Gravy Season, Part II: The Blue Tsunami

 Well then.

I was not expecting that. 

At this point, almost a week on, there's not much more that I can say about the midterm elections that hasn't already been said, except that while the rest of the country became progressive, the two states I have spent more of my life living in than any others are still blazing red: Nebraska and West Virginia. 

I shouldn't be surprised, really. Both states have been pretty backwards for a very long time. 

Still, I am beginning to get a little more hope back as an American. I almost forgot what it felt like to have hope again. I have seen a number of online posts from Canada and some other countries that are like "Oh, so you Americans do still have a democracy after all" or something along those lines. Yes, we do. Again, as I've said here before in defense of my country, we are not all like him, and I think these midterms made that statement louder than ever before. 

In the past week, I have not only felt more hope, but I have felt an amazing cultural shift in our attitude as a society. A week ago tonight was Halloween. One week ago. I told Daisy it feels like Halloween was months ago now because that's how fast everything has changed in the past week. Since Halloween, we have had the elections, the temperatures have dropped like a stone (there was a hard frost this morning at my house for only the second time this fall) and almost all the leaves on all the trees have, like a light switch being flicked, turned their colors and started falling. 

More than that, all of the commercials on TV are now completely geared towards Thanksgiving and Christmas, radio stations are playing Christmas music, and the local stores (like Kohls, Walmarts, etc) have all of their Christmas stuff out. It is wild how quickly all of this has happened. 

Maybe it happens this fast every year now and I just noticed it more this year because I've been out of the house hunting for Needohs with the wife multiple days per week. I don't really leave the house any more than I have to most of the time, and that's also been a big change with Daisy's new squishy obsession. I used to be incredibly opposed to anything Christmas being marketed before Thanksgiving -- no music, no cards, no presents or toys or any of that -- because it didn't feel right to me. Now, as a much older middle-aged man, I'm ready to put on the Santa hat and ugly sweaters on November 1st. I think part of it is the "let's stretch out this season as much as possible so that the crippling seasonal depression doesn't kick in until January" phase of my life, and some of it is that I just like having something to be happy about and look forward to. 

Ahem, eleven working days until Thanksgiving vacation...

Gravy Season 2026, Part I: The Holidays are Coming

Halloween has come and gone. Welcome to November. Welcome to the return to standard time. Welcome to the holiday season. Welcome, one and all, to Gravy Season. 

We had two trick-or-treaters for Halloween. I didn't get to see them, as when they came by, I was in the bathroom. $50ish worth of candy and other treats/goodies (Daisy got some Halloween party favors, pencils, bubbles, and other stuff) now sits in our closet unused.

Halloween is really weird in our neighborhood -- we either get a ton of trick-or-treaters or we get zero or almost zero. It seems like the families in our neighborhood turn off their lights and drive their kids to the rich neighborhoods on the other side of town to trick-or-treat -- our entire neighborhood goes dark except for our house and/or one or two others. It's rather sad to me. Trick-or-treating was one of my favorite things as a kid, even into my teenage years. 

In my adult years I'd get up early on the morning of November 1, jump in the car, and drive to Walmart at 5am, 6am to get the half-off candy. Instead, Daisy did this earlier this week when Target marked their overstock Halloween candy as 90% off, and got us more candy than a diabetic would need for his entire lifetime. I'll be eating Snickers Pumpkins for months.

Anyway. 

Yes, November is upon us, and generally that means a lot of changes across the board as we come down to the end of the year. November 1 is not only the beginning of Gravy Season, but it really begins the holiday season as well -- whether people want to believe that or not, or start preparing or not. November generally means we stop mowing the grass and doing yard work, but as it's been in the 70s (or warmer) almost every day, it feels far more like September than November, and I'll likely have to mow and trim one final time before we pack it all in for the year. Maybe not, though, if it keeps raining every weekend when I'd actually have the chance to do that. 

I usually stop wearing shorts every day in November -- and usually start putting away my sandals for the season -- in favor of pulling out socks and/or slippers as necessary for the winter. I swapped out my wardrobes about two weeks ago, replacing most of my warmer-weather attire with hoodies and jackets, and did a sweep through of the closet to fill another donations bag (which I dropped off at the Goodwill a few nights ago). I also begin pulling out the bathrobes, which become a second skin for me in the deep winter months when temperatures are single-digits or below zero.

Daisy has told me that she is in the Christmas Spirit™ way earlier than normal this year -- as she has already finished all her Christmas shopping for me as well as her parents. She has also told me that while it is not a competition, this year she will "win Christmas" and there's no way I can top what she did -- that it's something I would never and have never asked for, but as she knows who I am as a person, she knows it's something I'll love.

That alone in and of itself terrifies me. 

I don't want anything or need anything. Please don't spend money on me. I promise if I've never mentioned it, it's not something I want. I don't appreciate surprises as much as some people think I do or should, because if something's built up with a lot of hype, I will inevitably be disappointed or outright hate whatever it is -- and I cannot control that reaction because it's a stress response.  I also don't want "experiences" or vacations or things like that -- I'm too old now. It all just seems like work and effort. I'm too old and tired to care at this point, and there's nothing more important than being at home safe with my cats. Unless that is the gift -- the gift of never needing to work again, and being able to quit my job -- that would be a gift I would actually want. Everything else just seems like a chore or needless, unnecessary expense. 

Otherwise, November means I have but fifteen working days before I am on my first of two holiday vacation weeks of the season. I have a lot to accomplish in that time. I am still nowhere near done shopping for Daisy. I'd like to get her parents each something small too. I have no idea what I'm doing for my own parents this year either, or when I'll be able to get things sent to them. Bills are piling up, and my student loan repayments kicked back in, meaning I now have $400 less per month to work with when it comes to juggling expenses. It really sucks being an adult in your 40s, man. I wanted to be done with monthly worries and hassle about bills and student loans by now. I wanted to be sipping pineapple juice on a beach somewhere for the rest of my life. Or at least, y'know, no longer working. Not necessarily retired, but no longer needing to work, I mean. 

Instead, there's this.

Daisy and I voted over the weekend; we dropped off our ballots at the dropbox about a mile or two from the house. It feels good to vote. I don't necessarily have high hopes for Nebraska going blue, but I do have hopes that the rest of the country will come to its senses. Maybe I shouldn't have those hopes -- I've been burned badly there before -- but I do have them. 

Dolly's First Birthday

 

Dolly, our Halloween Girl™, celebrating her first birthday (complete with witch's hat) on October 31, 2026. Photos taken by her loving mother, in our kitchen sink. 

Unexpected Vacations, Part II

 After five and a half hours of troubleshooting with one of my company's IT technicians, and not one but two full reinstalls of Windows...my work laptop suddenly started working normally again. 

What was the problem? Who fuckin' knows.

After it started working again, I had to get my major programs -- like the VPN client and our workplace's firewall/network authentication system -- reinstalled at the admin level, because without those I couldn't work.

But, after about another forty minutes of testing all systems and making sure logins were still working, I was satisfied that -- for better or worse -- I was back online and my impromptu vacation had ended. I let my leadership know I'd be back in on Monday night, with only one real night of work missed. 

I then went upstairs and fell back into bed, where Mable and Dolly joined me and I slept for several more hours to reset my sleep schedule.

I worked the rest of the week without another issue. It was as if the October full moon (which was rising on Sunday night when I logged in) was trying to sabotage everything, and in jest throughout the rest of the week, that's what I chalked it up to. 

But, at least I got an extra day off out of it. 

Unexpected Vacations, Part I

 Last night, around 7:30pm and with coffee cup in hand, I sat down at my desk downstairs, opened my work laptop, and hit the power button.

It failed to boot. Instead, I got an error screen about something called a PXE boot.

Now, depending on what you find with the googles, this is anything from a boot misconfiguration to a "your hard drive is dead, so, we're exploring alternative options."

I wrestled with this really nice little Lenovo ThinkPad for approximately two hours, changing settings and running through available options. However, I am woefully out of date when it comes to trying to troubleshoot computers, and I could make no headway whatsoever -- even though every single diagnostic I could run told me there were absolutely zero problems with any of this machine's hardware.

Finally, after opening a ticket with the helpdesk and having a very painful conversation with their heavily-accented support staff, it became painfully apparent that I would likely need a complete machine replacement. I was instructed to join the support bridge in the morning once said bridge was up and running for the day and that would solidify my need for replacement, and they'd use the ticket I opened for it. 

Until then, well, I'm on an unplanned, unexpected vacation of sorts -- one that may end up lasting the whole week.

Computer replacements are nothing new for our teams and never have been. I have worked for my corporate overlords since 2014, under contract with not one or two, but three different consulting firms in that time. In that time, I believe I have had seven different computers. This one is just the latest to burn out. 

I also know, based on experience from one of the agents on my team having a similar issue earlier this month, that replacements take no less than three days and can take an entire week -- and go through a number of channels at our latest consulting company.

"I'm sorry, baby," Daisy told me. "I know that has to be frustrating."

"I ain't frustrated," I told her. "I'm salaried. Whether the computer works or not, or I work or not, I still get paid."

This...is true. Within reason, anyway.

This is one of those unavoidable, act-of-god sort of situations and they come along only very rarely. I can count on one hand the number of days of work I've missed because of faulty hardware in the past twelve years. Faulty hardware is also not something I can really fake and not something that's within my control, so it's not like I'm going to be penalized for it.

No, what is frustrating is leaving my teammates high and dry because I can't work, and the hassle of the replacement process itself. I will still have access to all of my corporate data and settings because those will be saved on the VPN, but anything local will be lost, and I'll have to set up accesses and pathways to everything again. The laptop is much less of an object these days as it is a passkey, a vehicle which lets me log into the actual systems to do my actual work.

So, in the morning, I will wake up and login to the troubleshooting bridge via my phone (which has Teams on it, so that at least makes things easier) and will request the official replacement. It will then get sent to fulfillment or whatever part of the company does that, they'll okay it, then they'll put a desktop image for my particular group on a new laptop -- or maybe they have them pre-made and pre-boxed, like they did when I was first hired on there -- and it'll be shipped to me (usually overnighted) with a tracking number that may or may not be provided to me before the replacement arrives.

Estimated time of arrival of new laptop, from process start to it sitting on my desk? About 48-72 hours, bare minimum, and if everything flows as it should with no snags.

That would put me at receiving it Wednesday if no issues arise, at the earliest. More realistic would be Thursday or Friday, but my goal is to harass them enough to make sure it happens by Wednesday. If it's not shipped by then I will not get it before Sunday and will be stuck until next Monday before I can get it configured, as the troubleshooting bridge is only Mon-Fri. 

And then, once I get it, I've got to spend yet another hour or two on the bridge or working with one of their helpers to configure it and set it up, and then make sure I still have access to all of my corporate overlords' stuff via the VPN. 

And then I have to box up and figure out how they want me to mail back/return the old laptop.

I'm not even sure I'll get the same laptop. The busted one is, as mentioned, an up-until-now wonderful Lenovo ThinkPad. But, I know some of my agents and colleagues have much lower-quality Dell laptops. So, if I don't get another ThinkPad I am going to dreadfully mourn that one, gone long before its time. 

In the interim, I get...an unexpected vacation. 

It's not a fun unexpected vacation, but maybe the muses or the fates or whoever have decided that no, actually, this man really needs a break and, with great irony, they decided to give it to me during the October full moon. My leadership knows and my team knows, and I'm sure none of them are thrilled, but again, it's not like I chose for this to happen. I told my long-term colleague who is essentially covering for me and running the show that believe me, I would much rather be there helping out as I could so that the full burden of everything didn't fall on everyone else. 

That's actually about 75% true so I don't feel that it's a lie. 

Holidays and the Future: October 2026, Part II

 The Christmas cards have been designed, ordered, printed, and have arrived at our house in their big orange box from Shutterfly. This year's total was, I believe, $171. 

Daisy rolls her eyes at this price but she never protests because she knows how important the cards are to me. 

Do I like them? Ehhhhh. This year's card is cute and well-designed, and a little bit larger than those in previous years (6x8 instead of the normal 5x7ish) but, I still maintain that last year's card design is my all-time favorite. Those of you who receive our cards -- those of you who both receive the cards and still pay attention to this website -- would probably agree. But, it's hard to outdo myself every year, and some years are going to be a little more understated than others. This year's card has a small tribute to Pete, who died shortly after last year's cards were printed and mailed, and has all six of the other cats on the front and the back.

Cards start going out on Black Friday, as you know. Them's the rules, the gentleman's agreement we all abide by.

I have used almost all of my remaining vacation time for the year to take some time off around both holidays. I took the Wednesday before and the Sunday after Thanksgiving off -- not because I need both of those days off (though I'm sure I will by the time we cross that bridge) but because I want some extra breathing space for Thanksgiving, family dinner, any shopping we may or may not want to do. There's also a bit of a buffer there in the event that we might travel, but I very seriously doubt that's going to happen. For one, we don't really have the money for it. For two and three, I don't really trust Daisy's aged Sonata any further than I can throw it, especially in cold weather, and Daisy really doesn't get any extra time off work around the holidays -- at least not time that she doesn't have to take PTO and find coverage for. So, really, it'll just be a few extra relaxation days for me, and -- when she's off work -- us. My goal is to catch up on sleep, maybe write a bit if I feel inspired, fill out and envelope/address/stamp the cards, etc.

I also took off time around my birthday and basically the entire week of Christmas, where I have already relayed to my team and my leadership that I will be 100% unavailable. One of my colleagues asked me who was backing me up.

"Hell if I know," I said. "Whoever's there, I guess." 

I do not assume anyone in particular is backing me up, nor am I going to ask someone else on my team, who also likely has holiday and/or family plans, "hey, do you want to work double shifts because I'm going to be out?" No, fuck that. I am taking my PTO and whoever they want to fill in, let 'em. I could not care less at this juncture because the burnout is real.

And honestly that is how I've been feeling about my job as of late. The burnout is real. I desperately need the job to pay bills, student loans, and keep food on the table and lights on, but now entering lucky year thirteen of it I am so much less inclined to put in the 110% I have done every day for years. Most days now they are lucky if I give 70% at best, and pretend/make the team believe that it's 90% or higher. It's gotten to the point where the absolute bullshit of all of it is wearing on me. No procedural or policy changes ever streamline anything or make the job easier; we are continually asked to do more with less, and then are asked to operate off of rules instead of "vibes" -- because with "vibes" it's hard to pinpoint who the corporate overlords can blame when we fail because we're set up for failure. 

If I were to operate on rules and policies exclusively instead of, as mentioned, "vibes" (their terms, not mine) the system would grind to a halt. Cue malicious compliance. Part of what makes everything there suck worse is that we're constantly expected to have magic wands, or move mountains, or fix things that we know nothing about that are not our jobs, specialties, or department whatsoever -- oh, and do it yesterday! why have I had to wait three days for this to be fixed?  Etc. If I go by rules and policies, and redirect the unreasonable folks to their unreasonable account teams for their unreasonable demands (just as an example) my higher leadership's phone lines would never stop ringing with whiny customers.

You may think I am exaggerating this; I really, really am not. We need about double the staffing we have now and about half the workload in order to function like an actual, normal workplace where people don't want to kill themselves and where their mental health does not deteriorate more and more every night. Again, you may think I am exaggerating here too. I am not -- I have had colleagues tell me how terrible and toxic our job is for their mental health, and I absolutely do not disagree. I have called it out myself on many occasions to our leadership, whose response seems to be something along the lines of "yeah, you're preaching to the choir, man." 

And to think, all they need to do to solve about 90% of the problems is hire and train about three more people per shift. That's it; that's literally all they need to do. Give me three more people on my team that aren't absolute morons, can understand and read/write English and follow directions, and are coachable/willing and able to learn and retain information and almost every single problem I have with that job goes away. 

So yes, that's the long way of me saying I'm taking the holiday time I want to, goddammit, and what happens while I'm not there isn't going to be my problem. 

Anyway, moving onward.

We're literally a week and only a week away from Halloween -- which falls on a Saturday this year -- and the wife and I have zero plans for it whatsoever. Halloween almost never falls on a night I'm not working, let alone on a Saturday. I am forty-three years old, I have been married to a spunky, Halloween-loving woman for twelve years, and aside from some spooky season decorations that we tend to leave up year-round anyway, we have done nothing.

"I find it shocking and appalling that we have no plans for Halloween," I told Daisy tonight. 

Like, it's not like I want to go out dancing or go trick-or-treating or anything like that, but having some or any plans could be fun. I lamented that none of our friends, but apparently not even the most obvious ones, had mentioned plans to throw any sort of Halloween party this year -- and we have some eccentric, wealthy friends too, the kind who do it up when it comes to this stuff. 

Still, nothing. 

Halloween is Dolly's birthday.

This little goblin turns one on Halloween. She was born in the shelter on Halloween last year, and I'm surprised she wasn't given some spooky shelter name because of it -- but at least she never had to live on the streets and face the danger and disease that comes with that. Instead, Pete died in early December and she learned how to coexist with other cats in the shelter until we adopted her on New Year's Eve. 

Dolly remains the absolute sweetest cat in the house, and the total spiritual successor to Pete. Daisy thinks that Charlie is sweeter, and don't get me wrong, Charlie is a really sweet boy, but Dolly is -- dare I say it -- the perfect cat. She spends equal amounts of time with us and loves us both very deeply in different ways. She is so very Pete-like in so many ways and so very much herself in so many others. I don't know exactly how to describe Dolly. She just fills me with so much love, so much joy. She has also, as of this afternoon, been turned into a fridge magnet and stickers for this year's holiday cards (both of which are hard tradition in our household). 

The other cats are fine. Hank has another eye appointment a week before Thanksgiving, and we are likely to cancel it at this juncture since he hasn't had any other eye flare-ups in almost a year. I told Daisy that if he remains okay and nothing else appears to be going on with his eyes, we should probably cancel the appoint by, say, a week or so before it's supposed to happen. That'll give them enough notice, I think. We have a standing order with auto-ship for his eye drops, so unless they tell us we need to bring him back in before they'll give us a prescription refill, we're probably fine at this point.

Emmy remains Hank's steadfast wife and has been slowly becoming more loving and receptive to touch and snuggles from us as well as the other cats other than Hank. As you may recall, Emmy really, really loved Pete and snuggled up with him every chance she got, especially if Hank was somewhere else in the house. Hank was her husband, but she treated Pete more like a father or grandfather. To his credit, he would love on her and baby her and hold her in his arms. It was really quite sweet. Well, when Pete started going downhill and his kidneys started failing more and more, his smell changed -- Emmy knew he was sick and started cuddling with him less and less. The others did too, for the most part -- they could tell. And then when Pete died last December -- to the other cats he just vanished; he was there one day and then we took him someplace and he never came back -- something inside Emmy broke. She did not want to lay on the couch with us anymore without him there. Instead she took to laying under or inside things, as if to hide and silently grieve. She didn't come out of this pattern of behavior until well into the summer months, where she slowly started getting up on the couch with us again, as well as letting Gary or sometimes Dolly lay with her. It's been a slow process for Emmy. 

The Double Trouble boys are, as expected, double troubling as per the usual:

Charlie cuddles up to Daisy in bed every morning for love, just like Pete used to, and if I sleep too long Gary makes sure he comes and wakes me up. They've grown up into such sweet boys.

Mable is also becoming more sweet by the day; she has now taken to coming to bed and curling up with me at my head, tight up against me, like Pete used to sleep with me. She will lay in the same spot all day and not move until I do. While Dolly loves to sleep on my feet or on my legs, Mable is slowly becoming a teddy bear kitty.

Almost all of them have birthdays coming up soon. Dolly's birthday is on Halloween, as mentioned before, but Emmy's follows the week after (age 3), Charlie in the beginning of December (age 2), Gary five weeks after that in January (age 2), and Mable a month or so later (age 3). We'll do photos for their birthdays as usual, but also we'll be doing their Christmas photos as possible too. 

Daisy has told me that she has finished her Christmas shopping. Not just for me, but for her parents, for her siblings and our nieces and nephews, everyone.

More than that, she told me she went way over budget this year for me for Christmas. 

Well, she must be a master at hiding it because I have seen nothing enter this house or be hidden away. Now, mind you, I sleep all day and she does not, and anything that would be delivered during the day she could probably easily hide and I would never know about it, but it's not even Halloween yet and she's done Christmas shopping for me? That sounds suspect AF, especially for my famously, notoriously ADHD wife.

"You're going to love all of it," she told me. "But I didn't get a single thing off your list."

I have a public "Christmas List" on Amazon that she and a select few other people have direct access to. I periodically add and subtract things throughout the year, and Daisy usually gets a couple of the things on it. In the past, her parents and my parents have pulled some things from it as well, so I generally just keep it as a novelty. Anything I really want I'll just buy outright and not bother anyone else with, so it's more for fun than anything else, like the old Sears Wish Book and Montgomery Ward catalogs of the 80s and 90s.

I have a good bit of stuff for Daisy that I've been slowly collecting since, say, early June or so (yes, I always start early) but I am nowhere near done for her yet. I am trying to keep some space on my cards so that when I see that unskippable Black Friday deal somewhere, I can just snap it up and be done. But no, as it stands now, if I were to present to her what I have at this point I'd expect a "that's it?" in response from her. And it would be warranted. 

I don't know. I'll see what happens, honestly. I have good and bad years for gift-giving, and on the bad years I usually find something that would normally be way out of our price range and get it just to say I'm done. I can't do that anymore; student loans are being paid again (I paid my first installment this past weekend) and budgets are going to get creative again. 

The Hole in the Wall Gang: October 2026, Part I

 The Denverites are in town this weekend -- at least, most of them. It's Daisy's sister and her four boys aged nine to seventeen. Currently, it is their fall break (Daisy's sister is the principal of a charter school that she helped to fund, institute, and build, so their family schedules operate around the school schedules). 

They were not here for 24 hours before one of the boys put a hole in the wall of the spare bedroom at the parents' (read: used to be Daisy's sister's room, now is used as the spare for any visiting guests).

The parents are, understandably, pissed.

"How did they put a hole in the wall?" I asked Dad last night when all of the boys were in the sun room with their mother and their aunt. "Like, you have to try to put a hole in the wall."

"With his head," Dad said.

"With his head?"

Did I hear that correctly?

Mama just looked at me and shook her head. 

"It's bad," she said. "You have no idea."

I did not go to look at the hole in the wall. Aside from the fact that it's sort of privacy-invasive to just wander into the bedroom when Daisy's sister is staying in town, even if she's not in the room at the time, I just...like, it's not important. I'll look at it next week when everyone's gone again, if it's not fixed by that point. 

The boys love to come to town to see their grandparents as well as me and Daisy. Our oldest nephew is 17 and is fielding many offers from many colleges for, essentially, full-ride scholarships to their engineering schools. He wants to go into mechanical and aerospace engineering, and he is absolutely bright enough to excel in those fields. I've talked to him at length both at Christmas and last night about colleges -- where he wants to go and why, etc. 

It's wild how things have changed. When Daisy and I first got together, this kid was barely four -- didn't even come up to my waist, and barely spoke complete sentences that his mother had to translate for me. When I met Daisy's sister (his mother) she was pregnant with her second child. That was 2013. She now has four of these boys, with that waist-high child now over six feet tall and about to start college.

The other boys, though...they're far younger and are much more boys in the stereotypical sense. They are sweet, hyper, talkative, intense, active boys, full of so much energy that I absolutely guarantee you I never had at their ages. And they love adventures, and they love their Aunt Daisy and Uncle Brandon. 

Do you know what Needohs and Squishies are? 

It's okay if you don't. I don't think I knew anything about them before, say, July or so.

To save you a lot of time, they are stress-ball-like toys made by various companies (some legitimate, some knock-offs) that are highly collectible, and range in size from, say, a ping pong ball to medium-sized teddy bears (I am not good with sizes, so, figure it out). Some change colors, some are soft squishes, some are hard squishes, some stretch, some light up, some are fuzzy, some constantly feel wet and sticky, etc. 

It's a thing. It's a big thing. I've not seen a fad like this since the Furby, the Tickle-Me-Elmo, or POGs. This shit is bananas. B-a-n-a-n-a-s. Bananas. 

Sometimes quite literally.

Here's the thing, though -- they're not just a kids' thing, they're super popular with collectors, resellers, and the neurodivergent community. It's the very definition of craze and fad. It's wild to see. And our nieces and nephews are all obsessed with them.

As is Daisy.

Now, let me explain this a bit. I am not faultless here, nor am I completely uninterested. I see the appeal of these toys and I own some of them myself. I have also been an enabler and pusher, and yes, there are some of the limited-edition Needohs I am still looking for on a daily basis -- I am, as they say, on the hunt.

Daisy and I have spent weeks, months, and hundreds (I am only guessing) of dollars on hunting, obtaining, and collecting Needohs and squishies. Every week it's a new adventure, and maybe perhaps I'll eventually get my last two glow penguins. 

Daisy and I have been first in line at several stores on "drop days" when the new holiday displays are going onto the floor, and we have both been nearly trampled and have been physically injured by swarming people. Daisy has a big bruise on her shoulder and was hit in the head last week during a drop day event at Kohls, and that same event got me nearly knocked down and elbowed in the ribs. 

I wish I were making this up. I now have greater respect for my mother, who told me she fought in the Cabbage Patch Wars™ for me in 1983. 

Anyway.

For the most part it's a very inclusive, fun community and it's the thrill of the chase that is the exciting part. Well, to our nephews who love having adventures with their aunt, they were thrilled when Daisy offered to take them Needoh hunting this morning.

As an aside, my wife is great with the kids. Any kids. She has the patience of a saint, she can corral four boys (only three of which really need supervision) into one nearly twenty-year-old Hyundai and take them to multiple stores, buying them multiple things at each place and getting them vegan cookies and milkshakes afterwards (not kidding) and they will look at her like she's a golden goddess -- they will remember adventures like this the rest of their lives. 

So that's what they did today. Daisy left the house early, drove over to the parents' to pick up the boys, ran the boys around all day (partially because she's a good aunt and partially because she knew the parents, and the boys' mother, needed a break), brought them back, came back home, changed her clothing, left again to go volunteer for her weekly kitten feeding time at the shelter, came back home again, she showered, we each took a nap for three hours, got up, went to Barnes & Noble and Kohls, and then -- at 8pm -- we pulled back into the driveway of the parents' house to spend the rest of the waking Saturday evening with the family because in the morning, before full dawn likely, they will be back on the road to Denver.

We don't always spend this much time with the family when they're in town. Truth be told, sometimes it's really difficult to spend that much time with Daisy's sister and the boys, either due to work schedules or prior commitments or just plain lack of time and energy. 

But.

This trip is likely the last hurrah for all of them to be in Omaha before the new year. They switch off years for holidays, and they spent the holidays in Omaha last year, so this year they'll be doing it with the in-laws' family and not us. This means, unless we wanted to spend $100 or more to ship their stuff to them, we needed to give them their Christmas presents now. Which, of course, the boys were wildly happy with.

Daisy got her sister a cooler and a giant Igloo water jug, since they're always on the go, as well as a few other little odds and ends things. She got the boys all sorts of Needohs and squishies not only today, but over the past few months -- that's how we got started on the trend, in fact; we were doing it for Christmas presents for all of the nieces and nephews and got sucked in. So, they got all those.

My present for the boys, as well as their father (for when they get home, of course) was the newly-finished, finally locked-down RetroDrive. Volume one, 2026. 

Behold, the contents of the aforementioned RetroDrive:

Click to scroll and zoom. Or don't, I'm a picture, not a cop.

This is a good starting collection, I thought.

The boys were absolutely thrilled by this and started watching episodes of The Real Ghostbusters almost immediately. While it's a great choice, I found it interesting they went right to that first with no hesitation. They also expressed interest in The Tick, which I also assured them was another fantastic choice. 

Mind you, unless they've seen them somewhere else, these younger boys have no idea what these shows are -- The Real Ghostbusters concluded its run in 1991, long before any of these boys were ever a twinkle in their parents' eyes. The Tick, I believe, ran from 1994-1996ish, so at best it's still thirty years old.

"My advice to you," I said to my oldest nephew, pulling him aside quietly, "is to find a way to copy that stuff to a laptop or to the cloud or somewhere you will have a backup of it as soon as possible once you get home, because I can't write-protect it and have it still be accessible/playable on anything and everything you plug it into. That means if something gets accidentally deleted or corrupted, it's gone." He acknowledged.

Truthfully what I gave the kids isn't 1/50th of the stuff I have, likely. I'm ballparking that number. I've amassed an absolute behemoth of a media collection over the years -- I joked to my oldest nephew that if I play my cards right, I've got Christmas presents for them for the next decade if I retain all that stuff. I was only about half kidding. I know it was such a hit this year that I can only try to top it next year. And that's before I present it to the other half of the family too.