Age

Injuries in your 20's:

• One bruise from falling out of tree.
• Slightly achy after car accident.
• Mild fever when contracting the plague.

Injuries in your 30's:

• Bad back from sleeping slightly weird.
• Twisted ankle from hitting the brakes too hard.
• Passed out after standing up too fast.

Maybe I should just admit that I need to work out... at all.

The unbreakable piñata

My youngest son seems to enjoy piñatas. His past few birthdays he's wanted one, and honestly, fine whatever. It's a candy explosion, they happen at kids birthdays anyway.

This year, the dinosaur was strong. It was a t-rex filled with snickers and peanut butter cups. There were eight small children. Piñata limbs were broken, cracks in the body showed, but it held strong. A single candy fell after a few rounds.

The children were restless. The t-rex would not release its sweet insides. I summoned my oldest niece. She's a teenager (wasn't even participating, just happened to be there), and had several years of martial arts training. She was armed, motivated, and inspired by the hopes of the surrounding children.

She lined up a shot, and took exactly one swing. Body parts went flying. Chocolaty eviscera blasted across the lawn. She turned and walked without a second glance. The children descended like locust.

Smart TV

In theory, I like the concept of a smart TV. Not requiring a separate device hooked up to get your streaming services offers simplicity, and I was drawn to the concept.

I bought a new TV this past week. I was, admittedly, looking forward to paring down the number of remote controls it takes. But something insidious happened.

Advertisements.

Now I need to say this: I loathe advertisements. They're ugly, intrusive, and manipulative. When my son repeated them verbatim with enthusiasm in his voice, as if he really believed the claims they made, I actively sought to banish them forever. Now before this was passive. I use adblockers on my web browsers, I pay a little extra on some services to disable ads (even on my wife's Kindle), and stopped using any services that showed them regardless.

I could barely watch the pilot of the new Star Trek show because of the near 1:1 ratio of ad:show.

I'm currently in the process of re-configuring my home network to block all ads on any devices instead of relying on the devices own adblocking abilities.

But that TV. I turned it on, and a full THIRD OF MY SCREEN was an unhidable, unskippable, permanent advertisement. This wasn't a third party that I chose to do business with, this wasn't something I could make go away. This was a permanent billboard that the TV manufacturer baked right into my house.

It went back to the store immediately. A fair amount of searching later showed that most, if not all, smart TV's have some sort of built in advertising that you couldn't dispose of.

I'd rather have more remotes than a single ad

Do not pass Go

My wife found my stash. She did some deep cleaning this past week and found what I've been hoarding since we moved in. The things I've been collecting and keeping to myself.

The noisy toys.

The stupid car that sings the entire song every time you hit the button, not allowing any interruptions. The whistles, the tambourine, everything. She thought little of bringing out these toys, thinking perhaps that it was a mistake that they were all somehow inexplicably crammed into a spot our children never look. The boys were all at school, and our daughter has little interest in these things. So the consequences were not immediate.

They return home from school not long before I return from work.

The worst offenders have already been.. reacquired. The others will follow soon.

Needing a vacation from my vacation

I never thought I'd be glad to go back to work.

Wait, let's back up.

So I had this past week off (plus today, being Labor Day). The NYS Fair runs during the same week that my company closes the doors for awhile (this is not a coincidence, but that's a story for another time*), so I often go at least more than once.

Monday I went with my brother. Just about killed myself. It took me the entirety of the following day just to recover properly. Thursday I went with my better half, and while she doesn't push as far, she's more thorough. It may not have been as intense, but the damage from Monday wasn't fully undone, so it felt just as bad.

My dear wife got a call from her oldest and bestest friend on Friday morning. We haven't seen her since her wedding, and that day they planned a weekend together.

With her husband. And their four kids. At my house.

For those of you keeping track, that makes two of us and our four kids, plus two of them and their four kids. My house can handle so much, fortunately my backyard can handle eight kids just fine.

They arrived at the house late in the evening (it was a five hour drive), and the women discussed what they could do the next day (being Saturday). The next morning, they had elected to go to the State Fair.

My to-do list hadn't gotten any smaller. My feet actually had some damage (bad shoes, since removed from my life), and I hadn't slept well in days. But I wasn't about to be the guy that spoiled her surprise weekend.

So we went back. In hot humid weather. Corralling eight children. Oh, and they broke an their daily attendance record, so we were doing this among 130+ thousand people. Fun was had.

I'm not gonna lie to you, I'd be there right now enjoying the final day if I wasn't battered and beaten by my age and lack of exercise. (and bad shoes) But man, am I going to be glad to be back at work so I can relax.

*If I ever remember