Sighting

When *it* all started last year, it all closed down. Things opened gradually, and last fall my kids slowly eked their way into society. It was, however, my wife that did most of the transportation. It stayed that way until January, when other family members drove my son to such events, because I was home watching the others while the wife was doing taxes.

Today was the first day I saw some people in over a year. I was only dropping my son off, and at the location, I literally had nowhere to put my car. I could linger for only a few minutes before I had to go. 

It actually hurt to leave. I miss people.

The big green

I finally just did it. The road I live on is a slight hill, and up that slight hill is an intersection with a stop sign. Anyone coming up the road with their lights on will inevitably have their headlights shining directly into my kitchen window. Also, anyone walking or driving down the road has a clear view of the aforementioned window, and the associated deck built off of the kitchen.

I finally just tore out all the goofy decorative landscaping the house came with (yea, I'm not big on lawn maintenance), shredded everything, plus the ground it was living in, and mulched everything over. I then proceeded to plant a dozen evergreen giants.

Oh but I didn't just stick them in the ground. I perfectly lined one up so it was directly between the window and the intersection, then selected the tallest of them for that exact spot. I spaced them out on either side from there. This particular variety grows 1-2 feet per year, so if I did this first thing they'd be pretty tall by now. Therein lies my regret; I noticed this problem the first fall/winter after moving in. Should have done it the following spring. 

 I also shouldn't have waited to do this until I was 40. I was working on this for 7 hours (including hauling 24 bags of mulch) because I tried (successfully) to get everything done in one day.

Yea, I'm not in that great shape.

Cryptic moni

Everyone wishes they could go back in time and change something. Most people talk about Bitcoin, others about past mistakes or lost opportunities. Me? I would go back to the 1970's and buy one of those refrigerators that your grandparents still have running in their kitchen to this day. 

The joy of a dependable appliance is lost on younger generations. 

But yea Bitcoin. Or Etherium, or whatever other magic internet money people out there are feverishly overworking their GPU's to get. We all wish we got in sooner. My problem isn't that I'm lazy (which I am, but that's not the problem). It's that I have a hard time grasping how to do anything with it. 

OK so I go into some kind of exchange to buy it, but then it's on my hard drive? Or I trick my computer into doing math until I get 0.0000058 *coin valued at... whatever people will pay for it. Then this magic internet money wallet is on my hard drive, which I keep hearing about people losing said hard drives so that's risky. 

So yea, I could go back in time and tell my younger self to get into Bitcoin, but he'd be sitting there asking the important questions, like "what's a Bitcoin?" and "...how?" and by the time I figured it out, it would be tomorrow.

The fruity chips

Growing up, Easter got the same treatment in my household that you would expect from a religious family: full of chocolate eggs and fake plastic grass. My dad, being somewhat health conscious, insisted that we have something that at least pretends to be healthy mixed in with our sugar. Sitting among the jelly beans and peeps would be dried apricots, raisins, and banana chips.

The healthy stuff was never rejected. It never seemed out of place to me. It was always a part of Easter, so its absence stood out more than anything. The dried fruits were devoured at the same rate as the candy, but what we looked forward to was the banana chips. 

Then one year they weren't there. The teasing was legendary. The pretend moping was over the top. Theatrics prevailed. The absence of a dehydrated Cavendish could have won us a Tony that day.

I type this out with a package of banana chips on my desk, regretting nothing.

The noises

So my kids have tablets that all, according to each of them, serve different purposes. For one, it's a handheld wiki to the larger game he's playing. To another, it's just a Netflix platform. This week is spring break; everything is closed and it's been rainy and cold. So indulge they have.

My youngest son plays games on his, unfortunately it also drains the aging battery pretty fast. It's still cold and rainy outside, and everything is still closed, so when the battery dies, I have little else to throw at him. So I let him use my tablet.

 

It's not like I'm using the thing anyway. I got it for free. Besides, everyone else doesn't have the battery issue his does. But when game time is over, everything goes back where they belong. Controllers and the like get put back in their box near the TV, and tablets go back to their chargers in a closet. Except mine, it goes back into my office. It sits just behind me. So imagine it's later that evening, the kids are (mostly) in their beds and I'm in here trying to do something moderately productive (most likely goofing off, now that I can), when all of a sudden, right by my head in the middle of the night when it's dark out and I've probably been watching a spooky video I get

MINECRAFT ZOMBIE NOISES RIGHT NEXT TO MY HEAD OUT OF NOWHERE.

I love my children, but I'm not giving him the satisfaction. I know he's not doing it on purpose, but if he hears about it once, he'll certainly try.