Category: Life

Last night, whilst grilling, I was pleased to go outside and see a bright star in the sky.

I got out my binoculars and took a look; yes, it was indeed two planets so close together that they looked like a single unit to the naked eye. I don’t have a tripod for my phone, unlike the artist formerly known as the One Hand Clapping Guy. So you get a dot, kind of like I saw.

My oldest saw me taking the binoculars out to the driveway, so he followed; he thought it was cool, so he told his brother, whom I then took out on the deck for a peek. I even coaxed my beautiful wife out to take a peek. They all thought it was neat, and then they went back to their other [electronic] endeavors.

You know, when I was in middle school, I was all down with astronomy. One of my father’s childhood books, a volume on astronomy, passed down to me, and I checked other books out of the library to read up on astronomy as it was understood in the 1960s. I lay on my back on my aunt’s yard in St. Charles and tried to draw a sky chart. I was very in tune with the position of the planets daily–but that came with the help of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which posted that information along with the daily weather report. But when 1986 rolled around, and we were living in the well-lit trailer park when Halley’s Comet came around. I might have seen it. I saw a smudge in the morning sky where the paper said it should be.

About that time, my interest in astronomy waned, which is just as well. I lived in well-lit areas after that. Even the house down the gravel road had close neighbors on either side with lights in their back yards and on their chicken coop, and I had a massive hill immediately for my western horizon.

Still, I thought the night was very dark when I moved to Nogglestead, but the horizons are shrinking with light from new developments and growing towns to the east and west. But I have, when I have thought of it and when news coverage prompted me, to go try to see a meteor shower or whatnot. I might have actually seen a meteor once a couple years back, but it was blink-and-it’s-gone, so I’m not sure.

So I was surprised and mutely delighted to actually see an astronomical phenomenon. One that Genghis Khan might have thought was a good omen. I’d like to try to treat it as such, but I am all-too-familiar with the Bayeux Tapestry.

So we have the majority of our Christmas cards signed, sealed, and mailed. But not without SCANDAL!

I mentioned that this year got glittery Christmas cards this year. I paid more for about 70 cards than I normally would, but two 35 packs were available at the warehouse store the day I wanted to start and I did not want to make another stop at Walmart to get more Brian-priced Christmas cards, so I forked over a handful. They’re pretty nice, though: glitter aside, they come with pretty and decorated envelopes and little foil seals for the back of the envelopes. So they were very lah-di-dah indeed. And spilled glitter everywhere.

However, I ran out of the new cards a little before I ran out of names and addresses. Which led to the conundrum:

If started mailing out plain cards, they likely would have glitter in them as the table where I prepared the cards will not give up the last of the stray glitter until sometime next year. So these recipients would likely get non-glittery cards with bits of glitter upon them. They might think that they do not rate with the Noggle family to get the fancy cards and might take offense.

I mean, this would mostly be my family, as somehow our Christmas card list is weighted so that the sixty-five percent of it comes before N, and family members who have married have married down in the alphabet. Except for my cousin who married Jeff AAABest (who has his own business); I simply forgot to re-sort the list this year, so she’s still listed under her old married name way down the alphabet. I could not slight my families!

So I did the next worst thing: I sent them some of the glittery cards remaining from 2018.

So they might look at the cards and say, “Oh, how the glitter clashes!” The 2018 cards have silvery glitter to represent snow; the 2020 cards have gold glitter from the frame of golden-hued cards. Or the recipient might look at it and say, “Wait, this is a repeat of the card from 2018!”

Either way, it’s less SCANDALOUS and hurtful than sending them cards with no glitter at all.

Or at least that’s the drama I inserted whilst I wrote out the Christmas cards.

In other news, I removed two families from the list this year (SCANDAL!). The first was a couple I went to high school with who married; we sat with them at my 10 year high school reunion 20 years ago and started sending them Christmas cards sometime thereafter. We haven’t received a card from them maybe ever, so twenty years is my limit! The other is a family who were friends of my parents as they lived across the hall from us in the middle 1970s. They lived not far from the store where I worked at college, so I saw them from time to time–the first time, I heard the gentleman’s voice before I saw him. He definitely had a radio announcer or movie trailer voice. They stayed in touch with my mom over the years, even coming for a visit — well, I guess that was also twenty-some years ago. I have not heard from them in a long time, and they’re getting up there. If they’re still alive.

The real scandal of the Christmas cards, I suppose, is that it gives me the one chance a year to think of and to communicate in a one-way fashion with people I’ve known and I think fondly of, but not fondly enough to keep in greater touch throughout the years. Some of them are on Facebook, or were for a while, but I’m not on Facebook much any more, and I hardly saw things from them when I was, either because they stopped participating or because Facebook has curated them out of my feed for its own ends.

So, for me at least, Christmas cards are about the warm feelings they give me and are a completely selfish pursuit. But I really do wish the recipients a Merry Christmas and a blessed 2021.

Apparently, I remember glitter-inclusive Christmas cards about as long as a woman remembers the pain of childbirth–a little over a year (which is why so many siblings are about two years different in age, I often argue).

Because I got Christmas cards with glitter in them again, and now suddenly I am inadvertently sparkly.

Even my beautiful wife catches some bits of glitter, either floating through the air or from my touch when I have been working on the cards. It gives her a bit of a clubbing vibe, which she carries off better because she is something like twenty-seven years old whilst I am significantly older.

At least this year, I don’t have a beard, so the little unicorn dandruff isn’t getting caught in my facial hair. And I started and will finish my Christmas cards a couple of days earlier, which means the glitter will all finally be cleaned up a little earlier next August.

So, gentle reader, as you might know, I am light on the work hours currently, which means that I get the chance to go to the gym a couple of mornings a week. Which would be great, and I would love to do an AoSHQ GAINZZZZ thread extolling my accomplishments there, but, really, all I know is that everyone is all of sudden a Gladys.

I guess it came to mind a couple of days ago when a post showed up in my Facebook Memories:

So as I am slowly working my way back into some shape (probably a rhombus), I’m suddenly confronted with the whole world of Gladyses.

Continue reading “Jeez, Everyone’s A Gladys Now” →

So I took a picture of D&D Home Services in Nixa because I was thinking about doing a post about it:

I was going to go off onto a schtick about “What would Dungeons and Dragons Home Services include? Gelatinous cube whole house decluttering and dusting?” and so on.

From the back seat, my oldest told us mentioned Wholesale Auto Paints, whose logo and sign on Glenstone feature the unfortunate abbreviation WAP which shares the letters of but probably not the philosophy of the recent Cardi B song. Well, he called it Warehouse Auto Paints, and it was I who explained the song to my beautiful wife, who was a bit aghast and termed it vulgar. I said it was the 2020 version of the oldie O.P.P., the 1991 song by Naughty By Nature, and she tried to defend the earlier song, saying that it was musical. Mostly, though, I hold that one considers different things vulgar when one is 19 than when one is (does math) thirty-something. But it was an interesting moment nevertheless.

I also mentioned Springfield Tool and Die, whose business stems from 1960 apparently. Its buildings are proudly emblazoned with STD, a term that would come to mean something entirely different in 1975, apparently.

Which is why I was very careful, gentle reader, when coining and popularizing (well, coining anyway) the abbreviation MfBJN for the name of this blog. Because if it’s ever going to mean something else, it is something that will still likely apply to me.

Thank you, that is all.

So I was telling my beautiful wife about this overpriced Facebook-advertised tchotchke that I ordered for my youngest son for Christmas (and will no doubt see advertisements for it now that I have actually ordered it because clearly I am a good lead for this particular vendor, and that’s how Internet advertising works).

I explained it was a little like pachinko:

“It’s a pegboard where you drop a little metal ball down it, but it has specific gates and things that will guide the way the ball rolls down the board…” I said. Or words to that effect, gentle reader; I did not take down the conversation verbatim, but it’s as real as any conversation you’ll read in a Norman Vincent Peale book.

“Don’t you mean Plinko?” she asked.

Which led me to question, Did I mean Plinko? So I researched it quickly to verify that the game pachinko actually exists and to show her details about it. The boy’s gift is more like pachinko, by the way; Plinko uses a disk and just pegs, whereas pachinko uses balls and bumpers of various kinds. It’s a bit like pinball, but it’s often a gambling device. The boy’s school has a board they use for carnivals and whatnot, and an Internet image search indicates a lot of schools do.

So you know I would like to turn this into some indicator of the differences in our upbringing–that I grew up working class in seedy taverns and she grew up in a comfortable suburban family that watched The Price Is Right. But the seedy taverns, which really weren’t that bad, didn’t have pachinko machines (I grew up in Milwaukee, not Tokyo). That I knew my pachinko from my Plinko probably stems from the fact that I read more widely (id est, randomly) than she does.

To be honest, I’m not sure if that came off of our Christmas tree or if a festive assassin dropped it.

All I know is that it’s now got my finger prints on it, and, Oh, my God, it’s a merryguffin, isn’t it?

I doubt “Cyber Monday” is much of a thing any more, really; back around the turn of the century, people did a bunch of Christmas shopping at work the Monday after Thanksgiving because their employers had fast Internet connections, and if people had Internet at all at home, it was dial-up (I can’t believe I have to explain this, but we are twenty years on). Now, everyone has a faster Internet connection in their pocket and the shopping apps on their phone, so you can buy what you want when you think of it.

I recycled this post from Facebook, where I originally posted this image five years ago. I don’t really do The Facebook any more; it’s for old people. Actually, no, I am an old people; it’s just that Facebook has, perhaps by its own design, gone from a place to share quips and pictures of your dog to the common Internet comments section, except starring people you actually knew sometime as the rando trolls.

I have signed up for MeWe, but it lacks (so far) a critical mass of people I know to make it worthwhile.

So, gentle reader, you get the bulk of my blat-something-into-the-aether communication efforts for the nonce. And occasional recycled content when appropriate.

Actually, it’s not true here at Nogglestead, fortunately. As my grandmother mentioned that she liked reading my letters and read them several times, I took to writing her once or twice a month, so I have a good running commentary of 2020 in almost real time. The real challenge, of course, will be distilling 2020 down into a one pager. It’s easier looking back at the end of the year, when the first four or five things I remember become the contents of the Christmas letter. With all this extra information at my fingertips, I have to prioritize.

Which will give me an excuse to put it off until it’s almost too late, at which time I will put in the first four or five things I think of just to get it done.

Never let it be said that I lack a process or procedure for writing the annual Christmas missive. Do let it be said it is not a good process or procedure.

Apparently, Roark liked it.

It was just the four of us this year. Five, if you count Roark, who was very brazen in his turkey hunting this year.

Now, some of the regularly scheduled holiday soul-searching below the fold.

Continue reading “Thanksgiving Dining Review” →

Last weekend, I undertook the lengthy project of reconfiguring the electronics of Nogglestead. I’m going to be a bit long-winded about it, so I will tuck this under the fold. But it does contain a single useful tip, maybe.

Continue reading “The Recombined Electronica of Nogglestead” →

I used to post stuff like this on Facebook, gentle reader, but I’m not spending much time over there these days, so you get them instead.

Continue reading “Ozark Multisport Life #2” →

So the youngest boy has a laptop provided by his school that includes monitoring software that gives us insight into the sites he’s visiting and the searches that he’s conducting. The older boy, who has a laptop issued by the public school, has no such software installed; what happens in Public School, stays in Public School, you know.

But what I found on my youngest son’s search list was SHOCKING and DISTURBING.

Continue reading “Shocking Internet Searches My Children Perform” →

Candace Cameron Bure calls sex ‘the blessing of marriage’ after backlash over handsy pic:

Candace Cameron Bure is reflecting on backlash she received from Christian fans who took issue with a photo of husband Valeri Bure cupping the actress’ breast on Instagram.

Valeri Bure played for the Blues in a handful of games when I was heavily watching the team in the early part of the century. As such, he is first and foremost a St. Louis Blue, not the husband of a childhood televisions star.

Kind of like I think of Paul Kariya and Wayne Gretzky as St. Louis Blues. And anyone who ever played for the Packers is a Packer unless they go to the Bears later, in which case ::makes Italian kiss-off gesture::.

I don’t care that there isn’t an Italian kiss-off gesture in Italy. They don’t have Bears fans in Italy. If they did, they would have one. One which Francis of Assisi would have developed.

Some years ago, when my beautiful wife was in the hospital overnight (probably after emitting a boy), I asked her if I could bring her anything.

“Tristan,” she said, referring to her white cat.

Well, I could not bring the cat to the hospital, so I picked up a stuffed white cat for her. It has bounced around the bedroom and perhaps her office since and was not turned over the the boys as the other stuffed animals from our youth were (okay, mine, amongst them Edwin, Pooky, and a large bear I received for Valentine’s Day once–I have since reclaimed Edwin, and the bear is in our closet as the boys have outgrown stuffed animals mostly, but apparently we parents have not, and how did this all of a sudden become about me?).

At any rate, earlier this week, someone turned down the bed in the master bedroom (yes, we turn down the beds in the evenings and clear the decorative pillows from them before bedtime–I started doing this when my wife was traveling a bunch for work, and I wanted to give her a more upscale feeling when she came home). In addition to not doing it the right way–that is, my way, the person put Tristan II between the pillows, which would not have worked at all as that’s where Athena sleeps at night.

So I put it in the crossbar of the canopy bed (minus canopy, because they’re expensive, and we stripped my sheers-held-in-place-with-magnets solution one of the times we converted the canopy bed to a sleigh bed or a mere four-poster bed) to recreate the poster that was on the walls of pretty much every classroom in Carleton Elementary and many offices besides.

It’s been there for a number of days without comment. Perhaps I need to pin or tape paper with the “Hang In There” text.

Or, more likely, now that I have amused myself (and perhaps you, gentle reader), perhaps I will just take it down and put it back on her dresser.

Also, I suppose I will have to stop calling you gentle reader as you have learned that I still have a stuffed animal or two in adulthood and will probably come rough me up for my lunch money.

On my desk this morning: A leftover bratwurst and the remaining quarter of one of my beautiful wife’s homemade pizzas.

Not depicted: Lots of coffee.

Clearly, I am not picky when I am half awake.

In putting up our Christmas trees this weekend, I rearranged the lower level ever-so-slightly.

Whoa, Brian J., we don’t like change! you might say, which explains why you’re here–you’re a lot like me.

Because, let’s face it, we have not made a lot of changes to the furniture arrangements at Nogglestead, mostly because the furniture only fits in the rooms certain ways.

Continue reading “The Slow Change Of Nogglestead” →