Head down. Humble. Don't say any more than what you were asked.

Get through the border into the EU, and THEN celebrate. DO NOT look happy about this at any point prior to being completely within EU territory with all the necessary stamps...

Good luck, my friend. The light at the end of the tunnel is here.

Tell me you are a young 20-something without telling me you are a young 20-something...

Your definition of success is as narrow as your life experience. And it shows.

Let's talk about pet stores, and see if I can bring you some perspective you'll understand.

Almost exactly 1 mile north of me is a tiny little woman-owned pet store, and she employs 4 people. We'll call it Lori's Pets. I've been patronizing her shop for more than a decade. Talking with my neighbor the other day (who moved in 4 years ago) I mentioned Lori's Pets, and he'd never heard of it and never been there. It is literally the closest pet store to our houses, and he has 4 cats and has never heard of Lori's Pets.

A little over a mile south of me is PetCo. It's the size of giant grocery store and employs probably 30 people. It's the kind of big landmark you use to give people directions. ("It's in the PetCo parking lot." "Take a left at PetCo, and you'll see the place you want on the right, in the next block.")

Lori owns two houses; one she lives in, one she rents out. In the hottest real estate market in America. She just had her first employee turnover in 5 years. Her business has been running for 15 years.

PetCo employees are bottom-of-the-barrel minimum wage drones, with zero product knowledge or even care for pets. The products are largely mass market garbage that your pet can survive on, but will never thrive on. Employee turnover seems to be around 25-40%.

But - using your metrics and valuation system - PetCo is a success and Lori's Pets isn't.

Big does not equal good.

Big does not equal success.

In actual fact, BIG is almost universally bad; for the people who work there, for the people who engage with their products, and for the communities in which these big companies operate.

Many people would argue that Hubski is an unmitigated success, having launched the same year as Google+, Snapchat, Groupon, LinkedIn, and Wikileaks, and being still in regular use today, while maintaining its core values, purpose, and intention.

EDITS BELOW because my original comments were overly harsh, and that was not my intention:

Don't parrot the value system of corporate America; find your own measure of value, that reflects your priorities.

You have inadvertently validated KB's tirade, and taken the easy route to bash the "little guy" (Hubski/mk) because it's not Reddit-sized, or something. Which, somewhat ironically, is exactly why many (most?) of us love it here.

I didn't think anyone still remembered Circus Contraption. (... pause for a moment of recollection and nostalgia ...)

The shooting of Drew and Joe at Cafe Racer wasn't the end of the circus. That was quite a bit earlier. The musicians were still playing the music in various bands and ensembles, but the performers had moved on to other things by the time the shooting took place.

And while it did end any possibility of a Circus Contraption reunion, it did not draw the curtain on the circus itself. That space was already empty...

Spent the weekend in a lovely little cabin on a river, near Leavenworth, WA, with my wife and dog, to celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary. The river was very high and the sound was amazing ... filled the area and the house with the soothing sound of water.

We went hiking, went into Leavenworth a couple of times, had dinner with @ball00n@ and his wife, went to the distillery and got some bourbon and gin (the Ghost Gin#6). The bourbon is lovely and warm, but the gin is REALLY something special! First off, it is aged. Second, it has the most wonderful combination of floral and herbal that are right up front and fill your nose and mouth with amazing complexity and fun!! Love this stuff.

We picked up some cured meats, pickles, mustard, and cheeses in Leavenworth and spent time walking the trails along the river with our dog, Moxie. The weather was about 78 degrees with a nice mountain breeze, so it was the perfect warmth, and all the pine trees were giving off their lovely warm scent in the sun... it could not have been better!! (There weren't many people there, since the previous weekend was 4th of July, and was super busy... most people don't travel the NEXT week after the 4th, so we had no problem with finding places to park, walk, eat, etc.)

We stayed over until Monday, and I worked from their fast wifi in the cabin, then we took a leisurely drive back home.

It was perfect.

Now to go buy a new lawnmower.

I hate Bluetooth.

I hate how audio is controlled on our modern devices.

Case in point: I'm working in my shop. I have my Spotify playlist up on my phone, and am connected via Bluetooth to my speaker, so I have music playing. If a call comes in, it projects over the Bluetooth speaker, which is in no way a useful or valuable place to have phone calls sent.

Or I take a break for a minute to sit down and have some water, and play a game on my phone. And now that game is bring projected over the sound of the music through the Bluetooth speaker.

Why can't I just have music sent to the Bluetooth speaker, and all other audio routed through my phone's built-in speaker?

What about my car?

I connect to my car's entertainment system via Bluetooth, and I listen to podcasts and music while driving. But every single notification that comes in pads my audio 25%, so I miss what the podcasters are saying. If I get multiple notifications in a row, I can miss a LOT of information.

Or maybe I want to use my AirPods, instead of the car's stereo system... but nope. Trying to get the car to release its Bluetooth lock on my iPhone is impossible to do when driving. And even when I do get the audio re-routed to my AirPods, if a call comes in, my phone disconnects from my AirPods, reconnects to the car stereo, and plays the call over the stereo system!

Fixes.

"Fixing" these problems is actually two different solutions to two different problems; one fix is possible, the other impossible.

The first option is to have some sort of built-in mixer into the OS, that allows me to specifically route specific app outputs to different places. So, send Spotify output to the Bluetooth connected device (speaker in the shop, or car stereo, for example) and send all other audio through the phone's built-in speaker.

The second option is to have multiple outputs available via Bluetooth. So I can send Spotify to my job site boombox, and phone to my AirPods. This can't happen, because Bluetooth cannot address more than one destination; there can be only one Bluetooth device connected at a time.

Most of the time now, I just drive with no audio at all. It's just less annoying to have to deal with these asinine design flaws in "modern" technology products.

Waaaah.

(But hey ... at least I'm not trying to avoid conscription gangs and looking at leaving my homeland for good and becoming an exile from my own country. (Yet.)

I'm actually taking some vacation time!

I don't do that, really, ever. Because y'all know how low stress and boring my job is, and I work from home with my dog laying next to me, and take time off whenever I want to, and take half days off on Tuesdays and Thursdays to hang out with Dad who has Alzheimers... so I have a LOT of liberty to do whatever with my schedule I want.

But I maxed out my vacation accrual (208 hours, or 26 days max). So I need to use some up.

So I randomly took off the middle week of October, since my last project is due Oct 4 and I don't have anything else on my calendar yet.

And we have a long break at the end of the year, from December 22nd to January 2nd, which I extended so it is now December 15th to January 2nd!

I suspect my wife, dog, and I will do some road trips. A couple days away here and there. But mostly I want to be at home, working on projects, playing music, organizing stuff, fixing homeowner-y things, and just enjoying my home.

A nice Staycation, mostly.

I'm really looking forward to it.

Oh. And apparently it is my 54th birthday on Sunday. So there's that, too.

Couple of us here on Hubski lost a good man this week to Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), a particularly wicked form of dementia that is also (thankfully) exceedingly rare. I seem to remember reading somewhere that 13 people have died of it in the last 5 years, or something. They don't know why it happens. They don't know the mechanisms of its operation. Someone just starts showing signs of early stage dementia, it progresses at lightning speed (faster than any other dementia diagnosis), and they are gone in 3-5 months.

I considered him my "extra Dad". He and his wife were friends with my parents before any of them were even married. We lived our lives side-by-side and even moved a couple states away to be near each other. When all four parents retired, they wound up buying a house together, and living two couples in one big house. It was pretty cool and many wonderful memories were made there on holidays and special occasions.

He was a brilliant man, and excelled at anything he put his mind to. So losing his cognitive abilities was particularly hard on him, but the speed of CJD was sort of a blessing there... he didn't suffer long.

I am filled with both a sense of loss and a sense of relief. I'll miss his sharp wit and clever comebacks and crafty endeavors. Rest well, my friend... you will be missed.

The Individual Contributor role is a double-edged sword; on one hand, almost complete autonomy while making a good salary. On the other hand, no growth path in the corporation.

I'm an IC at my company: completely self-contained and self-managed. I write proposals/bids for government technology contracts, but I write the proposal for our salespeople. They put their name on my document once I am done with it. So they also make the commission. (Which is fine with me... I'd rather a good salary than a big commission any day!)

But I do the job of 3 different people: researcher who finds the opportunities, writer who creates the content, and layout artist who creates the final document in InDesign. Replacing me would take a very unique person.

But ... this is the first time in my life I have had a title/role that can be searched in job listings. So I'm looking around at other proposal writing/management roles, and realizing how little I'd need to do anywhere else... and in my current job I only have about 10 hours a week of real "work" to do.

Bleh. I'd kinda like to have a job in an office again... but I'd have to be able to bring my dog to work. And set my own hours. And I've only got about 10 years to retirement, so why not just chill here in this easy job, and do more fun stuff outside of work?

Like yoga. And exercise. And getting my knee right again with proper PT...

Fall happened in one day in Seattle, this year.

Last Thursday it was 80 degrees F, with an Air Quality Index of 200 (or "harmful to most people") due to wildfires across the state.

Friday it was raining and 55 degrees with an AQI of 10.

The rain has continued on and off ever since, and the temps haven't gotten above 60 degrees F, and all forecasts show that we are now fully into Fall and heading into Winter. The trees are suddenly all changing colors very quickly, and leaves and falling everywhere.

It's like fall landed with a big wet thump, all at once.

And I love it. I love this time of year...

Goodbye for now, Hubski? Kind of?

So yeah ... just got back from two weeks of vacation - a week in Santorini, and a week in Rome with several day trips around to Florence and Pompeii - and am back on the job and shaking off some serious jet lag.

Being unplugged from all my usual internet use for that time has made me realize how little of it I actually need in my day to day life. And, while I was gone, my company has gone through a complete security overhaul (after some hackers did some serious damage), and we have to install DarkTrace Sensor on our machines.

DarkTrace is mostly a defensive tool for keeping out the baddies and nogoodniks, but it does also give the IT guys full access to your computer and visibility into your internet use. So I need to remove 1Password and all my personal stuff from my work machine, and stop visiting the sites I used to spend downtime on ... like Hubski.

Outside of work I have plenty of other stuff going on, so don't spend much time at all on a computer.

So yeah ... the sum of all that is I won't be dropping into Hubski during the workday anymore, which will pretty much eliminate my Hubksi browsing time. I'm not leaving in a huff, or in dissatisfaction, or anything like that, and I won't be deleting my account. I'll drop back in when time/interest is right.

Stay chill. Keep up the conversation, and the community, y'all.

Been away for a while, and came by to check in, and see everyone else is looking for work/hiring, too!

Passed my 7 year anniversary at the beginning of April, and I'm just kinda done with this company. The business is heading away from the GovEd market (which I work in: government and educational sales), and i don't have a lot of work to do on a daily basis, but the sales department is in denial about this movement of the company away from GovEd and keeps trying to put projects on my plate that we just simply are not the right answer for.

It's frustrating, because as I try to write the sales proposal for them, they can't give me legitimate answers to the customers' questions.

Me: "Ok, customer wants X, and we don't do that. So I checked "Does Not Comply" for that requirement."

Salesperson: "NO! Answer yes! We have this (totally unrelated) feature!"

Me: "So you want to sell them N to solve problem X? How is that going to work for them?"

Salesperson: "Doesn't matter; Once we get in the room with the customer and start negotiations, we can address those 'edge cases' in person."

Me: "You realize that the document I am building commits us to providing THIS feature X in the way THEY have defined it, right?"

Salesperson: "But our product doesn't do that."

Me: "Thatsmyfuckingpoint!"

Anyway, am out looking for work, interviewing, and talking with my manager about when we should plan for my departure. I'm thinking mid-June, but my Mom and Sister are on my case about leaving my job without another one already lined up. And I see their point... why not just keep doing the minimal amount of work my job takes, rake in the $100k/yr, and just keep my mouth shut?

Hm. They do have a point there...

Turns out our local rugby team - the Seattle Seawolves - really need a weirdo like me right now to come in and help manage a couple of different projects in the office. That would be cool. I hope that works out. But not banking on it ... it's not like there is an open job req or anything ... just me and the boss chatting over beers and discussing life, the universe, and everything. But he's gonna see what he can do.

It'd be nice to care about my work again.

Gonna try to take Dad (with Alzheimers) to a Seahawks game tomorrow.

He gets uncomfortable sitting in the car for long periods. The drive is going to be about an hour to get to parking, then we are going to have to Lyft to the stadium.

He can't walk very far, and has some days where his stability is better than others. We'll need to walk from the parking lot into the stadium and to our seats, which are not front row midfield...

He sometimes just "phases out", or loud sounds can annoy him. In a football stadium.

When his brain just shuts down and needs a break, he switches off pretty quickly. Much faster than I get get us out of the stadium, get him to a place outside where he can sit, while I run off to get a Lyft to my parked car and race back to the stadium to pick him up... and hope he hasn't had a forgetful episode and just wandered off somewhere in the interim.

Tomorrow is going to be capital-I INTERESTING. That's for sure!

My dog is finally coming out of her latest heat, and might be able to go to the dog park again this weekend. That'll be a relief... she's 100lbs of Anatolian Shepherd and Malamute, and while she is a very calm and gentle 2.5-year old, she needs to get out and run around with other dogs regularly. For a month now, it's been me and her taking walks in the parks and forests, and she's done being at the end of a leash with some goober that has a bad knee and can't run with her. :-)

In less than two weeks I head off to Santorini for a week and Rome for a week. My Travel Team and I have decided to land in these two places and stay for a while, and do day trips out to explore the areas around... other islands, other cities, etc.

This week I've embarked on a bit of a fitness journey. I'll be 55 this year and need to become far more flexible (Yoga and regular stretching), rowing regularly to maintain some muscle and aerobic exercise while I work on my knee issues (instead of just sitting at my desk all day), doing regular self-care (massages and pedicures), and eating a less-packaged diet (more veggies and meats, less breads and grains) because my body LOVES that food.

Feels good to be largely on track.

Oh. And work is going as well as can be hoped for. Review is coming up before the end of the month, so we will see if my boss agrees with my assessment.

Ukraine is about to be absolutely flush in cash, as foreign companies and governments come in to rebuild what Russia has destroyed. And once Crimea is back within Ukraine's borders, there will be a huge amount of work to do there, too.

I was in the Balkans after the wars there, working with the peacekeeping forces. Many many people got absolutely filthy rich, by providing things to the foreigners coming in to help. A fleet of 10 Toyota Land Cruisers - each one rented to an NGO for $5k/month, for 4 years straight - was enough to set up an entire family for life. A welder with his own equipment could charge literally anything he wanted - $1000/day - when he showed up to a site that needed him. Then they'd refer him to someone else. He lived out of his truck for a year, and made enough money to retire for life.

And then there will be the companies that want to move operations into Ukraine to take advantage of the newly built infrastructure. For example, if you manufacture automatic transmissions, a BRAND NEW factory in Kiev with skilled Ukrainian workers is a VERY tasty investment for Mr. CEO at big-name-car-brand. That building needs staff from janitors to senior managers, and everything in between.

Staying in the Ukraine, being social and connected and helpful to people around you, will lead to opportunities you simply couldn't conceive of today.

My friend Mirsad in Sarajevo had a small company making trophies, and engraving plaques for trophies for local kids groups and sports teams. He made some stuff for us, and we got him connected to the US Military, and he began making plaques and commemorative coins (souvenirs soldiers trade and cherish) for the military in country, which led to a contract with AAFES worldwide, which required him to build an entire factory and employ over 50 people!!

Countries recovering from war - especially when they are victorious - are rich lands of opportunity for any smart person standing around. Stay there. Do the work that interest you, and that you enjoy, and talk to everyone. Be helpful. You never know what will come of it...

... but I know those same opportunities will NEVER arise in San Francisco, where you'll just be another cog in someone else's machine.

I've got a group of friends from my time in Budapest who are high-quality journalists (Economist, Reuters, Independent, etc), members of the EU governing body, academics teaching courses on Russia, and others who watch Russia professionally.

Everyone is scrambling now and wondering about Putin's mental health. He may have had a mental breakdown ... this was all the standard Russian power-ploy that he pulls when the EU needs Russian natural gas to stay warm during the winter ... until they bombed Kyiv.

Grabbing the Crimea was all about getting a port that isn't iced over 8 months of the year. So annexing the rest of the southeast was kinda inevitable, and people always expected him to expand deeper into Ukraine.

But when you bomb the capitol city, that has no tactical advantage in his southeastern land grab... well, that is a full on invasion, with the intent of taking over the entire country by force. Not annexing a port.

So when he bombed Kyiv in the first hours of the attack, that CHANGED EVERYTHING. This is actual war.

One of my uber-conservative friends suggested the EU should take Kaliningrad. Immediately. Tit-for-tat.

And that's ... both scary and fucking clever. The EU (or anyone else) can take it by the same logic Putin is using, since it has only been a Russian protectorate (completely encircled by the EU) for 75 years. And it gives the EU a bargaining chip with Russia that has fuckall to do with the USA/Britain/etc.

We are in completely uncharted waters. I don't see any way out of this without an actual shooting war between the US and Russia. It may finally happen. Of course, the Russian military will be utterly wiped out quickly, because they are mostly a pretend army with mostly defective equipment.

Then again, Americans are, first and foremost, racist. And Ukrainians don't really register in our hierarchy of "who is worth saving". So...?

Completely uncharted waters, my friends.

Woke up this morning with a cough, thick head, and lethargy. I haven't been anywhere or done anything in a freakin' WEEK, but ... oh no! ... my body decides to catch something, and now I'm feelin' poopy.

I'll go upstairs and take a COVID test as soon as I care enough to get out of my chair.

Work is super slow right now. My work tends to be "seasonal" around how public agencies budget and spend the public's tax dollars. And I should be super busy into June ... but have literally NO work on my plate. So I'm making up some fun(ish) projects to do around my job, like graphics, and market research. I like doing that kind of stuff.

-

Aging is kinda fucked up in America, the land of zero discernible "health care" and lots of health insurance. Working with dementia (Alzheimers) and maneuvering various end-of-life issues and discussions is depressing because of the way our culture is all-in on "continue life at any cost", rather than people having choices about how they want to spend their final days.

Humans are oddly inhumane towards humans, yet compassionate and humane towards animals in truly beautiful ways. That's fucked up.

-

The wife and I discussed the very real possibility that I might be able to retire very soon. "What would you do with your time, if you didn't have to go to work?" is almost as fun a game to play as "what if I won the lottery?"

I'd definitely spend a couple days a week volunteering at my friend's blacksmith shop.

I'd get a personal trainer and meet with them three days a week for workouts focused on long-term health.

I'd probably re-open my marketing/writing consultancy and only take on clients I WANT to work with, regardless of their ability to pay.

And I'd probably spend a month solid on Fallout:76, then put the Xbox away forever and move on.

I'd read. I have a stack of books ready to dump themselves into my head and heart.

It's fun to think about, at least. Gives me something to do while work is slow...

Went into the office for the first time in 2 years, because I had to print out and bind some documents before shipping them off.

In a company of more than 400 people, I saw 4.

I could see going in once in a while, if I needed to. But I don't really need to. Since the last time I was in the office in February 2020, my entire team has dissolved, and I have been moved over to a different department in a different part of the building. But my cubicle with my name on it still stands alone in a vast dark room with nobody around.

The next two years in corporate America are going to be very weird. I can't see people happily returning to the status quo... and yet all this expensive real estate is built on the idea of people having to come into a specific location to prove they are working...

I just don't see people going back to that, if there are other options.

I've already knocked back my schedule so I get off work at noon on Tuesday and Thursdays, so I can help care for my Dad as he travels the Alzheimers road. Sure, it's only 6 hours a week, but ... I'm still making a full salary and still getting all my work done easily.

The rules of the game are changing. For the better, I feel. And Amazon warehouse workers won the right to organize a Union. Shit is changing for working stiffs.

I have too many musical tools that I don't know well enough to use fluidly. So instead of creating music, I just think about it a lot. Play my guitar or bass unplugged. Every once in a while I will turn on a synth and try to lay down something, but quickly get frustrated at the tools, and shut it all down again.

And when I went to take piano lessons, I didn't do the homework. I wouldn't make time for it.

And I need to do these exercises and stretches to keep on top of my knee and wrist issues, but I don't make time for it, and don't do it.

There's a pattern here of poor self care, and not supporting myself in the things I want to do. Self-defeating tendencies.

At least I know that.

Now to DO something about it...

Inside.

Honestly, I'm not being glib. Until you know who you are, and what drives you, you cannot be a good partner, and you cannot find the answers outside of you.

At one point in my life I realized I lived a very "noisy" active life. There was never any silence or time alone, just me and my thoughts. I was constantly generating noise/activity to avoid having to look inward and do any self-discovery.

It took me a year of quiet contemplation, living in a foreign country, largely alone, before I became truly comfortable just being with myself.

Everyone's journey is different, and only the few who truly dedicate themselves to it will achieve their goal of internal calm and confidence. But the process is worthy, no matter how far you take it.

I have an easy, generally non-stressful life.

And I am spending my days frustrated and angry and snippy.

This is a problem.

I'm working on it...

I have a weird relationship with Dave Chappelle ... I never found him very funny. I think us senior GenXers are just outside of the Chappelle window... we had SNL and SCTV, while the younger of my generation had Kids In The Hall, Almost Live, In Living Color, Up All Night, etc., and I never really liked that era of comedy. Which is where people like Chappelle and Chris Rock and the Wayans brothers came up.

So I missed that boat.

But Dave Letterman's new show, "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction" is a long-form interview format where Dave just sits and talks with someone he likes/respects very much.

His interview with Dave Chappelle was fascinating and made me love Chappelle, and what he has done with his life. The little town he lives in. The way he lives with his family and friends, and the community he has created around him as he has matured and mellowed over time.

... then this trans-phobic dude comes out of Chappelle's skin, and starts saying really stupid, ill-informed shit about an entire class of people who are finally getting some liberty and recognition, and not being ground under the boot of white American culture-leaders... and Chappelle takes the ENTIRELY wrong position.

And doubles-down on it. Again and again.

I have a hard time squaring the quiet, respectful, community-building family-man I saw Dave Letterman interview, with the on-stage dipshittery of Dave Chappelle's "comedy" show?!?

I'm not losing anything by tuning out Dave Chappelle, and I will happily continue to do so. But I wonder where the split is in his brain, where he fails to apply his worldview and generosity equally, and especially in the case of an abused minority, like trans people.

It's weird that he doesn't see it.

This is so gratifying to hear! Exploring a new country is such a thrill and a challenge and fun and exciting and worrying and and and... everything!

Congratulations, man. I hope the boss and the work is everything you are hoping for.

Welp. It's been a few weeks of the usual weirdness in my life.

I'd almost beaten the cold/flu that everyone is getting and simply calling "not COVID", when our Seattle Seawolves rugby team were eliminated from playoff contention. We had an AMAZING game and played REALLY well... but didn't have the aggregate points throughout the season to make it into the post-season.

Except... the top team in the league was suddenly disqualified for management misconduct, so we were suddenly in 4th place in the Western Division, with one game to play against our oldest rivals, the San Diego Legion! We beat them handily, and suddenly were in the playoffs!

The head cold was abating, my team got a sudden reprieve and got into the semi-finals, and...

... that evening my Father-in-law died.

My wife and I went from the height of sports-feelings to dealing with parental loss, funeral planning, estate issues, and estranged family members going crazy, in about 5 minutes.

The next day we flew to Minneapolis for his funeral. Turns out he has left an estate that will keep all of his living relatives (me included) fiscally secure for the rest of our lives. The estranged family members were kept calm and the drama was avoided by having off-duty police officers at the funeral and the shiva at the synagogue.

On Thursday of that week, I woke up in our hotel room with my arm oddly positioned under my head, and a weird pain in my shoulder. That slowly developed over the weekend into a seriously pinched nerve that rendered my left arm useless, tingling, and in severe pain that kept me up all night.

That Sunday the Seawolves played the last game of the season, against the best team in our division, and completely decimated them! This was a team that "the team to beat", and two weeks before we had been in 5th place in a 7-team division. The turnaround by the Seawolves has been astounding, and we are playing the best rugby we have ever played.

Medical attention (massage, acupuncture, etc.) for my shoulder and some strategic pillow use and borrowing some opiates from friends got me some sleep during the week. But things at work exploded with a lot of new work coming in for me to do a lot of writing for... with my left arm hanging useless at my side. Typing 100-page sales proposals with one hand is Not Fun.

My electric lawn mower (Black Decker) died, and since DeWalt now owns BD, they closed their only B+D service center in the Pacific Northwest three months ago. I now have to ship my mower somewhere to get it fixed... meanwhile my grass continues to grow amazingly fast, as my left arm hangs limp and useless.

The Seawolves then whomped the Houston Sabercats at their home field in Houston, winning the Western Division, and putting us into the Championship against (it turns out) Rugby New York.

Got into my doctor for the shoulder, finally, and she prescribed Oxycontin and Prednisone - for the pain and nerve inflammation, respectively - and within 3 days my arm is probably 60% useful again!

But I cannot travel like this, so I am going to miss my Seawolves play Rugby New York for the Major League Rugby Championship on Saturday. We have won the Championship twice before, and I was at both of those games, and am shattered that I can't go to this one. :(

So my wife and sister-in-law are both going to travel together and go to the game!!

Meanwhile, Moxie - my lovely Anatolian Shepherd/Malamute - is in heat, and FEELING SO MANY FEELINGS right now... I'm trying to keep her entertained, but we can't visit the dog park or run off-leash at all until she isn't fertile any more.

And also meanwhile, I have now changed my work schedule so I am off work Tuesdays and Thursdays to spend time with my Dad, who has early stage vascular Alzheimers. My mom and sister take care of him 24x7, and need a break. And, he "charges up" when he's with me. He is more lively, engaged, and more communicative when we have spent time together, and it usually lasts a day or so. It's nice to be able to give them a break, and also have such a positive effect on him and his enjoyment of life.

Today I get another massage on my shoulder. Tomorrow my Physical Therapy starts. And Saturday at 9:AM (pacific time) the Seawolves take the pitch to try for their THIRD championship in the Major League Rugby league's short 5-year history.

And with the family windfall... I now get to consider the possibility of retiring. Which is weird. What would I do with my time if I didn't have a job to get up and go to? For approximately 20-25 years?

I've had a job every day since I was 16... and never had any possibility of retiring. Ever.

Life is weird, man.

My spiral staircase arrives today, between 10 and 4.

It's a LOT of steel that I have to unload myself, inspect, and ensure no damage and all parts are there, before the truck leaves. So I have basically put myself on "tentative" availability all day for work, and am sitting here with my work clothes and gloves, ready to jump up and get to work whenever the truck arrives.

Then I need to get all the pieces in the back yard, set them up for finish painting (they are coming primed only), so I can get them dry and ready for install this weekend.

In other news, I went to a little fundraiser/get-together with a bunch of my old circus friends, who have gone on to set up a very successful dinner theater in Seattle ... and didn't have much fun. I just don't like being around people anymore. I don't like small talk.

I used to be a social butterfly, zooming around, checking in on everyone, connecting people together, leading community-building projects, and just DOING a lot.

Now? After an hour I had to go. I just had no more words inside my head to say, and didn't care what the other person was saying... which is just rude. If you aren't going to listen to someone, then don't waste their time, I say. So I left.

I'm in a weird middle-space about a lot of things.

My motorcycle isn't "right" for me anymore. But I don't know what make/model/style is "right".

My job is a minor annoyance that I could keep doing for a decade and then retire. Or I could pursue one of the other opportunities I have just been presented with. But ... meh.

It's just ennui. All the way down.

My wife and I were chatting about The Past last night, and remembering what things were like in the late 1980's and early 1990's. (We both graduated high school in the late 80's.)

Money. You had cash or checks. That was it. Banks were not open in the evenings or weekends, so you had to figure out what you were going to do/eat/drink all weekend, budget for it, go to the bank, get out that much money before they closed, and ... that was it. If you ran out of cash you didn't buy anything. (A grocery store would take a check, but a bar would not let you pay your tab with a check.)

There were no ATMs. There were no credit cards. (Well, your parents may have had ONE credit card that they used for very specific things. But nobody I knew could get a credit card. You had to have excellent credit - like be a homeowner - to get a CC.)

Communications. There were no cell phones amongst normal everyday people. You had an answering machine at home, and had to go home to check your messages to see where/when people were meeting up.

There's no GPS. Just a post-it note with turns noted, stuck to the rear view mirror. "I5 N -> Olive St -> R onto Olive -> R on 12th -> L on Ramona -> 4th house on right, blue truck"

---

There's parts of that I miss. I do wish there was some sort of hybrid Google Maps that didn't literally show me a map, but showed a list of turns in order, and as I come up to the turn it enlarges the map view so I can see the road map clearly. Then, after turning, the text list of turns zooms up again until I approach the next turn...

And prior to COVID I did almost all of my buying in cash. I didn't like the idea of "being tracked" by my purchases. And now? I like it when my bank calls and says, "hey this purchase didn't follow your pattern... is this legit or was your card/ID stolen?"

There's no point to this post. Just reminiscing.

It begs the question whether or not things will eventually return to normal.

Not to sound trite, but what is 'normal' has now been altered permanently. We have a new baseline to measure from, and you can't go back.

I've been watching the Burningman community with some interest... there are two distinct groups forming... the partiers who were only there for the party are going all gung-ho back into community events, and are spreading covid. (Friends of mine here in Seattle made the international news for the dumbass party they held that became a superspreader event.)

Then there is the other group of Burners who just deeply connect with the bigger picture/goals of Burningman, and are in full hibernation mode, and will be for probably another two years or so. (Depending on variant mutation, of course.)

They (us, we) are confident that we will gather again with friends, around a fire, and do silly shit together in a safe and fun environment. In about two years. When all the idiots are dead, the variants are under control, and there has been time for people to heal from their losses and define what their next phase of participation will be.

This is the group I am most excited about because they don't want to return to "normal"... they want to learn from the global human experience, and move forward and craft something new that is appropriate for the time, place, and experiences we have all had as humanity during the last few years.

THOSE events are going to be very interesting, and I believe will define the leading edge of creative culture for the next two decades, as Burningman (in the desert) did for the last three decades.

It will also be an interesting phase of life for a lot of my cohorts who were also "original" Burners, because we will be coming up on retirement age. And I am curious to see how we adapt to the physical and psychological changes that age brings, as well.

Nah, no Gerlach Regional for me. Been several years (6?) since I have been back to the dust.

Spent some time in the northern reaches of that terrain last year - the Alvord Desert in northeastern Oregon - and it was beautiful and a bit nostalgic for the grand old days of the Burn.

I have a loose intent to return to the Burn on my motorcycle one day, and solo camp out at walk-in camping, or around the 2:00 side of K street, where there is a lot of room, and not a lot of "party goers".

But yeah... not this year. And probably not next year. Maybe I'll do it for my 55th birthday...

As we take the Alzheimers journey with my Dad, I need to be there more often to take up some of the 24x7 care requirements that my Mom and Sister are shouldering now. So I've just applied for a 3-day workweek, with Tuesdays and Thursdays as my days to take care of Dad. I suspect this will go well.

Currently Dad is mostly just in the forgetful phase of dementia, with some difficulty finding the right words now and then, and just having his brain kinda fade in and out. (It "gets muddy" he says.) The full on hallucinations and seeing me as his old friend, were a one-off event. (This time.)

We are moving forward with establishing a relationship with a local senior memory-care facility, so when the time comes, he has a place to go and get the care he needs and deserves.

This is particularly hard for my sister, who is an expert and consultant on dementia in seniors.

She knows that everyone waits too long to put their loved one in a senior care center; people try to keep their loved ones at home for as long as possible, and to care for the person themselves for as long as possible, too.

But with dementia, there is a point where the brain cannot adapt to new circumstances and changes. So getting a patient into the facility early, while they still have some cognition and higher brain function to adapt to the new environment, is absolutely critical to the patient's long-term happiness and health. Wait too long for admission to the facility, and the person cannot physically adapt to the environment and will be constantly unhappy for the rest of their life. Get them in early, and they can adapt and enjoy the care they will receive.

My sister knows this. She consults with people on this every single day. But now, it is HER dad, and she doesn't want to do it. She's really torn between her professional knowledge and her personal experience.

My Mom has woken up next to my Dad for more than 55 years. She doesn't want him sleeping somewhere else, and waking up in an empty bed.

But, my Dad is an extrovert, a social butterfly, a story-teller. And nowadays he sits in his chair in the front room of the house, barely engaging with the newspaper or a book, and napping constantly. If we go out to a coffee shop or a Dr's appointment, as soon as there are people around, he lights up and engages with them, and becomes the Santa Claus everyone loves.

And he'd get that social interaction in a senior care facility. He'd have that every day. And people his age to talk to and connect with. And tell stories to! :-)

So I'm dropping down to a 3-day workweek so I can be with him on Tuesdays and Thursdays, go out to meetups and happy hours at various senior centers, and just generally keep him moving and engaging with the world outside the house.

... and while all of this is happening, I am thinking about being the last of my line. Neither my sister nor I had kids, and the family ends with me. I won't have kids to do this for me when I get old and experience my phase in that genetic lottery ...

Truckers and long distance trucking is about half of the business my company does. We provide the various log book and inspection technologies they are required to use when operating their vehicles.

There are about 10% of these people (60/40 men to women, actually) who have any skills/talent/knowledge at all. The rest are just ... well, you saw it in the video.

The coolest thing in trucking is that young women are getting into it. There are dozens and dozens of IG/TikTok accounts of pretty young 20-somethings with their dog, doing long-haul trucking and living in their vehicles full time.

And that's pretty goddamn cool, as far as I'm concerned.

I'm here.

Still breathing. Still have a bum knee. Still haven't done a single part of my physical therapy regimen to help my knee out. I look at the papers she gave me every single day, and have not yet done a single stretch or exercise.

Slept like shit last night. Again.

Because my knee was bothering me all night.

Because I haven't done any of my PT stretching or strength building exercises.

The cycle continues.