In the early 2000s I got my first GPS device. To be clear it was not one of those small, cute GPS units that attached to the windshield with a suction cup. It was a device that connected to a laptop with a serial cable (this was pre-USB). The maps were stored on a CD-ROM. I balanced my laptop on my truck’s center console and used a power inverter to power the whole mess. And while it worked, I knew at the time that it was a bit of a Frankenstein solution. I had the same feeling when I took my first road trip after buying an iPod and used one of those FM transmitters to play mp3s on my truck’s stereo. It felt like things were close, but not quite there.

We’ve had smartphones for a long time. My iPhone replaced my iPod and my GPS and my Palm Pilot and my digital camera and a whole bunch of gadgets. It changed everything. Before going on a road trip, we used to sit down with an atlas and plan our route. I used to spend an hour picking out my favorite 48 CDs for a trip. I remember the first time I left for a road trip and just relied on my GPS to get me there. The thought of looking at a paper map feels like something from the stone age now. None of our cars even have CD players anymore.

And while again none of this is breaking headline news, with phones we are never “away” away. The first road trip Susan and I took together, we had to pump quarters into payphones to call home and check in. Now, whichever of us is in the passenger seat is on our phone — texting, calling, checking email, posting on social media… electronically, it’s the same as if we were still home. When I was a kid, video phone calls were a thing of the future and now I get them by accident when someone sits on their phone the wrong way.

What really struck me over the past two days is that we now have unlimited access to the internet in the car. My old wallet full of road trip CDs became Spotify. Access to any album we can think of. As Susan drove I flipped between social media, email, Google News, and other apps.

Just a few years ago, I remember searching iHeartRadio for radio stations carrying OKC Thunder games, so I could listen in real time. Today, I watched two NFL games in the car. Live. Like, while Susan drove, I watched NFL games. And when we stopped for gas and food I paused the game, and when we returned to the car I fast forwarded through commercials and halftime to get caught back up to the live stream. It’s weird. It’s all weird.

As a kid I used to dream about taking our computer with us in the car. I used to dream of watching television in the car, and having some magical device to give me directions. A lot of the things we have now, I never imagined. And as far as car entertainment and access goes… I can’t think of anything else I want. There’s nothing I have access to at home that I can’t access while barreling down the interstate at 75mph.

Before I can talk about these shoes and how important they were to me, I have to first talk about shirts.

Around the time I graduated high school I discovered “cool” t-shirts. In college I purchased an Edward Scissorhands shirt and a yellow shirt with a black zig-zagging line that resembled Charlie Brown’s. One of my favorites was a white shirt with a can of Spam on the front. (This was a couple of years before the term would become associated with email; I just liked Spam!) Within a few years, that fun went away. I outgrew XL t-shirts, and back then none of those local t-shirt shops carried 2X sizes. Eventually I started buying shirts at big and tall stores, which mostly carried button-down shirts, polos, and plain t-shirts.

After wearing plain t-shirts with blue jeans or shorts for a couple of years I started buying colorful tennis shoes. If I couldn’t find cool shirts, I’d wear cool shoes instead — and often, a baseball cap to match. I got rid of my plain black and plain white shoes and replaced them with shoes from Converse, Vans, and Airwalk.

The problem with those brands is that they’re not super comfortable, especially for bigger guys. They look cool but don’t have much support and don’t last long. I finally figured out more expensive shoes felt better and lasted longer and so in the late 2000s I bought the red Nike shoes pictured above. They reminded me of Nikes from the 80s, and they went great with black, white, or red shirts.

Shortly after buying them, a couple of employees from Microsoft visited our office and one of them noticed my shoes immediately. We struck up a conversation and he told me all about “shoe culture,” something I knew nothing about and to be honest am not a part of. This guy was a serious “sneakerhead” who told me he would stand in line at midnight and pay hundreds of dollars for new shoe models when they were released. Long story short the guy really liked my shoes, and that reenforced my decision. Save for a single pair of black shoes I keep around for work trips, all of my shoes are colorful and fun.

Today cool plus-sized t-shirts are not hard to find and my closet is filled with them, but I never quit buying fun shoes. Those red Nikes were probably the oldest ones in my closet and well over ten years old (closer to fifteen). Recently one of the soles collapsed and it now makes a popping noise every time I take a step, so it was time to retire them. I set them out to donate to Goodwill and was informed Morgan snatched them up before they made it out the door.

I just ordered a red and white pair of Adidas to replace them.

2023 was a year of change, a year of success, and a year of fun. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights!

In 2023 our family unit saw a couple of big changes. In January, after many months of no updates, Susan’s medical retirement from the FAA was abruptly approved. After more than 25 years of federal service, she was given 24 hours to remove her belongings and wrap up the dozens of projects she was overseeing. Once the shock wore off, Susan began pouring her newfound free time into lipedema awareness and her new shoe company, LegsLikeMine. Throughout the year Susan wrote and published several books, spoke at multiple conferences, and worked with designers to create lipedema-friendly shoes, which should go on sale in early 2024. It should surprise no one that Susan is busier than ever.

Also this year, Morgan graduated high school. This fall, Mason and Morgan moved out and into a duplex. Just like that, Susan and I became empty nesters. Our home is more quiet than it has been in 20 years. Even though the kids live only twenty minutes away, we are always excited when they stop by the house to visit.

And finally, our cat Noodle passed away this year. Noodle had a history of abuse and hid from us for a month when we first brought her home from the shelter, but she warmed up over time and was one of the sweetest cats we’ve owned. A year or two ago she had a seizure that affected her equilibrium but nothing else. After Noodle passed away, Carol (our other cat) became lethargic and bored which led to a new addition to the cat family, Bobbi McGee. Bobbi is all kitten and loves to play (I have the scratches to prove it).

In 2023, Susan and I both turned 50 years old. For my birthday, Susan rented two Airstream trailers located at a local drive-in and a bunch of our friends came out to watch a movie on I believe the hottest and most humid evening of the entire year. For Susan’s birthday, I asked my buddy Andy to help me build one of those oversized Adirondack chairs for the backyard, and boy did he deliver! Susan painted the 8′ tall chair bright red and it can be easily seen over our fence while driving past our neighborhood, and quite possibly from outer space. The chair sits poolside and has been a fun addition to our backyard compound. We have been in this house for five years now and if we ever move it will take some logistics to relocate the chair which weighs more than half a ton.

Last fall, Susan and I, along with our friends Jeff and Heather, took a cruise to Cozumel. We had so much fun visiting the pyramids of Uxmal, swimming in a private cenote, and visiting Mr. Sancho’s. Susan and I spent so much money at the casino that we were offered another free cruise, which we’ll be taking advantage of next year. Last summer, Susan attended a conference in Minnesota and the two of us spent a week there. Along with the Mall of America, we toured Paisley Park (Prince’s home/compound) and visited all kinds of crazy things, from the world’s largest candy store to the Spam Museum, the Pizza Hut Museum, and the Evel Knievel Museum. It was such a fun vacation. Also last summer, I attended Boatfest, a vintage/retro computer convention in West Virginia for the second year in a row. This year, my buddy Jeff went with me and the two of us rented a Class B motorhome for the trip. We had a great time and learned that, among other things, mattresses in Class B motorhomes aren’t very comfortable.

In October, Susan and I was invited back to serve as parade judges for our town’s local Czech Festival Parade. It is so much fun and such an honor to get to participate in the festival in this capacity. Susan and I got all dressed up and sat on a stage right in the middle of Main Street, judging all the parade floats.

In the spring of 2023, hail rained down on our cars and home. Morgan’s brand new car sustained more than $10,000 in hail damage, which took several months to prepare. My car also took substantial hail damage. All of the vehicles parked in our driveway had their windshields smashed by the hail. Because of the hail we had to have the roof on our home and my workshop replaced, along with many of the gutters and window screens. We spent a lot of the summer listening to contractors replace the roofs of all our neighbors.

In 2023 we lost several celebrities, but the ones that affected me the most were actor Paul “Pee-wee Herman” Reubens, musician Sinead O’Connor, and the world’s most infamous hacker, Kevin Mitnick, who I had the pleasure of meeting and communicating with many times over the years. Other notable celebrities who passed away included Monster of the Midway Dick Butkus, former Price is Right host Bob Barker, and one half of the Smothers Brothers, Tom “Slithery Dee” Smothers. Finally, I was terribly saddened this year to learn of the passing of my old dear friend, Josh Erichsen. Josh and I met in high school and was one of the original members of the Nasty Pirates. Josh was funny and smart and will be sorely missed.

Over the past year Susan and I continued to visit local casinos and for the first time I was able to track all of our casino activity (except what happened on the cruise — that’s for the best). In 2023, Susan and I visited local casinos a lucky 13 times. We spent a total of 22.25 hours in casinos. I spent $2,480 and won $4,517; Susan spent $1,745 and won $807, so there’s that. Combined, we spent $4,225 at casinos and won $5,324, for a total of $1,099 in profits. We also had a lot of fun, sometimes with friends and coworkers, ate a lot of Indian Tacos and drank a lot of free 4oz cups of Diet Dr. Pepper. All of the money we spent came from previous visits and so none of this actually cost us anything out of pocket. You can view the raw data right here.

And finally, along with all my podcasts and game streams, in 2023 I continued my deep dive into the “vanlife” community. I spent a lot of time and money working on my van and driving everyone around me crazy by talking about vans and vanlife. Under the moniker BigRobsVan, I wrote a bunch of blog entries, gained thousands of followers on Instagram, and created two dozen videos on YouTube. I try to keep my vanlife content separate from everything else, but if any of that interests you check out this page for links to all my BigRobsVan social media accounts and content. It’s not for everybody and that’s why I don’t push it here, but if you find videos of me freezing while sleeping in the parking lot of my local courthouse entertaining, you might want to check it out.

Thanks for following all of our adventures, whether it was on RobOHara.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube. Here’s to health and adventure in 2024!

For the past eight years I have been tracking every movie, documentary, and television show I’ve watched. I didn’t do as good of a job in 2023 of writing everything down as I have in past years, so I’ll need to be more mindful of doing that next year. The two categories of movies that rarely get captured are films I end up watching on television while flipping channels, and films I only partially watch. This list is more about movies I sat down to intentionally watch and not things I happened to catch, especially in regards to television shows. I regularly watch Jeopardy, still watch Saturday Night Live, and must have seen 30 episodes of Seinfeld, but none of those appear on the list. Tracking every single show I watch would be impossible. Another thing I’m kicking myself over is not writing a description following every single entry. Sometimes I have nothing to say at the time and leave that field blank, which makes it incredibly difficult to remember what some of these movies were months later. I’ll do better about that next year.

With those disclaimers, let’s get to 2023’s list.

MOVIES

In 2023 I watched 80 movies, the lowest number of films I’ve watched in several years. (In 2022 I watched 103 films, in 2021 I watched 155). In 2023 I did a lot of podcasting and video editing and other activities that took away from my movie watching time. That number of 80 films does not reflect all the movies I started watching before drifting off to sleep in bed, otherwise I would have to add 200 more to the list.

The first movie I watched in 2023 was the 1954 sci-fi classic, Gog, and the last one I watched was The Great Rupert from 1950. The fact that both of these films are from the 50s is coincidental. Including those, I watched a total of 11 films that were released before 1970, and I enjoyed all of them. The oldest film I watched and the only one from the 1930s was 1931’s The Champ. I watched a couple of older horror movies including Scared to Death (1946), Tarantula (1955), The Spider (1958), and Carnival of Souls (1962. I finally got Susan to watch To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) with me and I watched The Quiet Man for the first time. I should watch more older movies because all the ones I watched were pretty good.

This year I watched 22 films that were released in 2023 and I didn’t love most of them. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was a bit of a let down. Five Nights at Freddy’s was pretty bad. Scream VI was okay but was unnecessarily convoluted. Dungeons and Dragons was okay. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was okay. Gran Turismo was okay. Super Mario Bros. was okay. Cocaine Bear was fun. Probably the most interesting film from 2023 I watched was Asteroid City, which was so strange I watched it twice in the same evening just to make sure I understood everything.

Some of my favorite movies I watched for the first time last year were The Drowning Pool (1975), Hopscotch (1980), The Whale, and The Menu (2022). There were several others that I enjoyed but didn’t love, like Everything, Everywhere All At Once and Quiz Lady. The winner of last year’s “you gotta see this in the theater” award goes to 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick.

As always I ended up watching a few stinkers as well. A Town Full of Ghosts was a “found footage film” that would have been better left unfound. V/H/S/85 was a horror compilation of half-baked ideas. Close to the bottom of the barrel was was Fog City, which my dad and I have lots of fun discussing and picking apart. The absolutel worst movie I watched in 2023 was Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey. Absolutely dreaful; don’t (oh) bother.

According to my list I only watched five documentaries last year, which is a very low number for me. The most memorable ones were Muscles and Mayhem (the untold story of the American Gladiators) and Bob Ross: The Happy Painter. In 2022 I watched 23 documentaries, so this was a really low number for me this year. I just remembered that Susan and I watched Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields and then visited the Texas Killing Fields while on a road trip.

As always I did a pretty bad job of tracking movies I had previously seen, but a few of the ones I remembered to capture were most of the Friday the 13th and Scary Movie films, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Stripes, Super Fuzz, and National Lampoon’s European Vacation.

TELEVISION

In 2023 I watched a few seasons of television and Susan actually watched a few of them with me. The two of us watched all three seasons of Only Murders in the Building together and are looking forward to season four. We also watched Poker Face which was a fun show and I hope they make a second season.

I watched the third season of The Mandalorian and will keep watching the show even though the third season really lost its way. I watched the Muppet Show spin-off Muppets Mayhem which was really good. I heard it has since been cancelled, even though I assumed it was a one-and-done miniseries to begin with. I also watched the 2022 season of Unsolved Mysteries, which was very well done.

As I mention every year, I watched lots of televison episodes that I did not capture. I fell asleep almost every night watching old episodes of Unsolved Mysteries on Pluto.tv, and watched a lot of vintage episodes of The Price is Right and Jeopardy.

SUMMARY

A lot of the films I watched in 2023 were done while multitasking and working on the computer. Next year I’d like to use my movie room to it’s full capacity and start watching movies out there again. In 2022 I had a list of classic films I wanted to watch and saw almost none of them. In 2024 I’d like to be more intentional with what I watch and get through some of those classics I never watched.

Here is a link to the entire list.

Some years it feels like doing the same holiday traditions over and over we is just going through the motions. Other years, the familiarity of those annual traditions provides comfort. That was the case this year for me. Our traditional events include baking Christmas cookies for Santa a few days before Christmas, having family over for snacks on Christmas Eve, having my dad over to open gifts and cook waffles on Christmas morning, and going over to my mom’s for lunch on Christmas Day. We did all of those things this year and none of them felt like an obligation. Each gathering was enjoyable.

A couple of days before Christmas Eve, Susan’s mom, sister, neice, and her son Flynn came over to make cookies. I enjoy this tradition because I don’t bake the cookies or decorate the cookies, but somehow I am allowed to eat them. It’s the best!

A few days later on Christmas Eve our family came over for snacks. Susan made her first charcuterie board which I believe is a fancy term for “cheese and meat served on wood.” I don’t care what you call it, it was delicious! There were plenty of snacks and good conversation to go around.

After a few hours, everyone left and we settled into bed, waiting for Santa to come.

We’ve been having eggs, bacon, and waffles made by the same waffle iron every Christmas morning for just about as long as I can remember (except for the year we lost the waffle iron in a move!). This year was no exception and after opening gifts Susan began making breakfast and discovered the old waffle iron would not turn on. We were still able to have waffles using the replacement waffle iron we bought the year the old one went missing, and I’m deciding what I’m going to do with the old one. (I’m thinking about framing it.)

If there is one thing I will remember about this year’s gifts it’s how thoughtful and useful they all were. My inlaws all got me things for my van, my dad got me a tool I needed, and my mom got me some liquor which, after the holidays, I also need. Susan surprised me with several gifts, some I had mentioned and some I didn’t know I needed until I opened them. All the things I gifted Susan were things I gifted Susan were things I thought she would use and enjoy. Well, maybe not the Singing Pickle, but everything else.

It was also great to have the kids around the house for a couple of days. It is so quiet around here with them gone and having them back really changes the whole vibe of the house, especially around the holidays.

At the end of Christmas, Susan and I went to bed sometime around 10 p.m., a little early for Susan and really early for me. I’m off work the entire week so I’m looking forward to digging into some of my gifts, doing some deep cleaning, and recharging my batteries.

I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend. Merry Christmas to everyone, even these dumb cats.

In 2022 I bought one of those 12′ skeletons from Home Depot. Those skeletons are so tall and unwieldy that I had to call my buddy Jeff to come help me assemble it. We stood it up in front of my workshop facing the pool and strapped it to one of the porch’s support beams after a gentle wind blew the whole thing over. The skeleton is so tall that you can clearly see it over the fence when driving down the main road behind our neighborhood. I’m sure the neighbors were pleased. I left him standing the entire month of October, and after Halloween passed I wasn’t looking forward to disassembling him and realized the ceiling in my workshop is just tall enough for me to store the skeleton without taking it apart.

This is a great solution if you’re lazy and happen to have a workshop with 14-foot ceilings, but it took up way more space than you would think. The base is like 4’x4′, but his arms stick out and it was a pain to work around for an entire year. I decided that in 2023 after setting him out again for Halloween I would figure out a way to break him down and and store him.

That solution came in the form of a gigantic Christmas tree bag, which Susan and I found at a garage sale for $5. Home Depot sells a skeleton storage bag for around $40, so this was a much cheaper solution. Some people store them back in the original box which takes some serious Tetris skills, and the box is pretty large (many people buying the skeleton complained the box wouldn’t fit in their hatchbacks or SUVs). Whether they’re standing up or just a pile of disassembled bones, 12′ skeletons take up a lot of space.

In 2023, we did not leave the skeleton in the backyard like we did in 2022. Instead, we put him in the front yard — like, right in front of our porch. I secured him with some bungie cords and there he stood, all through Halloween. To say I wasn’t looking forward to disassembling the skeleton is an understatement. I procrastinated so long that he stood there all the way through November, too. Susan joked that she was going to put a pilgrim’s hat on his head and a giant turkey leg in his hand. If I lived in the middle of nowhere I would own a few of these things and I would leave them up year round (lots of people do). Unfortunately I live in a neighborhood with an HOA and while nobody ever said anything as I left a 12′ skeleton standing though Halloween, Thanksgiving, and into December, I felt like I was pushing my luck.

There are lots of videos explaining how to assemble these things and surprisingly almost none showing how to take them apart. I definitely could not have done this without Susan’s help (and gentle coaxing that got a little firmer with each month that passed). The easiest way to take these things apart is to lay them face down onto “something” (we used plastic saw horses) and start from there.

These skeletons are essentially made up of hollow bones that slide around a metal frame that snaps together. We labeled each bone and piece of metal tubing we removed in hopes that we’ll be able to reassemble him next year.

The bag we purchased was large and roomy and had enough room for everything except ol’ skelly’s head, which I wanted to set out in the workshop anyhow.

In real people ribcages are great for storing organs. This guy’s ribcage turned out to be a great place to store his arms and legs.

Everything came apart as planned. The only potential issue we encountered was when a single, slow, sleepy hornet crawled out from the skeleton to see what was going on. He was so cold and moving so slowly that Susan was able to detain him with a piece of duck tape. Sorry, buggo. We didn’t see any signs of a nest anywhere but there’s always the chance we may find a surprise in the spring.

As of now, skelly (who has multiple names at this point including Mr. Sprigs and Gerald, among others) is being stored in three parts. His head’s in my workshop and the metal base along with the red bag is in the garage. Hopefully all those things will find one another next fall and Skelly will live again.

I was off work last Friday and so Susan and I had planned a day trip to Tulsa. While getting ready that morning I hopped in the shower and noticed there was no hot water. In one of our older houses we owned a hot water heater with a pilot light that was constantly going out, although we haven’t had that problem in either of our last two houses. I got pretty good at relighting it and wasn’t too worried about restarting this one before we left for the day.

A few minutes later Susan discovered the real problem, which wasn’t the pilot light. Water was spraying out of the top of our hot water heater and spilling out into the garage. We turned off our water to the house and called our go to plumbers to come assess the situation. Obviously, our trip to Tulsa got cancelled and instead we spent the day staying near the house, waiting for the plumber to arrive.

Our house is five years old and also, we assumed, was our hot water heater. We learned our hot water heater came with a six-year warranty, but there is always the possibility that the home builder bought a stockpile of hot water heaters and had them sitting in storage for a while prior to using them. That didn’t turn out to be the case and the hot water heater was still under warranty. I got real excited about that until I learned that warranties like that are prorated. When they said the hot water heater was under warranty what I heard was “free,” but the process turned out to be pretty far from free. Really what it meant was that the replacement and installation only cost us a little over a thousand dollars instead of a little over two thousand dollars.

While inspecting our old hot water heater the plumber kept repeating, “I’ve never seen this happen before.” It appears the unit failed due to poor installation which, based on other issues we’ve had with this house, is not particularly surprising. The connections on top of the tank were not connected properly and there was evidence that the tank has been leaking for quite some time. Our next door neighbor told me his hot water heater failed after seven years. His house was also build by Four Corners, or as I jokingly refer to them, Four Cut Corners.

Things could have been worse. Back in the late 90s after Susan and I moved back from Spokane, we had the hot water tank in our house completely fail. The bottom of the tank rusted through, sending 30 gallons of water into both the garage and our bedroom, completely soaking the carpet and making a big mess.

In our current house, the plumber said there was evidence that our tank had been failing for quite some time. The tank sits inside a closet we never open on top of a large wooden platform, and so it’s possible the tank has been leaking water down into the area we never see. Once the seal had completely failed, it was much easier to see the water, which was running out onto our driveway.

While replacing the tank, our plumber showed us where the hot water cut off was inside the closet. Turning off water to the entire house was overkill, but it’s what we knew how to do.

A couple of hours and one fat check later and we were all set with our new hot water heater. We didn’t make it to Tulsa, but we did celebrate by taking warm baths and showers later that evening.

Getting a song stuck in my head drives me crazy. When I can’t remember where I know the song from, it drives me even more crazy. And when I can’t figure out the name or the song or who the artist is, it drives me absolutely bonkers!

I mostly watch television these days on my computer, either using DirecTV Stream or one of a few video streaming apps (like Pluto). These streaming solutions have commercials just like regular cable television, but they seem to have a smaller stable of commercials meaning I end up seeing the same ones over and over — sometimes even twice during the same commercial break!

One commercial I’ve seen dozens of times this month is this one advertising Hyundai’s 2023 Tucson. I’m not in the market for a car and normally a commercial like this would go in one ear and out the other, but the song used in this commercial is stuck in my brain!

“Hello blue skies, Country moonlight, Touch of sunshine… Come along for the ride, you’re mine… Take me with you, take me with you…”

I am not as up on pop music as I once was. The singer sounds a bit like Christina Aguilera to me, but maybe that’s just the production? It’s not the style of music I would typically seek out, but after seeing this commercial and hearing this song so many times, I felt compelled to track down the artist!

I went online and quickly learned that I was not the only person trying to track down information regarding this song. What’s odd is that each post I found trailed off without an answer. No one was able to identify the artist or even the name of the song. On page after page I found people trying to track down “that catchy song in that new car commercial.”

I was about to give up when I came across this thread on Reddit that appeared in their “NameThatSong” sub. A user named “ZigsMusic” was able to solve the mystery and shed some light on the elusive song.

It turns out Zigs, as she is known professionally, was the vocalist on the “song” — and I put the word song in quotes because, in fact, there is no song. The 30 second clip you hear in the commercial is all that was recorded. It wasn’t cut down from a complete song. The snippet that appears in the commercial is the song.

Zigs went on the share a link to some of her other music, which you can check out below. Hopefully she’s able to hitch her wagon to the commercial and get some exposure through it. It wouldn’t be the first time an unknown performer got a hit by appearing in a commercial. Good luck, Zigs!

For Halloween in 2002, when Mason was only ten months old, Susan and I dressed him up in a costume (Tigger, I think) and took him “trick-or-treating” at the homes of our friends and family. For the past twenty years our Halloweens have revolved around celebrating with one or both of our children. Now that the kids have moved out into their own place, Halloween felt a little… empty this year.

Susan spent two weeks of October being sick before finally passing her cold on to me. We’re feeling better now, but neither of us were feeling great during peak Halloween decorating season. As a result, we didn’t start pulling out decorations until roughly two hours before trick-or-treating was scheduled to begin. Our tubs of Halloween decorations out in the garage didn’t even get opened. The minute work ended I dragged my 12′ skeleton out from the workshop and set him up in the front yard. We raided my office for a few random skulls and rolled Mick Rib (my 6′ skeleton) out onto the front porch. This year I installed some LED rope lighting in Skelly’s rib cage which really made him pop once it got dark outside.

Earlier in the day, Susan went to Sam’s Club and spent $60 on three boxes of full-sized candy bars (Milky Way, Three Musketeers, Snickers, and Twix). We already had a bowl of candy and I wasn’t irritated but more confused as to why she would go buy more candy, but later she said she remembered how rare and exciting it was to receive a full-size candy bar on Halloween as a kid, and that she wanted to do the same thing for kids. When I was a kid, I received full-sized candy bars so rarely that I can remember the exact houses where I got them, so after she said that, I got it. In a way, it’s the same reason I wanted to set up my 12′ skeleton. Give the kids something to remember.

At 5pm the temperature was 37F, and it only got colder as the sun dropped. Susan and I spent the evening on the front porch listening to an unintentionally hilarious kid-friendly Halloween mix on Spotify. About halfway through the evening I dragged out one of our portable heaters and set it up next to us. With the fan on high and the heat cranked up, the heater was able to warm the surrounding air just enough to help us make it through the night.

I’d estimate we had about twenty groups of trick-or-treaters this year with a total of about thirty kids. In between groups, Susan texted the kids to see what they were doing and I scrolled through social media on my phone using my numb fingers. By the time 8:30pm rolled around (the official end of trick-or-treating here), we wasted no time in moving inside to warm up. Susan made me a mug of hot chocolate before running a warm bath for herself.

While we didn’t have a bad Halloween, we’re still kind of adjusting to this new reality that… it’s just us. Empty nest syndrome is real, folks.