Category: Family

Good Bye Titus

While the rest of the world was shocked by the news of the passing of Queen Elizabeth, the Ward household was dealing with its own loss. We had to let go of our lovable Sphinx cat Titus. It would be a bit easier if it hadn’t come out of the blue. If it had been like some of our previous cats, where we knew they were in decline and we were just enjoying what time we had with them. No, it was bringing him in for a small issue and finding out there was a major problem. Then, having to make that very hard decision.

To call Titus amiable is understatement. The cat loved people and loved attention. He loved being on laps or snuggled next to someone. He loved to be held, which could be an issue considering he was a hefty boy. Yet, he loved the spotlight. Which is why he always got to meet Santa for pictures.

The first day I met Titus, I nicknamed him “Turkey Butt” because his butt end resembled a raw turkey. I don’t think The Wife ever forgave me when my friends used it. I reduced my usage over the years, but would occasionally call him that when he irked me.

Titus was one of the reasons we have always had a king-sized bed. He loved to snuggle with The Wife, attempt to snuggle with me, or just snuggle under his covers and be content with his humans. The bed seems emptier without him.

We will miss our dear, sweet Titus.

Weekend Oops

This weekend we had plans. Great plans. You know what they say about plans…

Saturday should have been relatively simple. We had to take the Ward Wagon back to the dealership to get a coating put on. It was something we purchased when we bought the Ward Wagon. The trick was that the dealership is an hour and a half north of us. The plan was to get there when they opened, which meant we were going to need to leave at oh-dark-early. At least for The Wife. She likes to sleep in on the weekends. Everything went fine. A little bit longer than we anticipated, but no major issues. I even got some writing done on the third Irregulars story (I’ll finish that. I promise.). Then we went to The Brother’s since we were not too far from him – not close, but not far compared to Ward Manor. He’s getting some roommates due to a rent increase and is in purge mode. We were getting some of his castoffs. As we were taking items back out, we realized that the service folks had taken out our trunk organizer – and failed to put it back in. Grumble, grumble, grumble. It was another half-hour back to the dealership. Then another 100 minutes to get home. Well, we did make one stop to a store we both hadn’t visited.

The Sunday before Labor Day is usually the day The Wife and I celebrate our first date by going back to the restaurant. From the annoyances on Saturday, and some other items, we decided we would just go to the restaurant on Monday. This is what we call in the writing world as foreshadowing. Most of Sunday was taken up with The Wife and MIL putting up decorations around the house.

Monday we decided would be a mostly TV day. Just as an aside, I decided to check the restaurant hours in case they were changed for Labor Day. Well, they hadn’t. Unfortunately, that was because the restaurant is closed on Mondays.

I guess we’ll try next weekend.

Lessons From A Birthday Party

The past weekend, we celebrated the great niece’s second birthday. In her usual fashion, The Wife went into full crafting mode to decorate the house in the party’s theme of Minnie and Mickey Mouse. Cricut go brrr. I think they went a little overboard. However, based on the guests’ comments, I was in the minority opinion.

So, what lessons did we learn?

First, if you are going to have large inflatable pools, have an air compressor that will actually handle inflating said large inflatable pool. Do not use the one you got off of an Amazon sale that is more designed for inflating small sports equipment and the tires to your hand cart.

Second, be more careful into which party supplies you buy from the warehouse. Particularly perishable items. My drink fridge has lots of drink boxes. We were expecting more toddlers that didn’t materialize. Fortunately, we are very good in using up spare hamburger buns, and hot dogs are a staple of our weekly menus.

Third, even if all you are doing is grilling, it’s probably a good idea to put on sunblock. I now have the red neck to go with my Southern accent. Fortunately, it’s less painful and more annoying.

Overall, it was a successful day. The guests were happy. The niece was happy. No family drama.

Derek’s Mildly Useful Reviews – Peaky Blinders and Reacher

The Wife, MIL, and I watch a show while we eat a meal. Mostly dinner, but sometimes over a weekend breakfast. Sometimes, we will end up binging a show we planned to watch more slowly. Two of the more recent shows were Peaky Blinders on Netflix and Reacher on Amazon Prime.

Peaky Blinders starts as a gangster show about a family of gypsy street gangsters and their rise in post-WWI Birmingham England. The first four seasons are solid gangster crime heist type shows. Smart writing, interesting characters, twisty plots. Soundtrack is solid, but not period. The fifth and sixth seasons were good, but the writers were infected with a common need to prove their correctness. All of the sudden, the gangsters are fighting fascists with the communists in late twenties Britain. It felt very much like they were taking modern issues and loosely draping history. And it felt a bit preachy. Which is not what I wanted. The rest of the story was at least interesting. Would I still recommend the show (including the last two seasons)? Hell yes.

Reacher, by contrast, was great popcorn fun television. Amusing characters and dialogue, but heavily driven with action and a kind of tropey plot and atrocious tactics/gun handling/fight physics. I think The Wife got tired of me yelling at the screen. She also learned what it meant to “rat-fuck a body”. You know it was good when what should have been a week’s or so worth of viewing ended up being watched over a weekend.

Downsizing – Vehicle Edition

Since The Wife and I are both teleworkers, we’ve been discussing going down to one vehicle. Mostly, that has been discussing of if we should sell/give my Xterra and just keep her CRV. Part of the issue is that I really didn’t want to give up the Xterra. Yet, we kept asking ourselves the question of why we were still holding on to it.

A couple of weekends ago, just out of curiosity, I looked up the values of both cars. That changed the conversation. Her Honda was worth almost as much as we paid for it. We discussed it more over dinner. Could we just sell both cars and get one we both really wanted?

We looked at a bunch of cars in our new “price range” and tentatively agreed on a Subaru Forester. The Wife started calling around. No one around us had new ones, and used ones were sparse on the ground. We did test drive one just to make sure that the Forester was at least comfortable to drive. The salesperson was clear that if we wanted one in the pipeline, it would be a month – maybe six weeks. Two to three months minimum if we wanted to order one. We looked at the used ones on the lot. The price difference was about two grand between the new ones in the pipeline and the used ones on the lot. And the used ones were 2019’s. Plus, the salesperson was kind of a dick.

We left talking about what should we do. Then we found a dealership with new ones in stock. There was just one small issue. It was about an hour and a half north of us. Still, they had the ones we wanted in stock. After work, we convoyed up.

We really liked the Forester we saw. Test drive confirmed we really liked it. The price was really at the top end of what we were willing to pay. The salesperson showed us a model that had just come in. I liked the green color, the fact that it had almost all of the same features, and was less expensive. We started running the numbers. Then it seemed to take a while. A lot longer than it should have. Finally, the salesperson comes over with a sheepish look on his face. It seems the green one was supposed to be in the loaner program and wasn’t even supposed to be on the floor. So, we were back to original car. Still doable.

After a long wait and some initial paperwork, we’re off to the Financing Lady. She explains that some of the long wait was due to The Wife missing a word on the address on her license (something we get to correct) and they can’t seem to spell my first name correctly. Then, she proceeds to inform us of a couple of items she discovered when going through our files. Since we were buying from the same chain that sold us The Wife’s Honda, the Financing Lady found out we were due money back from a maintenance contract and other items. Did we mind that she put all of that towards the down payment? Um, no. That was very helpful. We start signing. I comment on the picture of her cats on her file cabinet. This led to an ongoing conversation between The Wife and the Financing Lady about how to take care of kitties. As we were nearing completion, the Financing Lady asked if we brought in the Xterra. Yes, we did. How does it run? Pretty good, why? It seems the Financing Lady is looking for something like that. I’m pretty sure that my old Xterra won’t even hit the market.

By the end, it was nearing 11 at night, and we still had better than an hour drive home. We were all smiles as we drove it back home.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are now a single car family. And that car is hereby designated the Ward Wagon!

Five Years of Topsy Turvy

Five years ago, I was messaged on eHarmony. The latest date I’d gone on the week before ended with the lady messaging me saying we weren’t compatible. I was seriously thinking about putting a halt on my searching, but I decided I’d give it at least one more try. It wasn’t like I couldn’t go be a hermit if this one went down in flames as well.

Except that didn’t happen. We exchanged messages for more than a month. I think those were important. We really got to know each other before we actually met.

Then our first date. I had fun, but was nervous as hell. Honestly, I couldn’t tell if she thought it went well or not until she texted me the next morning. Then both of us were getting ready for Irma, which was scheduled to hit a few days later. During said preps, I discovered I’d left my debit card at the restaurant. I guess I was having a good time. The night of the hurricane, we were texting back and forth. The. Entire. Night.

More dates, which was difficult because we lived fifty miles away. Which felt longer because the main highway linking us liked to clog up at the most inopportune time. Then trading weekends. Neither of us can agree when we decided that our relationship was heading to marriage. All I know was that by May or June of 2018, I was hunting up wedding rings. She was sending me enough links to ones she liked that my FB feed had ads for rings for six months.

Five years ago, that message has upended my life. In so many good ways. I’d never thought I’d leave northern Hillsborough County. Now, that part of the state I’d spent almost all of my life in seems like a distant place. I’ve felt more at home in Parrish than I remember feeling since I was a child.

It’s been an amazing five years, and I can’t wait for many, many more.

Weekend Adventures and a Video on The Bugatti Veyron

This past weekend, The Wife and I got the bug to do some major rearranging. Major rearranging. Mostly between the upstairs living room, her office, and my office. These kinds of endeavors can be trying because we have very different opinions – more to the point, how to decide on things. She is much more deliberative than me. It’s very frustrating. We’ve gotten things to the “this is our experimental phase”.

After adventures in shuffling on Saturday, we went over to BIL’s and SIL’s house for family dinner. When we got there, BIL was watch How It’s Made: Dream Car Edition. He and I watched a few episodes. The one that kinda fascinated me was the Bugatti Veyron. Particularly how they put together the front end and the back end. Watch the first part of this video. Watch the floor. They have a rail with these metal slats that move like a wave. It’s nifty.

Of Course There’s A Spreadsheet

I tried to post this last week, but the WordPress app is for shit. Worse, it will work for a bit, and then look like it will work, but in actuality it’s eating the posts. Enough bitching – on to the story.

The wet food we’ve been using for the cats for as long as we’ve merged herds changed their formulation. Enough that even our normal ”garbage disposal” cats wouldn’t eat it. Grumble.

The Wife and MIL remedy this by experimenting with a variety of new wet foods. In true Ward family tradition, The Wife made up a spreadsheet to track who likes what food.

We now have a few varieties the cats like, but the experimentation continues. The Wife wants a wider variety. Just in case.

Now to figure out how to get rid of the flat of wet food the cats won’t eat. Grumble.

Prime Day(s) 2022

Well, since The Wife and I have our birthdays in July, we tend to get a lot of Amazon monies as gifts. Which is useful with Prime Day.

This year, it was Power and Transformers. I picked up a USB C power block to use with my laptop, a couple of Anker power banks, and some inexpensive Transformers. Because, those are my fidget spinners for when I’m on camera. When I’m not on camera…well, that’s why I have a bunch of airsofts.

The amusing purchase was a new vacuum sealer. After the second one of the same brand died (which was supposed to be a test device anyway), we went on the Wirecutter to find a better one. Oh hey, we like this one, but it’s $150. Let’s see what the price is on Prime Day. Oh, look – it’s down to $100. Sometimes patience is rewarded. Still don’t like it much.

Clearing the Tabs

Another day, another lawsuit against Sig for malfunctioning weapons. This was one of the reasons I didn’t go with Sig when I upgraded my sidearm.

Lego is building a new factory stateside. Normally, I’d wonder if having a local plant would reduce their cost. But, inflation. And collectability.

From Lee Williams, an article on UPS changing its rules on shipping firearms and parts. It’s like they’re taking customer service lessons from Dick’s.

Lastly, Tampa’s largest McDonald’s franchisee is selling off its McDonald’s stores. This is interesting to me as I used to work for Casper’s as a night manager many a moon ago.