Regular Dad

My Parents' visit went really well...except for my mom bursting her eardrum saturday night.  And not in a fun way.  But otherwise it was great.  Their cut-glass conference went great, the travel was easy, and we all had a great time here.  
As we all predicted, the Bears offense went from record high, to a near shut-out.  Only they could pull off that crap.  And Caleb popped a hammie.  It sounds like it might not be bad, but he's missing at least a few games.  Like the big Eagles game.  Yay.  
Which is why I feel less guilty about not watching the entire Bears game to play hockey.  There's a potentially spicy sub-plot building and I most definitely don't want to miss the potential shenanagans.  Fingers crossed for both...
Enjoy!

Well, we once again have a puppy in the house.  We adopted a "shepard mix" from a woman I know who was serving as an emergency foster.  Was I 100% ready for the mental load of taking care of a puppy all day?  Probably not.  But he's pretty awesome and so far makes up for it.  
When your kids comes runnign into your office and yells "Dad, the basement is leaking!  From the floor!" you go running into the basement.  Luckily he meant the ceiling, but that still means lots of problems that I didn't need on a Wednesday night.  
And don't get me started on the end of that Purdue-Wake Forest game.  I'm not even. 
Enjoy!!

Move over Alice Cooper, because school is officially un-out for summer.  What?  Whatever, both kids are in school and taking buses.  Does that mean everything is chiller?  Nope.  Just means I'm driving less before 4pm and than a poop-ton b/t 4-9, while also trying to cook dinner.  
Peacemaker, of all shows, sent me on an introspective journey.  And I gained some insight as to why 1 aspect of the MAGA crew annoys me so much.  Just because a situation isn't directly your fault, doesn't mean you can't do something to make it better.  
Middle West Spirits Pumpernickel Rye.  We're doing another review!  Is this just more meh stuff from a craft distillery, or is this worth bugging your local store to get in stock?
Project Hail Mary was met with mixed reviews in this house, and you might be surprised at who had what review. 
Enjoy!

New Season, same energy, same me.  Are there any promises for content or format changes?  Listen and see...
I'll keep this short (because I'm posting late and rushing), but a bad movie got me all reflective on my own Senior Prom.  Which was a non-trivial number of years ago.  Did the weekend go the way I thought it would?  Nope.  Was it still a memorable event?  Obviously, because I actually remember it enough to discuss it. 
Enjoy!

Yes folks, I'm fine.  It took over a week to get there, but it did happen.  And just to wrap everything up, I'll go over some of the higher-level points.  Things that were triggering me, memories, all that stuff.  But then we can all be done with the heavy lifting.  
And I finally thought of a positive spin to put on the ole Subaru Feugo incident.  And really, this is the narrative that I'm going to go with from now on.
Enjoy!

I'm not going to say much here, as the episode does it for me.  This was recorded over a week ago not long after it happened.  So this was part of my healing process, but also some of my rawest.  
I thought about not actually putting this out, but I feel it has value.  Not everything can be anger and made-up words and dumb jokes.  
Enjoy.

Here is the (slightly disingenuous) happy summary of camping.  The cool things we saw and did, the good parts.  
And the (non-crushing) parts of the following weekend's adventures.  Because for the most part it was a great trip and that needs to be captured.  
But obviously there's a dark cloud hanging over all of this, which unfortunately will be revealed.  
Enjoy.

I did it.  I successfully organized a 3-generation trip to the BWCA wilderness.  Entry permit, kids packed correctly, outfitter arranged for the bits we didn't have, lodging for the in and out days, etc.  Even had a rough plan for what we'd do for our 5-days / 4-nights.  
And then, just like the Wilderness loves to do, things went sideways.  Nothing major from an execution stand-point, but we didn't start on the lake I intended.  And only 3 of the 4 of us seems to actually enjoy this level of camping.  
Warning, this episode is WAY too much of a downer.  I guess I just needed to get out the bad emotions to cleanse things.  I'll do a happier recap next week with the really cool stuff we did and saw and experienced.  Cause there was a lot of journal-worthy events.  
Enjoy (I guess)!!
 

Well, if everything is planned right and going well, this will drop in the middle of what will be remembered as the first awesome canoe camping trip with my boys.  And no, I don't have any anxiety at all.  None.  Totally didn't wake up at 4am today letting bad thoughts creep in to my consciousness.  
But in nothing but happy news, our marriage has survived yet another calendar year.  I know, we keep beating the odds-makers.  And we almost dind't do anything for it.  Luckily Hayley made a dinner reservation last minute so we weren't completely lame. 
Enjoy!

The kids are back home again, and visiting "day" has been completed.  If you're only allowed on-site for like 4 hours, can it really be considered a day?  And is it worth 5 hours of driving each way?  
Is AI coming for the movie industry?  As in, when we look out 10, 20, 30 years, will AI generated movies be the norm and human-acted movies be pushed to the new indie films?  When you look at the trends of modern human history, add in the rapid scaling up of AI capabilities, I don't see anything really preventing it.  Maybe I'm wrong on this, but just look at how many other facets of our lives we've happily gone human-free.  
Enjoy!