News and Updates

1. We celebrated Father’s Day today because this was the day we had time to do so. There was take-out BBQ and some lovely cards and gifts, and then we sat at the table and played cards and hung out together and really, while I am happy to get cards and gifts the thing I most want is to spend time with my family not doing much beyond just hanging out and talking, and so it was a most lovely holiday that way.

2. I am now currently fobless, after several years of carrying around three different gizmos on my keychain in order to get into random computer programs on various campuses. You try to log in to one of them and get a message that you need the Extra Special Secret Code, which the fob would magically provide you five times out of seven, and then you could do your work. Of course the campuses never really standardized this, so I never really knew which program would require me to use a fob and which wouldn’t – the same program on different campuses would often give me different results. But now those have all been replaced by an app that I am required to download onto MY OWN PERSONAL PHONE THAT THEY ARE NOT PAYING FOR AT ALL, which frankly I find presumptuous. So if I ever lose MY OWN PERSONAL PHONE THAT THEY ARE NOT PAYING FOR AT ALL then I suppose I won’t be able to do my job and at that point they can start paying for a new phone or paying me not to do my job, whichever. Not that I am annoyed by this in any way that might conceivably lead to disciplinary action by humorless powers that be, of course.

3. The living room is now put back together, and it does in fact look nice. The mudroom is also put back together, since once the living room project got started it was clear that certain things would need to change in the mudroom, particularly the coat hanging area, which needed to be cut in half to accommodate the Giant Heavy Wardrobe that we use to hold board games and other random items – a piece of furniture that no longer had a place in the New Improved Living Room. The other half of the coat hanging area went out to the garage, which needed to be completely emptied (this is, for reference, a 2.5 car, extra-long garage that has not been seriously edited of stuff since 2018). Half of the stuff went directly to the landfill, a quarter went to Goodwill, and the rest we put back – some on the coat hanging area which now resides along the back wall of the garage. The dining room is also put back together now, as the stain on the hardwood floor that we put down in 2007 or so did not match the stain in the living room and now that neither room is carpeted there’s no real border between them so everything had to come out and the floor had to be restained, and while everything was out it was only natural that the dining room walls would also have to be repainted. I keep thinking that this all started with carpet, though admittedly things do look good now.

4. And it’s all done before Lauren’s graduation party, which will happen on Saturday if the rain holds off, though with the newly clean garage we can move some of it in there if it’s just a shower or two.

5. Meanwhile my summer class is bounding along and somehow I have become The Tech Guy, as noted earlier. Every time I think I have a handle on the Tech for this hybrid (face to face, but with a remote-access capability) class it turns out that I don’t and I need another hour of fiddling and swearing to get it right and all I can do is hope that I am not recording that part because the recordings automatically get published to the class website if you know where to look, complete with transcripts of sorts – the kinds of transcripts that get turned into memes because they’re done by AI bots programmed by people for whom English is probably not even a third language so mostly they’re just guessing and someday I will gather some friends and a large volume of adult beverages and stage a dramatic reading of some of them, just for the experience of it.

6. When we came back from Philadelphia last month I stowed two jars of the hoagie spread that the TSA had confiscated from me in April – the joy of driving is that you can dispense with the security theater and head straight for pickled hot pepper spread nirvana – and now that I have actually sampled it I can say that it was worth every bit of exertion. It is vinegary and spicy and tasty and the perfect thing to spread on a hoagie and I will definitely have to buy more of it and smuggle it back to Wisconsin along the nation’s battered interstate system next time I am out that way.

7. So apparently Critical Race Theory is the new right-wing Fearz-All tool for motivating their base into a violent frenzy against facts and reality, and having had this discussion with a few members of this base this month I can testify that not a single one of them actually knew what Critical Race Theory actually was but they were all prepared to tell me it was Evil and Un-American, in stark contrast with the recent Fascist insurrection designed to overthrow the legitimately elected government of the United States, which was apparently okay as long as the libs were the ones getting hurt. New liver, same eagles.

8. Now that I am finally catching my breath after the spring semester I am going to have to take care of some long-overdue maintenance and schedule a doctor appointment, which will likely not happen until September, and a dentist appointment, which (given the recent experience of Kim and Oliver) isn’t much of a possibility until October. I’m not even sure I want to guess how long an eye appointment will take. But you know, we have the best healthcare system in the world! Many people say so! Some of whom are completely sober! I shouldn’t complain, as at least I can see these professionals at some point which puts me one up over a great many people and gets me right back to the rich sarcasm of the middle of this paragraph. Sunrise, sunset.

9. I haven’t had much time to work on genealogy of late, though now that I have my own official Ancestry account I have discovered that Ancestry will do that for you. Every time I log in there are more “hints” that I can click on and see if they’re talking about my ancestor or someone who just shared the same name, or kind of the same name, or perhaps just a few of the same vowels. It varies. But I have found some Valuable Information that way, so credit where due.

10. Kim’s brother Randall came to stay with us for the weekend while the rest of the family went elsewhere, and he seemed to have a good time with us. He was happy to hang out and relax, and that’s pretty much our speed as well.