I pulled my Apple Music numbers for 2024, since it’s that time of year for wrap-ups. Except, something didn’t look right. When I looked at my top 15 artists, everything looked kind of what I expected – with the glaring exception of Taylor Swift standing atop the list like a juggernaut in terms of minutes played.
I am not a Taylor Swift fan. I’m sure I’ve heard her music, by osmosis if no other reason. But I’ve never intentionally searched out her music. So how? Oh, yeah. The Wife listens to music sometimes when she works. And she uses the Apple Music linked to the Echoes. Taylor Swift was not the only surprise. Let’s just say there were some unexpected albums that showed up. Ah well.
In most respects, it’s been a run-of-the-mill week. There was a decision made, which I’m keeping vague for OPSEC reasons. However, it required a lot of quick buying of things. Fortunately, there were still some Black Friday / Cyber Monday sales going.
Some items of note:
The Japanese restaurant that recently opened near us is pretty decent. At least food-wise. The chairs, on the other hand, leave much to be desired for a dinner.
I’m really not trying to get a new laptop right now. Although my current one is really trying to force the issue. We had a morning of me trying to get Civ to run without crashing. Ended up having to re-install Civ, which seemed to fix most of the issues. Most.
On a related note, since I had to go to Steam to download Civ, I checked my hours. I’m up to a bit over 8,500 hours on Civ 6. Yeah, I’ve gotten my money out of that.
On a related note, it’s really hard not to want to buy a new laptop when one of my top candidates is on sale. And maybe if we didn’t have to shell out a bunch of cash for the vague item in the intro, I could better justify it.
I did splurge and pick up a Tokyo Marui HK45 airsoft. No, I don’t play airsoft. They’re props, trainers, fidget spinners, and toys. I have noticed that over the years, my tastes have become more expensive. Not the pay real gun money for the airsoft version. But the idea of dropping a couple hundred or so on one is not unreasonable.
Speaking of gun-tangential topics, I’ve decided it was time to start carrying IWB again. I wish it meant I’d lost enough weight that I could do so with my current jeans, but I’m not that lucky. At any rate, I went to go find my previous IWB set-up. In the holster bin? Nope. Hrm. Look in the normal spots. Nope. Look in the abnormal spots. Nope. Where the hell? I know I didn’t give those away. But it was like they grew legs and went walkabout. The Wife suggested I should just get a new setup. After going back and forth, I decided to give We The People holsters a try and ordered. Then found my setup a few hours later in the place I put them in “because here I won’t forget them.” Eh, I’ll give the new ones a try when they show up.
Ward Manor upgrade happenings – We’re remodeling the downstairs bathroom to take out the tub and replace it with a walk-in shower. However, we’re getting close to start time, so we ordered all the tile needed. Yeah, that was a lot of money. The first bit was delivered, but it was by – I guess – a freelancer. We were taking packages of tile out of someone’s car. Well, we got to use the collapsible wagon we picked up with the ambitious goal of using it to walk to the grocery store across the street.
We also took advantage of the Black Friday deals to do some upgrades on televisions. Both MIL’s and our bedroom televisions have been showing their age. It was interesting to see how much thinner current televisions were compared to some most of a decade older. Plus it was nice watching “Dune Part 2” on a new OLED.
Less upgrade and more shuffling was moving a couch from upstairs to downstairs. Fortunately, it kind of slid down the stairs. But it did require quite a bit of shuffling to get it into place. Now to figure out how we’re redoing the upstairs. I mean, we kinda have a plan. Sort of.
Thanksgiving happenings – This year Thanksgiving was being held at BIL and SIL’s house. Since Mom is back out west for a bit, The Wife stepped up to make some of the common dishes. Namely, the stuffing, the apple crisp, and the sweet potato souffle. The stuffing is a family recipe from my paternal grandmother, and it was the first year someone other than Mom or The Brother made it. This was one of the holidays The Wife was very grateful to have the double oven. My contribution was limited to helping reach high or heavy items.
There was a lot of food. SIL went all-out. The Wife’s food was awesome. SIL’s food was awesome. I overindulged in said awesome food. It’s a good thing I took Black Friday off. Food hangovers can be just as bad as alcohol hangovers.
Story Happenings – I finally finished the third Irregulars story. Well, I got the ending finished. Now it’s set it down for a bit and then do an edit. My goal was around 15K words, and it’s sitting at 16K words.
Decorating Happenings – This is The Wife’s favorite time of year. She can let her decorating instincts run wild. To her credit, she’s been keeping the volume of decorations down to what can be easily moved in four to five large plastic tubs. Still, it’s surprising/amazing how the house changes as it is festooned with holiday cheer.
Monday evening my Uncle Calvin passed away. Fuck cancer. Fuck cancer with a syphilitic donkey cock.
Calvin and I were very different people. He was this gregarious man who was happiest outdoors with his horses. I am an introvert who is quite happy keeping his excursions outside Ward Manor to a minimum. We didn’t see much of each other due to living on other sides of the country. Still, the man put in indelible mark on my life.
The summer before junior year of high school, I was sent to work on Uncle Calvin’s farm. Tending to fields, helping with cattle, learning how to irrigate, and so much more. At the time, I didn’t realize how much growing up I was doing. I wouldn’t really figure that out for years.
I have many happy – or at least funny with the passage of time – memories of Uncle Calvin. I am very glad that The Wife got to spend time with him.
MIL has been tooling around in an eleven-year-old Hyundai that she bought new. Over the last six months or so, she’s been toying with the idea of getting a new vehicle since hers doesn’t have a backup camera or some of the other modern features. Plus, MIL wanted to go from a sedan to a small SUV or crossover. Well, riding around in her friend’s new car seemed to have been what was needed to push MIL over to actually going car shopping.
We really were just going to go to test drive a car. We narrowed down a Nissan Kicks as a likely possibility, and were going to let MIL test drive one to make sure. We really didn’t plan on coming home with a new car. But MIL really liked the Kicks.
I hate car buying, even when I’m not the one buying the car. It takes so damn long. The plus side was that neither the salesperson nor the finance person did any “hard selling”. It still took hours before MIL and The Wife drove the new car off the lot.
Still some admin stuff to finish up in handing down her old car to family, getting plates transferred, and other items. But as of now, the driveway has both the Ward Wagon and new MIL-Mobile.
I’m starting a new semi-regular feature on the birds of Ward Manor. The Wife and I set out bird feeders around the house to attract some of the local birds. Mainly for our viewing pleasure, although we have a couple that are primarily for the cats’ viewing/hunting pleasure.
This installment is on the flock of glossy ibis we have roaming around. Here’s the Wikipedia article. I like them because they’re like mini-plague doctors. Sometimes we have a few, but then are the days we have a flock of couple dozen. I managed to snap a couple of pics when the flock was between the two extremes.
Halloween Happenings – Ward Manor was invaded by the great niece so she could trick or treat in our neighborhood. This year, she decided to be a police officer. We set up our table at the end of the driveway and handed out little trinkets. We avoided handing out candy because, well, that means having candy in the house. I will say the best costume goes to the next door neighbors. Not because they dressed up their 13-month-old as an Ewok, but because they turned his stroller into an Imperial Speederbike.
Orlando Happenings – The Wife and I spent the last few days in Orlando so that I could go to the Babymetal concert.
Sunday, The Wife and I traveled over to Disney Springs. We got there shortly before everything opened up and made a beeline to the Lego store. Because, if you’ve never been, they limit the number of folks into the store. The line gets long the later in the day. From there, we meandered through the different stores. They closed their big Star Wars shop and enlarged the smaller one. Not sure if that’s permanent or what. From there, we went up to get some groceries. Much to our surprise, there was a hot pot place advertising boba tea next to the Publix. So, we enjoyed boba while we picked up groceries. From there, we trekked over to the Airbnb. Which was in a place that was kind of like a hotel/apartment thing? I dunno. We had some fun with the door lock, but got all of the stuff dragged in. Then came setting up the workstations. I found some portable monitor/laptop stands. These improve the workstations a lot more. The Wife got the small dining table, while I got the much smaller desk in the bedroom.
Monday was a work day. I will say using laptop stands improved working remotely. Which was good because the day job threw me a quick turnaround – as in same-day – analysis. The internet at the AirBnB wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t the worst we’ve had to deal with on our travels. The chairs were in the same vein – not great, not the worst. We ordered dinner in from Carrabba’s – which neither of us had eaten from in quite a long time. Tuesday work day was similar, with the exception of my work headphones acting up.
Concert Happenings – There was some discussion on whether I should bring my sling bag or not. I ended up deciding against it because it would be one more thing going through security. Plus, I’ve never been to the Hard Rock at Universal – and I always get a bit anxious with new places. When I arrived the line was – shall we say long? I will give them credit, once the doors opened, the line moved pretty smoothly.
The good news was that I had a seat in the center of the stage. The bad news was that the seat was probably in the top row.
The opening act was Scene Queen. Grindcore with a female lead. Kind of like Letters From The Fire meets Bloodhound Gang. Not my cup of tea. At least the singer’s voice didn’t hurt my head like the lead singer from Edge of Paradise.
Babymetal puts on a good show. The girls are very energetic and played a lot of their hits. I will say that through my AirPods Pro I was using as earpro, you could definitely tell how produced they are. Still, even with that, I really enjoyed it.
Plus when the concert was over and the house sound came back on, I got to hear a couple of thousand metalheads sing the refrain from “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” I may have joined in the festivities.
Day Job Happenings – I am now firmly ensconced in the old/new job. We have a new supervisor who was hired during my interregnum from the team. It’s fun when he explains something the team does that I helped start up before I left.
The other fun was I put in an IT ticket because a piece of software was having an issue. In return I was told my laptop was out of warranty and I needed to come in to swap it out. Grumble. My team uses some non-standard software. Plus, getting everything back would be a pain. On top of that, the day job is about fifty miles north of Ward Manor. Anywhoo, I went up, found a place to work for an hour until I could go down to IT, and at the appointed time went down – to be told there were no laptops to be had. Oh, and do you need yours to work? So, I guess I need to make the 100 mile round trip again at some point.
Drink Happenings – The Wife and I picked up bottles of the new Oreo flavored Coke Zero. Okay, not horrible, not great. Also, not something I would go out of my way to get again. I think that kind of sums up the experience.
Cat Tree Happenings – The cat tree we kept out on the back porch was finally deteriorated enough to toss out. After much deliberation, The Wife found one on Amazon that was wood and rope – perfect for outdoors. When it arrived, the wood was, shall we say, very naked. Dang. Run up to Lowe’s for stain and assorted items. I was told by The Wife to stick to staining the small pieces. Assembly didn’t go too bad. A couple of frustrations. Then some rearranging the back porch.
Voting Happenings – The Wife and I did our early voting. There was a small hiccup but went relatively smoothly.
Grill Happenings – It looks like I’m going to get a new grill. The Wife’s nephew is looking to offload some floor models from his day job. Plus, the old grill was getting a bit “dilapidated.”
The Wife loves her TikTok. The algorithm fed her up a guy named Caleb Hammer, who is kind of like a foul-mouthed, very confrontational Dave Ramsey. Not my cup of tea, but i can see why he would be popular.
Anywhoo, it led to a discussion between The Wife and me about how glad we are that we agreed early on money, spending, and budgeting. It also got me thinking on some of the financial reps – the financial muscles I had to build.
The beginning exercise was to pay cash for stuff. I really believe this was such a foundational financial rep. Because when I got used to paying cash for everything, I learned to pay for only what I could afford and budgeted to spend. This was the strength I needed to go to using a debit card. I could spend in more areas, but I still was doing the financial reps of staying within budget and keeping with what was in my account. This meant I had that discipline when The Wife and I went to a credit card. We already had those financial reps to treat the credit card like cash.
