Category: Life

From a piece in St. Louis Magazine entitled A guide to taking a Viking river cruise along the Mississippi from St. Louis:

Day 4: Stop in the Quad Cities, Iowa, the “Breadbasket” of the United States. Visitors will begin their day with a visit to the John Deere Pavilion and Deere family homes. Afterward, guests can choose between an optional tour of local farms or stroll through the city itself, visiting the Figge Art Museum or the Quad City Botanical Center.

Technically, the Quad Cities are, get this, four cities. The list of attractions includes stops in three of the four: The Deere things are in Moline; the art museum is in Davenport; the Botanical Gardens are in Rock Island. Only Bettendorf is omitted. I wonder if residents of the area think of the whole region as “the city.” I presume not since there is a river to cross to get from Davenport/Bettendorf to Moline/Rock Island.

Aren’t I Mr. Knowledge from having been to Davenport twice in the last two years? And I haven’t even read the history book of the area that I picked up in 2024. But that and the final Ben Wolf novel are definitely in the short queue before October this year.

And I looked at this article with some interest. Mrs. Noggle would like to go on another cruise after 27 years, but I’ve been a bit reluctant. So I kinda priced this one out and… Holy Huck Finn: $30,000 and 30 days for a round trip. I guess the Caribbean it is. Someday.

Facebook must know this story already to have presented this to me:

I lost on that word in 8th grade in the spelling bee, the feeder that could have taken me to Washington, D.C., although probably not–the words the kids win on these days are crazy. Maybe they were easier forty years ago, but I would have topped out maybe in districts at best. Maybe state, but probably not.

But I lost very early on threshold when Mr. Biedenstein, my 8th grade teacher and later (but still in the 1900s) became mayor of the new town of Byrnes Mill (old town, but newly chartered or whatever), when Mr. Biedenstein pronounced threshold with three Hs.

Not that I am bitter or anything.

Actually, no. Although I dominated the class-based fun-and-games from 8th grade Speech and Drama class games Alphabetics (not unlike Password) and Show-Offs (not unlike charades) and on to Honors Western Civ’s Jeopardy! my senior year of high school, when it came time to do actual competitions with other schools, I did not do so well. I did not study, so I got bounced out of the Civics/History trivia competition my senior year of high school very early.

I am pleased to note, however, that when I attended my sons’ Scholar Bowl tournament at their high school, I found I would have cleaned up on most but the fast-calculating math questions.

So I have that going for me, which is nice.

I mean, why not spell it right out, unsolicited email? Sus, indeed.

Ah, gentle reader. It started out so promising.

The day we left for Branson last week, that is, late Sunday morning, my beautiful wife was preparing to roast some pecans in the oven when she heard a pop, and the oven did not heat up. Ah, heating element again.

You might remember the saga last year:

To be clear: Apparently, this part shipped from St. Louis, Missouri, two days later (December 28), and:

• Arrived and left the carrier facility in St. Louis twice.
• Arrived in Kansas City on January 1, and then left the facility twice.
• Arrived in Springfield facility January 2, last Thursday, twice.

And there it sits. It is still scheduled to arrive by Wednesday, after I ordered it and twelve days since it shipped from St. Louis. Which is a three hour drive away. For some reason, it was routed through Kansas City for a week.

I guess I did not follow-up on that experience, but that particular part was shipped from St. Louis unpadded in a 1″ tall cardboard box which arrived bent, and the heating element in it was bent 20 degrees itself. So, unusable. I was able to return it even though the Amazon seller was a Ukrainian(!) company shipping from St. Louis or something–probably used parts from a junkyard or something. But they gave me a refund, and I got a heating element from a US-based (maybe) source and installed it.

Well. It lasted a year. But I ordered another from the same seller on Amazon (ending my tweehad against them for the moment)–getting ready to leave for the week, I felt too rushed to look at appliance parts sellers themselves on the Internet, and it was only when I was in Branson that I thought I hope I didn’t just order from the Ukrainian company again. But it came properly packaged and intact.

And since I had already done this and because it’s basically two 1/4 bolts and two screws to attach the leads, I had the oven up and running in under a half an hour.

So, on Sunday, I decided to crack open the refrigerator. Again.

Pretty much since we got the refrigerator, it would rattle when the compressor/evaporator fan stopped. But late last year, it started getting louder and rattling longer, so I figured I would take a look at it. Which means I would have Nico take a look at it.

A couple of years ago, I successfully defrosted the frozen drain line from the frost-free freezer, so I was unafraid.

I’d done some research, and the things on YouTube (which featured far younger refrigerators than this one, which is 26 years old and has metal parts in it) indicated it might be dirty coils or ice buildup on the coils leading to the fan nicking the ice. It might have been motor bearings. We cleaned it out, and it looked as the fan was running smoothly, but it did rattle when running. The shaft holding the fan on had a couple millimeters of give where it could go into and out of the motor that far. I guessed that it would be something we could live with whilst I researched maybe replacing the fan and/or motor.

But it seemed like the fan was running more frequently than previously. Several times an hour, it rattled for the length of the runtime. After I closed it back up, my wife said it sounded different. Perhaps I left the sheet metal on the back a little loose? After dinner, I thought to look at the temperature controls to see if maybe they might have changed. And the freezer was set to the absolute lowest setting. A-ha! I thought. When I tried to dial it up, though, it resisted and then popped. But now the fan was permanently on. Not good.

So, after a couple hours of listening to the beating of his tell-tale heart rattling fan, I had us move the contents of the 26-year-old refrigerator to the 45-year-old drink refrigerator behind the bar downstairs while we explore our options (buy a new refrigerator with an expected life of 10 years).

Not without some self-doubt, gentle reader, not without some self-doubt. My father’s handy angel on my right shoulder encourages me to fix it (and expresses silently doubt that I can), but that might involve a cycle of ordering a $60 part, nope, that’s not it, ordering a $60 part, no, that’s not it until I listen to the devil of modern disposable culture on the left. So, yeah, we’re getting a new refrigerator.

Next internal conflict: Do I keep this refrigerator to try to fix it in my spare time? Well, no. The garage does not have room for it. And maybe I should actually get into the habit of taking care of things before I get these ambitions. So, no, they’ll haul it away and either recycle it or fix it and resell it. Which I could do myself were I so inclined, but history has shown I have not been so inclined.

Maybe the theme of the year should be Get away from the damned desk and take care of things.

At any rate, I have ordered an extra heating element for the oven. Which might end up cluttering the garage and its museum of parts for appliances Brian J. fixed but then got sick of and replaced (with several dryer wheel kits for an old Whirlpool dryer and tub suspension rods for a Samsung washer).

And, wait a minute. Does the exhaust fan motor sound different?

Ah, gentle reader. The bath toys.

It was 2013 when 2013 when I lamented that my children would grow up and not want Mr. Bubble baths and their bath toys:

I’ve already gamed it out: the older boy will one day decide Mr. Bubble is for babies, much like he decided at one point that Sesame Street is for babies, and that will be that. Perhaps the younger will hold out hope for another dash of the Mr. Bubble at some point, but he’ll follow his older brother’s lead, and he’ll stop asking for toys in the bathtub and for bubbles.

Eventually, the toys will get cleaned up and donated to a church sale or some such collection, but the last bottle of Mr. Bubble will just migrate to the rear of the cabinet. Periodically, I’ll clean and rearrange the contents of the cabinet, but I won’t want to dispose of half a bottle of Mr. Bubble. Eventually, I’ll say I’m saving it for the grandchildren, but I’ll not really know if I’m to have my line continue or if I’ll live to see it.

I mentioned in 2021 that the toys were gone:

I know, gentle reader, I suffer more last times for everything than actually occur (for example, the bottle of Mr. Bubble mentioned in The Future Forgotten Bottle of Mr. Bubble actually got used up, another secured, and that one used up, so there is currently no half-empty bottle of Mr. Bubble to be forgotten, but the bath toys are long gone now).

Ah, but as I noted in 2024:

But in 2013, when writing about The Future Forgotten Half-Empty Bottle of Mr. Bubble, I mentioned their bath toys, and in 2021, I said the bath toys were long gone, but I must have meant that their playing with bath toys was long gone, as the bath toys are still in the bin under the sink in the hall bath.

No more.

In this, the year of our lord 2026, I have taken the bin out, discarded the sponges, and bleach-washed the toys for actual donation.

The impetus of this drastic action: I needed the bin. My oldest, a man now (albeit a young one), has a collection of grooming products with which he clutters the vanity in the hall bath. As part of my cleaning this weekend, I wanted to put those things in the bin and under the sink. So I finally dealt with the bath toys.

In 2024, I also mentioned old videos:

But as I am who I am, I accumulated a bunch of videocassettes and whatnot for my children. Actually, I bought a bunch before we even thought of having children when I was doing the Ebay thing around the turn of the century.

So I have a bit of a conundrum now: What to do with the portion of the Nogglestead video library (and book library) which is geared toward children? So I box them up and store them for eventual grandchildren? Try to sell them (who watches old videocassettes these days except me?).

Ah, you know, sometime in December, I culled the video library of a number of these titles. But I left them on the floor by the video shelves, obscured by the unused weight bench in our family room, and it was also only this weekend where I put them in a box and put them onto the table downstairs because I expected my beautiful wife might want to pick through them. Mr. Popper’s Penguins with Jim Carrey. Which I didn’t watch with the boys even when the youngest was in his penguins phase. I think I have the G.I.Joe complete cartoon series box set in it; I might have to pull that one out. But it will likely remain on the table for weeks if we don’t need the table for something else in the meantime.

But these two things do underline the slow pace of change at Nogglestead. Which is to say nothing changes, and that leads to some weird sense-of-time dilation in my own head for sure.

Perhaps part of my get away from the damned desk theme for the year should be to make some changes around Nogglestead. Maybe finally paint the shed red as I’ve hoped to for some time. Maybe clean the garage, which is an effort I started last year and got away from.

I’m actually writing a poem on this theme. Well, I started a poem on this theme. But I’ve set it aside as I have finished the first part of the two- or three-part poem and will pick it up again when I get a good feeling for the turn in it. Or, given my recent (as in, within the last sixteen years) history, maybe never.

Ah, gentle reader. The annual tradition continues. After we hurriedly put away the Christmas decorations in early January, we find some decorations that have escaped notice and need to be put away later. Since I cleaned the whole house this weekend, I think I got a pretty good handle on what was left behind this year.

The sleighbells on the door.

This is almost an annual tradition, and I think that we had them on the door for most of the year once.

I have mentioned the story of before, so I won’t bore you with it again. In addition to the stiffness of the belt leather holding it these days, we don’t hear them jingle because people don’t tend to come through our front door. We open the door once every couple of weeks for packages, but the number of guests to Nogglestead these days is not very large. And those who come often come through the garage.

The Winter/Christmas Village Buildings.

To be honest, perhaps my beautiful wife, who collected the tchotchkes whilst I wrestled with unwrapping the well-wrapt lights on the upstairs Christmas tree, did not recognize that these winter scenes were now Christmas decorations. After all, it’s possible she has noticed them before Christmas individually–I buy a Christmas decoration before we have the Christmas decorations out to cheer myself and to see if anyone notices, and I bought the church in 2024 and the coffee shop 2025. So she might have thought they were just part of the décor.

By the way, has anyone noticed? Well, as part of our actual Christmas decorations, I found a new tchotchke on the mantel which I’d never seen and didn’t acquire. So I think my oldest has noticed and added one of his own.

A couple of boxes for decorations.

I pulled these empty boxes when undecorating the tree. One of the boxes is for a Chewbacca ornament which I don’t know that I have ever seen (not the Easter Chewbacca, which did not come with a box). The other is a little hearth candle holder which I’ve seen, but is one of the decorations which I’ve not been eager to put out because of young children (no longer young) and kittens (no longer kittens, but still kittenish chaos on twelve paws).

I guess at some point, we put the decorations out, and when it came time for the rapid deChristmasification, we put the decorations away but not in their boxes.

You know, gentle reader, I think this year we will have an audit of our Christmas decorations. We have so many that do not actually get put out for one reason or another (or horizontal surfaces are limited and cat-patrolled). So perhaps we should sort them, divest ourselves of some, and make sure to properly box the ones we will keep. Properly box until the next time we take the decorations down.

A little oil lamp.

This little piece of unknown inheritance was located on the bookshelves behind the television, and when my wife swept the lower level, she did not look closely to the bookshelves since most of them are double-stuffed with books.

At any rate, they are all put away now. And as part of the housecleaning, I played a game of “Christmas ornament or cat toy?” Ah, gentle reader, as you know, to a cat, they are one and the same, which explains why sometimes Christmas ornaments are found months later in an opposite corner of the room from the Christmas tree. But, dang it, don’t they sometimes look the same. A little bell and a tailing ribbon. Uh…. No place for a hook, cat toy? I think I’ve answered correctly in all cases so far.

So this should be the annual Christmas Straggler post. But, as always, no guarantees. Stay tuned for further updates (if any).

(Previous Christmas Stragglers covered in 2012, 2013, 2018, 2019, 2021, ,2022, and 2023.)

While I was researching yesterday’s post (that is, reading the Wikipedia entry on the Surfside condominium collapse), it (the Wikipedia entry) mentioned that the Hyatt Regency walkway collapse was the most deadly (non-aviation) engineering failure in history (so far). In that disaster, a walkway loaded with party attendees gave way and collapsed onto a ballroom floor with other partygoers under it.

Ah, gentle reader; I remember the engineering failure that caused it.

I read something about it in a magazine, or perhaps in the hotel itself–might we have stayed there on one of our trips to Kansas City over the years? But I think it was a magazine because I remember seeing a diagram like this:

It has stuck in my head over the years. I’d also say it has informed me of my twee little two-by-four engineering projects around Nogglestead, but probably not much.

Ted Gioia posts Why Secondhand Is Now Better Than New, Or how the thrift store suddenly became cool:

Something unusual is happening in the world of gifting. I saw it during the recent holiday season—and you may have too.

The Wall Street Journal noticed it a few weeks ago. People are now buying secondhand gifts. The sheer numbers are staggering—in a recent survey, 82% of consumers said they’re more likely to purchase pre-owned items for holiday presents.

Ah, gentle reader. As you know, I’ve been doing that for a long time–and I’ve mentioned it from time to time especially since I started doing “Good Album Hunting” posts where my Christmas shopping has resulted in more for me than gift recipients (like this post from 2016).

I have found some delightful things for gifts. And because I have often relied on the Gift Schtick, I’ve found it easier to find Duck Dynasty, Dallas, duck, chicken, flamingo, owl, or eagle-themed gifts at second hand stores. Even now, or at least this year, I noticed an awful lot of owls available, which is what I would have bought for my sainted mother.

In my case, it’s not so much quality but other things that have led me to secondhand stores for gifts. But as they grow popular, the prices will go up, and they’ll have less appeal for me.

I posted earlier today about us seeing the policy activity after a local shooting.

Turns out, on this very date 14 years ago, something similar happened.

Man, right about that time, I was assuredly questioning the safety of my new home. In addition to passing that crime scene, right about the same time we had serial killers at church (who came to Nogglestead for dinner after the unfortunate instance of one of their victim’s dying); the coach of the little league team I also coached and my boys played on shot his wife and killed himself; and someone rang our bell at 4am because the stolen car they were driving broke down or something–he abandoned it and fled from the helpful deputy we summoned to try to help while I waited inside the house cradling a shotgun just in case.

Even worse, on this day eight years ago….

My beautiful wife and I are doing the Whole 30 again this year, which will be our third time through it. You know, it won’t really affect my intake much. I won’t cook bacon or breakfast sausage. I haven’t really eaten as many doughnuts as in the recent past. I won’t have the opportunity to throw in a frozen pizza or something else from the freezer for a quick lunch. I won’t be able to cook a can of beans as a handy side. I’ll not have my nightly portion of wine. I won’t be able to snack on tortilla chips in the evening, which is something I do, what, once a week? No melted cheese tortillas or ham and cheese on rye.

I’ll have to be mindful, and that’s what is difficult, especially at lunch time. I can eat all the raw vegetables I want, and all the nuts I want, and meat and eggs. I’ll have to make sure there’s plenty of things in the refrigerator, so I’ll hard-bake a dozen eggs or two and cook extra cheap steak or chicken for snacking. But I’ll make it through, especially since I get to concentrate on the Winter Reading Challenge, which also starts today.

Babbel in the New Year: Lifetime language learning for $199

So the monthly subscriptions must be tailing off, ainna?

I’ve mocked the monthly subscription language places before, saying they’re not geared to help you learn the language–they’re geared to make you come back tomorrow.

Or maybe I’m just bored because in Duolingo, I only got far enough into Japanese to introduce myself and to order green tea and rice. After a couple of weeks.

I opened a bookshop. It was the best, worst thing I’ve ever done:

January 2025
Slate-grey skies and relentless rural gloom. The Wiltshire idyll that my husband and I moved our young family to 15 years ago entirely loses its charm at this time of year. I long for London. For high heels on pavements. For culture around every corner. I head to the butcher in Tisbury, a picturesque, largely independent high street between Shaftesbury and Salisbury, to buy something cheering for dinner. And that is when I see it: the three arched windows of the shop opposite, formerly a gift shop full of cotton nightdresses and the type of wooden toys no child ever wants to play with, a “For Sale” sign hanging outside.

February
“A bookshop?” says the solicitor we have instructed with the conveyancing of the purchase. “Lovely, romantic idea. You’ll go under in a year.”

I read The Bookshop in 2021 and saw the film in June.

My beautiful wife’s barometer and comfort level with the idea of opening or acquiring a book store waxes and wanes. Given our current fiscal situation, it’s definitely not in a gibbous state.

God, I hate this song.

I am pretty sure I hate most of John Lennon’s oeuvre, especially if it’s not with the Beatles (and I’m not that much of a Beatles fan either).

I find the sentiment artificial and cloying, and I also tend to feel a stinging indictment that I’ve mostly frittered away another year, that I have continued to squander my inheritance that I’ve been given, and that the next year will probably be more of the same.

I did have some accomplishments this year:

• I got to the rank of 3rd degree black belt in martial arts (but I’ve been very intermittent in attendance since last January).
• I did manage to get three apps into the Apple App Store (Boxing Drill Companion, Dr. Franklin’s Art of Virtue Tracker, and Nico’s Kitty Translator).
• I had two poems appear in a university publication (the Green Hills Literary Lantern).
• I have four poems submitted to a major, actual print, magazine, and they have not been rejected in seven months.

  

I mean, I guess that’s a couple of things to hang one’s hat on, conversation starters and whatnot, but some other numbers are less encouraging.

• I “applied” for 1,035 jobs this year, of which I received…
• 26 responses requesting more information, assessments, or scheduling screener interviews, wherein…
• I talked to actual people at 9 companies, mostly screeners, but…
• 2 times I went deep into the interview process and got…
• 1 job offer in February, contingent on contract award in April. Given how the times have a-changed, there’s no telling if that contract was awarded. I liked my chances elsewhere, though, although this seems to have been an overly optimistic view of the market and/or my salability.

I have been blessed to have two part-time, sometimes, contracts to provide some income, although it’s frankly only enough to cover COBRA health benefits now. One of the contracts, though, requires me to be available a lot of the time but I only get to bill when I’m responding to needs. Which has left me feeling chained to my desk for many days over the year. And it has night meetings, which means I’m “on” until 8:30 or so at night, which leaves me little time for reading. I’m lucky to have it; it’s one of the few job offers I’ve had in the late over-the-transom period of applying on the Internet.

So, what am I going to do differently in 2026 to improve my lot? Probably not a lot, gentle reader.

I haven’t had “New Years Resolutions,” but I have tried to pin some themes on the years. Things to focus on improving, so to speak. The theme for 2024, for example, was “Focus.” I realized I was a little busy-minded, especially when reading at night, where I was constantly checking the Internet for this or that on my phone when I was supposed to be reading. So I worked hard to resist that urge to respond to a text until the end of a chapter or to not look up something when it occurred to me. I did okay at that one.

This year, the goal was “Industry.” Given my employment situation, I wanted to make sure that I spent the time at my computer and other daytime hours in a productive fashion. Well, kinda, especially early in the year. But my Industry yielded few sales of apps, which discouraged me, so, yeah, the latter part of this year has been less industrious.

Next year, though: “Get the hell away from the desk.” It’s not one word and not very snappy, but it will probably do a lot for me. One of the things that I’ve been proud of going into my fifties has been how sort-of athletic I am and how healthy I am, and the latter part of 2025 has seen me relinquish that day by day. Plus, I really could use the interaction with humans that I get from martial arts classes or business networking events or tech meetups.

I should probably start today. I should probably start right now. Maybe after a nap. Which is away from the desk, after all.

Kim du Toit is not interested in winning one and a half billion in the lottery:

Here’s the thing. The cash option on that beast was about $500 million, making the lucky winner a semi-billionaire. And that life-changing thing is what stopped me from buying a ticket.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s not that I wouldn’t be able to spend the money — I have plenty of relatives and friends, all of whom I could make extremely happy/wealthy. But honestly, I don’t want to change my own life that much.

Believe me: change it would. With 500 big ones to your name, you become a target for all sorts of undesirable people: kidnappers, scam artists, robbers, whatever. You might think that you could disappear from public life and become anonymous, but you can’t; that sum of money is just too big. So you’d have to hire lawyers, accountants, financial planners and personal bodyguards… and that all adds up to a massive lifestyle change.

That’s the exact line of reasoning I express to my boys when we pass by the grocery store courtesy counter when the jackpots get that large.

I mentioned to my brother yesterday that the winning ticket was sold in Arkansas, and he said he’d have to check his numbers–he lives not far from the state line, and wasn’t sure what state he bought his tickets in.

Now that would be more my luck: he wins a billion dollars, and I’m the one kidnapped for ransom by some Eastern European syndicate or South American cartel. I mean, we’re close, but are we a million or ten million in ransom close? I’d hate to discover.

In a post about upcoming movies, he likes the trailer for The Odyssey but:

But now here’s some more Slop Superhero Content: Wonder Man. They did a race swap on Wonder Man which I don’t care about because, get this, literally no one cares about Wonder Man. The character was invented for purely cynical reasons — it was practice back then to steal another company’s IP by just flipping the gender of a character. Thus, Marvel created Wonder Man just because DC was making some money with Wonder Woman. (And Stan Lee created She-Hulk because he knew that someone, likely DC, would create a female Hulk if he didn’t do so first.)

If you never heard of Wonder Man, don’t sweat it. He’s a D-list team member on whichever Avengers team needed a spare body in the 80s. He was one of those characters I would actively avoid by not buying a comic if he was on the cover or if I knew he was on the team. Like Captain Mar-Vell or Quasar or a dozen other generic Superman-derivatives.

Oh, that’s going to leave a mark on my retirement portfolio which is heavy into Gen X Collectibles that later generations don’t want anyway.

I have the first 13 issues of the Wonder Man comic book from the 1980s and the first 17 of Quasar.

As a matter of fact, I recently saw a Facebook memory from, oh, a decade or so ago asking what everyone’s favorite Avenger was, and I said Wonder Man to tut tut the people who only knew the Avengers from the movies.

Probably not going to see a streaming series, though, so I won’t know about how it compares to the comics which were a little arch in their day.

How’s your comic book collection these days, Brian J.? you might ask. Well, the last comic I might have bought was Sarah Hoyt’s Barbarella in 2021, but I’ve read a couple from the older ones I reclaimed when my boy cleaned his room this summer, so I’m at 1216 logged in the spreadsheet. Don’t anticipate buying any anytime soon. Man, I miss the Comic Cave and it’s dollar-each multi-issue runs. But the business model that made it affordable to me put him out of business. But Comic Force is still going–I just was in there to buy a couple of short boxes and poly bags.

On the comic book movie/series front, I wonder why nobody has tapped into the Marvel 2099 titles. They came out in the early 1990s with imaginings of other people claiming the hero names in a dystopian future–Doom 2099, Punisher 2099, Spider-Man 2099, Hulk 2099, Ravage 2099, X-Men 2099…. And some of them ran for two or three years. I wonder if they could make something of that, but the people in charge are probably just too young.

My beautiful wife helped with Christmas cards this year, so we got the sixty-five or so addressed in two days, which is good because we started late. Every year, I think I should start at the beginning of December or even late November, but I never do.

Our Christmas card list is dwindling. A couple of years ago, it was almost one hundred. But people have moved, cards have been returned, or people have died. Sometimes we never know.

When the card comes back with the yellow label or when we learn otherwise someone has moved, the address gets erased but the name gets left on with a grey or yellow stripe. How long until I remove those lines from the list? Scott’s been on it ever since I started tracking diligently in the spreadsheet instead of working from an address book like an old man–I think we briefly worked from my wife’s Google contact list, but it favored recent friends.

Most of the people on our list are acquaintances from twenty years ago or more. I’ve got two friends from my time in Milwaukee in college; a couple of former co-workers, but nothing since 2007 when I went fully remote consulting. We’ve added a couple from church and the family of a girl who attended school with my youngest, but mostly it’s from 20 years ago, and mostly it’s the only contact we have with most of them, especially since Facebook has gone to ads, suggested posts, and slop instead of, you know, friends.

So far, we’ve gotten seven Christmas cards. And of those, one are from the Lutheran school we continue to support and one is a thank you card from our postal carrier after we gave her a couple of gift cards.

Christmas cards seem to be becoming an anachronism; we receive fewer each year, too, and it would seem odd to start adding to the list now.

It kind of feels like casting my bread upon the waters except without the return. But that kind of matches most of what I do with my life. A blog with a couple of readers (Rick and Chinese LLMs, mainly). Publishing books which yielded, what, 50 sales (John Donnelly’s Gold), 1 sale (The Courtship of Barbara Holt), and maybe ten sales (Coffee House Memories). I’ve written and released apps to lackluster sales (Boxing Drill Companion, 2; Dr. Franklin’s Art of Virtue Tracker, 2; Nico’s Kitty Translator, 3).

So, like so many things these days, instead of joy or pleasant memories of the people to whom I’m addressing the cards, the experience reinforces my fin de siècle mood these days.

I thought I might have mentioned the story about Curt, the guy who ran the Didde-Glaser printing press next to mine on second shift, somewhere along the line, but I cannot find it on the blog. Curt would come in at 3pm when the rest of us were getting off, and he was known to come in with a bit of a buzz. As he explained it to me, he would go down by the lake for lunch and sometimes have a six-pack somehow and then it was time for work. Of course, he was carrying on a tradition–some of the old-timers (they were all old-timers at the print shop which was over 100 years old by the time I worked there 1996 to 1998) would bring in six packs and drink them while they worked. Not a thing by the 1990s, and not a thing I would do working with industrial machines that could rip your arm off.

But sometime in the middle of my stint there, I was telling Curt all about how much you could find out about a person in the Internet. Bear in mind, this was 1997ish. And I was on America Online, the last company to buy Time Warner and die (I’d short Netflix if I could about now).

I came in with a printed (surely sheet-fed by then and not dot-matrix, but one never knows) pages including his address and a map to his house. And I asked him if that was his address even though the electric bill had a different first name.

It was his kid’s name–when he couldn’t make the payment, the electric company cut him off, and he had it reconnected in his kid’s name. As a certain segment of the population was wont to do in those days where the internet was in its infancy and all the things were not yet connected.

I thought about this yesterday when I mentioned to my oldest son, who is old enough to sign contracts now, that if he registered for a free trial of Fox One or whatever, we could watch the Packers game. I couldn’t do it because I’d used the free trial to watch the Packers game two or three weeks ago. I cancelled the trial before half time because it was not going well for the Packers.

And he did, so we watched the football game. Well, the boys watched the first half of it, and I stuck until the bitter and disappointing end.

But for a brief moment, I was just like Curt, briefly. I hadn’t thought of him for many years, maybe a decade ago. When I searched the Internet for him again then I found his obituary and was momentarily shaken. Because in my memory, he’s younger than I am now.

You are forgiven if you read the title like this:

Heaven knows I did.

This time last week, I was in Florida. My beautiful wife had purchased a “marketing package” from one of our timeshare companies in 2022, back in the days when I had an income. It was a three night stay at a resort in Orlando, and we would have to attend a pitch for buying more timeshare. She pushed it off as long as she could, but it finally came time to fly down or sacrifice our prepayment. So we did.

Springfield offers (likely subsidized) direct flights, but at odd times. So we were at the airport at 6:30, and we were in the Orlando area a little after noon. I say area because the direct flight was to Sanford, Florida, about an hour north of the southern part of Orlando where we stayed. We got to Orlando, had an early dinner, and I was wiped since I’d been up since 3am. So I read a bit and went to bed early.

The next day, we had the sales presentation. It was supposed to be only two hours, but they let us marinate for a full three and a half, sweating us or letting us discuss the pros and cons of an additional purchase. I said earlier “one of our timeshare companies” because when she bought the package, we had two, but this company bought our other company, so now we have one. Being the cynic I am and seeing how they’ve only partially integrated, I think company #2 is going to skim the best of company #1’s properties and get some of company #1’s owners to buy in and then spin the rump of company #1 off. These companies are always coming up with novel ways to acquire each other and to create new “ownership” products that are good for the company. It didn’t help that the place where we had the sales pitch was the same place we had it 11 years ago, when we bought. Back then, the plans were to develop the whole plot, with buildings surrounding the little “lake” in the center. In 2025, the project was not completed, and the company representative said they would probably not build new again since it was time-consuming and expensive, whereas fiscal gimcrackery was easier and has better ROI (well, I inferred the last part). So the great importance of buying now did not affect us, even if we could. I’m starting to wonder if the timeshares were a good idea at all, but we skipped a year and bugged out on our vacation this year. Eh, who knows.

But! I took a weekend trip. What did I do on my trip?

• We went to an outlet mall after our sales pitch and the next day we went to an Orange County park. It was a low-key visit with no amusement park trips or anything especially touristy.
• We had two dinners out and several in.
• I read a bunch of magazines, a couple issues of First Things, New Oxford Review, and Reader’s Digest. Even though I did bring books (including What the Frost?, I stuck to the magazines. And during our walks, I made several allusions to what I read in Reader’s Digest. The others, not so much.
• It was, however, a three-Wargames weekend. My wife mentioned she had seen the film again on a recent flight while we were flying; because the building we were staying in was the Ville de Falconi, I unlocked the room door at one point and said, “We’re in. It thinks I’m falcon!” (which she didn’t recognize because she doesn’t say it when logging into any new device for the first time), and New Oxford Review had a piece called “DEFCON, Neocon, Katechon” which alludes to the film.
• I missed what might be my only chance to say “Mele Kalikimaka” to a native Hawaiian–the woman giving the group part of the sales pitch. One never knows when one will get another opportunity to speak to a native Hawaiaan in December.
• Wondered if the decorators of the room knew that they had two of the same picture in it.

  

  Or if one of the housekeepers was playing a little joke.

• Got to watch most of the Packers game which we could not do at home. But turned it off near the end when they were done before the Broncos were. Just like home in the days when we had DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket.

At any rate, it was an okay trip. It was nice to spend some time alone with my wife–but we will someday soon be empty nesters spending all of our time together alone. We did have to leave Orlando at 3:45am to catch a 6:30 flight home, but I slept better and was able to function Monday afternoon. But it was essentially two travel days for two days of vacation which is a little much for my taste, especially as it involved airports.

Once home, though, the bad habits resumed. Spending too much time doomscrolling at the computer because my one contract needs me to be available even though I only bill for times I’m working–not all of the available time.

Also, I thought “Zoot Suit Riot” was Squirrel Nut Zippers, but it clearly is not. The rockabilly/Big Band sound had a brief moment back in the middle 1990s, ainna?