This year I’ve made the choice to move the best bit up top. I also decided to be a bit less dire than my original outline would have been. I’ve refrained from including quotes from monsters that died this year. I’m also refraining from saying much about the monsters that sadly didn’t die this year. I keep thinking of a quote from the book The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead, “Sometimes a useful delusion is better than a useful truth. Nothing’s going to grow in this mean cold, but we can still have flowers.”
I got some pictures drawn of Hedy and Hux, delivered on January 3rd. She drew them facing away with their ears up in the most charming style ever. Support random people on the internet doing creative things with their own hands.
Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29th, lies in state. An outpouring of love and appreciation for a man who was too good a person to be a well liked president followed. I can’t imagine why this feels like such a worthwhile point to make these days.
We rented a car to take a trip with the dog to the hills of Tennessee with some friends. The car I reserved has balding tires, so they complimentarily upgraded me, to a Waggoneer. We had room for luggage, groceries, a dog with enough space left over for a full field hockey team and another car.
An episode of Bluey made me cry. (Actually a couple of them did)
Had to do compliance and harassment training at work. In a world where DOGE is committing treason and a felon sits in the White House.
Just a bit outside – Bob Uecker
Kendrick Lamar upheld the new American tradition of making boring ass white people talk a lot about things that weren’t aimed at them and they didn’t understand anyway. Also, he kicked ass.
Speaking of traditions, Civ VII came out. I lose many, many hours to it.
A bunch of improvisers and comedians do a live stage reading of The Muppet Movie. I pay for a livestream and spend some time laughing.
Travelled to Lehi UT for work. When I booked my travel, I deliberately booked a flight that would get me there in time to get to the office and say Hi, get the lay of the land. I did not notice it was Martin Luther King JR day, and the office was closed. I’m too tired to enjoy the free day, even after I learn there’s a peak nearby called Gobblers Knob.
Two astronauts finally return home, their scheduled one week stay aboard the International Space Station stretched to 286 days.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler starts with Tina Fey as first guest, and both my crushes are still going.
In an effort to grab any possible joy, I subscribe to The Onion, physical paper edition, for a whole year. Has it been worth $75? YES! Holy cow these people are good at their job.
We get 8+ inches of rain in 3 days. One of the river’s gauges crested at 36 feet. For reference, 12 feet is normal. The great flood of ‘37 topped out at 52 feet.
I’m pretty sure the spring broke my dog. At one point she ate a book, and to this day if we dare drop our phone, or a television show features any loud sound, she will jump up and bolt to the bathroom.
Go to a work event for a couple of days in Indianapolis. We happen to be there exactly 30 years to the day after I’d moved there. I used it as an excuse to walk around and visit my old office building, my old apartment building.
JD Vance killed the Pope.
We had a bidet installed. Pooping is even more fun now!
A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just. – Pope Francis
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, decides that since integrity doesn’t matter to a plurality of Americans, it shouldn’t really matter in baseball. So he removes a bunch of people who bet on baseball games from the “permanently ineligible” list.
Michelle’s friends visit, and stay in our house. So I have to get out.
I use the occasion to plan a personal road trip. I drive to Atlanta, stay downtown overnight, and spend several hours in The Center for Puppetry Arts and take too many pictures.
Then, I drive north, up into the Blue Ridge mountains and stay with an old friend (Hi Craig!) for a couple of nights in a little slice of heaven; a house built at the bend of a creek. The air is cool, the water’s high, the raging creek is loud, and the mountains are marvelous.
I not only get recognized - I get recognized from behind. – George Wendt
Sold a ton of Magic stuff I ‘collected’ but never played with to pay off our upcoming Joco Cruise (March 2026). Don’t worry, I kept a lot more than I got rid of.
Locusts! So many cicada at work. It’s loud, and they constantly fly into you and make some people scream. The geese feast on them, and then get the runs all over the parking lot.
The NBA Playoffs make for an insanely fun month. The Pacers have a last second comeback in 4 consecutive playoff series. The lose the finals, but it goes 7 games, and is a great series.
“No Kings” day reminds a lot of people they aren’t alone in thinking this is all a bit much.
Squirrels infest our roof. Fixing this costs thousands of dollars and takes MONTHS
I got solicited for ‘advice’ from a younger coworker. I spent some time trying to think of a few things, and really liked what I came up with:
- Take more shit than you give
- Protect your attention
- Go to the funeral
- Fight the real enemy
Michelle takes the dog to her brother’s house to tough out the fireworks. It mostly works, but it’s just one day. She (Osti) still suffers through the hell that is firework season. A season that lasts roughly 4 months in our area.
Treasonous, short-sighted, republican kleptocrats rescinded money already promised. So an outpouring of donations flows into NPR stations across the nation.
“Saturating the WAN” sounds way sexier than it is. For the nerds in the crowd, we converted nearly 6 billion rows of data from an archaic format to a more modern, faster, but much less storage efficient format, then shoved into a cloud database. Took 51 days to convert the data, wrote out nearly 70 terabytes of text files. Billions are big numbers.
July is really rough on the Gen-X cohort. Malcolm-Jamal Warner, Ozzy Osbourne, Hulk Hogan and Ryne Sandberg all passed away.
A bird gets in the house somehow. I spend hours trying to escort a bird out of the house. Osti catches a bird.
Travel to Lehi for work. My boss forgets he’s out of the office for 3 of the 4 days I’m there, because of this scheduling snafu, I actually get an office for 3 days. With a door. Oh, and I spent a few bucks to bump my seats to First Class. Should I be trying to climb a corporate ladder?!
Posted a pic with Mom on her birthday. Facebook’s AI helpfully adds, “What’s Bonnie’s son’s relationship with her?”, and this technology is what’s sucked all the air out of every room for years now? For fuck’s sake, it’s just a hammer, no one talks about hammers nearly as much as the press and tech worlds talk about AI.
“We learned a lot about the Moon, but what we really learned was about the Earth. … You can put your thumb up to the window and hide the Earth behind your thumb.” – Jim Lovell
David Byrne does Track Star*, and I’m reminded what a goofy dork he is. Also, Track Star* is neat. It’s always fun to hear people talk about things that excite them.
Yet another presentation at work. I guess I’m just this guy now.
Michelle arranged to have 3 dudes with working knees and backs carry a couple of tons of trash out of our basement and deliver to a dump. I stimulate the local economy by exchanging cash for goods and services I did not want to do myself.
Since we cancelled Disney I subscribe to KET/pbs.org. Michelle takes it upon herself to watch years of British mystery shows from throughout the history of recorded television.
One of my oldest friends, and former roommate, has a cancer scare, has a surgery. It was early, she should be OK. But still, fuck cancer. To help her cope, I offered to change her name in my phone to 55378008.
I had a colonoscopy. But I got to have twilight sedation, unlike what the US of A is currently undergoing.
Had a 3rd round of mandatory AI training. When I let Copilot rewrite my initial comment of “holy fuck, more required AI training that elides every negative and carries water for the worst people in history, love living in the future." it returned with “Wow, looks like we have even more AI training ahead! It’s amazing to see how technology keeps pushing us into the future-what an experience!"
Keith Urban files for divorce from Nicole Kidman, because she was too horny for him.
In preparing for my upcoming trip to Quaker country, before our trip to Baltimore, I borrow a book of my dad’s that was assembled by my 3rd cousin, twice removed on 10 generations of Churchman family history. A book he put together using software called Paperclip on a commodore 64 in 1988.
We rent a car for a week, and take a road trip. First to Lancaster, PA to visit a very old internet friend I hadn’t seen in person in 25 years.
Then we head to Chester County, MD. Where I meet up with a local antique dealer and historian who shows me land the Churchmans farmed in the very early 18th century. Got to see and touch a clock that belonged to my great great great great great great great grandfather. Saw a house his kid built for another one of his kids.
Saw a truly magnificent oak tree that was 100 years old before the quakers built their meeting house there.
Then we headed to Baltimore and did the touristy thing. Visited some Poe stuff, a couple of awesome museums. An old library. Stayed in a really cool area of town and had the most expensive meal of my life for our anniversary.
On our way back, we give up driving in the dark through WV at Charleston. Then the next morning, promptly hit a deer at about 5mph (it was on the interstate, but i’d come very close to a complete stop before that idiot decided to stop)
Shohei Ohtani strikes out 10 and hits 3 homers in the same game. The mlb.com site has an article about why this is the greatest game ever played. Eleven days later he reaches base 9 times (2 home runs, 2 doubles, 4 intentional walks) in 9 opportunities, in an 18 inning game.
“Only if we understand, can we care. Only if we care, we will help. Only if we help, we shall be saved” – Jane Goodall
In the last 3 months, 3 different friends lost their greyhounds. One of them had lost another earlier in the year too. This year has just ground so many people down in so many ways.
The northern lights are visible in Louisville. Local social media feeds are filled with beautiful images.
Watched Avatar: The Last Airbender, because of the new Magic: The Gathering set coming out. If I were a younger nerd, that would have been a favorite. Enjoyed it, and the magic set.
Yet another trip to Lehi UT. This time to brainstorm with another team about ways to correllate data from vastly different systems. I named the output “frankenbaby.sql”
Busta Rhymes and Lil Jon both perform at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Just to make you feel old.
I leave our Turkey Day family gathering early to go home and take care of the dog. Michelle forgets to bring me leftovers. I finally understand suffering.
For some reason annual ‘wrapped’ lists from all the streaming services starts in earnest at the beginning of December, and I get to work writing this damn thing.
We have to do our self evaluations at work before the end of year. The gentle reminders from HR explain how we can use GenAI to help us write the review. So I feed my finished one to the engine and have it rewrite it in the style of Dr. Seuss:
With data that’s tangled or systems that sprawl,
I peel back the curtains and answer the call:
From brainstorming builds where the data was thin,
To simplifying steps so the work can begin.
The same crew that did The Muppet Movie earlier in the year does another show, called The Muppet Scriptmas Carol. Paul Williams himself shows up at the end and congratulates the performers.
I like writing because you can make things happen and turn out the way they never do in real life. – Rob Reiner