Category: Family

Last year, my only goal was to get my weight back down to 200. To put it bluntly, I not only failed, but lost ground. So, I’m trying again this year.

I’ve found that my willpower is going in two to three week cycles. So, the main thrust of this goal is less working directly on my weight, and more working on my willpower. Building that “muscle” back to its strength back when I was in full “weight-loss” mode in 2017 to 2019.

Which means saying no to food outside my calorie budget. Saying yes to going to the gym, even when it’s cold, raining, or difficult to get moving.

I hope to have better news to relate at this time next year.

Finally after a couple rollercoaster years, 2022 wasn’t a bunch of crazy highs and lows. There were both, but not crazy swings.

The year started out with me having enough in my gun fund to finally upgrade my sidearm to a Smith & Wesson M&P9 2.0. It would be a bit before I could run some rounds through it, but it’s now riding in my holster. I have found that the aggressive stippling on grip likes to snag my cover garment more than expected, but I’m still liking it.

February the Ward household got hit with COVID. Damn, that was the worst sick I’d been in a very long time. The MIL, BIL, and SIL all got it. The Wife was like that one trailer in the trailer park the tornado just ignores. Which left her having to care for us. She was also the only one who could visit when BIL had to go to the hospital. Yeah, that wasn’t fun in any measure. It hit him hard and put him out of work for most of the year.

March was the first time since our wedding that The Wife and I actually go to go out to celebrate our anniversary. So, we moseyed up to St. Augustine for a few days. This would not be our only trips for 2022.

April and June were the months I lost both of my grandmothers – the last of my grandparents. In one of those odd coincidences, they died exactly two months apart. There were some heart wrenching decisions – such as whether I could make the trip out to see them. Fortunately, technology allowed me to have a final “face to face” call with my paternal grandmother. The one I made sure to call every Thursday. It’s still odd when I remember I don’t need to call her after work on Thursday.

May is also when I wrapped up reposting Zombie Strike on the blog. Which meant no Monday Fiction. It would be a while before Monday Links would become the replacement. Although, Monday Fiction might make its return. If I can get some things done.

In June, I did my first speech to my Toastmasters club in two years. The club finally began meeting in person again this year. And I felt it was time to get back up on the horse – so to speak. I would go on to give two more speeches this year. In addition, The Wife and I agreed to become officers again in our Toastmasters club.

August was the month we went down to one car. Well, The Wife and I went down to one car. The MIL still has hers. Yet, after much discussion, The Wife and I became the proud owners of the Ward Wagon. Later that month, we would host the great-niece’s second birthday party. The Wife and crew made the house look like Disney vomited inside it.

September was the month we lost our sphinx Titus. This was a hard loss because it was so sudden. Titus was one of the most people-friendly cats I’ve known, and his loss put a big hole in the house. Then we had to deal with Hurricane Ian. This was the first big storm in the new house, and we were afraid we were looking down at a Hurricane Andrew-type event. We had to pull out the storm screens and get things rearranged. Then it was twenty-four hours of watching the storm. Fortunately, our house came through without issue.

October was the month where three years of planning finally saw us going out west. Both The Wife and I have family in Idaho and Washington State. So, we spent a couple of weeks visiting/introducing each other to our respective sides.

November saw us on the road again as The Wife’s job had her come up to New York to meet some of her coworkers IRL. And since I can do my job from anywhere there’s internet, I went up with her. Which resulted in her going around while I stayed in the hotel room. After we got home, we had some discussions on the clowder. And ended up bringing home a new kitten – Freya. Adding a kitten has done some interesting things to the clowder. It’s been amusing to see which cats warmed up to her – and which ones were very annoyed by the new one’s presence.

December has been relatively quiet – except for the onslaught of holiday parties, holiday shopping, and prepping for hosting Christmas dinner. I also got a new iPad which helped with boosting my writing on my fantasy novel. Maybe I’ll finish it. Sometime.

Onward to 2023.

Last week was dominated by holiday parties and an internet outage.

Tuesday was our Toastmasters Holiday Party. It’s always interesting to see what luck comes from the potluck – and it was a pretty decent spread. Unfortunately, we needed to leave prior to the white elephant gift exchange. One of the cats decided to pull a disappearing trick. Missed dinner, missed treat time, could not be found. Very unusual for this cat. The Wife was worried enough that she couldn’t enjoy the party. So, with heavy hearts, we bid the club adieu and headed home to join in the hunt. Only for the cat to show back up when we were five minutes from the house. At that point, we were too exhausted to even contemplate going back.

Thursday the Ward family woke up to an internet outage in the neighborhood. This is something of a concern as both The Wife and I are teleworkers. Plus, we have a lot of smart home stuff. Okay, well, outages happen. They usually resolved by the time we have to go to work. Um, nope. Damn. The Wife and I manage to tether our work phones to our work laptops. The Wife gets almost as good speed from hers. Mine is… well, let’s just say anemic was being nice. Annoying, but outages happen. It should be resolved before lunch. Nope. By dinner? By bedtime? WTF happened? We awoke at 0300 the next morning, and I was still seeing the red ring of “no internet” on my Echo. The Wife informs the outage is resolved. Maybe for the neighborhood, but not for Ward Manor. We get on chat. Go through the usually “have you turned it off and on again” steps. They end up having to send out a tech. Who comes in early enough that we didn’t have to work most of the day off of our phones. Some sort of issue with the cable. Which meant I didn’t have to spend time doing maintenance getting stuff on a new network. Yay!

Which was really good because that meant I didn’t have to miss my office holiday party. Since most of us are fully virtual, this is one of the few times we see each other in person. Sometimes it’s a challenge for me because all of the normal meeting places are usually a good hour away. This year was at an upscale bowling alley/family fun place. Whatever. I wasn’t bowling. Shoulders said no. But the food was good – and it’s good seeing my teammates in person on occasion. Our supervisor always gets annoyed with us at the White Elephant because we don’t get into the larcenous side of the event. We’re just too laidback. I got a ten dollar bill stapled to a candy bar because one of our teammates left her present and that was what she could come up with on short notice. Hey, cash and sugar. I wasn’t going to complain.

Saturday was the Ward family holiday. Mom, The Brother, The Brother’s roommates (who are long-time friends), Rocket Engineer Brother and his family, The Wife and I traveled to Bok Tower for food and frivolity. The weather was cooperating and the food was plentiful. We don’t do white elephant for the family. The Brother runs a Secret Santa for the adults and everyone buys stuff for the niece and nephew. Secret Santa (SIL) got me a signed screenplay from an episode of Firefly and a little sign with my name from gun things. (You’ve probably seen the ads). The Wife got a small whiteboard desk cubby and some dry erase erasers in the shape of paw prints from The Brother. Of course, getting back home was a bit interesting due to one of the main state roads getting closed due to an accident. The only way to move traffic was an access road on the property of one of the major phosphate companies – who was reluctant to allow a large volume of vehicles go screaming through their area of liability. I think some of the deputies had a talk with security – who had a talk with their higher-ups – and we were finally able to get around.

All in all, not a horrible week. I don’t care what my calorie counter says.

Last weekend, The Wife, The Brother and I took my mom out for some fun for her birthday.

We started at Manatee Historical Village’s Old Florida Christmas. It’s an arts and crafts fair on their grounds. Generally, their heavily Christmas-themed crafts, but there’s often a variety. This year had a lot more vendors than last. We walked around and picked up some things. The Brother was interested in some hand-crafted pens – because he’s really into ink pens. Mom picked up a wreath and we got some ornaments. Not a bad day’s haul.

Then we went off to Hobby Lobby – because Mom and The Wife needed some things. And it’s Hobby Lobby. While The Brother entertained himself in the Ward Wagon, The Wife, Mom, and I meandered through the store. Some things were purchased, but not as much as was threatened. At least The Wife and I got our white elephant gifts for our Toastmaster’s Christmas party.

Dinner was at Rosemary and Thyme’s. Which if you are ever down in Sarasota, I would highly recommend. We all had a wonderful time, but I managed to tempt my mom to forego dinner there for another little gem of our area. For dessert, we went down to the American Honey Creamery ice cream shop. This is The Wife’s and my favorite little ice cream shop. The Brother and Mom were suitably impressed with their offerings.

It was good we had so much fun on Saturday, because Sunday was for labor. I had to pull some work hours while The Wife put together Christmas cards. As in assemble cards from parts she made using her Cricuts. The Wife is of the opinion – and I agree with her – that if she has the time, she will make people greeting cards rather than purchase them.

Then it was time to assemble her new standing desk. The side table she had been using for her Cricut station was nice, but not the most stable thing. We’d been talking about getting her something like my workbench – which is kind of a standing desk sold by Home Depot. We found an inexpensive standing desk on Amazon, which of course, requires assembly. This is the third standing desk I’ve assembled, and in many ways, it went together the easiest. Some of that was experience.

Of course, once the new desk was assembled and put into place, that required reshuffling furniture. Side desk to loft. Loft furniture to gathering room. Knight to king four.

Still, a semi-productive weekend.

This year, Thanksgiving was held at SIL’s place. This required the dinner being pushed back to Sunday due to BIL’s work. The Wife and I both took off Black Friday, so we had a four-day weekend. Well, I had a four-day weekend. The Wife had use-or-lose, so she took off a bit more time.

Thursday, since we didn’t have a dinner, was more or less a standard day – except I didn’t have to work. The Wife’s Halloween/Fall/Thanksgiving decorations went into storage and the plethora of The Wife’s Christmas decorations came back to the house. Then, The Wife fired up her Cricut to do some party favors for the Sunday dinner. Little turkeys with M&M’s in them.

Friday was The Wife decorating the house. Decorations are her passion. While she was doing that, I took my grandfather’s 100-year-old shotgun and mounted it in my office. Yeah, we have different ideas of how to decorate.

Saturday was a cooking day for The Wife as she prepared what she was bringing for dinner. Namely her deviled eggs and “Christmas Crackers.” Which was kind of like peppermint bark on a saltine. Different, but yummy. While she was doing that, I actually finished a couple of scenes on my fantasy novel. Slow progress is still progress. Which helped with the frustration of watching the delivery status of my new iPad go from “By End Of Day” to “Delayed”.

Sunday morning was labor intensive. MIL’s been sleeping on the transformer couch bed since she moved in. She wanted something smaller so she could get a recliner into her room. A new bed was purchased, but we needed to move the transformer couch out to the garage. It will be retrieved by BIL at a later date. Yeah, that wasn’t a whole lot of fun. Particularly when it decides to transform in mid-move. Then I had to put together the new bed. That wasn’t too bad, but it had its moments. Frustration burns calories, doesn’t it?

The Wife’s niece and great niece came over to go with us to dinner. The toddler was generally well behaved. She played well with the kitten. For some reason, she was under impression that the most exciting thing at Ward Manor was to go up and down the stairs. Okay, not a problem as long as there was an adult to go up and down the stairs with her. Except, the only adult that was available was me. Going up and down the stairs burns calories doesn’t it?

My mom, recently retuned from the great white north, and The Brother joined us at Ward Manor. It was a chance for them to meet the new kitten and drop off some items from my grandmother’s estate. Plus that large print of Starry Starry Night that The Wife and I bought up in Idaho. And a box of ammo that I bought. Then we all convoyed over to BIL’s.

Shortly after we arrived, I got an alert that my iPad was delivered. Not wanting it to sit on the front porch, The Brother and I jumped in the Ward Wagon to fetch it. Except it wasn’t there. WTF? I looked at the picture in the delivery photo. No, that’s not my house. Unable to locate it, we returned to BIL’s house for dinner. During which, I figure out the issue. I fat fingered my address when ordering the iPad. It was delivered a few houses down. Jump into the Ward Wagon. Fortunately, the neighbor had the parcel. Success! I returned and we finished dinner.

Relief burns calories, doesn’t it?

1. The Wife and I walked up to the neighborhood’s “Vendor Fair”. Honestly, it was kind of pathetic, but I’m chalking that up to it being the first year. Hopefully, there will be more stands next year. From there, we went up to the local market. That was much more fruitful, as we needed to pick up some gifts for the holidays. We also joined the local civic association – something we’ve been discussing for a few months.
2. We did an initial pull of the holiday decorations. The Wife has a lot of holiday decorations, and we just brought home the first load. The Ward Wagon will require more trips due to its smaller cargo size. I also helped pull out one of her trees. She wanted to put it up to get Freya used to it. Hopefully, that will keep the destruction down.
3. During our shopping, The Wife and I discussed pulling weeds on Sunday morning while it was still cool out. We came home to find the neighbor girls pulling our weeds. Apparently, they offered to pull the weeds for some spending cash. Well, okay, it was something that we didn’t really want to do anyway. They did a real good job too. The Wife asked if they could come over every couple of weeks and take care of the weeds. I do love rewarding entrepreneurship. Particularly when it relieves me of having to do hated chores.
4. We did manage to hang a couple of paintings we bought a few months back. I found a print of Monet’s Impression, Sunrise and The Wife found another print we liked. The hard part is that we hung them on the wall facing the stairwell, which meant reaching out from the second floor.
5. I ordered a new iPad. My current one is getting long in the tooth. I mean, long enough it wasn’t even worth trading in. So, now I get to wait a bit for it to be delivered. Still, it should be powerful enough to last me the next four or five years. Particularly since I don’t do a lot of heavy lifting with the iPad.
6. If you are going to do a gender reveal party with some fireworks, it is considered polite to let the rest of the neighborhood know. Particularly those that sound like shotgun blasts.

Since we lost Titus a couple of months ago, the house felt a bit empty. We discussed adding another cat to the group. What sex? What kind? The Wife wanted another hairless, but those are few and far between. Plus, in the aftermath of Ian, there was a heightened scrutiny on all listings. Just as tragedies bring out the greatness in humanity, it also brings out the worst.

Finally, we made an appointment at a local shelter. We looked at several, but ended up with a tiny kitty. A tiny Siamese kitty.

There was much discussion on a name. The Wife prefers old-fashioned names. I prefer non-people names. She started with Alice. I countered with Mab. She offered Hazel. I offered Inara. Finally we settled on a name.

I present to you the newest member of the Ward Clowder – Freya.

Last week, The Wife’s job flew her up to New York to meet with her co-workers in the offices around there. Since I can do my job from anywhere with internet access, I tagged along. We stayed in Morristown, New Jersey, which is a very pretty town from what we saw. I mostly stayed in the hotel room working while The Wife gallivanted around with her boss to the various offices.

The title from this post comes from a comment made by The Wife when we realized that I had left my phone at the ticket counter when we checked in for our flight north. Fortunately, we were able to get back and retrieve my phone with little issue, but it was about ten to fifteen minutes of high stress.

Then, The Wife “returned the favor” when she accidentally left her work headphones at one of the satellite offices. We both use Jabra headsets for our work, which aren’t cheap, but immensely worth it for when we have multiple and/or long teleconferences and meetings. And I was running a major multiple-day meeting from the hotel room. Fortunately, one of her coworkers found the headphones and mailed them back to us. They were waiting for us when we returned.

We are done with traveling for the foreseeable future. After three weeks on the road, it’s so good to be back in our beds and in our routines.

1. In the last week, I crossed 2,000 days of calorie tracking. To be honest, I put in calories every day, but some days are less accurate than others. Let’s just say not staying on budget for the better part of a month, I’m not doing good on my weight goals. The pants are a bit on the tight side. But dammit, I refuse to go up a pants size when I worked hard to get it down. Plus, the pain is motivation.
2. After playing with The Wife’s cousin’s airsoft set up (Glock-style CO2 gun and target trap) during our recent trip, she and I discussed me getting a similar set up. So, we ordered a pistol (M&P instead of Glock) and a trap. Except, when the trap came, it was much smaller than we anticipated. That doesn’t bother me, as I’m hoping it will help with my accuracy (i.e., aim small, miss small). I’ve even set up a spare belt with one of my old holsters for practice. The only issue is The Wife wants me to practice outside, and I want to do it in the garage. If we had real fences, I wouldn’t have an issue, but since we don’t, I don’t want to tempt the neighborhood Karens. Or shoot a bunch of airsoft bb’s into the pond. (Because my aim isn’t always perfect.)
3. My SIL sent over pics of my niece going to homecoming. My niece looked very pretty. Still, when did my niece get old enough to go to homecoming? Damn, time flies.
4. I came home from the trip with more toys for my office. Yeah, it’s starting to get crowded in there. May have to do a culling. Many of them are just displayed, but some are my fidget spinners. Those are mainly transformers. The two new ones (Coronation Starscream and Cobb Vanth from Mandalorian) are both display items. Just figuring out where stuff goes. I may have to take everything down and re-org the office. And I still need to mount Grandpa’s old shotgun.

For the last couple of weeks, The Wife and I travelled out west to meet parts of each other’s family. The Brother joined us for the first week. This is going to be a bit of a long post, so don’t feel to bad if it’s TLDR. The gist is that we had lots of fun, but damn were we glad to get back home.

The Wife, The Brother, and I flew out Friday, October 7. That was a long day of travel. Essentially, it was Tampa to Seattle, long layover, and then onto Boise. About a 20-hour day.

Saturday, Oct 8, was one of the main reasons to come out. My maternal grandmother passed away back in April, and Saturday was the memorial service. Anytime I meet relatives out west, most of them I don’t or barely remember. The difference this year was that included “the littles”, or the children of my first cousins. I imagine by the time we get back out there, the next generation will be included.

Sunday, Oct. 9, the family went up to Sun Valley to see “The Trailing Of The Sheep.” If I’m remembering local lore correctly, the local sheepherders had some trails to move their flocks. At some point those paths got paved (not clear who was responsible). At some point, bikers and hikers started using those paths for their activities. These newcomers got very annoyed that when the flocks were moved, “their” paths were littered with sheep dung. They complained to the authorities, who pointed out that, the bikers and hikers were technically in the wrong, and no, they weren’t going to tell the ranchers jack shit. Someone on the sheep rancher side came up with the idea of a parade to raise money for some charity or other and to bring peace to both sides. It’s evolved since. It was interesting to watch contingents from the local Basques, Peruvians, and Highlanders marching. There was also someone in a slightly disturbing sheep costume that may end up in one of my urban fantasy novels.

From the rest of Sunday through Friday, we did sightseeing around the Twin Falls area of Idaho, as well as meeting family. The Wife got to see my family’s farm, try my uncle’s homebrewed mead (first time trying mead for her), and go to some local antique/second-hand shops.

On Friday, Oct. 14, The Wife and I travelled up to Lewiston, Idaho. We had to make a short stop in Meridian (which I think is kind of a suburb of Boise). The jacket I brought was good for rain, but crap for wind. So, we found a 5.11, and I picked up a new jacket. Along with other stuff, because I can never get out of that shop for cheap. We also found out that a doughnut franchise we’d found in Williamsburg had expanded to Idaho. The drive was mostly nice, but I don’t like driving in the mountains. It makes me nervous when I we’re doing turns with a several hundred foot drop on the other side. We did see a couple of A-10’s flying around Mountain Home, so The Wife learned the BRRR meme.

Friday night and Saturday was meeting The Wife’s family around the Lewiston and Clarkston, Washington area. This included everyone meeting a “new” cousin. I don’t have my scorecard to keep all of my wife’s relatives straight (I’m getting better, I promise!). From what I gathered, this new cousin was the daughter of some folks the others had a few interactions. New Cousin was discovered when she moved in near some of The Wife’s cousins and relations were discovered. So, both New Cousin and I got to hear a bunch of family lore. While we were in the area, The Wife and I went around to found old family houses and other areas she remembered.

Sunday, Oct 16, we drove to the Tri-Cities in Washington. There was a stop over in Pomeroy, a small farming community in Washington. MIL’s family was from there, so we stopped to visit some graves and find old houses. There was some detective work on that last bit using an old photo and Apple Maps.

From Sunday until we left on Friday, there was a lot of meeting The Wife’s family and going around the Tri-Cities to see places The Wife lived, her relatives lived, and other areas she remembered fondly. It was also a chance for The Wife to catch up with her childhood BFF.

We made a trip out to Fort Walla Walla, which was a neat museum and historic village. That was really neat, particularly the display of a thirty-mule mechanical combine. Then, The Wife made a couple of the workers slightly jealous when she told them about where we got married in Florida (since it was kind of a similar thing). We also made a trip up to Leavenworth with The Wife’s BFF and BFF’s husband. From what I understand, it was an old logging town that was facing hardship as logging fell off. So, they decided to go the tourist route and converted their town into a “Bavarian Alpine village”. I use the quotes because apparently BFF brought a German foreign exchange student who was amused by the attempt. Anyways, Leavenworth has a bunch of nifty little shops and restaurants. We had some really good German food and bought a bunch of stuff. The only drawback were there were some nasty fires going, so the smell of smoke was heavy in the area and the mountains were obscured by the haze. BFF’s husband pointed out a bunch of neat stuff on the trip up and back.

The trip home wasn’t quite as long as the trip out. The only major hiccup was making our connection in Seattle, since that entailed having to travel across the airport. It was so nice being back in my house, my bed, driving the Ward Wagon, and playing with the clowder.