I've been having a tough time of it lately. I either pulled something in my leg... or twisted something in my leg... or maybe it's a blood clot in my leg... or perhaps nerve damage... I dunno. All I do know is that it feels as though all the bones in my left leg are being broken over and over again. It's excruciating. And sleep has been tough to come by because of it.

My guess is that it will probably have to be amputated. But I suppose that's for a doctor to decide.

Today I was too exhausted and in too much pain to get anything done, so I left work early to drug up, wrap my leg in hot packs, and take a nap.

I don't want to brag, but it was a huge success. I slept so good that there was a cat on me when I woke up. That's some great sleeping right there...

I would have liked to have stayed in bed for the rest of the day, but I have a massive to-do list that I need to be working on before winter arrives.

First up was figuring out why some of my SONOS speakers are showing up as "offline" to Alexa. It happened after the last update and it's been driving me crazy. It's also been driving the cats crazy, because one of the speakers that Alexa can't recognize is the speaker which plays their breakfast and dinner alarms.

The horror.

A half hour later and I eventually solve the problem by uncoupling my surround sound setup, making all the speakers be individual "rooms," then running "discovery" so Alexa could see all of them again. Then setting up my surround system from scratch again. What a pain in the ass that was.

But that's technology for ya. Making things easier for you while making things more difficult at the same time.

But try explaining that to a cat.

Today was flu shot day at work.

I got the shots for the longest time... then stopped because I ended up getting the flu a couple times anyway... then started getting shots again when I got a nephew and wanted to do everything I could to not be sick around him. My doctor said that the flu vaccine can't possibly fight every strain of flu, but it can combat some big ones and decrease severity and duration of others... so why not?

Oh... I dunno... BECAUSE I HATE GETTING SHOTS?!?

And I honsetly don't know why.

It's not the needle. That doesn't bother me at all. Tattoos are lots and lots of needles, and I am unphased.

And it's not the shot itself. When I was a kid I had to get three allergy shots a week, so I am unphased.

What I think it is? The stuff they shoot into you.

Despite my head knowing how vaccines work... knowing they are safe... and knowing that I trust science... there's something about knowing they are shooting dead (or weakened) viruses into me that freaks me out! The minute they jab me with that needle, all I can do is imagine that stuff floating through my blood stream... then my immune system going HOLY SHIT! and unleashing a torrent of antibodies to kill it all... and kill it dead (or, more likely, dead-er). Probably because I saw Fantastic Voyage as a kid and it's been in my head ever since...

What's going on inside me right now is disconcerting. I mean, just LOOK at this...

But the alternative? Having all that happen and getting really sick.

No thank you.

So there I was... rolling up my sleeve so I could get shooted.

And here I am now... imagining my antibodies attacking viruses.

I should probably take a couple sleeping pills tonight so I sleep through the battle raging in my body. GO ANTIBODIES! FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!

Four years ago today my offer was accepted on my condo.

Four years ago two days prior I toured the condo and had my real estate agent make a full-price offer. There would be no negotiating. No back-and-forth. I wanted the deal closed as quickly as possible.

Four years ago three days prior I was looking through real estate websites. Yet again. And I wasn't hopeful. Over a month of searching had turned up nothing. But there it was. A brand new listing for a condo in my old neighborhood. Four doors down from where I grew up. The home wasn't perfect, but the location was ideal. With some remodeling the home could be exactly what I needed and, with some luck, my search was over.

Little did I know that it would be four-and-a-half months of torture before I could move in... but that's another story.

As is the lead-up to four years ago today...

When my mom first started having trouble climbing stairs and walking on carpet at her apartment, I knew it was time to move. There was no way she would be able to safely live in a space where she was in constant danger of falling. Problem is, finding rental housing where I live is difficult even when you have no restrictions. But if you require a single story home with no carpet? Might as well be wanting to live on the moon.

I was left with two options: Buy or Build.

I didn't want to do either, but when you're left with no "option three" you do what you gotta do. I called up somebody I knew who's very good with local real estate and asked her to find me a house I could remodel or land I could build on. Then I purchased a home design software package and got to work.

After a conversation with a friend of a friend on the East Coast who has worked on creating homes for peoples with disabilities, I spent weeks coming up with dozens of floor plans for houses that would be best suited for my mom. Once I narrowed in on a couple designs, I just kept refining them over and over. The idea was to have a large central room with the kitchen, dining, and living room all together, then have the other rooms radiate around that. This simple concept would minimize confusion, because it's hard to get lost in. But something so simple in concept turned out to be far more difficult in reality...

In the above plan, for example, there was no bathroom directly off the main "hub" of the home. That has disaster written all over it, so I had to come up with something different...

And even that had problems. So it was back to the drawing board over and over and over.

Land within the city limits is scarce, but my agent had a lead on some possibilities. And so long as there was a chance, I was going to keep designing homes. Then that listing for my condo popped up and that was the end of my being an architect. It was fun while it lasted.

My mom's health declined far faster than anticipated, so instead of the five years I was hoping for, she only lived with me for 8 months. Then the doctor told me that she needed more care than I could provide on my own and it was over.

My first thought was to sell the condo since it was far more home than I needed (or could really afford). Everybody and their dog advised against it. The costs involved in buying a home and selling a home within a span of a year would be more than if I were to just hold out for a while. And so here I am, still here after all these years.

No lie... mortgage payments and HOA dues are a killer... but I'm happy I stayed.

Maybe one day I'll have to move. Maybe sooner than I'd like. But, in the meanwhile, this place is probably better than I deserve. And I've still got a kitchen remodel I want to work on, so there's that.

When I get screwed over by a company, I'm pretty unforgiving.

Sometimes it's because their product is total shit and they won't stand behind it, like Panasonic... sometimes it's because the customer service treated me like total shit, like Hewlett Packard (both of which I talk about here).

And sometimes it's because of a reason even I think is stupid, like CorningWare.

When I moved to my new place, I had to buy new everything. New television. New furniture. New cleaning supplies. And... new dishes.

One of the many new dishes I bought was a set of six different-color CorningWare "Meal Mugs." I loved all the CorningWare stuff I had purchased previously, and these looked like a fantastic thing to have...

You can mix, bake, heat, store, freeze, and serve in the things. The cover even has a steam vent for when you microwave. On top of all that, it's dishwasher safe! And they're a good enough size that they're practically a bowl... which is why I like them for soups, pastas, cereals, oatmeal, and even cakes. They're just so beautifully versatile. One of my better purchases, and I love them.

Except...

When they arrived they had labels on the front and the back. LABELS THAT WERE ADHERED WITH SOME KIND OF FUCKING SUPER GLUE. I am not even kidding. Peeling off the labels was impossible. Soaking them did nothing. Running them through the dishwasher dozens of times didn't touch them. The only thing that worked was a half-bottle of "Goo Gone" (THE LARGE BOTTLE!) and a plastic scraper. And even then I still feel a patch of label glue on them... TO THIS VERY DAY! So idiotic.

It was so rage-inducing that I never bought another CorningWare product.

This morning as I was unloading the dishwasher, I dropped one of my Meal Mugs. The red one, which is my favorite. I held my breath when it fell because this presented a real quandary. Would I break my ban on CorningWare to get a new one? Do I really want to waste a bottle of Goo Gone and an hour of my time to remove the labels? What does life even mean?

Fortunately, it didn't break after all and I held my breath for nothing.

So I guess I get to kick that can a little further down the road.

In an effort to save money, I've been investigating a lot of "off-brand" alternatives to the stuff I buy. This is a complete 180 from my previous attitude where I'd always pay extra for the "good one." Then I read an article about how often times the "cheap one" is times made by the same company and is identical in every way except the packaging.

This has not always proven true, but it's been true often enough that I have switched my buying habits as a result.

Where this has saved me the most money is food. As an example... instead of buying Hunts tomato paste, I buy the Safeway Signature Select. There is no difference except I save a little by buying Safeway brand. And that little bit of cash adds up to quite a lot in the long run.

I was thinking of this when I took a photo of my cupboard after I was tagged in one of those "SHOW US A PHOTO OF YOUR..." memes (the last one I did was my refrigerator). There's a significant amount of off-brand stuff in there...

There are two things I can think of that I don't buy off-brand. I like Campbell's Tomato Bisque and Tomato Rice soups. All you can get as an alternative is plain old tomato soup, which I don't like as well. The other thing is pasta sauce. I prefer to make my own from scratch, but I always keep jars on hand in case I don't have time. The Classico is my favorite, and often times tastes as good as what I make. The off-brand is not as good, so I pay double to get something I enjoy eating.

I have been buying off-brand for more more than just food.

Today I received new air filters for my Coway Air Purifiers. Surprisngly, there are a number of off-brand alternatives. Most of them are cheaper because they are not true HEPA filters. But, if you shop carefully, you can find off-brand that are HEPA. One of the off-brand filter sets by Cabiclean was highly reviewed and $5 cheaper so I decided to go for it. Much to my amusement, this was printed on the box...

Clearly this wasn't written by somebody with great English skills but, hey, I don't need great marketing if it saves me $5... this is perfectly fine so long as it works. I guess time will tell, but I honestly couldn't see a difference between my new and old filters when I looked closely, so I'm guessing it's all good.

Well, maybe not "all good," but hopefully it's EFFECTIVE ENOUGH!

Every year since 9/11 I would remember back to the memory of it all... still fresh in my head after all these years... then write about what I was feeling. It's a singular event which most all Americans alive at the time can relate to regardless of the politics and issues which has divided us so badly.

Most times it went okay. Sometimes somebody would slap back with "YOU WEREN'T EVEN THERE! YOU WERE ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE COUNTRY! WHAT DO YOU KNOW?" or maybe something like "IT'S PATHETIC HOW AMERICANS GET SO CHOKED UP OVER ONE DAY WHEN 9/11 IS HAPPENING EVERY SINGLE DAY IN SYRIA!" In all cases I'd try to be empathetic. Those were words said more out of hurt than anger, and I get it. I resisted the urge to reply, which would solve nothing, delete the comment, then move on with my life the best I can.

All those years of coming up with something to share for 9/11 were eclipsed by The Story that I couldn't share. It encapsulated everything I feel about the anniversary of the terrorist attacks, but I wasn't going to share while my mom was still here. After I could no longer take care of her and she had to be moved to a facility over the mountains in June of 2016, I felt I could finally talk about it. That entry was pretty much my final word on 9/11.

There's not much more to be said.

Back in the late 80s when my friend Doug and I were in Kauai, we looked at a map (yes, this was before Google Maps because I'm old) and saw a massive beach on the Western side of the island called "Barking Sands" and decided to go. Little did we know that Barking Sands Beach is a part of the Barking Sands Naval Base, home of the Pacific Missile Range Facility. We were (of course) halted at a fence and told to turn around and vacate the premises. Then were told that there was a public beach north of the facility if we wanted to go there. It was called "Polihale Beach" and we decided it was better than nothing after having driven all the way across the island.

If you look at it on a map, you can see what the deal was...

Map From Google Maps

Problem was... our map was pretty vague about the area. We ended up taking a very wrong turn and ended up headed inland. When we tried to turn around using a drive into a sugar cane field, we were met by a guy with a gun who told us to get the hell off his property.

And so we did. Quickly.

Just one of many bizarre misadventures we we got into on that trip.

Once we got back to the road we needed to be on, we eventually spotted a road that looked like it maybe kinda possibly wouldn't get us shot... so we headed to the beach. This was an undeveloped off-the-beaten-path situation, so once we saw water we just pulled off the road and parked in an area where it looked like we might be out of the way.

This Google Maps satellite image may or may not be where we actually ended up, but you can get an idea of what I'm talking about...

Map From Google Maps

After parking, we headed to the beach.

Just as we turned the corner, we ran across a couple who had attempted to drive their rental SUV ONTO THE BEACH.

Needless to say, they immediately became stuck. Then they made things worse by slamming down on the gas pedal, which only dug the car deeper into the sand...

Map From Google Maps

Apparently they didn't get the memo on why you don't want to drive on sand with a vehicle not designed for that purpose.

As we approached we saw that a woman was seated in the passenger side of the SUV fuming. A man was attempting to dig it out with a frisbee. A futile effort if there ever was one, because the SUV was sunk up to the floorboards. The only way he was ever going to get off that beach would be if somebody parked off the beach with a winch and pulled him off of it.

As we passed, the guy looks up at us and says "Hell of a day, isn't it?" And Doug was all "Um. Yeah." Because the only thing going through both of our heads was how we were going to escape if this guy asked us to help him dig his car out. But he never did. So we walked up the beach, which was quite nice. Beautiful golden sand with turquoise waters and hardly any people...

One of the (many) things I love about Google Maps is that you can literally pinpoint where I took the above shot...

Satellite View From Google Maps

It's not a great beach for swimming thanks to the waves, which were rough, but pretty to look at otherwise...

I did not take a photo of the guy digging his SUV out. This was before the days of being able to sneak a shot with a mobile phone, and I really didn't want him to get pissed at me for exploiting his misfortune if I were caught... so I restrained myself. In the shot above, he is just to the left out of frame.

Wow. These shots I took really are from the 80's. Just look at that film grain when I zoom in...

Anyway... After twenty minutes of bumming around, we walked back to our jeep. The guy was still there attempting to dig the SUV out. A part of me wanted to ask if we should call a tow truck for him when we got back to civilization, but I didn't want him getting more pissed than he already was. Instead we took a long loop around him. We were on vacation, after all. If he had shouted out to us as we walked by, we absolutely would have called AAA for him (or whatever) but, well, you know...

Once we made it back and climbed into the jeep, Doug turned to me and said "Hell of a day, isn't it?" And then we both laughed our asses off because we're mean that way. But, hey, at least we know better than to try and drive in sand, amirite?

Fast forward to a couple years later. The movie Total Recall had just come out. It featured a scene where Arnold Schwarzenegger wakes up in a cab being driven by a robot. After some confusion as to how he got there, the Johnny Cab robot says "Hell of a day, isn't it?"...

I don't know if Doug was with me in the theater when I saw Total Recall. I'd like to think that he was. He probably was. Or maybe he wasn't and I talked to him about it later after we had both seen it. I honestly don't remember. What I DO remember is laughing my ass off when Johnny Cab said "Hell of a day, isn't it?" Because that's exactly how the guy digging out his car said it. The people in the theater probably thought I was insane, but it was damn funny in a "You Had To Be There" kind of way.

Over the years, every once in a while when we saw each other, one of us would inevitably say "Hell of a day, isn't it?".

Last week I ran across a story about a car that had been driven out onto the beach, then abandoned in the face of Hurricane Dorian because it got stuck...

After it was discovered, social media happened. Because of course it did. Then #JeepWatch2019 took over. The meme was popping up everywhere...

Now, as you can imagine, the minute I saw this my first instinct was to create my own meme and text it to Doug...

Except I couldn't.

It took me a minute to remember that Doug is gone.

That's one of the worst things there is, isn't it? Having a shared experience that only one other person on earth could possibly relate to... but for them to no longer be around to share it with? Not even the guy who was trying to dig his SUV out of the sand with a frisbee that day can possibly know what that moment was to us. My writing this long-ass blog entry can explain what happened, but it's not the same as having lived through it. There was only the two of us.

And now there's just one of us.

And while it's a funny memory for me... knowing that I will never again have that one person to laugh about it with is a weight that came crashing down on my head like a ton of bricks. And it's weird, isn't it? How I never heard about a car getting stuck on a beach when it could have meant something hilarious... but now that it can't, I'm probably going to be hearing about it happening all the time? Because isn't that the way these things go? Maybe it's just how The Universe likes to dick with us. Or maybe it's how our brains like to dick with us by noticing things only after they've become more hurtful than hilarious? Heaven only knows that a Google Image Seach for "Car Stuck on Beach" sure turns up a lot of photos of it happening.

Today I found out that they were finally able to rescue that SUV from the beach after the hurricane passed. I still have no idea how the guy at Polihale Beach, Kauai ever managed to get his SUV off the beach.

Hell of a day, isn't it?

This morning I woke up and felt, for the first time this year, that Summer is on its way out. Instead of the beautiful mornings that permeate the months of June, July, and August, things looked considerably less bright. More dreary and foreboding. The afternoons will still be sunny and warm for a while yet, but the mornings and evenings will be colder, dimmer, and less life affirming. Don't get me wrong... I love Fall... but the transition to get there is darn depressing. Not enough that I want to move south so I can avoid it, but enough that I don't want to get out of bed in the morning.

Especially early in the morning, like today.

Usually I am awake and working at 5:30am. Checking email, going through my to-do's, setting up things that need to be done when I get into the office... that kind of stuff. But I don't get out of bed until the Alexa alarm goes off at 7am and it's time to feed the cats. Then I work a little more before getting ready to go into the office at 9am. Most days this means I've put in two or three hours before I even go to work, but I'm okay with it because I'm not completely overwhelmed once I get there.

If I get out of bed earlier than 7am, it's almost always because I'm traveling. This morning it was because I had to shoot some video.

But Jake and Jenny don't know that. All they know is that their daily routine is being disrupted. In their mind, I'm going to be gone for days, which causes a major freak-out. Jenny's crying on the banister. Jake is running after me so he can rub up against my legs. It's like a Greek feline tragedy unfolding, and I always feel terrible about it. I try to explain that I'll be back this afternoon, but they're cats... so... well, you know...

I wish for the ability to talk with my cats almost daily. Most of the time it's to ask them "Why did you just do that? What are you thinking here?" But times like this would be to tell them what's going on so they wouldn't be so upset.

Instead all I can do is distract them with cat treats while I sneak out the front door.

Then spend the rest of my day wondering how they're doing after the cat treats are gone.

Thanks to my two cats, my home will never be impeccably clean. Their fur is everywhere. Their toys are everywhere. Their kitty litter tracks everywhere. And their cat trees are pretty gross. And yet... I do what I can to keep my house as clean as possible. Partly because I don't want it looking like a disaster area when guests drop by unexpectedly. But mostly because I don't want bugs in my house, and I've found constant cleaning goes a long, long way towards keeping them out.

Carl the RoboVac runs every day to keep my floors mostly clean (I vacuum by hand when needed to get the rest). I steam-clean the cat feeding station every week (Jenny makes a bit of a mess when eating wet food because she licks it instead of bites it). I keep countertops clean and my kitchen mopped. I wipe up or vacuum food crumbs whenever I spot them. I scrub everything with a baking soda wash on a rotating schedule. I do whatever I can to keep my home as clean as possible so bugs don't show up. Yes, it's a lot of work, but it's worth it because it actually seems to help. I am lucky to see few insects in my house.

Except...

Lately my cats have been catching giant spiders out in the catio then bringing them inside to play with.

As you can imagine, this has me more than a little freaked out. Nothing quite like spotting something on the floor out of the corner of your eye... going to investigate... then seeing it's a spider that the cats tortured to death.

And here I thought that Jake and Jenny eating bugs out in the catio was the worst thing that could possibly happen. I love my cats more than I know how to adequately express, but this is driving me insane. But what can you do? I refuse to yell at my cats for being cats. When I adopted them to keep my mom company, I knew what I was getting into. Any problems that come out of that decision are my fault, not theirs.

And so... occasional spiders are in my future, I guess.

Meanwhile in TV Land...

Hallmark has finally confirmed their new Christmas movie schedule and I've updated my 2019 movie page so that all forty of them are in my winter television schedule. Hopefully at least half of them are worth a crap. It seems as they increase the number of movies year after year, the overall quality has been declining.

On the bright side, however, this year we're getting A Christmas Love Story starring KRISTIN CHENOWETH and Scott Wolf...

Just when you think that everything that could possibly be said about Christmas from Hallmark has been said... here comes Kristin! So at least one of the movies will be insanely chipper in the way that only Kristin Chenoweth can deliver!

Ho! Ho! Ho! 50 days to go until October 25th...

As I mentioned last week, I used my new Apple Card credit card to buy a print from The Night Sky. You tell them the time, date, location on earth, and they will create a star map for you using the design options you choose.

I picked a nice navy blue color with coordinate lines and constellation lines with a dark blue background. Then I personalized the text in remembrance of my mom from when we were looking at The Milky Way while on safari in Zimbabwe.

I also made the big mistake of getting it framed. But more on that in a minute.

My home has a weird, narrow, angled wall leading to the stairwell. Originally, the handrail wrapped along it, but my mom would consistently fall down the final two stairs because her hand would run out of rail and she wouldn't see them (I nearly fell a couple times myself). I solved this by designing a small shelf so the handrail went all the way down.

For the longest time, I filled the space by putting one of my National Park posters from around the corner there. But I always wanted to find something else so my Park posters would be complete again. I thought the star map print would be perfect...

The print itself is pretty great. I've seen other companies that do this, but the design from The Night Sky was the best I had seen. I wanted navy ink instead of black ink because I through it looks more like the sky I remember...

It's an eerily perfect match...

Using the Star Walk app on my iPhone, I've been able to draw in the horizon and The Milky Way so I can see the area of the sky I was looking at that night...

Pretty cool.

It's printed on acid-free paper with archival inks, has a great design aesthetic, and ships free... so the $60 price tag feels worth it.

The $60 frame that came with it, however? Not so much.

It's not even made of wood and glass... it's some kind of lightweight composite with a thin acrylic sheet. But the worst part? It's garbage. For $60 I'd expect that, AT THE VERY LEAST, would have corners that meet and are filled. But they don't. Even worse? The paint job is utter crap (UPDATE: SEE BELOW)...

They put a Kraft paper on the back, which is nice. There's a sawtooth hanger at the very top and felt feet on the bottom, which is also nice. But the feet aren't thick enough to offset the hanger, so I had to add some silicone bumpers to make the print be truly vertical on the wall...

   
I cannot for the life of me figure out how they justify a $60 price tag for this terrible frame. I wouldn't have paid $20 for this mess. So now, in addition to the $60 I've already paid, I'm going to have to sand it, fill it, then repaint it so it looks half-way decent.

If you're going to buy a print from The Night Sky, I would pass on their frames and go buy a much better one for much less that's on sale at Michaels or something. Or, if you're like me, you could build a similar one for under $10.

If you want a star map print of your very own, The Night Sky is the place!

UPDATE: After reading my review and my experience with their frame, The Night Sky sent me a replacement. So much nicer! The paint isn't peeling off. The corners actually all meet up. I'm still not sure if it's worth $60, but at least now I don't regret having spent $60 on it. If this is what the quality is usually like, and my bad frame was just a fluke, then it could be worth it to you. The paper backing and hanger certainly add value over what you'd get at a craft store.