Category: Uncategorized

Looks like the mask is on the other foot.

Wear a mask and keep distance, you epic bunch of tools.

Hundreds of firefighters have arrived in town. They are headed upriver to fight the monster Holiday Farm Fire. We have been in Level 1 since Tuesday and holding tight. The cars are packed with stuff and ready to leave within minutes if need be. Thankfully the smoke (which is so thick and heavy the air quality warning levels end far before the level of particulate matter) has changed the weather and it is 20 degrees cooler than it was forecast to be this week. So now we wait.

Quite a few people we know have lost houses, their possessions, and whatnot to the fire. A few of my clients have had to evacuate and some are being evacuated from their evacuation spaces due to the other fires across the state.

We spent today getting things together for people who had lost everything and now I am trying to just maintain the state of normal life by fighting against the most nefarious beast known to mankind. No, not a video game villain, but the NELP. The Never Ending Laundry Pile. A monster so vile and unyielding that it can continue to spawn new heads every time one is severed. (Yes, like a Hydra) So sneaky, it can pile up several feet high in a single day. (Why do kids change their clothes so much when they don’t even go outside?)

At least that’s back to normal.

The fires are getting close. I know anyone who has gone through a natural disaster like a tornado, fire, etc knows what this is like. Looking around at the things you’ve had for your whole life (not much), your adult life (more) and that you’ve worked very hard to get and knowing that it may be the last time you ever see or use them.

It’s trite, and we should think instead in terms of, “Well, we are all getting out with our lives, and that’s what is important / that’s why we pay so much for insurance” but still. As an American, consumerism has been driven into our psyche and I think, “I have thousands of dollars worth of video games in my garage that I cannot take with me. I have 65+ pair of sneakers I cannot take with me.” It’s a lot easier to part with the TVs and things that there’s already a new model of, and that you can just roll into a Costco on any given Wednesday and pick up. The baby blankets and photo albums that aren’t already scanned are in the car already.

Listening to the police/fire scanner is a double edged sword because there are so many alerts and so much going on yet the majority of it does not apply to us. The kids aren’t scared. They were just upset that the emergency alerts kept on beeping in while they were watching Glitch Techs.

Be safe everyone.

Sweet pickles are nasty garbage.

There are many things that have not aged well about the movie. Kids today that see the movie would want to know these things:

1. Why does her computer make that weird noise when she checks her email?
2. Why doesn’t she just check her email on her phone?
3. Why don’t they just text each other?
4. What is a bookstore?
5. Why did they remake Sleepless in Seattle with the same actors?

Ironically, even if Tom Hanks had saved Meg Ryan’s bookstore, Amazon would have put them both out of business by now but then some astroturf trust fund kid would have reopened a bookstore in the old shop’s location except they would charge astronomical prices and give worse customer service. It would be as if Comcast opened a bookstore.

Still a cute movie though. Wifey insisted on watching it. My pick the other night when I made us watch a video game documentary. I am lame.

One morning, several weeks ago, I was signing into my new fancy Remote Work Experience™ and my kids were in the office doing their usual morning routine of begging to play Fortnite followed by crying about not being able to play Fortnite. I had an eBay window open because I had been looking for something, probably a strategy guide for Fire Emblem or something. They had become obsessed with Deadpool mostly because he is currently in (you guessed it) Fortnite. They also have a table full of Legos and one of them asked, “Why don’t we have Deadpool Legos?” to which I responded, “Because there are no Deadpool Legos (I guessed). This led to my being coerced into searching eBay for Deadpool Legos. Well, there are apparently Deadpool “Legos”.

They demanded that i order them the Deadpool characters. I did what any other parent would do. I said “No, I’m not paying $4 each for a miniature Deadpool Lego guy that you are going to drop on the floor and forget about only to have it find its way embedded into the bottom of my foot one night when I go in to turn the Tortoise’s heat lamp off on my way to bed, good day, sir!”, took them to school, and came home and ordered the overpriced Chinese knock off “Lego” characters.

$4 each plus $4 shipping plus 8 weeks later for shipping and here they are. I forgot I had ordered them and opened the package in front of the kids. So after using them as a bribe to go get their pajamas on and teeth brushed I gave them out and the kids began to play with them. 5 minutes later, one of the katanas had broken. A little gorilla glue and an overnight rest and it was as good as new ( I guess).

My favorite part is Provide Against the Children to Eat

You can see that the hand sockets are too small for regular hands

and that Deadpool likes backrubs.

You can see the hands are too small for regular sockets

Oh look, the feet don’t say Lego™, that seems legit

But in the end Deadpool and regular Lego™ characters can be friends

and yet another side effect of my website having been transferred to a new server (grrr) I can’t post pictures. Ill fix it later.

Edit: Weeks later, I fixed it!

I worked all day. Tried to run a virtual Cub Scout meeting. My kid was super disrespectful. At least wifey made apple crisp and got me a sweet trailblazers hoodie.

Happy birthday to me. And Eric Clapton, and MC Hammer, and Tracy Chapman, and Pete Holmes, and Norah Jones, and apparently Celine Dion, and Apparently John Astin is still alive and he is exactly 50 years older than I am. Also Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid in the Harry Potter films), and Chris Sale even though you are a douche for cutting all those jerseys when you played for the White Sox.