I’ve just come through what has been a particularly obnoxious period of time at work…my main work area was relocated, and the great majority of the work involved in relocating my work area fell on me, so I guess a better way of saying that would be, “I relocated my work area.” In the middle of that relocation effort I had a brief mini-vacation that felt more like a pause to gather breath than an actual break, and even while moving all of my Stuff I still had to execute normal job duties along the way. (By way of analogy, I am to The Store as Scotty is to the starship Enterprise.)
The move is probably around 80 percent complete now…I’ve finally reached the point where I can reliably execute my job while continuing to organize my Stuff, so maybe things will lower back down to a simmer. Anyway, I continue to find art and beauty to be the best emotional salve for the obnoxious times in one’s life…though it would be nice if I were more able to approach art and beauty on their own terms rather than turning to them for relief. Anyway, here are some recent photos of things!
“Indian Family Life”, by Norval Morrisseau (1931-2007) Art Gallery of HamiltonAbsolute World Towers, Mississauga, ON (colloquially called the “Marilyn Monroe Towers”)The Niagara River, flowing north toward Lake Ontario.Butterfly on Leaf, Niagara Butterfly ConservatoryButterfly on Leaf II, Niagara Butterfly Conservatory Note the butterfly’s visible tongue!
I was just sitting down to write a post about my unplanned hiatus, and then the frigging power went out. And the weather TODAY is GREAT! So that sucks.
Anyway, I’ll get back to y’all later. (Everything’s fine, I took a short vacation and The Wife and I enjoyed a brief getaway.)
(And as I’m writing the power just came back on. We’ll see. Harumph!)
As is my usual tradition, below is the post that I reuse every year and keep adding to in really ungainly fashion. This post actually first lived on the old BlogSpot incarnation of this site and now it’s over here on WordPress…and I’m not using the old-school WordPress interface anymore, I use the one with “blocks”, and this post, as Dr. Cox might say, ruh-heellly does not work well in blocks, so if the formatting here is a bit “janky”, as the kids say, that’s why.
As I write this, she and I are approaching our 29th anniversary in May, with six years of dating before that…in fact, the 35th anniversary of our very first date was just four days ago, and six days before that was the 35th anniversary of the night in 1991 when she and I were in the same cluster of friends heading off to the local bar to celebrate my then-roommate’s birthday, a night when at some point she and I ended up sitting next to each other and I thought, “Huh, she’s cute….”
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about memories, both specific and not, and how some dreams came true and some did not and how some that did are dreams that I didn’t know I had or maybe I didn’t have them at the time. I did dream about having someone whose hand I could hold during movies or go see the new Star Wars or James Bond with; and I did dream about someone who might hang out in art museums and libraries and cool shopping places. I dreamed about having someone to laugh with, someone to put up with my crap and cook for me and eat what I cooked. I dreamed about being with someone who would be willing to occasionally dispatch a pie into my face. I did not originally dream about having a family, and I certainly never dreamed about having dogs. I didn’t dream about flying with someone to Hawaii or standing on a sidewalk in New York City at 7am on Thanksgiving, waiting for the parade to start. But all those dreams came true. I’m hoping for many more years of dreams coming true, whether they’re dreams I have right now or not.
And now, the messiest post of every one I’ve ever put on this site…and I’m not ever going to clean it up. As always, new stuff is added toward the end of the list; also as always, I don’t edit what I’ve written before or revise anything that’s out of date. Think of some of that stuff as growth rings on a tree…part of the reason of this post is to preserve memories.
Happy Birthday, my love!
Today is The Wife’s birthday! Onward and upward, as always!
A brief slideshow of photos (some of which are already on this post, but I like them and it’s my blog, so there they are again!) follows. The song is “Live Forever” by Drew Holcomb and the Neighbors, a wonderful band.
And now, my annual list of memories and things from our years together. (New items on the list are appended to Number 97, alphabetically. I do this because I’m too lazy to renumber all the stuff after that one every year.)
1. Her hand fits perfectly into mine, as though our hands were fit for each other.
1a. That said, there’s a good chance that she prefers the dog to me.
2. The first time she saw Star Wars was with me. And ET.
2a. The first time I saw Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty were with her.
3. She used to keep an aquarium before a bunch of moves made us give up the fish. Maybe we’ll do that again someday. But when we started dating, she had two fish, named Ken and Wanda, named after two memorable characters from A Fish Called Wanda. When Ken went belly-up, she called a friend and solemnly informed her, “K-k-k-ken d-d-d-died.” (One of the movie’s running gags is Ken’s stuttering.)
4. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but I’ve converted her from someone who hated coffee into a regular coffee drinker.
5. For reasons passing understanding, she has always found Erik Estrada attractive. She and I used to have arguments over who could best the other in a fight: Agent Mulder from The X-Files or Ponch from Chips. (I think Mulder would have blinded Ponch with the beam from those giant blue-beamed flashlights he and Scully were always toting, and then beaten him into submission with his eternally-able-to-get-a-signal cell phone.)
6. One of the first things we cooked together was Spanish rice, which is to this day a comfort dish of ours. The first time we made it together was also the first time she’d ever cooked with actual bulb garlic, as opposed to garlic powder. The recipe called for a clove, but she thought the entire head was a clove, so into the rice the entire head of garlic went. That was the best Spanish rice ever.
7. A few years ago she baked a Bundt cake for The Daughter’s birthday, but the damned thing stuck in the pan, resulting not in a ring but a mound. So she just mounded it up, glopped the frosting right over the top, and called it a “Volcano Cake”. Now, every year at her birthday, The Daughter says, “Remember the Volcano Cake?”
8. Our first date was to see Edward Scissorhands. So, Johnny Depp’s been there since the beginning, from Edward all the way to Captain Jack Sparrow and beyond.
9. We used to go out for chicken wings and beer every Thursday night. We didn’t even miss our Thursday night wing night when The Daughter was born: her birth was on a Saturday, and we left the hospital on Tuesday, so at the tender age of five days, The Daughter entered a bar for the first time. This may have made us bad parents, but I don’t think so. A girl’s got to know how to handle herself in a bar, right?
9a. She’s not a huge fan of when I post photos of her sleeping.
10. She insisted on breastfeeding both The Daughter and Little Quinn, which in both cases required lots of pumping. Especially in Little Quinn’s case, since he was never able to eat by mouth. Every drop of breastmilk that entered his body went in via the G-tube, so for as long as her production held up, she pumped six times a day.
11. I’ll probably never completely understand how much of herself she sacrificed in fourteen months to keep Little Quinn alive and progressing. It seems, in retrospect, that every free day she had was given to him.
12. That same instinct in her kicked in again when Fiona was in danger. She didn’t question the necessity or possibility of spending months flat on her back with her feet inclined, if that was what it took. If commitment was all that was needed, Fiona would be here today. (Of course, if commitment was all that was needed, Little Quinn would be here and Fiona wouldn’t have happened.)
13. We used to associate certain teevee shows with the snack foods we’d eat while watching them. NYPDBlue was always chips-and-salsa. ER, when we still watched it, was often good ice cream. Now, good ice cream has been transposed to Grey’s Anatomy.
14. “Our” first teevee show was LA Law.
15. Subsequent teevee shows of “ours” included ER, Mad About You, The Pretender, Profiler, CSI, Firefly, and more.
16. On our first Internet account, we set up our combined e-mail identity after the two main characers on The Pretender. We were “Jarod and Miss Parker”. People familiar with the show wondered what that said about our relationship, since Jarod and Miss Parker aren’t allies. In fact, Miss Parker was initially a villain but as the show went on her character became much more complex.
17. She started roller blading, got me hooked, and then promptly stopped roller blading. Now she prefers biking.
18. It was almost without warning that I met her parents for the first time. We started dating late February 1991; a couple of weeks later was spring break, for a week, so I came home to Buffalo. At the end of that week I tried calling her, only to learn from the old lady she was renting a room from that she wasn’t home because of a death in her family. I remembered her saying something about a sick grandfather, and that’s what turned out to have happened; her grandfather had passed away from Lou Gehrig’s Disease. When I got back out to school, her entire family was there. So I met the future in-laws on the spot. Luckily, I seem to have made some kind of decent impression.
19. Our first long trip together was from Iowa to Idaho, to visit her family, a couple of weeks before school began in August of 1992. She had already graduated college, but I was in my senior year. While we were out there, the infamous Ruby Ridge Incident was taking place twenty miles down the road, so all week there were National Guard vehicles on the roads and helicopters overhead.
20. I am forever amazed at her ability to take some fabric and create a garment. This skill of hers looks like magic to me.
21. Her first pair of overalls were a gift from me. She thought the whole thing was goofy – maybe she still does! – but she wore them for years until at one point they became too small for her, and then a short while later they became too big for her. We didn’t start wearing overalls together until we’d been dating for about a year.
22. Back in the 90s, on two different occasions, we picked out Persian kittens. Both were wonderful cats, both are gone now, and we miss them both dearly. The first was a beautiful tortoiseshell Persian named Jasmine; the second was a red Persian named Simba. Both died in the year preceding this blog’s launch.
23. Adopting Lester and Julio was The Wife’s idea. I’m still unsold on these two giant lummox goofballs.
24. The Wife also took The Daughter to adopt Comet, when The Daughter was only two.
25. Shortly after The Wife moved to Western New York to be near me, she adopted a cat from the shelter she named Lilac. That cat never really liked me all that much. Lilac died a few months after Little Quinn passed.
25a. She is directly responsible for all the animals with whom we currently live.
26. She loves to laugh, particularly at my expense. She is convinced I don’t think she’s funny, but that’s just not the case.
27. Things with which she has a deft touch include: a pair of scissors, a needle and thread, a kitchen knife, the mixer, bread dough, a screwdriver, a lug wrench, and a shot glass.
28. It irritates her that The Daughter has inherited my tolerance for sunlight — I tan, whereas The Wife burns.
29. The Wife likes to read, albeit not quite as much as I do. She always has a book going, and she reads every day.
30. She never used to use a bookmark, until I finally decided I was tired of watching her flip through a book looking for a passage that was familiar to her so she could find her place. I bought her a bookmark.
31. She loves nuts – except for walnuts and pecans, which I love. This makes it occasionally difficult find good brownies and similar items in bakeries, since many people default to putting pecans or walnuts in their brownies or other chocolate cookies.
32. When I first met her, she was a huge Anne Rice fan and read most of what Rice wrote until she decided that Rice’s output wasn’t interesting her much anymore. Since then she’s read a lot of other authors, including a lot of unfamiliar names whose books I’ve plucked from the stacks of offerings at library book sales over the years. Interesting how obscure even the bestsellers of yesteryear eventually become, huh? Currently she really loves Gregory Maguire, the Wicked guy.
33. When we first met, she was a Washington Redskins fan. So of course, the first Super Bowl we were together was the one where the Redskins knocked the Bills on their collective arse. Oh well, at least she hated the Cowboys.
34. She prefers her KFC “extra crispy”, where I’m an “Original Recipe” guy.
35. Movies that are particularly meaningful or nostalgic to us, in addition to Edward Scissorhands and Star Wars are Dances With Wolves, Titanic, The Lord of the Rings, Singin’ in the Rain, and the James Bond movies.
36. For some reason we didn’t take any pictures when we were on our honeymoon or when we were on our vacation to Disney a year later. I think we were between working cameras at those points…but lately I really wish we’d have addressed that at the time.
37. Things we did on our honeymoon to Cape Cod, Boston, and New Hampshire: road a boat out to sea to watch the whales; visited the New England Aquarium; ate dim sum in Boston’s Chinatown; bought lots of kitchenware at an outlet strip (don’t laugh, we still have some of that stuff); visited the Boston Science Museum. While doing two days in Boston we stayed at a hotel about forty miles out and road the train into town; on the second day, on the way back, we fell asleep on each other’s shoulders.
38. Our first argument as a couple resulted from a common misunderstanding between people when one is from Iowa and one is just living in Iowa for a while. I told her we’d meet for dinner, so she showed up at noon and got annoyed because I wasn’t there. Well, duh! I said “dinner”, not “lunch”. Except, remember, she’s a native Iowan, which means instead of eating breakfast, lunch and dinner like most (ahem) normal folks, she ate breakfast, dinner and supper. Thankfully, I’ve converted her since then. Whew!
39. Our first wedding anniversary saw us spending a week at Walt Disney World. What a wonderful time that was! Even if she managed to rip her toenail out two days into the trip, thus requiring me to push her around in a wheelchair the whole time after that.
40. She had long hair when we started dating, and I had short hair. Now we’ve reversed that.
41. Before we started dating, I had a beard. When I became interested in her, I shaved it so I’d look better. Then, I learned that she likes facial hair. So I grew the beard back a while later.
42. Foods I’ve tried because of her: asparagus, squash, rhubarb, grapefruit, and more that I don’t recall.
43. She loves George Carlin.
44. She bought me my first cell phone, and my second cell phone.
45. When we were at the Erie County Fair in 2001, she wandered off to look at the Bernina sewing machines. When I came by ten minutes or so later, she was in the process of buying a Bernina sewing machine. I didn’t complain; I just stood there, kind of looking shell-shocked.
46. Leading up to our wedding, she rigidly adhered to the notion that the groom should not see the bride in her wedding dress until she comes round the corner to walk down the aisle. So I didn’t see her until she came round the corner to walk down the aisle.
47. Starting a family was her idea. Not that I was against it; I figured we’d get there eventually. She just picked the “eventually”.
48. She picked The Daughter’s first name, so I got to pick her middle name.
48a. And now, this:
49. Since Thanksgiving Break at college was only a four day weekend, I didn’t go home for T-giving my junior year; instead, I spent the weekend with her. We went to see her extended family out in Storm Lake, Iowa, which is on the other side of the state. Since she has family over there on both sides of the family, we ended up having two Thanksgiving dinners that day. Some part of me is still full from those two meals.
50. Iowa delicacies that The Wife and I share are pork tenderloin sandwiches and broasted chicken.
51. Some of our early dates were sufficiently cheap that we had to look for ATM machines that would dispense cash in five dollar denominations.
52. She bought Simba, the above-mentioned red Persian kitten, while we were on a shopping trip to Erie, PA. She fell in love with the kitten as soon as she saw him in the pet store; we then spent the rest of the day walking around the mall with me listening to her as she tried to talk herself out of buying him. (Persian kittens are pricey little buggers.) Finally, while we were at dinner at Red Lobster, she decided to pull the trigger.
53. Before Little Quinn, the most heartbroken I ever saw The Wife was the day we finally had to end Simba’s life. His kidneys were in failure.
54. Great gifts she’s bought me through the years: my current winter coat, a cupboard-full of drinking vessels of all types, candles, incense burners, the Star Wars original trilogy on DVD, my anniversary edition of The Lord of the Rings with paintings by Alan Lee, my star sapphire ring, my current wristwatch, and many more.
55. The first thing she ever gave me: a stuffed bear, around whose neck she tied a lavender ribbon. I think she doused it with perfume. I named that bear “Bertrand”, after philosopher Bertrand Russell.
56. The first thing I bought her: a little two-inch high figurine of a laughing Buddha. I think this confused her a bit.
57. Despite my best efforts for a while, she’s never much warmed to baseball. That used to bother me, but these days that doesn’t bug me much at all. I’m pretty cool to baseball myself now.
58. For a few years we went to Cedar Point each fall. We haven’t been there in a long time, but I always found being there with her in the fall, in the cool air, pretty romantic. I loved riding the Giant Wheel after dark, sitting up there with her hand in mine, looking out over Lake Erie.
59. At Cedar Point, she decided that she liked this one coaster that does loops, so I stayed on the ground while she rode it. I’m terrified of those things.
60. Why don’t we play mini golf more often? We both love mini golf. The Daughter loves mini golf. What gives?
61. One day in 1996, we were eating lunch in Buffalo when we had “The Discussion”. Any guy who’s ever been dating the same girl for a period of time measurable in years will know what “The Discussion” is. So I agreed, it was time for us to take the “next step”. Later on, while she was having her eyes examined at LensCrafters, I bopped over to Penney’s to buy her a ring. I chose a nice emerald one that looked really pretty. Sadly, they didn’t have it in her size, so they had to order it, which would take three weeks. So I figured, OK, I’ll get the ring in three weeks and make this thing official. Yay, Me!
62. The next day, she proposed to me.
63. Three weeks later I showed up to get the ring. They had it, but they couldn’t find the paperwork, so some poor guy at the pickup counter at Penney’s spent his entire lunch hour trying to find the paperwork so I could give my already-fiancee her engagement ring.
64. I don’t remember exactly when we picked out her wedding rings, but we each have an Irish wedding band, and each ring is set with the other person’s birthstone. So my ring is set with four amethysts, which is her birthstone; hers is set with four sapphires, which is mine.
65. For years I wore my ring incorrectly. Apparently there’s one way to wear an Irish wedding band that signifies being married, and another that signifies being single. I was wearing mine the “single” way. I was alerted to this by a guy I worked with at The Store; he said, “Yeah, you’re telling all the women that you’re available.” I replied, “Yeah, and I’m beating them off with a stick.”
66. On our honeymoon, it was important to her that she at least get to dip her toes in the Atlantic Ocean. So she did. The water was very cold, though.
66a. She replicated this moment years later when we took a trip to the Jersey Shore.
66b. We returned two years later.
67. It always bugged her mother that she saw Niagara Falls before her mother did. Later we took her mother to Niagara when she was out for a visit.
68. During the summer of 1991, when I was at home and she was still in Iowa, she came to spend a week with me. I took her to Buffalo and to Toronto, on the way to which we stopped to see Niagara Falls for her first time.
69. She was really confused the first time a Japanese tourist asked her to take his picture in front of the Falls.
70. At the time our beer of choice was Labatt’s. It’s pronounced “la-BATS”, but we had a family friend at the time who liked to say it “LAB-uhts”, which is how I said it at college just for fun and habit. So when she visited me that summer, we went to the bar where this friend hung out, and he was so impressed when she ordered a “LAB-uhts”.
71. Our favorite mixed drink in college was the sloe gin fizz. A few years ago I tried making these again, discovering that her tastes had changed and she now found them sickeningly sweet. I like them still, but yeah, they’re sugary. (And pink. When I told a friend at work who knows everything about liquor that I’d bought some sloe gin, he laughed and said, “Oh good! Now you can make pink drinks!”)
72. She taught me the right way to do laundry.
73. I taught her the right way to crack open crab legs so as to not mangle the meat.
74. Our first major mistake of parenting was taking The Daughter to a fireworks display on the Fourth of July in 1999. The Daughter was all of fifteen days old. This was the big display in Lakewood, NY, which is right on the banks of Lake Chautauqua. The Daughter did not respond well to the fireworks detonating right over our heads; the sounds were bad and for years afterwards The Daughter was very scared of loud sounds.
75. We always say that we should go camping. We never actually do go camping. We need to do more camping.
76. Once for dinner I made some frozen cheese ravioli with sauce, a favorite meal of ours that we hadn’t had in a long time. She said that she was looking forward to “eating some cheesy goodness”. Unfortunately, the raviolis were a bit on the old and tough side, and the cheese never got nice and melty, so after the meal, she commented, “That wasn’t really cheesy goodness.”
77. She likes eggs over-easy. I’m not a big fan of those, but I try to make them for her when she’s getting over being sick.
78. She makes fun of my over-reliance on boxed mixes in the kitchen.
78a. I’m much better about this now. Her main kitchen complaint about me is that I make way too big a mess when I cook.
79. In 1993, when Cheers aired its final episode, she bought pizza for my roommate and I.
80. She only swears when she’s really annoyed.
81. She is not happy that her nine-year-old, fourth-grade daughter is now the same shoe size as she is.
82. A while back she had her hair colored a brighter shade of blond than is her natural color. It was awesome.
83. Before that she experimented with red. I’ve tried talking her into doing that again, but no dice.
84. When my aunt met her the night before our wedding, she made a comment to the effect that I was to be commended for adding blond hair and blue eyes to our gene pool.
85. The Daughter has blond hair and blue eyes. So did Little Quinn.
86. I’m not sure there’s a variety of seafood she dislikes.
87. I love the way she looks when she’s just come home from work and changed into her PJ’s.
88. Adopting Lester and Julio was her idea, but she claims the upper hand on that anyway because she was helping out my mother.
89. For some reason, The Daughter and I like to bring up at the dinner table the fact that The Wife, as a kid, had to help the family out on Chicken Butchering Day. I don’t know why.
90. She thinks Orlando Bloom is really attractive. I don’t see it, myself, but you can’t argue these things.
91. For my birthday in 1992 she drove me to Dyersville, IA so I could see the Field of Dreams.
92. If I want to spoil her, all I have to do is buy her blush wine, cashews, olives and chocolate. Cake helps, too.
93. She spoils me by looking the other way when I go to Borders; by making me waffles or French toast or Spanish rice; by cleaning the kitchen after I’ve messed it up; by indulging my love of pie; and a thousand other ways.
94. “You want me to hit you in the face with a pie?” “Sure, it’ll be fun!” “Kinda weird, isn’t it?” “Well, yeah, but still fun, right?” “I dunno, let’s find out.”
It did take her a couple of attempts to nail down her technique, but she quickly realized she didn’t need to be super gentle with the pie. And really, folks, if you haven’t taken a pie in the face from the person you love, well…I’m not sure what you’re waiting for!
94a. We haven’t done this in a really long time. Hmmmm….
95. I know I’ve found the perfect girl for me when she describes our Thanksgiving in 2006 as being perfect because, after dinner, we went to see Casino Royale. In her words: “We had a big turkey dinner, and then we watched James Bond kill people.”
96. We both love laughing at David Caruso on CSI Miami.
96a. Sadly, CSI Miami is long gone, but now we thrill to the adventures of Team Machine on Person of Interest, of Castle and Beckett on Castle, and we enjoy Alton Brown’s delicious brand of pure evil on Cutthroat Kitchen.
97. One time when we were working out at the Y, and she got so engrossed in what she was doing that when I approached her, she didn’t recognize me at first.
97a. She loves lilacs.
97b. She loves sushi, so for a while our Saturday night dinner tradition was I’d buy her sushi at The Store, and she’d eat that while I had a “charcuterie” plate of my own. (I think we can all agree that “charcuterie” is the fancy-schmancy word for “cheese and crackers,” yes? Kind of like how “grits” turned into “polenta” at some point and started commanding $15 a plate?) But she’d eye my cheese and ask for a bite or two. Over time this morphed into her and I both having the cheese plate.
But she still loves the sushi, and I still have to buy it for her! It just becomes her lunch at work on Mondays. No escape!
97c. While driving once:
ME: Huh. HER: What? ME: I know I’ve heard this piece but I don’t know what it is. HER: [into phone] What is this song? [holds phone to speaker, then looks at phone] It’s the fourth movement of Mozart’s Eine kleine nachtmusik. ME: Wow, I didn’t know your phone could do that. HER: I’m pretty sure it’s standard now! Your phone can do it too! ME: Whoa….
See? She teaches me things.
97d. For years she worked in the restaurant biz, which meant working just about all of the major holidays and struggling just to use her allotted vacation time. Now, she’s in banking, so not only does she get the holidays off, she gets off all of them, including the ones I don’t! (I have to work MLK Day, Presidents Day, and the other “lesser” holidays that are still “No mail and no banks” days. She gets ’em off now.) She is not shy about gloating about this.
97e. She continues to make fun of my previous claims that I “am not a dog person”. To my recollection I never made any claims along those lines, just that I was unfamiliar with dogs, not that I disliked dogs. She just shakes her head and keeps on being amused at how much Cane and Carla like me. What can I say!
97f. Her, a few years ago: “Hey, there’s this event where people who own greyhounds all meet up in the Finger Lakes and then we all tour around to wineries and taste wine and have fun with our dogs! Wanna go?” We just got back from our fourth time on that trip the day before yesterday.
97g. This last year has been different, I’ll say that. We’re eating out a lot and staying home and watching movies in bed and so on. Aside from our not being able to go out to eat or to see movies, and the cancellation of several of our favorite festival events, this crisis really hasn’t impacted our lifestyles much at all. I’m glad she’s the one I’m enduring the pandemic with!
97h. Exploring Oahu with her at my side was wonderful. We both kept getting amazed by the same things!
97i. Sometimes it’s hard to find a teevee show that she likes, but when I do find one, it’s a blast as references from those shows will creep into our vernacular.
97j. We tend to get mutually weepy over the more emotional reveals on The Repair Shop.
97k. This last year has had some difficulties of its own, over and above the COVID struggles, but we’ve weathered all of it and continue to weather it all.
97l. Our opinions differed wildly on No Time To Die. Hey, it happens! Kinda like her distaste for coconut. (Which is weird, let’s be honest.)
New for 2023! 97m. She’s had a couple of surgeries in recent years that led to some recovery time and bed-rest, which meant she watched a lot of streaming shows. I didn’t realize what kind of stuff she was streaming until one night we were watching Saturday Night Live and she started laughing knowingly at this sketch. I asked, “Are you watching a lot of murder shows these days?”
97n. On weekends I usually get up before she does, so I’ll come downstairs and make my coffee and get hers set up to go. My signal that she is getting up for good is when she actually opens the blinds in the bedroom; when I hear that, I’m to get up and turn on the coffee. (Sometimes I’m listening to music on my earbuds and I don’t hear the blinds and then she comes downstairs and gives me the “No coffee?!” look. Fellas, try to avoid the “No coffee?!” look.)
97o. No, it doesn’t bother me at all that Carla prefers to sit with her on the love seat when we’re watching teevee at night as opposed to sitting with me on the couch. Harumph.
97p. If I could go back in time and make exactly one change to our wedding day? Yup. We’re all doing the “Rock the Boat” dance made famous by Derry Girls.
97q: Related to 97n above, I’ve been up for 45 minutes while she was trying to doze a bit more. This was thwarted by our cats, who decided to have rompies all over the upstairs, including the bed with her in it. As I write this she has just come downstairs, called the cats assholes, and is now making her coffee.
97r: Stay tuned, but she has started the ball rolling for adopting another greyhound. Yes, I’m on board, but this one’s going to have some pretty big pawprints to fill. (This weekend is a little bittersweet because this is when we’d be on our annual greyhound-meetup excursion to the Finger Lakes wine country.)
97s. Maybe I mentioned this above someplace, I don’t know, but I love how she has chosen to approach her dietary restrictions with a sense of adventure and discovery. We have found more great places to eat and discovered more terrific foods to cook in the years since her celiac diagnosis than we did before, and it’s not like we were dull sticks-in-the-mud in the food department to begin with! She’s always loved trying new foods and spicing things up, which is a real blessing if you’re at all familiar with the Monument to Blandness that is the usual Iowa spice rack.
97t. I’ve come to really like coming home from work, looking up as I pull into the driveway, and seeing her in her home office. Sometimes there will be a dog looking back down at me, which is also cool.
97u. Apparently she takes some of the chocolate from the home supply that I maintain to her desk at work, and some of her coworkers know she has a chocolate stash, so sometimes that gets shared around. I do the “I’m not feeding all the kids in the neighborhood!” thing, you know, the one where your kid wants to grab a dozen freezy-pops from the freezer for all the friends on a hot summer day and despite your protest you let it happen. Because hey, it’s chocolate and that increases the net happiness in the world.
97v. Our last cinematic disagreement came after watching Top Gun: Maverick, which I really liked (despite my general lack of enthusiasm for the original movie). She was distracted by the impossibility of Tom Cruise having perfectly brown hair at this point in his life. I’m hoping this doesn’t hurt our enjoyment of the upcoming Mission: Impossible flicks….
97w. We have developed a way of simultaneously groaning wistfully whenever an unexpected reference to Hawaii shows up on teevee, like the Netflix show we’ve been watching about American street food, and at the end of one episode the preview for the next said, “Next time: Oahu!”, with a big shot of Waikiki.
NEW FOR 2024!!! 97y. This last year was a struggle…my mom’s last months of struggles which played out amidst The Wife’s own struggles. Are things getting better? Who knows…but I hope so.
97aa. I’m just now realizing that I took zero photos of The Wife this past year. This is a big sign of what a rough year it was. It’s time to start turning that shit around!
97ab. No, wait! I did get a lovely shot of her just last weekend! Amazing that I own this great new camera and I haven’t taken enough photos of her yet. But anyway:
2025!!!
97ac. Her birthday present this year? We’re going to see Raiders of the Lost Ark at Kleinhans Music Hall, with the Buffalo Philharmonic doing the music. Yay! But that’s not until May 2. I always feel a little weird giving tickets to something a few months after the gift-giving occasion for the gift-giving occasion, but it’s still a gift!
97ad. Note to self: Order the cake for this weekend.
97ae. See below for new photos with her and Hobbes. This post has become sufficiently unwieldy through multiple updates over the years, and multiple versions of WordPress, that it’s just easier.
97af. Accommodating her celiac needs is sometimes a challenge, but on the upside, I now know where to get a good breakfast sandwich pretty anywhere between Buffalo and Syracuse!
97ag. On work mornings we’re both often making our coffee at the same time. I usually let her use the creamer first. Yesterday she gets her coffee all dosed-up the way she wants it, and then she hands me the container, saying “It’s all yours.” There’s about a quarter-teaspoon left in there. She was amused by this.
97ah. For Christmas this past year I gave her the gift of warmth: a knitted cowl to wear around her neck, a plug-in seat-warmer for her car, and an electric blanket. I guess you reach a point where warmth is the best gift.
97ai. On a sad note…if I had to learn that my mother had died from someone, I’m glad it was her.
97aj. I guess in the end it’s all about relationships, and how the friends you surround yourself with help get you through the day–oh wait, sorry. I slipped into “J.D.’s episode-closing monologue” mode there. We just completed a re-watch of Scrubs last night. Next we’ll probably start a complete rewatch of Letterkenny. Pitter patter!
2026!!!!!
97ak. “I’d sit my bare ass on the Big Nickel just to have you flick some debris off my shirt, I swear to God I’d be so good to ya.” She’s my Laura Mohr. IYKYK.
97al. I guess when you’re with someone long enough, you get to the point when you’re driving them to their surgical procedures….
97am. I’m giving her a bottle of Veuve Clicquot! She knows by the time you are reading this.
97an. Since last year she bought a Subaru Forester. When we first started dating, her car was a Subaru. It’s like we’ve come full circle! (Only this one has seat warmers. That’s a thing we didn’t have when we were Two Yoots.)
97ao. Our new Sunday afternoon routine, when we’re at home: I make popcorn and then she eats some while she watches a Murder Show on the teevee. (I watch YouTube videos and stuff while I consume my share.)
97ap. Next month we’re going to a huge gluten-free food expo in Mississaugua, ON. This is the type of thing we do now, and it’s awesome.
97aq. She puts up with me when I dawdle and linger places because I’m taking photos.
97ar. When she works at home, lots of times Carla goes and hangs out with her. It’s very cute.
97as. We’ve discovered Indian food of late. Oh yeah. Why did we never eat Indian food until relatively recently? How do I know???
97at. A few months ago I saw that The Guns of Navarone was on Netflix, and it was my week to pick the movie, because I watched it years ago and it’s really good! A terrific and entertaining war thriller with good action and a pulse-pounding climax! Yay! Only…she didn’t like it, and she thought I was mad at her and picked a movie on purpose that we didn’t like. I was all, “Uhhh…I really didn’t think you’d hate it.” Oops. It happens.
97au. Her current greyhound, Hobbes, is admittedly a nice dog. He is also a giant booger who vocalizes in squeaks, wakes me up to pee every weekend morning no later than 7am, and when I go to give him food, runs for his crate to enjoy the treat. From The Wife, he will accept food wherever he is.
97av. She sends me dog videos. Cute ones, funny ones, cute and funny ones. This is a good thing and I hope it never stops.
98. Maybe this is a personal failing on my part, but I can’t bear it when she cries. It kills me inside. But I’m trying to get better at this, since as Gandalf said, “Not all tears are an evil.”
99. I wish we were living lives that didn’t include so many tears.
100. I love her more than I did last week at this time.
101. Number 100 on this list will be equally true next week at this time. And the week after. And so on.
102. She makes me happier than I thought possible.
103. She…oh, I guess that’s where I need to stop. I love you, honey!
Well, here we go: it’s time for my annual look back at the year that has just ended. On a personal level, I didn’t have that bad a year at all. Which is nice, because I don’t just exist on a personal level, now do I?
Let’s get right to it:
Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I have entered every year for the last, oh, ten or so with the intent to get better at planning and structuring my life. This has always been a struggle, and I can report that I am, in fact, getting better at this. Late in every year I buy a new planner for the year to come, and every new year I start using that planner, only to peter out at some point and then come back to it and peter out again. But, over the last several years, the “peter out” phases of this cycle have become (a) shorter, and (b) less frequent! So I am getting better. Maybe 2026 is the year I actually “put it all together”! We’ll see.
When it comes to resolutions, I’m not really a fan of those. I’m more about setting goals, and maybe (or maybe not) achieving them. So, goals this year include:
A bit of weight loss (not much, we’ll get back to this below)
Trying a bunch of new recipes
Eating vegetarian/pescatarian for a whole day, at least once per week
Stop allowing the chairs and the desk in my library to become collecting points for stuff
Starting The Song of Forgotten Stars, book six
Get my damnable sweet tooth under control (this is the struggle of my life…I have a wicked sweet tooth and a brain that refuses to take a sensible approach to serving sizes, so this will be a thing)
Relaunching my newsletter (likely on a different platform because Substack has issues)
Take 10,000 photos (Why 10,000? I dunno, it’s a nice big round number. I don’t know if this one’s really going to be doable, but we’ll see. The main thing is I will be shooting a lot, even more in 2026 than I did in 2025, and I shot a lot in 2025.)
Focus my reading life on books I already own (and as I write this, it’s the day after I went to the library and checked out nine books, so, yeah)
Reading: 52 books, 200 poems.
Creating content, including more video. (I’ll have more to say about my new approach to social media in an upcoming post!)
Selling photography prints
That sounds like a lot, and you might think, “Wow, maybe you should do one thing at a time.” Well, as characters often say in Aaron Sorkin scripts, “I don’t have time to do one thing at a time!”
Did anyone close to you give birth?
No, unless we count a number of people I follow on social media. It’s funny: I’ve seen several instances lately of a reliable content creator going dark for a bit, and then resurfacing with a video in which they say something like “Hi everyone, I’m so sorry for disappearing, but now I think it’s time to come back and tell you what’s been going on….” And then they stand up and turn to the side, revealing their “baby bump”. That’s always nice.
Did anyone close to you die?
No, thankfully.
What countries did you visit?
We went to Canada last April and we hope to go again this spring!
What would you like to have this year that you lacked last year?
I wouldn’t characterize it as a “lack”, but I’m strongly considering making a big upgrade this year in terms of my camera gear. I feel like I’m achieving consistency with Miranda that indicates that I have, in fact, leveled up a bit. I’m excited by this prospect.
What was your biggest achievement of the year?
It turns out that 2025 wasn’t really a year of “big achievements” for me. It was more a year of moving the needle slowly toward where I want to be. And that’s not nothing!
What was your biggest failure?
I endured something of a “crisis of confidence” in terms of my writing life, to the point that I was wondering if I was still a writer at all. More recently, I’ve come to the new-ish realization, alluded to above, that what’s at work here isn’t a lack of confidence in writing, or a loss of desire, but a lack of clarity about how to fit writing into a creative life that just three years ago at this time I didn’t see expanding the way it has. And that’s where the “structure” mentioned above comes into play. I will likely have more to say about this, moving forward.
What was the best thing you bought?
I don’t think I’ve written about them yet! Weird…I need to get on that. I even have the content in mind, but I’ve done it a few times on video and not shared it yet. Anyway, there’s a specific pair of vintage overalls that I bought back in April that make me really happy. Also, a pair of white overalls by the Hisea brand that I got this year. And some new shirts. It wasn’t a big year for buying stuff. Oh, I did get a new shoulder-sling bag that I like a lot. It’s not specifically designed for cameras, but I may be able to make it work as such when I upgrade my camera kit, which I’m hoping to do in 2026.
Whose behavior merited celebration?
Americans who continue to resist and oppose what often feels like the relentless march toward an end of democracy and the dawn of authoritarianism in America.
Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
The people who are marching in lockstep with the administration.
Where did most of your money go?
Food, drink, new overalls and shirts, and gifts and stuff along the way.
What did you get really excited about?
Going to Toronto in April was an absolute thrill. If I were guaranteed a decent living in a city outside of America and I had to go there and never return, Toronto would be my choice.
Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
I don’t mean to be wishy-washy here, but…both. And I’m not joking! Seriously, it’s both. Aspects of life are getting better, and other aspects are getting worse. I imagine that balancing act isn’t sustainable for life, but, as the Zen master said, “We’ll see.”
Thinner or fatter?
You know what, this one’s kind of funny: based on my official weight last time I visited my doctor (just a month or so ago), the answer is, neither! My weight has stayed basically the same, literally within no more than a pound or two, for over a year now.
Richer or poorer?
Richer, I suppose, but not by much.
What do you wish you’d done more of?
Photography, reading, listening to music, going places with The Wife, hanging with The Kid, and any pie-throwing at all would have been nice!
What do you wish you’d done less of?
You know, a day’s gonna come when I actually don’t have to think about Donald Goddamned Trump at all. I keep hoping for that day to come.
How did you spend Christmas?
Quietly, with family. Basically the way we do every year. Sometimes I envy people with large families and relations close by…but mostly, I don’t.
As James Bond once noted, “That’s not the sort of question a gentleman answers.”
What was your favorite TV program?
Shoresy and Resident Alien are ruling the roost right now.
Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
If there is, they’re probably a Republican of whom I was unaware a year ago.
What was the best book you read?
Guy Gavriel Kay’s latest novel, Written on the Dark.
What was your greatest musical discovery?
No one specific artist or composer, really…but I’ve been listening to a few playlists of music that was heard on the show Shoresy of late, and it’s a lot of Canadian rap and techno and dance music. Some of it goes right through one ear and out the other, but some of it…really does hit. It “slaps”, as the kids say. (Are they still saying that? How the hell do I know?)
What did you want and get?
The Kansas City Chiefs faceplanting in the Super Bowl, and then having a crappy season this year. Also, I got a lot more experience with the camera and I got a lot of shots that make me very happy.
What did you want and not get?
Any conclusive sign that America is shifting toward sanity, a Super Bowl championship for the Bills, a new owner for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and a pie in the face.
What were your favorite films of this year?
We didn’t watch it until 2026, but Wake Up Dead Man, the new Benoit Blanc mystery movie, made us happy.
It occurs to me that in 2026 I need to do a lot better job recording what we actually watched, because as I write this, I’m drawing a blank and I’m kinda too lazy to go look up the “watch history” on Netflix….
What did you do on your birthday?
We always celebrate my birthday by traveling to Ithaca and the Finger Lakes region for the Apple Harvest Festival and some wine tasting and other fun, which we did this year as well…but this is the first time those events actually coincided with my birthday! We set out for our three-day-weekend right on my birthday, which was nice.
How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2019?
Overalls Conquers The World. Or, when I wear my favorite white poofy shirt under a pair of hickory-striped overalls, “Bridgerton Plus Trains”.
What kept you sane?
Good lord, I have no idea. I’m not sure anything did. Creative pursuits, maybe. Walking around a lot with a camera in my hand or hanging around my shoulder.
Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I’ll go a little off-kilter here: I’ve been following Luke of the Outdoor Boys YouTube channel for a few years, and I’ve liked his no-nonsense and enthusiastic approach to exploring his nook of the world and his pursuit of his passions and his explanations for why and how he does what he does. At the end of one of his videos, about how to dig a snow cave for yourself and survive in the wilderness in a deep freeze, he says that you should do your homework and your research: “I’m just a guy on the Internet who has managed to not kill himself yet. What do I know?” Luke pretty much ended his own channel in 2026, mainly due to burnout and the physically draining nature of the content he made for years, and I salute his work.
What political issue stirred you the most?
Climate change, the loss of democracy, trans rights, human rights of all sorts, racism, sexism, the strife in Gaza and the inescapable twinge of anti-Semitism, and who should be mayor of Buffalo.
Who did you miss?
Mom and Dad. Always. (Dad isn’t gone yet, but I haven’t written about him yet…so I’ll just note that I’m not sure there’s anything sadder than dementia.)
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned last year:
There’s usually a big block of stuff I paste in here every year, but 2025 was different (and as I write this, 2026 is not off to a promising start). This year is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Lord of the Rings movies, and this speech by Samwise Gamgee at the end of The Two Towers is a great one. I just wish it wasn’t so constantly applicable.
Frodo: I can’t do this, Sam.
Sam: I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger, they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn’t. They kept going. Because they were holding on to something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo… and it’s worth fighting for.
You know what? I was just about to call this answer done and actually publish the post, but I just remembered something. There’s a brilliant creator named Amanda Nelson who posts a lot on various social media platforms. I believe she’s a historian by training, but I’m not sure on that point. She is always thoughtful and measured in her content, and what I strongly appreciate about her is how even-keeled she is; Ms. Nelson will point out that yes, we’re in a really bad spot, but she’s still not particularly given to the kind of “We’re doomed” rhetoric that often dominates my side of the aisle. At one point this year, and I cannot for the life of me remember in which video she said this and she makes so much content that I have no intention of taking the time to find it, she said something that I have thought myself in various ways, but never put so succinctly. This really hit me between the eyes:
“America is not a thing that happens to us.”
Think about that.
If you take selfies, post your six favorite ones:
I’m going to relocate these to the concluding 2025 Photography Recap post, which will appear tomorrow. I’m doing this for one very important reason: WordPress’s “block” format gets a bit unwieldy with long posts like this, and I don’t feel like struggling with it anymore this morning! Harumph.
Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
This one has been tripping me up for a while, but I think I got it. You see, finding a song to sum up 2025 is tough, because 2025 was a year of serious absurdity, in which some of the most consequential things of my lifetime, events and policies that will define life for decades to come, are being imposed and enforced by complete idiots. Seriously: we are being governed by people who, without exception, think and believe things that are simply false, objectively untrue, and therefore utterly stupid. I keep coming back to this moment from the movie Glass Onion:
So, what kind of song could possibly align to times like these? It wasn’t a good year at all, but to note that it wasn’t a good year isn’t enough; the year was made un-good by people who aren’t serious, who aren’t smart, and who have never had any kind of genuine human feeling (other than hate) or any kind of genuine human thought. Everything about this time in which we’re disastrously living is just dumb and absurd and just…pedestrian. That’s what irritates me the most about these times: our villains are pedestrian dullards.
Thus, I needed a song that’s kind of pedestrian and somehow absurd. And that’s where my train of thought stopped.
And then, as Ray Romano once noted, “Sometimes, material presents itself.”
First, the song. There was a one-hit wonder in the mid-2000s that you may remember. This song was everywhere. For a while you couldn’t go anywhere without hearing it at least once, someplace, and American Idol used it for its “Goodbye” segment every week when someone was eliminated. The song was, of course, Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day”.
Yup, that’s where I’m going, because in 2025, America had a “bad day”.
But where’s the absurd part, the fact that our collective bad day was brought upon us by a giant collection of nitwits and nincompoops?
Enter a content creator I’ve been following for quite a while now, first on Instagram and now on Tiktok. She goes by “Capture Calliope”, and the other day I saw this recent video of hers:
So, there it is. What song lyric and song makes me think of 2025? Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day”, as performed by Alvin and the Goddamned Chipmunks. That’s the kind of freaking year 2025 was.
“Because you had a bad day, you’re taking one down You sing a sad song just to turn it around You say you don’t know, you tell me, don’t lie You work at a smile and you go for a ride You had a bad day, the camera don’t lie You’re coming back down and you really don’t mind You had a bad day You had a bad day….”
Yeah. Tell us about it.
Anyway, here we go, into 2026. As I write this we’re ten days in and ICE has already murdered someone and the usual suspects are telling us that she had it coming. Another year in America.
Wow! I didn’t actually plan to take four days of break from posting here; I had a nice little streak going there, too! But, that’s what happens. Truth to tell, I spent four days in jail for faking my car’s registration and inspection stickers with a Sharpie. Oops!
OK, no, that wasn’t me. But what a story, eh? As President Josiah Bartlet once noted, “Some of the stupidest criminals in the world are working right here in America. I’ve always been very proud of that.”
Anyway, yes, I’m still kicking with a pulse and everything. Nothing major, just the usual stuff of “Busy at work, quite a bit to do at home”. Not that anyone asked, which come to think of it, I now find a little rude!
Because it was wonderfully crisp and cool out all weekend, I decided to fully embrace my favorite look, poofy shirts paired with overalls, during both days. And that’s probably a big reason why it was a really good weekend indeed. When you’re at maximum comfort, both in terms of just physical comfort but also just plain looking the way you want to look, it’s hard to have a bad day. And I had two pretty good days: trips to the farmer’s market and our favorite bakery and a different library branch where I checked out too many books (in terms of “will I get through them before they’re due”, because really, that’s the only actual context in which “too many books” is a concept that makes any sense at all). Then the next morning it was off to the Outer Harbor for some photography, and then it was off to Knox Farm for a little more photography (and some video footage shooting) because it was just too darn cold at the Outer Harbor! When those winds come off the lake on a cool fall morning, it can be downright chilly.
Let’s see, what else…there was cheese for dinner Saturday, and pork chops with corn on the cob last night. Yeah, not a bad weekend at all. I mean, sure, the weekend ended with the Buffalo Bills getting clobbered at home by the Baltimore Ravens. Bummer, but it happens. I went to bed when the score was 40-25, and, well, sometimes you don’t win…[listens to voice in earpiece]…OK, I have some new information here.
Anyway, here are the weekend’s outfits! Yes, this is two different poofy white shirts. Saturday’s overalls were dark blue Levi’s. Sunday’s overalls were vintage Lee Hickory-striped.
There’s something to be said for how life improves when you finally figure out what your real “look” actually is….
Wow, I haven’t posted here since last Tuesday? Oh noes!!!
Nothing major or nefarious or bad is going on. In fact, it’s going pretty well. I’ve been on vacation since I left work on Wednesday, and I don’t return to work until Thursday. Also, my sister is visiting from out of town and we made our annual trip to the Erie County Fair on Friday. I’m swamped!
As far as this site goes, I didn’t make a conscious decision to take a posting break, it just happened. I’ve been active on Teh Socials, so if you follow me there, you’ve seen a few of my shenanigans. Just a few, anyway. More to come, especially a bunch of photos; I took a ton at the Fair, and I have others that are still awaiting editing from last week, and I am hoping to go on an all-day streetscape photography binge on Wednesday, weather permitting. (Oh, on the subject of weather? This summer has been loaded with hot-and-humid, and I’m rather tired of it. Also, this summer has not been loaded with rain, and we need some of that, too.
Anyway, let’s do the Sunday Stealing for this week, shall we? It’s a list of alphabetical prompts.
A. Auto: Buick Encore (2019). It’s in pretty good shape! Earlier this year I had to get all new brakes and tires; I could have done without those things needing done at the same time, but so be it. I also have a somewhat busted passenger-side mirror, from an errant backing-in incident. B. Bed size: At home, Queen. When we go to a hotel, we try for King. C. Cats: Three: Remy and Rosa, whom we adopted a few years ago, and we have added Daisy, my mother’s cat who was left behind when Mom died. D. Dogs: Two: Carla, our pittie mix, and Hobbes, our greyhound. E. Essential start to your day: Coffee and feeding Hobbes breakfast. Hobbes is usually up first. F. Favorite color: If pressed, I say purple, but really, I love all colors. Brown isn’t one I tend to wear a whole lot, but I don’t dislike it at all. G. Gold or silver: They each have their places, to be honest. H. Hand you favor (righty or lefty): Right. I. Instruments you play: I used to play the trumpet (very well!) and the piano (less well, though I wasn’t terrible). I have not touched either instrument in many years, sadly. My musical life is purely as a listener now. J. Job title: Facilities Technician. K. Kids: One. (Not by choice. Those stories are sad.) L. Live (rural, suburb, city): Suburb. I wouldn’t mind living farther out, in a decent-sized house on a nice lot with tons of trees…but then, I also wouldn’t mind living in a nice apartment in a vibrant city, either. M. Meal plans: Right now? As I write this, I’m not sure what we’re doing for dinner! N. Nicknames: None, really. “Hey you,” I suppose. O. Overnight hospital stays: For me, as of now? None. I suppose I can’t dodge that bullet forever, but I’m trying. P. Pet peeves: Ohhhh, we do not have time for that conversation right now! Let me name just one: People who don’t utilize right-of-way properly when driving, and then do shit like sit at the STOP sign and wave at me to go when it’s their turn, or worse, when they stop at a YIELD sign while I have a stop and start that “No, you go!” shit. GAH. Q. Quote from a movie: “I don’t know, I’m making this up as I go.” –Indiana Jones, Raiders of the Lost Ark R. Regrets: I’m not a big fan of regrets…but the one I wonder about most is leaving my music studies in college for Philosophy. I’m not sure that was a great idea. S. Siblings: One. She’s actually visiting right now! U. Underwear: Yes, I’m wearing some. Why are we asking? What are we asking? (And where is ‘T’?) V. Vegetable you love: Corn. Though technically it’s not a vegetable, it’s a grain. Tomato! Which is a fruit. Asparagus? I’ve come to like it a lot, though not steamed, which for years was the only way I knew it. Brushed with olive oil, dusted with salt and pepper, and grilled? Oh yeah babe. W. What makes you run late: Panicking over if I have everything. I really try not to run late, though. X. X-rays you’ve had: Teeth and my collar bone when I was in 7th grade. Y. Yummy food: Chicken tikka masala. We discovered Indian food this year! Why only this year? Who knows…I think we were a bit skittish to try it ourselves without someone along who was “in the know”. That turned out to be my brother-in-law. Now we love it. Z. Zoo animal: I don’t really like zoos anymore; I find them depressing, even though I know that most of them really try to do the best they can by the animals in their care. That said, I always love seeing elephants.
