Valentines deus

Look at your calendar. Read off those special days where people do fancy things. Notice anything? These holidays all have themes. "we're celebrating this for that reason" etc.

This is where Valentines day seems oddly redundant. If you're in a relationship, shouldn't you *always* be working on said relationship? Holidays are typically cultural, celebrating or commemorating an event in history.

Relationships have their own holidays. Anniversaries and other milestones that are celebrated together. At this point, Valentines day seems almost redundant. Now don't get me wrong. I'm a sucker for a fancy night out, but it always feels so.. generic.

At least there's an abundance of cheap chocolates on the 15th.

The car

During my cars first year of life, it was a rental. Plenty of people used and abused it for money.

It's red. My license plate starts with GEM.

I call her Ruby because she used to be a prostitute*.

Anyway, I'm currently visiting Ruby in the hospital. We don't know if she's going to pull through. She's old, she's had a good life, but I'm telling you I'm conflicted. I haven't had to make payments in... ever. (That was nice) But the car had next to nothing. Basic audio with a CD player. Do you even know what a CD player is? No other audio inputs, just AM/FM and CD's.

I used to have what I thought was a limitless supply of blank CD's to draw from while putting together music to listen to in this car, and she's exhausted my supply.

It's definitely been a love/hate relationship with this old Taurus.

*That's the joke I tell everyone but my dad. He gets the dad joke: "I call it Robert, because it's a Red Ford" When he laughs and everyone else rolls their eyes, I know it worked.

Face blanket

I got lazy, and it got cold. The result was a beard. I was never a beard guy. Had one for awhile a few years ago, didn't suit me then.

Sure is warm, though.

My wife is always one to let me know how she feels about it. (Note: she likes it)

My coworkers seemed to have their own unyielding opinions. Now while there are some who would be annoyed if others didn't notice changes made to their appearance, I'm not one of them. In fact, I'd rather not anyone make a spectacle over it.

I passed by a mirror last night and thought "yep, time to go".

Man was my face cold this morning.

The c-list

The company that I work for has a total of sixteen employees. Sixteen. One-six. Four squared. I make no effort to see any of my coworkers outside of work hours. (I don't even add them on social media. Only three have ever tried, and I accepted not to be awkward, but keep them on a bit of a throttle)

Yet I find traces of them everywhere I go.

My son is in Pre-K with a coworkers granddaughter. Took my daughter to the doctor for a well visit, and the receptionist is a coworkers sister. When my solar panels were installed, the electrical inspector that was brought in is married to another coworker. I could go on. (We all met at the Christmas party)

Whoever is putting together this production needs to get more extras, because you can't keep dragging out the same batch of c-listers over and over. It's getting suspicious.

Keto quitter

I used to blame my metabolism for my once youthful physique. Then I got married and realized that my wife's cooking could easily overcome that. I'm far from fat, I just have the exact same protuberance in my midsection that every other male in my family inherits.

Meanwhile, my wife gave me four children.

So she was looking at a change in her diet that would fix that. Many (very many) of our friends and the like have tried this ketogenic diet, and all have shown very favorable results. The trick is you drop carbohydrates way the heck down so your body is forced to switch its power source to fat, hence you're now burning off your fat.

Problem is, I can't really digest that much fat without my gallbladder kicking around. I learned that the hard way after a couple days. The results were... unpleasant.

"Oh, but there are ways to get around that. You can take this supplement, or alter the diet a bit, etc..."

Tried that. Didn't work. The supplements? I experienced every single side effect. Extreme abdominal [issues] and lots of dizziness aren't my idea of a good time. I actually missed work because of how extreme these were.

I'm typing this over a bagel. I'm cheering on my wife from the sidelines.

Solar Panels

Right, so now I steal power from the sun.

I was at the NYS Fair (back in 2016...) with the wife when I saw a guy at a booth selling these things. I've long had an interest in stealing power from a fusion generator that lives 93 million miles away, so I simply approached him and said: "Tell me everything"

And he did.

After a few months of back and forth (engineers, design approval, permits, regulations, financing, blah blah blah), we were finally able to stick a bunch on my roof. Unfortunately, my house has a rather small footprint. I wanted a massive array focusing gigawatts of solar radiation into my air conditioner. I got seventeen 320 watt panels instead. I'm not thrilled with the limits, but every month from the day it was installed until August we generated a surplus. (The A in August stands for air conditioning)

The difference in my power bill is, on average, equal or greater than the cost of the panels.

For years, and even when living in Buffalo, we would get people going door to door trying to sell themselves as middlemen to our electric utility. ("We want to make sure you're getting all your discounts. We just need to see your electric bill") These "people" would be aggressive and annoying, then act as if you've wasted *their* time when you send them packing. Since I had these photovoltaic beauties on display, I feel somewhat ignored.

Now if only it worked on the clowns selling Hyla.

The great (temporary) thaw

So last week it was incredibly cold. The kind of cold that makes my lungs not work right.

Side note: I had a nasty case of bronchitis about ten years ago that I lacked the wherewithal to blog about. I was moderately delirious, and was left with some damage to my lungs. The problems only show when the temperatures drop below 10 or so degrees.

So the snow kept coming, and the snowblower that I have here just wasn't working. I can't shovel in this cold (I can't breathe in this cold), so it just kinda piled up.

Today is the first day that the temperatures have finally broken past the melting point, and it's been a mad scramble to get all the snow out of the way.

And off of my solar panels. Have I mentioned those yet? Got those a year ago now.

Really? I haven't blogged about those? Man I suck at this.