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 However, I am woefully out of date when it comes to trying to troubleshoot computers, and I could make no headway whatsoever -- even though every single diagnostic I could run told me there were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.

Fall 2026 Begins, Part II

 Fall feels like a blessing, a rebirth in many ways. I've written here before about how it always felt like each fall was a new chance, a reset, when school started. You could always reinvent who you were and say you grew and matured over the summer.

You could say that in college too, of course, but it was always a bit "you're still doing the I've grown and changed thing over the summer, bro?"

As we near October -- historically one of the unluckiest months of the year for me -- I think about Octobers past and present. I've been observing and taking in a lot over the years, and I can finally tell you that, yes, with age does come wisdom. I laugh to myself to think about how much I thought I knew as a kid, or even a decade ago, about what life would be like as an adult in my forties.

I could have looked to my parents too, I guess. I am 43. When my mother was 43, I was a junior in college. When my dad was 43, he'd just met my mother and they were trying to figure out the beginnings of their relationship while both of them were just coming out of horrible previous relationships. 

Me, at 43 in October 2026? I am a non-smoking, non-drinking, non-vaping, non-meat-eating vegetarian with six cats, a house and a wife of twelve years. I weigh 300 pounds and I have diabetes. 

Winning?

I mean, could definitely be worse, right?

People seem to think life is complicated. It is not. Life, itself, is remarkably easy. We add the complications ourselves, and choose to live with them. As I get older, I find myself less and less burdened by those self-imposed complications. For example, I have zero qualms whatsoever with packing up some shit, getting as much money as possible and fleeing the fucking country if necessary. Hell, I'll change my name too if it lets me escape my problems and start over. Thirty years ago I could just decide that I was changing my personality for the new school year -- I would now be the kid with long hair, or the kid who liked metal music, or whatever. Now, in the present, I can ctrl+alt+delete and reboot my entire life if I want to. The hard reset. And I have no compunctions about this whatsoever. I'll take the name of one of my characters from one of my short stories, and figuratively disappear. Bonus: maybe it would get me out of my student loan and credit card debt, too.

I am not actually going to do this, of course, but my point here is that I have no problem with it. And so many people I know couldn't actually fathom doing it -- they have too many friends, too many commitments, children, jobs they care about, etc. That's cute. Meanwhile:

Anyway.

Most of September has been punctuated by chores. And I don't just mean cleaning the house or doing yard work, though there's been a lot of that too -- I mean stuff that must be taken care of that we don't necessarily want to do, but have to do. For example -- this afternoon I processed the renewal of Daisy's car registration. New stickers and paperwork should get here in a few days. I should have done it weeks ago, but I forgot until this morning. 

Yesterday we figured out the new plans for my student loan repayment, since that's about to become a thing again. To pay mine back, I'll be paying about $400 a month for the next decade...but after that, the remaining balance is wiped out/forgiven. Believe me, I am not okay with this, but as that's the cheapest plan and as it's the only one that wipes the remainder of the balance after ten years, that's what I'm picking. I am also hoping that sometime within the next ten years, we get a progressive president who looks at this horseshit and says "yeah, no, we're wiping this debt off the board now" and makes it all magically go away. 

Daisy will be paying something like $250 a month on hers as well, and hers (because they were undergrad, amongst other reasons I guess) don't give her the option of the rest of the balance getting wiped after a decade; she has to pay it off in full, until we get the aforementioned progressive president mentioned above. 

I will also add that both of us are still in administrative forbearance; we don't have to pay anything yet. But, it's coming back, and soon. 

In other news, the rainy season has returned to Omaha. We have received rain every day for the past seventeen days in a row as of this writing. No, it's not been all-day, drenching rain, but some rain every day. The next two days are supposed to be relatively dry, and then for the next week the skies are supposed to open again, and weather forecasters are already predicting something like 2-3 inches of new rain by the end of this coming week.

I don't mind this, and I certainly don't mind the massive temperature shift from highs in the 80s and 90s to temperatures hovering between 55-65 24x7 now. My allergies, however, beg to differ, and the yard work/yard mowing that begs to be done but can't be, because of inches of rain leaving veritable puddles in the yard also beg to differ. 

There is always something else to do, of course. We still have mice in our garage (we have never seen them, but Daisy is pretty sure of it) that we'd like to evict sometime in the next month or two at most by cleaning out the rest of the garage. Daisy started doing some cleaning/trashing out there a few weeks ago, and we need to just go through and finish all of that together. Ideally I'd like to be completely done with the garage cleaning by Halloween.

Halloween is also Dolly's first birthday, and Empress's third birthday follows the week after. All of these cats are growing up and getting older so fast. Dolly and Mable are almost the same size now, and it's really hard to tell them apart in the dark or an otherwise dimly-lit room. I made the joke to Daisy tonight that we have boys and girls in small, medium, and large.

Small: Dolly, Gary
Medium: Hank, Mable
Large: Emmy, Charlie

Dolly is probably nine or ten pounds now, and is still the smallest. Gary was ten pounds at his last vet visit. Hank was fifteen-something pounds (I can't remember exact numbers now) and Mable was thirteen-something. Emmy and Charlie are the giant ones, with Emmy over sixteen and Charlie over eighteen.

All of this is slowly changing though. I've noticed they've been eating far less food now that we've added a different dry food into the mix -- they like it more and I guess it keeps them fuller longer. Hank used to look far fatter and feel heavier than he is now -- like he's balanced out. I think Mable is lighter now too. Gary is finally growing and looks like he's growing into the giant Maine Coon boy I expected him to be. I also expect Emmy to keep growing for another year or so -- she's a massive girl and really, really exhibits those Maine Coon genes. Charlie...well, we've not really noticed a difference with Charlie, but we hope that he evens out/balances out too, just like Hank and Mable have. It took Hank three years to get there though, so we're cautiously optimistic and biding our time.

With the coming of October, the holidays are upon us. Again.

First comes Canadian Thanksgiving (October 12, also known as Columbus Day here in the states). Then Halloween. Then American Thanksgiving, Black Friday, my birthday, Christmas and New Year's all in a row, one after another after another. Can I already say how tired I am of the holidays? It's not that I'm not in the spirit for it -- because, really, after this very long and troubling year, I desperately need something to look forward to, so I am filled with holiday cheer. But also I am already filled with fatigue and the holidays really, really pile that on worse. 

I still have not made the Christmas cards. It's not that I'm procrastinating on it because I dread doing it -- far from it -- I just need the time and energy to spend the better part of a day or night going through designs, editing designs, mocking up said designs, doing color and photo swaps, etc. One of our friends is supposed to come over on a Saturday night in a week or two; maybe I'll take the time after I come upstairs (read: letting Daisy get her "girls time" in) and work on them then. I don't know. My goal is still to get them done as soon as possible so that they can be ordered, printed up, and then crossed off my list once they get here in the mail. 

Of course, I also need to go order more stamps too. 

Fall 2026 Begins, Part I

 We had the TV installed and mounted yesterday morning. It is big. It is stupid big for our bedroom. The antenna arrives for it on Tuesday. All of the streaming services are already hooked up to it and working.

The dentist appointments were cancelled. Daisy couldn't get off work, and honestly I didn't want to go anyway. We have follow-up appointments in March, and should be fine until then. 

Gas is almost $5 a gallon here in Omaha. Diesel is almost $7. I have never seen prices like this -- not even during the recession years of 2007-09.

Truckers are allegedly planning a massive strike starting around October 1 if fuel prices don't go back down. I'm debating on whether I should order a bunch of extra meds from my prescription site before then just in case. 

Daisy is dropping weight like a stone on the Mounjaro and is no longer testing as diabetic when it comes to her blood sugars and A1C. I am the exact opposite -- I have somehow, almost inexplicably, gained 20 pounds in the past six months and my A1C has increased since my last doctor's visit in June. My diet and lifestyle have not changed -- the only thing that has really changed over the summer is that I quit vaping. 

I an really frustrated and frazzled in general. It feels like my body is in revolt. I went from being able to get good, satisfying sleep to now only being able to get 3-4 hours at a time again. I went from feeling great physically and noticing a difference in how I looked because I'd steadily been dropping weight to, all of a sudden, gaining a lot of it back and my diabetes numbers once more getting out of whack. This also does not bode well going into the holidays, where there are three big meal days in a row coming up (Canadian Thanksgiving, American Thanksgiving, and Christmas).

We're only a few weeks out from Canadian Thanksgiving, and it is wild that it's been almost a year since we were in Canada last fall and celebrated it (a day or two early, but together nonetheless) with the family up there and went to Daisy's cousin's wedding. It does not feel like it's been a year at all.

But then I remind myself that a year ago at this time, Pete still had almost three months left to live and Dolly hadn't even been born yet -- and it feels like a decade has passed. 

Three months from today is my 44th birthday. 

My cousin announced last week that his third book is coming out soon. 

I sometimes wonder if I've awakened in some sort of parody universe -- where everything is skewed and slightly or (at times) greatly different than what I believe it "should" be. Some people have some interesting coping mechanisms for what this world has become and is becoming. For example, a close friend of mine once told me that he does a watchthrough of The West Wing every 18 months or so just to be reminded what a functioning, idealistic (but also, realistic) government is supposed to look and act like, and...I can't fault him for that. When I messaged him a few years back that Daisy and I were doing the same, he lauded me for it. 

I just try to drown out the noise on everything I can. It's the equivalent of just putting my head down and waiting it out, the equivalent of zipping the sleeping bag closed over one's head to conserve as much body heat as possible throughout the dark, freezing night.

There's a lot of emotions and feelings I just can't shake these days. I wouldn't say I'm depressed (believe me, I know what that feels like) but it feels like everything is a struggle. I am motivated to do nothing, I have no ambition or drive to succeed anymore, and I just want to...keep myself busy with unimportant nonsense, I guess. 

The End of Summer, Part II: September's Additions and Subtractions

 As we close in on mid-month, it has finally started to cool down in Omaha. Yesterday's high barely hit 75, and I have my window open at 4am as the temperature outside is, purportedly, 60 degrees. Fall is definitely here. The NFL season has started, WVU has won their first two football games of the season, the Steelers play today and the Chiefs play tomorrow night. Yes, fall is here. 

To celebrate Labor Day weekend last week, Daisy and I pored over sales and ran comparisons between models, but I am happy to report that we are having a 65-inch Roku TV delivered and mounted, professionally, on our bedroom wall later this week. 

Did we need a giant (ten inches larger than our downstairs television) TV mounted on our bedroom wall? No, but we've been talking about it for years. I would've been happy with a smaller model, but Daisy wanted the big wall, movie theater experience if we were going to do it. So I said sure, fuck it, let's do it.

And then a week after we ordered it, we got text message notifications that we both had 11am dentist appointments on Friday -- the day the TV folks are supposed to come anytime between 7am and 7pm to put the TV up on the wall. 

We're debating on whether we should just cancel the appointments -- they're just teeth cleanings -- because rescheduling a delivery and install of the TVs will be hella difficult, and Daisy does not know whether she will be able to take the time off work for the appointments anyhow (the appointments were made long before she was in the position she is in now within her job). 

I, on the other hand, was going to just be here and take care of the install guys myself, handling it and making sure they were supervised and the cats were out of the way -- because, honestly, how long could it take to drill a mount into the wall and put a TV on it? Ten minutes? Fifteen? We could've done it ourselves but instead of mess with the hassle, Daisy and I both decided to not stress about it and just pay the experts to do it. 

As for the dentist, that's up in the air. We already have our next set of appointments after these ones set for March anyway. It is what it is. I told her if she can't get off work for our appointments or if it would be exceedingly difficult to do so, believe me, I have no problems canceling a teeth cleaning. It saves me from needing to leave the house on a Friday.

Because, folks, that's the type of lazy I have become in my old age. I don't have to leave the house and play a game of "who's in my mouth?" while HGTV blares above my head in the dental chair? Okay, cool.

Truth be told, there's a lot of things I need to be doing this fall, and especially this month -- for one, I have not created the Christmas cards yet. I wanted to do it tonight, but I am now too exhausted to do so and would not be able to make good judgment calls at 4am. For two, I have bills I need to assess and pay. Again, too tired tonight at this juncture to do math. And the third thing I have to do is...I have to figure out my new student loan repayment plan before the end of the month. 

That last one is a big one. 

Because they canceled the SAVE plan I was on for income-based repayment, we got notices a few months ago that after July 1, we would be told by our loan servicers that we'd have a 60-day window to login and select a new repayment plan for our loans. I'm sure if you have student loans, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Well, I was on an income-based repayment plan and I was paying something like $200 a month for my loans -- which I was fine with, I guess. It was an added expense every month, but it was what it was.

And then Covid hit, and everyone's payments were put on hiatus and/or were thrown into forbearance. And...it didn't end. I think I made one payment after Covid hit, and it was done the week before everything had been put on hold. Well, once I select my new payment plan, that hold finally comes off  and for the first time in well over five years, I will be paying on student loans again. Except, well, that income-based repayment plan likely isn't going to work for me anymore as I now make a lot more money than I did when I last tried to recertify that plan.

"Your bare minimum is going to be something like $300-400 a month," Daisy told me last weekend, after doing some rough calculations. 

"My goal," I said, "is to pay the bare minimum possible every month until the remainder is discharged."

There's something like a 15-year stipulation for student loans for undergrads and, I think, 20 years for grad students, where anything past that point just gets waived/discharged. Covid helped that for us big time, as did the court battle for the SAVE plan putting us back on hiatus. 2033 would be 20 years for me. So that's what, six years and change? Psh, if I have to, I should be able to handle that. And, likely, it won't even be that long as we should elect a Democrat president in 2028 who will likely wipe out the vast majority of student loan debt anyhow. I'll roll the dice on that, sure.

I will note here that I took those loans out in the long-long-ago, the earth-that-was, in 2010 -- and I took them out because I needed to eat and put gas in the Monte Carlo while I was in grad school. I needed to keep the lights on, I needed to keep food in the fridge and in the bowls of the cats. It wasn't like OMG, I can get free money from the government? Okay! It was a necessity for survival. And I knew even then I did not and would not want to pay them back when they came due. I was right there. 

Shit, I'm 43 now. Back then, I didn't expect to live past 40 in any real reasonable fashion, ever. I would either drink and smoke myself to death, I'd die in a fiery car crash, or if neither of those things happened, I would likely -- at some point, anyway -- off myself. None of those scenarios entailed doing it after age 40. I was, after all, desperately alone and lonely and didn't see much of a future for myself outside of being poor and teaching class after class every semester until it was time to die. 

You know, figuratively, anyway.

Fast forward to today and life is very different, but still. 

The End of Summer, Part I

 Well, here we are. Another year, another summer gone.

Summer 2026 seems like it disappeared -- evaporated before our eyes and vanished into nothingness as we held it in our arms. I told Daisy this past weekend that it feels like we just got back from Canada two weeks ago, not two months ago. 

It is now Labor Day weekend. Well, for me anyway. For me it's been Labor Day weekend for two days already. I took off Wednesday the 2nd, and as I am already out until Tuesday the 8th, I have a rather uncommon stretch of six days in a row off work, unfettered, for downtime and relaxation. 

I am, quietly and slowly/peacefully, trying to reset myself for fall. With fall comes cooler temperatures and work tends to slow down a bit (it has not yet, but it tends to). Football, both NFL and college, comes back this week. Schools are already back in session, of course, and school buses are continually rolling through the neighborhoods of Omaha once more. Pumpkin spice lattes have become a thing again, and I'm already starting the season right -- despite the fact that it was almost 100 degrees every day this week, I have already enjoyed a few pumpkin spice lattes, both made at home as well as purchased. That's right, I'm a basic bitch.

Anyway. 

Fall this year somehow feels different as well -- I haven't made the Christmas cards yet. I don't even have good photos for the cards yet this year. This time last year I was worried about how long Pete was going to last and prepping for our trip to Canada -- this year we've already been to Canada and back again, Pete is dead, and we have a Dolly now. 

Speaking of Dollys, I should probably mention how the passing of three greats this past week or so have really felt like a gut punch. I'm sure if you've not been living under a rock, you are aware that Dolly Parton died. Some of you who paid a little more close attention also would have heard that Tim Curry and Peter Cullen both died as well.

Look, I realize I am old now. I also realize that I am far past the age of where any celebrity, big or small, should have a profound affect on me if and when they eventually die. I can likely count on one hand the number of celebrities out there who I could name who I would be affected more by, and whose work really shaped a large part of my life more than Tim Curry and Peter Cullen. 

I am sure there are people reading this website who don't really know who I am, or are reading it for the first time. Certainly some of my readers here have never met me in real life, or if they have, they have not seen me in over two decades -- I understand that and it's okay. But, for those of you who know me well, who have known me well for most if not all of my life, you realize that The Rocky Horror Picture Show affected me in profound ways. Not sexually, of course, but creatively, musically, even spiritually to an extent. Was it a bad movie? Oh hell yes. Is it still my favorite movie of all time, and is Tim Curry a giant part of that? Also yes. I realize his health had been failing in the past decade or so, and yes, he was an old man, but losing him is a tremendous loss to fans of not just musical theater, but of the man himself. 

Similarly, Peter Cullen voiced my childhood. Since I don't expect most normal people to know who he was, here:

And a Canadian, too. 

Every time I heard Optimus Prime as a child well into my adulthood, it was Peter Cullen (with the exceptions of a few roles in offshoot series, where Garry Chalk voiced one or more characters of other/some variations of Optimus). I am and always have been a huge fan of anything Transformers. I own the entire original series and the movie as well as all of Generation 2 and the sequel series Beast Wars and Beast Machines. I went to see the first...several? Michael Bay movies in the theater based on the fact that Cullen had returned to the role of Optimus Prime for those films. The man was loved in my heart and mind. 

Everyone dies eventually, of course. I am likely going to see a lot of my heroes die of old age at some point before I kick off this mortal coil as well. One of my former friends told me that when Bob Dylan dies, she's going to wear black for a month, and...I get that. I echo that sentiment. I can't think of a major musical icon dying suddenly that really affected me and my own generation -- I guess Kurt was likely the last one, and even that was more Gen X than it was me as an elder millennial. Maybe Amy Winehouse? Still not the same level as Kurt though. I'm talking someone who my generation would be very, very upset over because they're a universally beloved household name. I don't know if anyone exists like that for my generation, someone that everyone knows.

But everyone knew Dolly Parton.

Young and old, everyone knew Dolly by music, looks, acting, or association. At the very least I don't think there's anyone on the planet in English-speaking countries who did not know who Dolly Parton was or who hadn't heard of her by name. And for those folks paying attention? She was universally beloved. It's not really hyperbole when I say that, either. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would have said something like "to hell with Dolly Parton, she's an awful human being" because nobody I've ever seen or known has ever disliked her.

Dolly was not of my generation; she was of my parents and grandparents' generation -- but we all knew her. We all adored her. We all knew more about her than most people would care to admit. And she was such a remarkable person, a true example of a great role model to follow. I am not going to go into details here because all of you can feel free to research her on your own, and many of you already know -- but I am going to tell two stories about Dolly, one short and one long. 

The short one is, because of the association of "Dolly" to "Dolly Parton," I always wondered how many people immediately assumed that Daisy had named our cat Dolly after her. Of all the names ending in -olly, she chose Dolly -- over Holly, Polly, and/or Molly. That will, always, boggle my mind to an extent. And to be fair, Daisy did question the cat's name a number of times, not knowing that it really fit her. Well, now ten months into having that cat, the name fits her very well. She is a very vocal, outspoken girl with big words and a big voice, but she still has a little frame and a little face. She is our Dollbaby, our Dollface. 

The second story is the longer story. As you folks may know, Daisy's grandfather built guitars. I don't think he ever really did it for a living, but more of a hobby. It seemed to be much more of a labor of love than anything else, but it seemed like his output increased as he got older. He would sell them for extra money, sometimes large sums of money -- so okay, maybe it was what he did for a living after a while. He didn't just build guitars, either -- he built banjos and dobros, he made his own guitar straps in his same workshop on the same workbench (and apparently also did other leatherwork as well, such as belts). 

I don't know how many guitars he cranked out every year, or over his lifetime. It was a lot of work. They are some of the finest, most beautiful guitars I have ever seen. He made them in all sizes, and when we visited up there for the first time in 2015, I actually got to see some of them in-progress -- as well as got to briefly "jam" with him and Daisy's uncle (his son) in the basement where we spent most of our time a few months ago when we were there.

When he died, in 2022, the remaining completed guitars (all but two or three of them) were distributed throughout the family. Daisy got one, Daisy's sister and our nephew got one, etc. I am sure Mama has at least one, if not more than one, of his guitars too. The rest went to his sons, all that I know of but two -- they adorn the wall of the basement living room; one is a normal acoustic and the other is a shiny, silver dobro.

It turns out that his dobros got the attention, eventually, of someone quite famous.

That someone was Dolly Parton. 

On the wall downstairs in that basement is a letter Daisy's grandfather received from Dolly Parton. It addressed him by name and said (and I am paraphrasing here) that he made the best dobros she'd ever seen, and invited him to join her to play one at the Dixie Stampede, where (at the time) she performed every night. 

Now, this letter did not have a date on it. I don't know how authentic it is, only that the family claims it's absolutely authentic. I don't know when Dolly stopped performing nightly at the Dixie Stampede. But it is a remarkable artifact and conversation piece. I have a high-definition photo of the letter, which I will obviously not share here as it has family information/names on it. The letter, to this day, hangs on Grandpa's computer desk downstairs in the basement. He did not frame it -- he was not really a framing man, from what I gathered -- but it hangs there in bare paper as if it were a shopping list, on a desk in a basement where everything sits as if frozen in time since the day the man died in 2022. 

So there's the stories. Now, onward...