Last year I bought a snowblower, and as Murphy's Law dictates, it barely snowed much at all.
Well this year, I still have it. I got it out, set it up, gassed it up, and it's been rainy all season.
Rainy. Not snowy, like you'd expect in December. Rainy. Look, I don't mind *not* having to clear snow all the time. People tend to forget how to drive when it snows, so every other car becomes a hazard. It's just weird.
Back in the summer of 2003, I bought a small ivy plant. It was in a cheap plastic pot and had three leaves. It's moved with me five times. Meanwhile it's been in, if I remember correctly, three different pots. At its largest, it spread ten feet. It's always filled the space it's been given, so its only constraint has been, well, space. It occurred to me that I've had this one plant for over twenty years now.
I wonder how long a houseplant really lives for.
Meanwhile, my wife got herself another small plant. I honestly don't know what the species is, but that never mattered much to me. She tried to care for it, but it withered down to a mere stem, all leaves lost. She was going to get rid of it, but I took possession instead. A little soil nutrition and a fair amount of water, and the stem turned green and started to stand upright. Then a leaf pushed out of the dirt next to it. Right now it's about four inches tall and has eight leaves all reaching for the light.
Necroplancer.
Going to the gym in the morning requires that I leave so I can get to work. It's a deliberate cutoff - I have to go. But on days when I don't have that requirement, I find that I just stay there. This morning I got there when they opened (which was late, because it's a holiday or something), and was there two and a half hours. I left because I simply couldn't do anything else.
Oh, I knew exactly how long I'd been there. It's hard to lose track of time when you're always timing yourself. I just didn't want to go.
But I suppose today of all days is the one to overdo it at the gym. Gotta earn that big dinner.
A week before Halloween, I told my kids not to give me any candy. I told them that if I asked, say no. If they saw me taking any, take it back. Don't let me have candy. I may have developed some good self control over my diet in the last year, but I decided on this anyway.
They opted to eat the candy I liked first. Then they ate the stuff that didn't have red food coloring. (Either that or they hid the rest) Now what's left is stuff that will give me migraines. I have to admit I'm proud of how they pulled it off.
Turns out it wasn't necessary anyway. A mere look into their stash showed me nothing but sloppy sugar and the kinds of candy that pull out fillings. My oldest also pointed out that, as an adult with a job and a car, I can just go out and get whatever candy I want whenever I want anyway, and that I don't.
He's 14 now and I keep forgetting that.
I know the stated reason for doing the time change at 2AM on Sunday. To minimize the impact on business.
Screw that noise. None of us benefit from an extra hour on Sunday mornings. I didn't change my clocks until Sunday night. I had a normal day (mindful, after all, half my clocks change themselves), and when it was time to go to bed, I changed the rest of the clocks and went to sleep.
Monday morning, that's when you want that extra hour. So that's when I took it. This whole thing needs to go anyway.
The schools always have these random days off that aren't on known holidays. The calendar always calls them something like 'superintendent conference days' or whatnot. That's fine, let them take a day to sort themselves out.
But why isn't November 1 one of them?
I can make my case in one word: Halloween. Or in one short sentence: it's the day after Halloween. The kids were up late either running amok in the neighborhood, or out late at a party. They stayed up eating candy and watching an appropriately themed movie whose genre is defined by their age bracket. Either way, they had a terrible night sleep.
It's even a Catholic holiday. Maybe if we got them on board we could do this.
