Getting Fit, the Brandon Way

March 2019.

We've now lived in the house for almost exactly six months, and in that time a lot has happened. I myself haven't updated this blog here since Thanksgiving week, so let's do a quick recap of some major events since then:

1. My job will eventually disappear.
I haven't really spoken much about my job as of late, but in the past six months or so I've lost a lot of the stability and security I had with it. My firm was bought out by an Indian-owned outsourcing company whose overall goal is to cut costs in any and every way possible. As such, the contract that myself and my employees work under -- as well as everyone else in our firm -- has a hard out at the end of this year. Hard out meaning end of the line, full stop, the job will still exist but it won't be us in America doing it anymore, hit the bricks pal. Many employees have already left, including some close friends, and many more are looking to get out before the endgame. I am of the latter; I'm still there, but I know the end is coming and as such have been looking and applying for other forms of gainful employment since around Christmas or so. Current projections have my team lasting at least until the end of summer or so, but anything past that is a mystery. It also doesn't help in the present that said job has become a miserable slog of stress almost every single night I'm there, to the point where I'm pretty sure it's regularly negatively affecting my health. One night a few months ago, my heart rate dropped to something like 40 beats a minute over the span of about five minutes and I came very close to passing out. To this day I have no idea why.


2. The health kick continues.
I mentioned here before that I became vegetarian shortly before we purchased this house (late August, something like that) and that remains a thing. My weight loss stalled out quite a bit over the holidays, and I put a little bit of weight back on, but right now I've lost a net total of about 40 pounds since January 2018. It's not so much the vegetarianism as it is just being mindful of what I eat and how much of it I eat. I also don't think I could ever go full vegan -- I love cheese far, far too much to ever go without it. It is a necessary evil for me. I also don't know if I'll remain vegetarian indefinitely or what have you; it's not so much a life philosophy for me as it is for others. I just want to be healthier, and any diet and exercise plan has to be live-able. If I come to a time where I need to do something else, or I need to make a change, I'll address that when I come to it.


3. This winter has fucking sucked.
We're out of winter and into spring now, of course, but for the record, I've lived in the midwest almost 13 years now and I've seen a lot of nasty weather, from tornadoes and tennis-ball-sized hail to 18-inch snowstorms and high temperatures of -15. I'm not sure I've seen a winter as nasty as the one we just had since I was living in West Virginia in the 90s and early 2000s. Adding insult to injury, when you own your own home in Omaha, you have to shovel your own driveway and sidewalks. If you don't, even if you have nowhere to go and you're snowed in and the like, the city issues you a steep fine.


4. The flooding.
I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the Nebraska flooding, which a few weeks ago was one of the biggest stories in the country. Because of all of the snow and all of the rain, once it got warmer everything here flooded. Like, a lot. Entire towns underwater, bridges and roads washed out, etc. Some of them will not reopen for many months or until they are rebuilt (many are still closed now). Several of my coworkers and employees were uprooted and/or made completely homeless by the flooding, and the wife and I did what we could to help out via donations and gift cards and by organizing/working with local charities. The wife worked with some charity groups to get one of my employees put up in a hotel for a week for no cost to them, as well. Suffice it to say, though, it's bad. However, we are lucky enough to live in a part of town that's not been affected by any of the flooding, and I have seen very little, if any, of it firsthand. I have fielded many questions about it from friends and family out of state, though.


5. The new Brandon mentality
Jumping a bit off #2, the wife and I have purchased a Planet Fitness membership, and goddamn do we ever use it. I've been hitting the gym for 60-90 minute workout sessions generally 3x a week. I had to start slow (because it hurt after not really working out in about ten years) but now I'm doing 2-3 miles cardio per session as well as weights and abs pretty much every time I'm there. I sweat, I burn calories, I take muscle-supporting supplements (BCAAs and B-vitamins) and every time I'm there it gets easier than the last. My goal is to get swole, or as I put it on Facebook, #getswole. I'll let everyone know how it goes, of course, but I want to look like a bodybuilder with nicely-defined muscles by the end of the year.

The Winds of November

Thanksgiving week, 2018.

Thanksgiving has always held a small, special place in a dark corner of my dead little heart. I don't know exactly why. Perhaps it's because, for many years, it was time spent with my family, back when my grandmother was still alive, back when the entire family got along and wasn't embroiled in one spat or another (some of which have now gone on so long that most of my extended family members no longer speak to one another).

Perhaps it's because I have fond memories of waking up to watch the Macy's parade, a tradition I still continue as I slowly lurch my way into middle age. This year, I took off the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving specifically so I can sleep and get up early to watch the parade.

Perhaps it's because during my formative years, it was always a week I had off school (depending on whatever school district I was part of at the time, it was either the full week or a partial week), a week I could mostly detach from the world.

Perhaps it's because Thanksgiving, and the Black Friday that always follows, ushers in the beginning of the Christmas season.

There were several years in a row, even during times where I didn't have much money, that I went to bed early on the night of Thanksgiving, getting up at 3AM to go Black Friday shopping in the cold darkness either by myself or with my ex and her mother, the latter of whom was absolutely thrilled by the hunt of the chase. My Dirt Devil stick vac, which I used in four different residences in three different states until I tossed it upon moving into this house, was a $12 Black Friday deal at Target in 2007 or '08. I'm sure there are a few other notable Black Friday purchases around the house still -- my Blu-ray player was one of them, for example, a $50 impulse buy from Walmart in Kansas when I went to pick up cigarettes at 2AM one year after Black Friday had ended.

At age 35, while I am still to some extent a consumer whore, I haven't the slightest interest in Black Friday shopping.

"Wife," I said to Daisy, "just in case you were interested or had any plans..." I began, even though I already knew she didn't, "...there's only one item in any Black Friday ad I've seen that I'm remotely interested in."

"Oh?"

"Walmart has the newest, best Roku for $49," I said. "That's half off."

"Okay," she said, not really looking up from whatever she was doing.

And that was the extent of our Christmas shopping discussion.

As for Daisy, I'm done shopping for her already; the last of her gifts arrive here this week.

It doesn't really matter anyhow. I told her that she didn't need to get me anything, but if she wanted to, the only stuff I wanted was that aforementioned Roku and two more pairs of the jeans I like from Duluth Trading Company. I have Amazon Prime -- believe me, if there's anything I can't live without, I order it and it gets here in two days, with the delivery drivers texting me a picture of it sitting on my doorstep when it arrives.

What a glorious new century we live in.

As you all know, Christmas has always been far from my favorite time of year, at least since I've been an adult. I've had some good ones, yes, and I've also had some awful ones. My birthday falling five days beforehand doesn't usually help much either. I've pretty much stopped trying to celebrate my birthday much as of late over the past few years. About the most I do these days is try to make it the first day I take off over the course of the holidays when I burn the most PTO possible to not have to enter the building between my birthday and after Christmas. Winter in Nebraska sucks, there's still three months of it to deal with after Christmas is over, and as most of you know, I'm an atheist, so there's not much spiritual comfort I get out of the holidays.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Thanksgiving this year will be just us and Daisy's parents, with maybe a longtime family friend joining us. I'm okay with this; I'm looking forward to the downtime more than anything else. I never get any real time with Daisy or her parents anymore, and that time has lessened more that we've moved into this new house, since there's always something else to be done when it comes to upkeep or cleaning,

It also isn't lost on me that it was 12 years ago this week that I moved to the midwest and my, shall we say, independent life started. I lived with my ex and/or her family for the first five years of that, and for the past seven I've either lived on my own or with my wife. There are bits and pieces of that time and all of the places I've lived scattered around the house, from furniture of different sorts to more sentimental items like clothing or small electronics. There is very little I brought out here with me from West Virginia in that initial move that has still survived -- less than ten items of clothing, an engraved lighter my mother gave me as a college graduation gift, an old laptop (that still works, by the way), a knife or two, etc. I do still have my old cell phone I bought 12 years ago this month, an old Nokia prepaid phone, just in the event that I might need it in an emergency, even though I probably never will.

As I mentioned in my last post, I sold my truck.

I wasn't exactly sorry to see it go, but I wasn't exactly not sorry either. I got something like $880 out of it, I can't remember the exact number. The entire experience was miserable, to be honest with you. They sent the people to pick it up at the wrong time on the wrong day, said people thought I was donating and not selling it (so they had to cut me a check on the spot), and I had no tools readily available to remove the plates, so we had to call and make an appointment to go to the junkyard I'd sold it to after the fact and get the plates the next day -- thankfully the wife and her parents did that, and I am grateful they did so.

Apparently I can turn in the plates to the DMV with my registration and get a small refund on the registration. At some point. I don't exactly know how it works and I've been too fried and exhausted to research it. Also, it's not like I could do it on my own, because, well, no vehicle. Except for weekends, whenever I'm home, I'm either asleep or the wife is at work...with the car.

I'll get something new to drive eventually. I was telling Daisy tonight how I may hold out for the new 2020 Bronco, as it looks beautiful.

Here's hoping they keep the removable cap.

Work continues, both in and out of the house. With the new door on the closet now, Daisy's new project is to paint the inside of the closet before we put our clothing in there. So yes, for the past two months now, I've been living out of clothing boxes and tubs with no free access to my actual clothing. To be fair, boxes still fill a good chunk of the house -- boxes of the wife's clothing line the bedroom and boxes of books and other office things line her office. There are still three small boxes in the kitchen, and probably 20 or more in the garage of stuff that needs to be put away, with six or seven more in the living room. I don't know where all of this stuff is going to go, to be honest with you. I got rid of most of my worldly possessions when we moved into this house, simply so I could sell it for cash and so I wouldn't have to move it -- the wife did not. She got rid of some stuff, yes, but not nearly the amount I did. My mother has asked me repeatedly for pictures of the interior of the house, but well, until everything's put the fuck away and unpacked properly I can't really snap any, as it's not really attractive photography to have boxes scattered everywhere.

The cats have adjusted well to their new home; they seem to enjoy having all the new extra space and new hiding spots/new places to sleep, and overall seem to be getting along better. I purchased a new water fountain for them when we moved in, and set that up a few weeks ago -- to them I think it's a calming piece of home, an anchor that lets them know they're safe and this is where they belong.

As for us, well, it's felt like home since we settled in, but I'm still getting used to owning a house instead of writing someone a rent check every month. It'll take a bit more getting used to, I'm sure, before everything feels completely normal. Once we're all unpacked and settle in over the winter months, it'll be more comforting instead of alien and strange, or like a hotel we're just occupying. We'll see.

Homeward Bound, Part II

We are in the new house.

The past ten days have been frantic and not very relaxing, to put it mildly. For many of them I have just wanted to sleep, to sit, to collapse into my overstuffed chair and be done with the world and house stuff and anything else for a good long time. Both the wife and I have spent far more time awake than asleep as of late, napping here and there when we can and when we can't, not sleeping for 24-30 hour stretches.

But, we are in the house.

And we are still in the apartment. Sort of.

Our last day of our lease is October 5 -- that's this coming Friday (as I write this, anyhow) -- a mere six days away. Today is Sunday, and we moved into the house on Tuesday. Since Tuesday we have been spending many hours every day gutting and cleaning the old place out. It is 3:30 in the morning now and Daisy and I just returned home from yet another cleaning run about two hours ago. The vast majority of everything is done now -- we've already taken care of the hardest stuff, so to speak, and what's left is just ancillary for the most part.

I have burned through every hour of PTO I had available for work, and will now need to rebuild and rack up some time between now and the holidays in order to get my birthday off and the like. While I am looking to move on from that job in telecom hell sooner rather than later, it is a job, and it is something I need to be able to keep for as long as I can, especially now that a mortgage rides on it.

We have a mortgage. We are homeowners. The actual processing of the past ten days' events hasn't really sunk in yet.

I suppose I should start from the beginning with a brief recap of events.

Hi, my name is Brandon. You might remember me from blogs such as the one you're reading. I'm a vegetarian atheist with three cats and a punk rock haircut, and I work as a contractor for the largest telecommunications corporation on the planet. My younger-than-me vegan wife holds a reasonably secure and upward-mobile position in the finance industry and is the brains and cogs of our entire marriage. Welcome to my world. We bought a house.

Now that you're up to speed, here's what happened.

On Monday night we did our final walkthrough of the house with the sellers present. They made sure we had spare keys and knew how everything worked, and said they'd be out by the morning to start on their own next big adventure in life.

Truth be told, they were -- we signed all of the closing documents and paperwork in our realtor's office at 8AM on Tuesday morning in the midst of a raging fall thunderstorm, then came back to the apartment -- new keys in hand, to wait for the movers. Our movers came, they loaded everything up, and by around 4PM they were done, paid, and we were in a house full of boxes with very little actual furniture to speak of.

By 5PM we were at the furniture store picking out our new living room furniture and purchasing rugs and the like. We got a giant sectional sofa set that cost more than four times what I paid for my first car (my Monte Carlo, if you folks remember that from back in the day) scheduled to be delivered Thursday. We got pizza for dinner and ended our very, very long day by passing out in different places -- me in my overstuffed chair in my new office, and the wife on the bed, which was at that time the only piece of furniture that could be slept on.

Well, I mean, I guess a person could sleep on a dining room table if they really wanted to, but who wants that?

Anyway.

Truthfully, the days all run together. Once in the house, we still spent a large number of hours over at the apartment, packing and cleaning what was left. Because of our jobs and our offset schedules (the wife works dayshift, I work overnights), packing and cleaning together wasn't exactly something we could really do as a team that well.  As a result, the entire kitchen and both bathrooms in the apartment were left to deal with later, and we focused on the movers taking all the boxes and the large items we couldn't move ourselves. Tonight we finished the cleaning of the most difficult rooms -- the laundry room and the back bathroom -- and we're still nowhere near done, even though the apartment looks pretty flawless in most ways. We didn't get our TV moved over here until last night, and it wasn't until tonight that I actually brought my truck over here. This leads to amusing conversations such as this one:

Side note -- yes, I own two of the expensive, exquisitely-detailed Black Series lightsabers. One is Luke's, one is Vader's.

So, anyway, on Thursday our furniture arrived. Fully wrapped and unassembled. The house has French doors, so we swung those open and with great pains both spiritual and physical, we got all six pieces of this massive sectional sofa into the house...only to find that to screw on the legs, we needed power tools.

A quick drive to Lowe's later, we had those tools and the wife and I spent hours unwrapping the furniture, setting it up, and screwing on leg after leg after leg. Do you know how many legs a six-piece sectional sofa has? The answer is 24. Yes, twenty-four. The power drill/electric screwdriver we got had its battery die about 2/3 into the workload, and...


***intermission***


It is now a week later and I can tell you without shame that I fell the fuck asleep while writing the above, which is why it stopped abruptly.

Work still continues in the house, though we are now completely out of the apartment -- keys turned in, final walkthrough done, no need to ever darken the door of that place again. The wife cried because of all of the memories we'd made there, but in the end she was just as happy as I was to never have to go back. Onward and upward -- we own a house now.

The building manager did a sixty-second walkthrough and called it good, and said we'd be getting a deposit check back in a few weeks -- didn't say for how much, if we'd be getting the full deposit back or what, but truthfully I don't exactly care at this point. I'm happy to wash my hands of that place after all the maintenance problems we had in it within the past eighteen months or so.

When I say "work continues" at the new house, I actually mean that. We're getting a closet door installed sometime this week by the aforementioned folks at Lowe's, and the door plus installation was only about $200, so we have that going for us. We also haven't unpacked everything yet -- there are still probably 30 boxes in the garage and at least that within all the rooms of the house as well. Without a door on the closet in the master bedroom, we can't unpack our clothing as we can't keep the cats out of the closet without using the boxes of clothing to block it off. As such, we've both had to go in there a few times, moving the boxes and the wife's dresser we're currently using to block the door, to grab whatever clothing we need for the week before we have to block it back off.

I worked all of last week but took tonight off as I haven't had a true day off in several weeks now. Doing so puts me negative into PTO, but I don't exactly care at this point -- I also spent two hours tonight looking for and applying to other jobs. My goal is to be doing something else somewhere else by Thanksgiving. While that may not be possible I at least am trying my best. This house is closer to my job than ever before, yet I just...I can't keep doing it anymore. The stress and responsibility levels are too great, and the job itself never gets any easier -- ever. Unrealistic expectations abound, my team is unhappy with the direction the job is going, I am more unhappy than they are, my leadership is ambivalent at best on a good day and unhappy more and more by the day on the bad ones, and the smart people who have a way out are leaving like rats from a sinking ship -- making me the leader of the idiots, the lazy, the desperate, and the otherwise unemployable masses. I can't do that anymore. I have a Master's degree. My wife was able to get out, so I don't know why I can't.

I told the wife my dream is for her to get a promotion and get pregnant so I can be a stay-at-home-dad. Well, it's not really a dream per se, but something that would be nice. It's not like I wouldn't work; I'd just work on what I want to do (writing/editing/web stuff) versus needing to go into an office every day for ten hour shifts on overnights. There was once a time where I would've killed for an office job -- not anymore. I've done it for too long now and my real goal is to not have to wear pants while I work. Ever.

But alas, I do have to work. We have a mortgage now. It's a bit more expensive than the rent on the apartment was. And we're responsible for any problems the house has, obviously -- things like plumbing or roofing or putting a door on the closet. In hindsight, that last one really should've been something we asked the previous owners to do, because it's a pain in the dick.

My own office doesn't have a closet -- where the closet would be is where the previous owners put the washer and dryer. So I have my office in the laundry room, or vice versa -- which is nice and what I wanted -- but no storage space. It's fine, though. It is what it is. I'll be sharing the master bedroom closet with the wife, once the door is on it. And it's big enough.

In other news, I'm selling my truck.

Truth be told, the truck has sat in the driveway -- both here and at the apartment complex -- for months, only rarely being driven. It sucks gas like crazy, the tires are bald, it needs some new spark plugs and an oil change, and it's rusting out from underneath me. I don't have the time or money to give it the TLC it needs, so I'm selling it for about $800 -- which is close to what the tires alone would cost to replace, not to mention everything else -- and a decent deal for a seventeen-year-old truck. The buyers are one of those online "sell your vehicles to us" outfits, and they'll come to pick it up for free and haul it away. I'm setting up the appointment in the morning (or afternoon) when I wake up.

The goal in the next few months or so -- though realistically probably not until Spring -- is to get me a smaller subcompact four-door hatchback. I just need something cheap and reliable with an automatic transmission that will get me to and from work, wherever to and from work may be. It has to be four-door because if we do ever have kids, I need to be able to put the car seat(s) in the back seat. Rear-facing, of course. I can't tell you what model of vehicle I want, though I've had my eye on a few different ones. For example, I've always liked the styling of the Mitsubishi Mirage:

Just something small, economical, and point-A-to-point-B.

But I digress.

I mentioned above, briefly, that I have become a vegetarian. This wasn't a joke.

For those of you who have been following this blog for a while, you know that I have been on the path to betterment and wellness for some time now. Since January 1st of this year, I have now lost forty pounds. This isn't a massive accomplishment, of course, but it's a lot better than many others could do, so I'm counting it as a win.

Part of the weight loss has been thanks to the keto diet, which I was on for several months. However, there's so much meat and fat in the keto diet, and it didn't seem to help my metabolism or energy levels that much. The variety (or the ability to have some variety) was at first thrilling, but began to wear on me after a few months. I can only eat so many high-protein beef or turkey sticks or low-carb tortillas with my steamed vegetables before I snap and want a pizza, or Chinese food with fried rice, or some fucking french fries. I know there are people who stay on keto for years with great results, and more power to them, because I don't want to be chained to a diet for the rest of my life.

So, I slowly began adding carbs back into my diet once I had lost over 25 pounds, and with that, slowly began cutting back on the meats and cheeses almost subconsciously. It wasn't necessarily something I had planned, but I slowly leaned more and more towards vegetarianism.

And a funny thing happened -- I continued to lose weight. More slowly, of course, but pounds kept dropping. Within a month I had basically become vegetarian without even really noticing it. After a month I decided fuck it, let's see where this vegetarian thing goes. As such, I have not had any meat since...late August? Something like that. I didn't really keep track.

However, I want to make something very clear -- I am not vegan. My wife is. I am not. Foods containing dairy and eggs and the like are very much a continued part of my diet -- cheese is a large part of my life. I will get the fried rice with egg from the Chinese delivery place and not bat an eye, and I eat at least five sticks of string cheese pretty much every day. When available and if I'm in the mood, I'll put real milk in my coffee or real butter on my bagel. I do not plan to go vegan, but I will tell you that I do not eat meat anymore.

Friends have already asked me what this means for Gravy Season, and I told them it means nothing whatsoever. Gravy doesn't count in my book, for one, and for two, I don't particularly care. Gravy to me is the same as eating egg or dairy. I wouldn't be opposed to beef or chicken broth either, because I'm not eating an actual animal. Just juices from said animal. Look, my logic is complicated, and I simplify it by saying I don't eat meat. The whole "I don't eat anything with a face" or "I don't eat anything that had a mother" sort of thing applies here.

Besides, the wife makes a fantastic vegan gravy. She's like an alchemist in the kitchen.

I will say that my choice to go vegetarian is more health-based than it is morality-based, but obviously morals play into it quite a bit. I am now sort of disgusted by exactly how much meat-eating plays into our culture, and how much meat is actually out there and being consumed every day. Not that it was outwardly spoken or made a mantra or anything, but growing up, it was sort of an unwritten rule that it wasn't a meal unless meat was involved somewhere -- anything else was just a snack. I think a lot of people have that mindset, and until I stopped eating meat I didn't realize how pervasive it was in society.

This doesn't mean I'll be a vegetarian forever, or even 100% vegetarian all the time. If there's something with meat in it that I absolutely want, I'm not going to deny myself just because of some whim of ideology. And truth be told, in a few months I may hate being a vegetarian and everything it entails, and if that's the case, so be it. But, in the interim, I'm gonna let it ride and see what happens -- specifically, see if I keep losing weight.

Anyway, that's about all for now. This post is long enough. I'll keep everyone updated on the adventures with the new house and with my job searching, all in good time.

Homeward, Bound: Part I

We're moving.

The wife and I have had an offer accepted to purchase a home.

There's no need for a long intro here, nor is there a need for fanfare and victory celebrations or anything like that just yet -- it is what it is. We made an offer on a house we wanted, the seller accepted the offer, and our anticipated closing date is in about a week and a half.

Everything paperwork-wise is done at this point, and everything's wrapped up figuratively with a pretty little bow. We'll go sign the closing agreement, wire over the down payment, get the keys, and we'll be done. Two hours after that we move out of the apartment with hired movers that we're also paying a great deal of money to just to get it all done quickly and same-day. That evening, we'll be purchasing new furniture for next-day delivery. Over the course of the next week afterwards, we'll be scrubbing down this apartment and (thankfully) leaving it as a memory. Deuces, bitches. 

The house itself is gorgeous, about 40 years old, and in a decent neighborhood. It's closer to my job and slightly further away from the wife's job. My upstairs "office" houses the washer/dryer as well as contains ample room for my stuff, including my favorite overstuffed chair that's currently in the living room of our apartment -- it's the only piece of our living room furniture we're keeping aside from the storage ottoman, which will also be in there. The wife has her own craft room/office as well, and our master bedroom has a walk-in closet almost the size of our current kitchen. We're quite happy with the place.

With this comes a lot of work and tasks both large and small. Large tasks are the moving itself, as well as all of the cleaning and packing (which we haven't done a lot of yet, and will monopolize pretty much all of our free time for the next three weeks, roughly. The smaller tasks are numerous and time-consuming as well, such as getting all of the utilities transferred to the new place, figuring out logistics of address changes and the like for official documents like driver's licenses, bank accounts, credit cards, etc etc, and actually setting up the new place once moved in.

To those ends, for the past few weeks (read: since we knew the house was ours), we've been gutting this apartment as much as possible -- a trend that we know will continue on a more amped-up scale now that our timeframe for the move shortens more by the day. I've been especially brutal with my own gutting of this place in getting rid of everything I own that I don't actually need to keep. I have to be brutal to myself because I own a lot of shit. When I first moved to Omaha from Kansas, I took so many things with me that I thought I would want to keep forever, only to find them in boxes years later and look at them like "what the fuck was I thinking?"

This time around I'm not doing that.

With a very everything must go mentality, I have systematically been going through my possessions and sorting them out -- keep, sell, donate. As such, I have sold almost my entire comic collection, almost every video game and/or system I've had or collected in the past 25 years, and every book, CD, tape, movie (DVD and VHS), and magazine that isn't essential. For the essentials I have purchased four 100-CD wallets and stored them all, tossing the cases and therefore saving an ungodly amount of storage space.

Tomorrow will mark the fourth (and hopefully, final) Saturday trip to Half Price Books, who has purchased the bulk of my stuff from me. It will also make our second and final trip to Gamers, the used and vintage games shop here in town, to sell the remaining game stuff I will be parting with.

In these trips over the past few weeks, I've made $400 or so in cold hard cash, bills-in-wallet cash, money that has gone to groceries and some other essentials so that we can save as much of our paychecks as we can. A down payment for a house is no fucking joke, friends -- it'll basically bleed us dry for a bit, and if it makes it easier for us in some small (or large) fashion, I don't mind selling most of my stuff to get it out of this place and make it less to move.

Plus, 95% of this stuff has literally been sitting in the apartment in boxes, whether in closets or in corners or on shelves.

"I don't want you to sell anything you'll regret," Daisy told me last weekend, very seriously.

"It's fine," I told her. "I don't think I'll regret any of this. It's all just stuff. It's things I've collected that I have no more use for whatsoever. I've been an adult for half my life, but I've never really been a grown up. We've been married for going on five years now and we've bought a house. It's time to grow up."

My entire adult life has consisted of moving from place to place, living alone or with someone else, dragging along all of these physical mementos of my past with me to each one. Aside from a few very important sentimental items here and there, all of it can be sold, donated to charity, or otherwise disposed of at this point. I'm turning 36 this year. I've worked in a corporate job for over four years, and have been married for almost five (as mentioned above). There's no longer much of anything I own that I can't part with if necessary. For example, there's a lot of clothing I've had for ten-plus years that I only wear occasionally, if ever, and that's only if I still fit into it. That all went to the purge, as I call it, for donations to the Salvation Army.

As an aside, I've probably mentioned here before in the past that I'm not a huge fan of the Salvation Army for a number of reasons -- for one, they aren't the kindest to our gay friends and family members, and the wife and I have a lot of those. For two, their very church-based, Jesus-y mission statement doesn't mesh well with me, a lifelong atheist. But, and here's the thing -- they do a lot of good charitable work to help people, regardless of whatever agendas they have...and they will come to my home to pick up donations. Any donations. That's a big plus.

As an additional aside, the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) doesn't do pickups here in Omaha. I checked. Those people have been my go-to charity for many years now, but they just don't really have a presence up here like they do in Missouri and Kansas. That is unfortunate, really.

So, over the course of the past two years or so, every few months I've scheduled a pickup appointment with the Salvation Army for donations, in order to get rid of a lot of useless stuff around the house, stuff that I should've gotten rid of when I moved up here from Kansas, but y'know, hindsight 20-20 and all that. Each time I've gotten a tax receipt, which the wife may or may not use when I provide it to her for when she does the taxes (I'll never know, she handles that). However, in the past six months or so, they've been here three or four times, as I have donated about 2/3 of my wardrobe to them. I'm encouraging Daisy to do the same during this move, as we'll be trying to get rid of all we can, and truthfully she wears the same 25-30 outfits for work anyway and not much else. How do I know this? I do the laundry. This is why I was thrilled to have the washer/dryer in my new office in the new house.

"I want to get everything but the essentials all packed up this weekend," she told me.

I looked at her and tried not to roll my eyes, as doing this would mean she'd not sleep at all, and neither would I. Like, at all. For a guy who's constantly sleep deprived anyway this personally sounds like absolute hell. I love Daisy very much, but I've also been awake since 7:30 last night (it's almost 1PM now), and have packed/assembled maybe five or six boxes today. I haven't showered, I have eaten one meal, and I'll have to sleep at some point tonight too, of course. Tomorrow is my last day off of my "weekend," as I have to work Sunday overnight, which means I'll be sleeping all day Sunday. My work schedule is not a good one for an undertaking such as this.

Still, we moved everything out of my house in Kansas in the span of about 36 hours, and that was by ourselves packing up a U-Haul. Granted, we both had fewer things then, but the house was larger than this apartment and we were doing it all with just the two of us (we had no choice). But at the time, I was also unemployed and had all the figurative time in the world as I had just finished teaching for the semester and was leaving the state.

This is part of why I'm trying to purge everything possible from this apartment. Screw it, if we don't use it, it goes. Despite that I am sure Daisy will find ways to not part with a lot of stuff, as she is much more sentimental than I. Some of it I can understand, of course -- I have two t-shirts I've owned for over twenty years, purchased from a long-closed head shop in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on a beach trip there back in the 90s. One is an Iron Maiden shirt and the other is a KMFDM shirt. I will never get rid of either one. Here's a picture of me wearing the KMFDM shirt last week:

Also pictured: cat, chair, Grateful Dead tapestry, and my punk rock haircut.

Yeah, last weekend I got my hair done in a sort of wide mohawk style, completely shaved on the sides all the way up to the long part on top. It sort of makes me look like a pineapple, but fuck it. Even in September, it's still 90 degrees in Nebraska.

Now that I've said that, of course, it'll be in the 40s next week -- you watch.

Anyway, that's about where my sentimental attachment to certain items ends. I sold my Sega Genesis, which was my first game system I got as a Christmas present in 1994, and thought nearly nothing of it aside from a "well buddy, it was a good run, go have a game with another friend."

So yeah, we're moving and stuff has to go. And truthfully I can't wait to really dive in and start getting rid of stuff. Part of it will end up being replaced by newer, more exciting stuff. I am big on, ahem, as they say, retail therapy. Meaning, as much as I hate being a consumer whore, few things make me feel better than getting rid of a bunch of old stuff and replacing some of those things with newly purchased upgrades. My wardrobe is a good example of that; I've replaced a good chunk of the stuff I've donated with new stuff that fits better and I enjoy more. Mind you, a lot of it is still nerdy t-shirts and a bunch of hoodies, but again, fuck it.

We have to think logistically about a lot of stuff we take with us -- we have a much larger kitchen in the new place, but the bathroom doesn't have as much storage, there aren't as many closets, there's not a basement, etc. We have a garage, but it's small and won't have much more room for anything aside from the wife's car (my truck won't fit in it comfortably, for example, and we'll need room for a lawn mower and stuff like that too, etc). I'm not sure my office has a large closet aside from the washer/dryer area, and am not entirely sure it has a second closet at all, though I think it does. Getting all the stuff we have and want to keep over to the new house is one thing -- having somewhere to put it once we get it there is quite another.

While all of this is going on, I should note that Hurricane Florence is pounding the Carolinas right now, and my parents have been forced to evacuate back home to WV until it all subsides -- who knows if their beach house will remain standing when they return. Living in the midwest with the threat of tornado season is one thing -- hurricanes are quite another.

Mind you, we haven't really had any tornadoes to speak of in the Omaha area for a few years now; oh sure, we'll have the occasional watch or warning when one gets fairly close, but truthfully they talk big game about tornado season up here and rarely anything exciting happens. Same went for when I was living in Kansas for five years; nothing came closer than about 20 miles or so from my house. I experienced much worse weather living in Missouri -- hell, I experienced worse weather in West Virginia when I was living there.

A little over a year ago -- almost a year exactly, in fact -- Daisy and I visited West Virginia to see friends and family, including my grandmother, who was at the time in her last three months of life. We didn't know that then, of course, but we knew it would be the last time we saw her alive.

While cleaning, I found the birthday card she sent me last year. She sent it to me less than three weeks before she died, and it is the last written anything I received from her, or would receive from her.

I haven't really written about my grandmother's death here because I'm not sure I've really processed it yet. She died in January, on a cold Sunday morning shortly before I went to bed. She had turned 90 four months before, so it's not like she was young. She left me her newspaper clipping collection in her will, which I told my extended family and estate executors they could do what they wanted with; there was no need to send them to me out here in Nebraska. I do not regret this decision, really. Instead, I asked them to send me my grandfather's prosthetic leg if they could find it while cleaning out her belongings.

I'm weird like that.

Regardless, my aunt told me if they could find it, it was all mine.

She was buried on the hill in the town cemetery next to my grandfather, who had been laid to rest there in 1982. I did not attend the funeral. The family understood. I'm not sure my parents did, but the rest of the family did.

So yes, I'm still processing it somewhat. I now have no living grandparents. My parents are both rapidly aging as well, as are Daisy's. At age 35, I'm finally buying a house with my wife. I guess this means I am indeed a grown up now. Which I think, really, is the entire point of this post overall.

Next up after the house is to sell my truck and to get a new(er), reliable vehicle and to get a job working on dayshift, something that's far, far different from what I do now (so I don't end up eventually hanging myself).

As I've mentioned in the past, this year has been a year of self-betterment for me. I've lost close to 40 pounds since the beginning of the year, and I have begun the transition to an entirely, or mostly, vegetarian diet. Not vegan, mind you, but vegetarian. I want myself to be healthy, I want more energy, and I want to be able to live for a long time.

Heh, imagine that, me saying that I want to live. Clearly there's something wrong with me.

As I told Daisy, if you would've told me ten years ago that at age 35, I'd be a vegetarian with a mohawk who sold almost all of his comic books and video games, well...


More to come.

"Weirdo"

Over the past week I've been going through my personal archives of CDs and CD-Rs and slowly digitizing them one by one.

It was an ungodly painstaking, time-consuming process.

I have been collecting data and burning it onto CD-R literally since January 2002, when I purchased my first computer with a CD-R drive (it was a Hewlett-Packard, 128mb RAM, Windows XP machine, and it literally died in two years -- but the hard drive and CD drive are still in my possession to this day as I put them both into my next machine).

I had, approximately, 800 discs.

Most of them were music and/or backup discs from computers long past -- when my whopping 10GB HD would get too full of pictures or podcasts or music, I'd back up that stuff on a CD-R (or a few of them) and delete. Every three months or so I would back up everything in order to make sure I had it on file in the event I needed it.

Now that my archiving work has completed, I have about 75 discs, almost all of them commercially purchased music CDs (which yes, I backed up digitally as well).

The remaining 725 or so were only part of my collection -- I know I have more, spindles upon spindles more somewhere in this apartment in a box or tub stuffed into a closet. Half of my music collection is missing, for one, and I know I didn't get rid of it. I paid good money for those albums; they're still here somewhere.

However, that's not the reason I came here to post this entry.

What I found on some of those discs was actually rather shocking to me, in a lot of ways. Pictures of friends I haven't seen in many, many years -- some of whom I can't even remember their names -- as well as chat transcripts from AIM (remember AIM?), tax forms, news articles I'd saved, obituaries of people I'd gone to high school or college with, letters I'd written but never sent, music from bands and artists I'd completely forgotten about, podcasts from 2003-07, multiple creative projects I thought were a good idea at the time until I realized they were actual work, etc. All of it a snapshot of time, frozen like Walt Disney's head.

Yes, I know Walt Disney's head was never frozen. Still.

I went through each CD one by one, pulled off the stuff I wanted to keep into some files on my current, two-terabyte hard drive, and if there was any personal info on said CD, put it directly into my powerful, $100 I-can-shred-a-book-if-I-want crosscut shredder as soon as I'd recovered the data I wanted. If there was nothing personal on it or it was just music backups or games or pictures downloaded off of image boards or the like, it just went into the trash after my plundering.

All in all, I recovered about 50GB of pure data. Some of the discs were so old that they were becoming unreadable -- disc rot is a thing -- but I was able to recover the vast majority of what I wanted.

Including some of my writing.

Church abhors me like nature abhors a vacuum. When I was a kid, the preacher of the church I attended asked me if I knew what Lent was. I told him it was the fuzz that comes out of the trap in the dryer. The room erupted in laughter, mother hid her face in shame, and we never again returned to church after that.


That's a true story, by the way.



If you’re at all internet-literate, then by now you’ve probably heard of (and probably use) some sort of instant messenger. Most of these programs have a feature which will let other users know when you’re away from the desk or currently unavailable. They’re called “status messages” or “away messages.” Here is a short list of some of my more memorable away messages:


Currently masturbating


Holy Crap Batman! He’s away from the desk!


Thinking about you naked


Getting naked and wet (for I’m in the shower)


All dressed up and no one to hang out with


All dressed up and no one to kill


Napping! Leeme ‘lone!


Would somebody please kill me so that I don’t have to go to college anymore?


Ever blow your nose and your nose vibrates really fast because so much air is being rapidly forced out BUT there are only 3 drops of snot on the tissue?



Yeahhh….umm, and I wonder why nobody talks to me when I’m online.



This is also true.

I'm slowly realizing that fifteen years ago, I was a whiny, attention-whore douchebag who either played the victim an awful lot or was just weird for weird's sake.

Here's a snippet of an actual resume I put together probably around my junior year of college. Junior year of college, folks.

So yeah, I was a weirdo. Hindsight is 20:20 and all that.

I did have a blog at the time, long since deleted and scrubbed from the internet now. It was called The Criminally Goofy, which sums up in a nutshell the person I was between 2002 and 2005, when I closed it down due to acquiring a stalker (yeah, that happened, it was weird and not fun). I actually have most, if not all, of the posts from that blog saved and archived in a few places, including on some of the CDs I just digitally archived this week.

And hoo boy is some of that shit embarrassing.

Like, I realize that 2003 is fifteen years ago and that people grow and mature. I used to think that I hadn't changed much, that fundamentally I am still the person I was back then, the same person I've "always been," so they say. Boy, was I wrong. Brandon at age 20 was whiny, phony, slightly psychotic, manipulative, suffered from "poor me" syndrome as well as the aforementioned perpetual victim complex, and I cannot for the life of me understand how any of my friends tolerated me during that several-year span. I was so stunned in reading some of the stuff I blogged about during that time that I had to send an email to one of my close personal friends to ask her how she put up with me.

No, I'm not putting any of that writing here, because college is a span of my life I'd really rather forget most of for many reasons, but it's also a span of my life where a lot of things happened that I flat out don't remember. I must've gotten into a lot of fights with my friends, as three or four of the posts I dredged up made reference to these fights and/or even transcribed some of them. I have no recollection of these things. Maybe that's my mind going in my old age, or maybe I blocked it out (like repressed memories or something) or maybe I was just too plain swamped by life to be able to remember every little thing that happened.

I whined about my relationship with my parents. I whined about being a virgin a lot (until, well, I wasn't one anymore, so that eventually stopped). I whined about how nobody truly understood me. I whined about being fat and unattractive -- even though back then I was about 20 pounds lighter than I am now and far more stylish in my appearance. Maybe a lot of those topics are universal and are part of growing up, but in my reading I noticed a very thick underlying immaturity to all of it -- writing done by someone who thought he'd experienced the world but in reality didn't have any fucking clue of what it was honestly like.

In 2005, after shutting that journal down, due to the fact that I'd obtained a stalker -- and not the fun kind, the blackmailin' kind -- I took a two year hiatus from active blogging/writing until I opened this blog in August 2007. I turned the first two years of this blog into a book, as some of you know (the manuscript needs a heavy re-editing job done to it before I can actually make it publication-ready again, and who knows if that will ever happen).

Anyway.

Archiving all this stuff -- going through it piece by piece -- makes me feel in some small way that I am being productive, doing something that somewhat means something or that I can feel good about. This doesn't happen much in my life anymore, honestly. My work (neither job, if I'm going to be completely honest about it) doesn't feel meaningful to me, doesn't feel like I'm bettering myself or the world. At home, when I'm off work, I do the same chores every week (when I have the energy to do so) just to keep the house maintained. I take no joy in it, it just is what it is. It is treading water, a concept I've mentioned here numerous times in the past.

But, there is excitement in nostalgia. There is excitement in finding what was once lost, excitement in remembrance and reminiscence.

As mentioned, there are many more CDs to find. The vast majority of my music collection is among them, as well as so many comedy albums, movies, and otherwise "lost data" yet to be reclaimed. I will find them here and there, bit by bit, as I slowly gut this room and decide what stays and what goes.

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.