Tetris and Life

Last week while chatting with friends, the topic of Tetris came up. I suggested they watch Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters, a 2011 documentary about the world’s best Tetris players. Discussion continued and to make a long story short, a bunch of middle-aged men scattered across the country are once again playing Tetris and comparing high scores. Most people know that Tetris was created in the Soviet Union by engineer Alexey Pajitnov. It took Pajitnov’s game four years to migrate to the United States. The first officially licensed version of Tetris, published by Spectrum Holobyte, appeared on US shelves… (read more)

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What I Watched and Read in 2021

Another year has passed, and as is tradition, I present to you a summary of the movies and television shows I watched in 2021. MOVIES In 2021 I watched 155 movies, the most I’ve watched since I began tracking back in 2016. The second highest number was 127 movies in 2017. The two factors that led to this increase in media consumption was having a dedicated movie room, and staying home due to COVID. Of those 155 films, 100 were movies and 55 were documentaries. The first movie I watched in 2021 was Wonder Woman 1984, and the last was… (read more)

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2021 Year End Summary

In 2020 I wrote the fewest amount of blog posts I’ve ever written since I began blogging more than two decades ago. In 2021 I wrote even less than that. When you stop leaving the house and going to work, it’s hard to find things to write about on a regular basis. The COVID-19 pandemic began in March of 2020, and we spent the majority of that year hunkered down in place. In March/April of 2021, Susan and I were able to get vaccinated, and the kids got their shots a couple of months after that. Being vaccinated while wearing… (read more)

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Christmas 2021

Around 4:30 this morning I rolled out of bed and tip-toed to the living room. Once there I unlocked the back door’s deadbolt, turning it slowly to ensure it would not make a sound. Before opening the door I pulled it toward me and then gently opened it to avoid making a sound. From the back of my workshop I retrieved a set of electronic drums we’ve been hiding from Mason, a custom lamp made out of a trombone that Susan found for Morgan, and a Bohemian lamp Susan had pointed out to me at a local antique mall that… (read more)

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Cozumel Cruise #3 (2021)

Susan and I had an amazing cruise to Alaska scheduled for for our 25th wedding anniversary in August of 2020… which happened to fall in the middle of a global pandemic. That cruise was cancelled, and some of those funds were used to reschedule a new cruise in the winter of 2021. Surely COVID would be gone by then, right? Right? Two weeks before the start of our cruise, the “Omicron” variant of COVID-19 exploded, and the day before our cruise was set to sail — literally as we were in the car, halfway to New Orleans — we received… (read more)

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Barber Loyalty

When I moved back to Oklahoma from Spokane in 1998, I started getting my hair cut at Headhunters Barbershop, located in Yukon. The two men who owned the place were retired veterans, and during most visits, at 30 years old, I was the youngest guy in the room. The guys would talk to customers and each other about the news, the weather, and whatever else was on their minds. Mason had his first haircut there. I got haircuts there every other month for five years until one of the owners passed away and the other retired. If they hadn’t closed… (read more)

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Coming and Going (the Pool Heater)

The construction of my workshop was estimated to take four months to complete. It took eight. We were told it would take three months to install our pool. It took six. So in October, when we were told by plumbers that our pool’s heater would be “ready to go” in 24 hours… you’ll have to forgive me for taking that estimate with a gain of salt. Our pool came with a heater, but installation did not include the price of running a line from our gas meter to the heater itself — that part was on us. My gas meter… (read more)

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Halloween’s Downs and Ups

I had a hard time getting into the Halloween spirit this year. I don’t leave the house or go to stores as often as I used to, so without all the visual cues like paper skeletons or orange and black decorations, the holiday just kind of snuck up on me. We didn’t set out any Halloween decorations this year or make a jack-o-lantern. I guess nobody was interested. With Mason away in college and Morgan being pulled in multiple directions by school, choir, band, and being a teenager in general, there really wasn’t anyone around to decorate for. There’s a… (read more)

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My #Vanlife Info Dump

A few weeks ago, as part of the Gabby Petito/Brian Laundrie news coverage, I was introduced to the term “vanlife,” which is typically preceded by a hashtag. I’ve spent the past two weeks diving down the #vanlife rabbit hole. Here is what I’ve learned. “Vanlife” is a lifestyle consisting of people who choose to live either part-time or fulltime in converted vans. Although each person has his or her own reasons for joining the #vanlife movement, most of these people do so by choice and enjoy road trips, travelling, nature, and seeing the country. For most members of the movement… (read more)

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The Latest Collectible… Monster Cereals?

When I was a kid, I ate cereal for breakfast almost every day. As far as I was concerned, the more sugar a cereal had, the better it was. I was a big fan of Cookie Crisp, and loved cereal with marshmallows like Lucky Charms. One of my favorite cereals was Count Chocula. It was full of sugar, it had marshmallows, and if you waited long enough, it turned your milk into chocolate milk. On top of all that, its mascot was a vampire. Count Chocula had it all. I never associated Count Chocula or General Mills’ other monster cereals… (read more)

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