mod would fire intermittently and give me a breath of vapor, and then it would either fry the coil or would stop working completely, giving me "atomizer short" errors.

I was beyond frustrated. I felt like I had wasted so much time, effort, and money on not only the mod itself, but all of the juices, tanks, and accessories I had purchased. It was also the beginning of January, and it was cold outside -- and while I could vape in the house, I could not smoke in the house. While I was already smoking a lot less than before, I was still smoking -- trying to wean myself off with the vape more than anything else.

After a day or so of frustration, I took stock of everything I had. I'd spent about $200 on juices and another $50 on tanks (not to mention extra coils for the tanks as well) and I wasn't about to give up now. I'd just gotten an increase on my credit card limit for one of my best cards, and now was as good a time as any to use it. With the mindset of if this gets me off the cigarettes, it will save me money as well as probably my life in the long run, I bit the bullet and logged on to purchase not one, but two more new mods -- I wasn't going to go without having a "backup" again. Those mods were the Smok Micro One 80w and the Eleaf iStick 40w, the latter being the smaller and slightly less powerful version of the mod that had died on me. Both had internal batteries that charged via USB as well, so I didn't have to worry about carrying spare batteries or making sure I had one charged and ready to go at all times.

Fast forward to today, and I use both mods on a daily basis -- sometimes it's hard to choose which one I want to take to work with me, or which one I want to carry when I go out to run errands and/or do shopping or dinner with the parents.

My collection grew, as well -- as much as it was a means to an end, it became a full-on hobby, a minor obsession. Right now I have three full time mods I switch between (the third being a red Kangertech KBOX 120, which I'm using right now), a backup 40w iStick that is still sealed in its box, a Kangertech KBOX Mini 60w Platinum which I also keep as a second backup, and today I ordered a Smok Stick One Plus kit simply because it bills itself as a "smart" mechanical mod. Right now I have close to ten different tanks -- several multiples, some small, some large, and two more still coming to me in the mail even now -- all with enough extra coils to last me for months on end. And, not to be outdone, I have probably fifty bottles of juice hanging on the wall in the living room in a spice rack specifically purchased and mounted to keep the juice in.

The wife, of course, finds all of this quaint and exceedingly amusing. She'll watch me order a bunch of juice only to see me give half of it away to friends over the course of the weeks/months following (I've now found my 5-7 go-to flavors, and buy it in bulk -- but I do go for the "special" or "limited edition" juices from time to time, depending on what they are).

For the record, my go-to juices are Circus Bear (strawberry/banana custard), Wrecking Ball (banana cream), Fruit Hoops (like a similarly-named cereal), Strawberries & Cream (no flavor explanation necessary here), Murica (bomb pop), Bombshell Batter (blueberry/lemon pound cake), Butterbeer (butterscotch cream soda) and Smurf Cake (blueberry cake-pie).

There are others, of course, but those are my staples. I like the coffee and nutty/toffee juices too, as well as a few menthol flavors, but not all the time and only in small amounts.

The wife will listen to me talk about different juices or mods or tanks or what-have-you for hours on end at times, all with a wry smile on her face -- she doesn't care that she doesn't know about everything I'm talking about (though I'm sure she's learned a lot), but she is happy to see me have a passion of sorts that I am vocal about, and is very proud of me that I've almost quit smoking. I've even helped several people at work get on the vaping train, including one Director and his wife, to help them get away from smoking. It's like I'm a pusher -- only the first taste is free, etc. In the short few months I've been really "into it," I've become a bit of an expert -- I've even joined a few groups on Facebook which I am fairly active in, all to help people out and give them advice. I've studied, I've done research, and it has, indeed, become a passion of mine.

That being said, however, is not the point of this post.

The point of this post is that I have not, unfortunately, been able to completely quit smoking.

As I mentioned above, vaping is many things, and it is very fun, therapeutic, and something I very much enjoy -- enjoy more than many other things in my life, in fact -- but it is not a cigarette. 

For those of you who are current or former smokers, you know what I'm talking about. Whether you smoked five cigarettes a day or fifty, it is not a habit that can easily be broken no matter what you try to do to replace it or wean off of it. It is a dirty habit, a shameful one, and an (increasingly so) expensive one. I take no pride in the fact that I smoke, especially not when I'm still smoking after many months of being one of the biggest vaping advocates I know. I feel like a traitor, or at the very least, a hypocrite.

But it is hard. It is very hard to just quit, to switch from one habit to another, all with the goal of being done with everything completely at some point. Because, honestly, that is the goal here -- for all of the time and money I've put into the vaping thing, the overall goal is to be able to quit that as well after some time. I don't want to turn one habit into another, at least not forever.

That being said, I have gone from being a pack a day smoker down to four packs a week, then to two. Presently, I have five singular cigarettes left, and I want them to be the last cigarettes I ever purchase.

It's time; I want to be done with them. The goal was originally to be done with smoking completely by the beginning of summer, when it would be nice enough to sit out on the porch every morning before work and not freeze, drink a cup of coffee and hold my mod and not need a cigarette instead. But that goal got pushed up as I began to smoke less and less, and as I purchased more vapor accessories, flavors of juices, mods, and tanks. I've gone whole hog on the vaping thing at this point, and it's really something I enjoy -- I no longer have a true physical or psychological need for the cigarettes, it's just a habit. And it's a habit that finally, I can say I want to be completely rid of. The latest catalyst is the two aforementioned tanks that are on their way to me now via international mail -- they're tanks I've been looking forward to owning and using for months (the Smok TFV4), which I already know I'll love as I have the miniature version already.

Many friends have told me that the only way to stop smoking is to stop allowing myself to smoke -- I vape now, so just quit buying them. Quit buying the cigarettes, remove yourself from situations where you'd want to smoke, and make the resolve to be done.

That's really all it is at this point -- being steely in my resolve. I can't tell you how many times I've fantasized about waking up in the morning and not needing a cigarette, or have wanted go out somewhere and not have to check all of my pockets for my pack and my lighter beforehand. Smoking in my house in Kansas turned the walls of that place from white to brown; I can't imagine how much better my lungs will feel once they don't have to deal with that anymore.

Is it going to be hard, is it going to be rough going for those first few days or weeks? You bet. The juice I vape is 3mg nicotine; it's very low. Higher nicotine levels than that burn my throat or make me cough like crazy (especially in all of these new, high-tech sub-ohm vaping devices), but that's good -- it means that I've already done more than half the work for myself. Vaping that low means I've already cut myself off from a lot of nicotine.

I've gotten good support from my friends, the wife (of course) and the wife's family; my own parents seem sort of ambivalent or aloof about my goals here, though that's probably due to them not knowing a whole lot about anything I'm talking about when I mention vaping to them (they've mostly ignored it). As contact with my parents has become more and more sporadic since I got married, oh well. There's not a whole lot of talking or chatting between us anymore as I am usually so swamped with work and there's always something else to do around the house.

So that's where my life is at right now. Hopefully, in my next post I will be able to tell you how many days/weeks I've gone cigarette-free.

#slytherinpride

I am a Slytherin. I am a proud Slytherin. I absolutely embody many traits of Slytherins (though I embody several traits of the other houses as well).

I'm sure this surprises some of you, and for others, you are probably thinking "yeah, that's about right." When Pottermore got its makeover, it was roughly around the time the wife and I purchased the Blu-rays of all eight Harry Potter movies -- none of which I'd seen in years (and several which I'd never seen all the way through from beginning to end), and I took the sorting hat test.

I thought for years that I would be, as one of my friends likes to call herself as well, a "textbook Ravenclaw." I have many House Ravenclaw traits, including the quest for knowledge and the dedication/desire to be the smartest and the best.

But I have arrogance, I have ego, I have a desire for power and control of all things possible. I am always trying to climb the proverbial ladder, in almost all situations. I am not evil (which many of you can attest to), but I do have an evil side, yes, a mean streak that will occasionally come out. I have little patience or understanding for incompetence or failure, and even less patience for incompetence or failure in someone I know to be competent and successful. I am not in blatant disregard of the rules -- in fact, I tend to follow the rules as much as I can, and expect others to do the same -- yet I can and will absolutely bend said rules as much as possible if in doing so I can gain an upper hand in any given situation, and cover my tracks behind me.

These aren't just things I've noticed in passing -- many of these personality traits are core parts of my personality, my soul, that make me who I am.

From the Pottermore Wiki page:

Slytherins are associated with cunning, ambition and a tendency to look after their own. Their Pottermore welcome letter describes Slytherin as the "coolest and edgiest house in the school." which most Slytherins can confirm. Slytherin has produced its share of Dark witches and wizards, but unlike the other houses, members are not afraid to admit it as one of the Slytherin traits is ambition and greatness. Its students are often feared by the other houses, but most Slytherins are actually very kind (unless you happen to get on their bad side for some reason). 

Many view Slytherin as an evil house. According to the welcome letter, this is not necessarily true. It is true that some Slytherins have achieved greatness through evil deeds, but there are just as many if not more who have done great, non-evil things to achieve greatness. 

Slytherins are always striving to be the best, something they have in common with Ravenclaws. However, Slytherins will never leave their own to be the best. 

And, from the official Harry Potter Wiki:

Slytherins tend to be ambitious, shrewd, cunning, strong leaders, and achievement-oriented. They also have highly developed senses of self-preservation.^[7] This means that Slytherins tend to hesitate before acting, so as to weigh all possible outcomes before deciding exactly what should be done.

Well then.

I knew almost as soon as I began the sorting hat test that it would place me into Slytherin -- the test isn't perfect by any means, but it is the one sanctioned by Rowling herself, so it's the one everyone should and does trust.

For the record, as I'm sure you're curious -- my wife is a Hufflepuff, as is her mother, one of her sisters, and several of our close friends. The sister and brother-in-law who gave us my truck are both Gryffindors. I know very few Ravenclaws -- true Ravenclaws, anyway -- and even fewer Slytherins. It sort of makes me the odd man out in our combined family as well, as I am the only Slytherin I know of in both my family as well as the wife's.

Well, let me take that back -- I'm fairly certain that if my mother took the test, she'd be a Slytherin. As well as at least one, if not both, of my brothers. I'm much less certain about either of them.

When I found out I was Slytherin, I went "whole hog" with it, as they say. I got us banners for the wall in our bedroom -- Slytherin on my side of the bed, Hufflepuff on the wife's. I own no fewer than three Slytherin shirts (with three more on the way to me in the mail now) and a Slytherin coffee mug. My Facebook is covered in Slytherin things, and my profile message on our work IM program is #slytherinpride, with my avatar photo the Slytherin crest.

The wife finds it all very amusing and nerdy, especially for a guy who's never read any of the books (well, I read about half of the first one about ten years ago). I have, however, seen the movies. I am disappointed with the way most Slytherins are portrayed and have had long discussions about this with my wife -- most of them are portrayed as one-dimensional characters, at least in the films. It's all "hey, we're Slytherins, let's be dicks because this story needs villains!" And I'm all like "no, just because the biggest dick in the wizarding world just happens to be the heir to Salazar Slytherin and he kills a whole bunch of people doesn't mean that all of us are fuckholes."



In my research to learn more about Slytherin House, I came across an interesting little quiz; these seventeen questions were written from the perspective of a Gryffindor as questions Gryffindors have for Slytherins. They came from this article, which was posted some time ago on Buzzfeed. As a Slytherin, I feel it is my duty to answer them.

1. How does it feel to be a part of the most loathed house at Hogwarts?

Oh, I don't know, how does it feel to be in a house full of cocky little pricks who think they're better than everyone else just because Harry Potter was one of you?

2. Do you ever secretly wish you were a Gryffindor?

Do you ever secretly wish Merlin was a Gryffindor? I bet you do. 

3. Are you proud of the reputation your house has in the school?

Wouldn't you be?

4. Do you honestly believe the teachings of Salazar Slytherin? The whole pureblood thing?

No. Truthfully, I couldn't care less about it.

5. Could someone tell Millicent Bulstrode to stop spreading cat hairs everywhere?

Ugh, again with the cat hair. Stop whining.

6. Does it bother you that, like, 99 percent of the world believes Gryffindor is the best house?

I can't help that people are stupid. Plus, it keeps the attention off of us.

7. Although not all Slytherins are terrible, do you ever feel weird knowing that your crest was named after one of the most hated creatures of all time?

What, the snake? There's nothing wrong with snakes. They eat rats, keep the pest population down, scare whiners...

8. Does it make you feel weird that Malfoy, your Quidditch seeker, had to buy his way on to the team?

Malfoy is a sniveling little snot who doesn't deserve to be a Slytherin anyhow, so I don't believe this question warrants a response.

9. On a scale from one to 10, how mad were you all when Dumbledore awarded Gryffindor the House Cup after the whole Philosopher’s Stone thing?

Do you mean on a scale of one to fucking horseshit? I think that's what you meant, right?

10. Do you feel a little weird knowing that some of your parents are Death Eaters?!

Meh, we all have our own goals and passions. Who are you to judge? Besides, while I don't approve of the Death Eaters' actions, you have to admit that the Dark Mark is badass.

11. Could one of you notify Blaise Zabini to drop by the Gryffindor common room one day? He’s cute.

Oh yeah, like he'd associate with any of you little pricks.

12. Does it suck that your common room is located in the dungeons?

You mean "under the Black Lake"? Because that's where the common room is, and let me tell you, that's pretty fucking awesome.

13. Are you guys ever astonished by how dim Crabbe and Goyle are?

I'm sure the other houses have some idiots in them too, you know.

14. Harry was definitely the winner of the duel between him and Malfoy in year two, right?

Who cares?

15. Do you all ever make friends with people in other Hogwarts houses?

Of course, but that's because I don't have prejudices against people just because a hat told them what part of the building they're going to sleep in for seven years.

16. Is it annoying that the most popular person who ever lived is a Gryffindor?

Popularity is vain and fleeting.

17. And finally, if you could be sorted again, would you ask the Sorting Hat to be a Gryffindor?

Psh, no.