Category Archives: family

family, roadtrips Leave a comment

Spring Break Staycation

The highlight of last month’s spring break staycation was taking a daytrip to Ann Arbor! Thrifting, gaming, shopping, and eating. And walking.

Our first stop was Salvation Army, on our way into town. Connor found a telescope for cheap — all it needs is a bolt and locking washer for one of the tripod legs.

Our next stop was Pinball Pete’s. Connor had never been to an honest-to-goodness arcade before (Chuck E. Cheese doesn’t count). All the machines still take actual money, not tokens or cards, which was refreshing.

Luckily, there’s no visual documentation of me playing DDR Extreme — although it was OMG SO FUN and took me back to my college days, I really don’t need to see what I looked like jumping around to my favorite DDR song. I assure you, I looked nothing like this guy.

After an hour or so at Pinball Pete’s, we walked across the Diag to the other side of campus, for virtually everything else we wanted to do.

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house, pets, randomness, the ongoing saga of my job Leave a comment

Unpublished, Jan 2023: Life Keeps Happening

Once again, I uploaded the relevant photo from my iPhone, plus a topic sentence, with all intentions of returning and fleshing out this entry. Alas, this is as far as I got:

I thoroughly enjoyed my two-week holiday staycation, apart from the washing machine breaking and my Mom not being able to visit for Christmas.

To summarize:

  • Our washing machine stopped agitating a few days before Christmas, and didn’t get fixed until a couple weeks and two laundromat trips later.
  • My Mom had other obligations over the Christmas weekend and gave us plenty of notice that she wouldn’t be driving out to see us. As it happened, a winter storm came through and cancelled her plans.
  • The Sportage started smelling of exhaust fumes, and we spent hundreds of dollars on multiple trips to the Service Department at our local Kia dealership before the problem was finally acknowledged and rectified.
  • On my second day back at work after my staycation, I was given some privileged information about the future plans of my employer, as it pertains to my department and to me specifically. I couldn’t act on this information, and I couldn’t share it with anyone else. As of this writing, I still can’t.
  • The very next day, I woke up to find that Baxter’s eye was goopy. I provided the photo below to the vet, and they recommended he be seen by the vet ASAP. We came away from that vet visit with a two-week regimen of eye ointment.

Yet another example of that feeling I get of barely keeping up with the treadmill that is Life.

family, snapshots Leave a comment

Unpublished: Christmas 2022

I uploaded the photos before Christmas Day was even over, but never quite got past the first line of copy:

“My Mom had already given us notice on Thanksgiving that she wouldn’t be driving out to see us on Christmas this year.”

Instead of leaving these memories to languish in my Drafts folder, I’m opting to share them now, with captions for context.

Connor helped me make snickerdoodles in preparation for our Christmas celebration.
Christmas Eve featured our traditional meal of maple-glazed ham, green bean casserole (courtesy of my brother-in-law), sweet potatoes (scalloped this year), and sweet dinner rolls.
Obligatory holiday selfie.
All four of us — Aaron, Connor, my brother-in-law, and myself — played a game of Chronology. (The original version, not the 20th Anniversary reissue, in case you were wondering.)
Connor got an iPod Nano in his stocking, loaded with video game soundtracks, and suddenly turned into a teenager.
Obligatory Christmas Morning selfie
Aaron got me this fantastic Totoro embroidered hoodie, and it is now my favorite comfy sweatshirt.
Baxter must have decided that a shoulder-sit was an appropriate present for Aaron, who had never experienced a properly-perched Baxter up until then.

It was a low-key Christmas, but a relatively merry one that deserves to be remembered.

pets, snapshots Leave a comment

Quirky Kitty

When he hears the shower turn off, Baxter will scratch at the bathroom door, asking to come in. He loves to lay on the drippy bathroom rug while one of his humans is drying off, and he starts purring at maximum volume if that human then covers him with their damp towel.