Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
So this brave new year of 2022 has barely started, and already too much of the news is bad news. Today’s sad news is about a famed Rock Singer with the unlikely name of “Meat Loaf,” passing at the age of 74.
He was/is one of my favorite “Classical Rock” performers. A trailblazer in his art who built a place among the great musicians of our era.
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
This past Monday folks here on the north-eastern seaboard of the United States discovered that it really is winter. The realization came from temperatures changing from 60 degrees on Sunday to 30 degrees on Monday. Accompanied by our first snow of the season, a whopping nine inches in my neighborhood.
Nine inches doesn’t seem like all that much snow, compared to what I’ve experienced even since living here in Northern Virginia. But, perhaps because we’ve had almost no snow for the past couple of winters, people forgot that snow happens. This past Monday, going into Tuesday and Wednesday, the great snowpocalypse of 2022 shut down a major interstate highways and dumped power for thousands of people in my area.
And this is only January. We have lots of time for a Snowpocalypse Part II, and more…
Estimated reading time: 1 minute
Yes, today is the first day of the year 2022 as per the Julian calendar, as devised by non other than Julius Caesar himself. So we managed to survive another year of lockdown due to the seemingly never-ending , along with all the horrors of the post-trump-presidency error era.
So, for my first post of this brave new year I feel we need a little bit of celebratory music.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
Our moving had a number of challenges, but one challenge we didn’t expect was having our electrical service cut off. But we did, at absolutely the wrong time. Not that there’s ever a good time to lose electrical service.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
So Winnie and I have successfully finished moving into our new old house. As it’s been 15 years since I last moved housing, this most recent experience re-taught me old lessons. With luck, I won’t need to re-use my re-learned lessons again.
This all comes under the heading of “The Tao of Moving: How to Move Gracefully.” As opposed to “Dear, where the hell is my other slipper?”
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
So after nearly fifteen years of being settled into the same house, Winnie and I are moving. It’s not a big move, as these things go. We’re only moving across town so local rates apply. But we’re self-moving, one trailer load at a time.
I’ve discovered that fifteen years in the same place means a lot of accumulation.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
This past week Winnie and I made a trip to Rhode Island to visit family. It was notable for several reasons; it was the first overnight trip we’ve had since this Zombie Apocalypse started in March 2020. The occasion was the 75th birthday of one of my cousins still living in New England, and lots of other family came in to celebrate.
So we had several days of hanging around family and visiting in New England in November. It turned out to be a nice visit.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
I’ve had a long post-Navy career at this point, and moved around a lot in my jobs. Within the different companies I’ve worked for I’ve had the great fortune of moving around doing different things, learning new skills, and working with different people. Some of the things I’ve done and people I’ve worked for were good. Other things and other people – not good.
I’ve also made some bad decisions throughout my career, mostly on basis that my word was the same as my signature, and other people’s word was the same as their signature. So when I had a chance to answer a Quora question ” Did you accept counter offer from your current employer when you put in two weeks, how did it turn out?” I went with my most infuriating job-related incident of trusting someone to keep their word.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
So yesterday was our wedding anniversary – this one marking eighteen years together. Over our years together we’ve been flooded out, moved across country, performed multiple home renovations, and worked at multiple jobs. We survived two years apart and now we’ve survived eighteen months of near-house arrest. We’re still together so that’s a good thing.
In other news; We’re getting into autumn with cooler autumn weather and shorter days. Such is the cycle of life.
Estimated reading time: 12 minutes
On a daily basis, it feels like someone is trying to pick my pocket. The scams come in ever-increasing formats; from emails to text messages, phone calls, old-fashioned snail mail, and in-person. The one common denominator is that all these scams are focused on transferring my hard-earned cash to someone who feels they need my cash more than me.
The most recent attempted scam was this past week, when a person(s) replied to a Craigslist ad for an old guitar I’m trying to sell. The only notable part of this scam was that I exposed them. I’m going to expose these jerks even more in this post.