Dream Journal : I Bought a Mall

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In fact, mall was really an understatement as my dream progressed!

It started with an incredibly large apartment – bigger than any house I’ve ever seen, to the point where I had a bunch of people come over to help me inspect the place and get settled. I had oddly discovered that one of the windows didn’t lock correctly, so I wanted to go over the entire place to see what else needed to be addressed, but as we wandered the rooms just kept going and going…

…also, apparently there was a mini-golf course outside, though that never actually got played!

Just outside the entrance to my apartment was a lounge that seemed quaint, but was also surprisingly large with several connected rooms each filled with a small number of patrons each. As I realized that this was now also mine, I was intrigued by the idea of walking around in the evenings as people drank and chatted the night away. I think there might’ve been some gambling involved, too?

At one point I remember sitting down at the bar and counseling a young waitress who was great at her job, eventually asking if she wanted the position of head maître d because the current person when I bought the place wasn’t working out.

The biggest surprise, however, was when my wandering led me to discover the full blown shopping mall that was also connected to the growing complex that was my new home! There was a huge computer store and tons of boutiques, a salon, and several larger stores, too. I was actually going to get a golf cart to help me get around the complex because it was so large, and I had an assistant who I would communicate with via radio for seemingly mundane things like turning down the AC in an area that was too cold.

It wasn’t until me and some friends were wandering around the computer store – which was more like a warehouse – that reality started to catch up with me and I began to wonder how in the world all of this only cost me $1,300 a month!

We ran for a while among all of the computers when we thought a security team was chasing us, but it wasn’t until I was back at home and waiting outside to meet somebody because the entrance was hard to find in all of it that an expensive, black car pulled up and the original owner appeared to explain that the purchase price had actually been $13 million a month, not $1,300.

Coronavirus, Day 425 – My Achy Achy Shot

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Color me vaccinated!

Well, I’ve had both of my shots, anyways, so about ten days from now I’ll be vaccinated … though it’s hard to tell in our world right now exactly what that really means…

My “COVID morale” over the last week or so has definitely taken a few hits on account of the following:

  • Florida’s Governor overriding every local government and suspending all COVID-related orders across the state.
  • Many counties following suit and admitting that they can’t enforce their own ordinances anymore. (my own county did this at the beginning of April)
  • Word on the street that theme parks are loosening their own restrictions.
  • A promise already that schools this fall will be in person and without masks.
  • …despite a not-zero number of kids who have caught this thing.

Seriously, almost 4 MILLION kids have gotten COVID?! And over 250 of them have died!

I get that we’re talking about BIG NUMBERS here and the averages are still quite low, but when so much of the rhetoric – especially from our governor – has been that, “COVID doesn’t affect kids at all – it’s a crime not to have these schools fully open!”

I think my big fear right now is that now that we’ve gotten a good number vaccinated (31% fully as of now, 40% has at least one dose), we’re going to see the counts stabilize just long enough to “get back to normal” and drop the rest of our restrictions, and then this summer we’ll see another wave because everyone who was going to get vaccinated will have done so, but not necessarily enough for us to truly achieve herd immunity. 

The truth of the matter is that the lower stats lately are really only good as compared to the previous peaks – averaging 50,000 new cases every single day, particularly when 20+% of them are apparently kids, isn’t exactly anything to cheer about…

One thing I will admit is that I’m starting to agree that COVID probably isn’t something that we’re ever going to truly be rid of – it’ll get down to a more manageable level and we’ll probably see it wrapped in with our flu shots – but it will never go away. The question is, to what level will the stats fall before we declare that “victory” and try to move on with our lives, particularly considering that some want us to have done so already???

I get that in the grand scheme of things, tens of thousands of people are both born and pass away every single day. Hell, even with all of that death, 220,000 new people were born today alone!

But I think it’s easy to discount life when you only look at death from such a high level overview. Were the 14,000 deaths from COVID today around the world not worth the rest of us taking precautions for because 26,000 people died of cancer or nearly 50,000 died of heart disease? I’ve seen a lot of people get into these weird arguments about personal responsibility and probability and not living their lives in fear, but mostly I think it comes down to whether you’re able to be compassionate for other people or you’re just seeing COVID as something standing in the way of you having a good time.

Also, while cancer and heart disease aren’t communicable diseases, how much COVID spreads is directly determined by what we do as a society, so I’ll be “curious” to see how the graphs change into the summer months across states and countries with varying vaccination rates.

Maybe I’ll be wrong and it’ll turn out that Michiganders should’ve been able to go fishing all along, but I doubt it.

P.S. I had originally meant to write this blog post about my reaction to my second shot, but then I kind of got off on another angle there! Regardless, my arm ached a bit, then I had some nausea and trouble sleeping overnight, and now two days later the ache is mostly gone and all that’s left is a bruise.

*shrug*

#HealthBlog, Post #3 – The Next 10 Pounds Are Always the Hardest…

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First and foremost, I suppose I need to accept some credit where credit is due because although a couple of weeks ago I wrote about my weight loss going kind of slow, in reality I ended up losing 10 pounds during the month of April!

*hold for applause*

I guess it’s tough because I know that in the past when I’ve tried to lose weight, I tend to lose a bunch of water weight right off the bat and it’s a nice little drop, however this time it really has been slow and steady for the most part, which I know is how it’s supposed to go anyways, but I digress.

I think I’m both excited and nervous about May because while I’m generally feeling good about the new choices that I’m making, it’s still a question mark as to what the long term impact will look like … not that two months is long term…

Part of it is really because in all of my various attempts over the years, I’ve only ever been able to lose maybe 20 – 30 pounds, and usually I’ve stalled out closer to the 15-pound mark.

And I know that I don’t necessarily have to lose another 10 pounds this month – again, it’s a journey, not a destination.

Maybe it’s just that I’ll feel better about saying that “I’m working on losing weight” again once I get past my previous points of failure. It’s not that it doesn’t count until I clear those previous hurdles, yet sometimes it kind of feels like it.

It reminds me of a bit from comedian Tom Segura I heard a while ago where he talks about imagining explaining to people how he’s lost all kinds of weight without actually having lost it yet … as in the classic, “It’s not a diet, it’s a lifestyle…” line and so forth.

I think because I’ve tried to do this so many times, it feels a little fake to celebrate these smaller milestones that I lost and then eventually gained back and then some. It actually makes me wish I had some sort of record that I could hold myself to as I progress to be able to say, “Now I’ve lost 25 pounds, and I weight what I used to weigh five years ago…” or something like that.

Or maybe I just need to stop thinking about it and go do something productive instead! 😛

Coronavirus, Day 416 – An Unofficial Survey About Masks

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So first of all, the good news – our local school district has announced that masks will be required in our kids’ schools for the rest of the school year!

Granted it’s only another month, but you may recall that this was a big issue earlier this month for me because my county dropped its mask mandate and the schools were contemplating theirs, as it hinged on a statewide order that is set to expire at the end of this week.

Now I don’t know what happened because our governor still hasn’t announced whether it will be extended or not, but apparently the schools decided they had more power than they thought and just decided to pull the trigger anyways. Maybe somebody figured that a lawsuit is going to take longer than the next month to get resolved anyways, so who cares?!

Well, I do, and I’m both happy and relieved by the result.

That said, this afternoon was also interesting on social media because after reading the announcement online, I shared it to our community’s Facebook group as no one else had done so yet and what followed turned into a rather interesting social experiment for me. I mean, I knew that there were going to be some negative reactions because it’s clear that not everybody is onboard with wearing masks.

But I’ve always wondered just how many were of that opinion because A) people who bitch online tend to be the loudest, and B) I’ve observed both good and bad days just going to our local Walmart at various times. If I go after the kids are in bed around 9pm, I’d say the vast majority of shoppers are wearing masks, but if I go around 10am after I drop David off at school, it’s far worse to the point where my trip last week was pretty uncomfortable.

So I’ve been watching both the reactions and the comments on this news post for a few hours now … or at least until an admin closed comments because some folks weren’t being very nice … and here are just a few unofficial observations that I’ve made about wearing masks, particularly children wearing them, in my local community…

Of those 194 reactions:

  • Like – 109
  • Love – 29
  • Caring – 3
  • Sad – 9
  • Angry – 44

In other words, 73% were positive and 27% were negative … which is both comforting and better than I was expecting.

Some choice comments…

  • One person was concerned about bullying – of people who weren’t wearing masks – because they believed people were already being bullied about not wanting to take the vaccine.
  • One person repeatedly shared a well-debunked link about masks not being effective.
  • A common retort was to “follow the science” as if to imply that science said that the pandemic was already over.
  • One lady actually did say that the pandemic was over because we have a vaccine and hospitals aren’t overwhelmed anymore.
  • Lots of complaints mentioned “not living their lives in fear.”
  • One person cited losing 53 people in their life to COVID, which is just really horrible.

Other random observations…

  • Of the 100 comments entered, the same people’s names kept coming up over and over … meaning that while it looked like this huge debate, the reality was at least a lot of the back and forth was a small handful of people responding with the same arguments.
  • A lot of stats were overstated on both sides – one person cited 20,000 new cases in Florida every day, whereas we’ve really been averaging about 6,000 cases a day. Another cited “classrooms of 60-80 kids” in close proximity, which is also clearly wrong!
  • One guy told me, “If the government told you eating shit sandwiches protected you against “covid”.. you’d be first in line.”
  • Another fun person had a banner on their profile picture that said, “I would rather shit in my hands and clap than take the shot.” But in a cute way because it used emojis for the poop and the vaccine!

So the good news is, my kids get to finish out the school year uninterrupted and we can worry about what happens next at the end of the summer when we’ve got a few more months, and hopefully more vaccines and far fewer daily cases and deaths to worry about.

On the other hand, some of these folks who don’t believe in the importance of wearing masks apparently also have a strange fascination with shit … which isn’t great for public health concerns in general if they also believe hand washing to be a waste of their time.

Life’s a Journey, Not a Destination…

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Admittedly my weight hasn’t really moved much since the last time I wrote – it went down a pound or two but then dipped back up – yet ultimately I’m still feeling pretty good.

This week I think it might’ve finally clicked what Aerosmith was trying to teach me back in the ’90s because of all the various goals that I’m currently working on for the next couple of months, I’m really trying to acknowledge not only the progress, but also the things I’m learning along the way…

For my diet and weight loss goal, I’m learning how to eat better and things that I can enjoy that are healthier for me than what I used to gorge myself on.

For my writing goals, I’m learning what things best influence my own productivity and which types of creative work are best suited for me.

For my day job goals, I’m learning about how to plan for the unexpected and making commitments that are both ambitious but still realistic at the same time.

And for my sleep goal, well, I’m learning that I really need to go to bed earlier if I ever want to succeed at this one!

On top of all that, I’m trying not to take for granted the simple notion that life really isn’t simple at all.

There are so many moving parts in my life right now and I’ve got a lot of different irons in the fire, so maybe when I didn’t excel with writing in a given week, it’s because I was more focused on weight loss or family stuff. You can’t run at 100% all of the time, and when you’ve got a bunch of different goals like I do, I think I need to accept that they’re going to move along at different intervals.

Which is important to understand because I know that being down on myself for “being unproductive” just devastates my work all the more – depression can be a bitch like that – so I’m much better off looking back and trying to focus on the positives, even if I have to dig a little for them, and then doing my best to learn from them as I move forward.

P.S. Fun Fact – The actual origin of the “Life’s a journey…” quote is believed to have been a religious text from about a hundred years ago!

#HealthBlog, Post #2

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So how’s it going?

I’ve been at my new diet now for a little over two weeks, and even though the pounds aren’t quite falling off the scale as quickly as I would like … best I can tell, I’m down about seven pounds, give or take … overall I think I’m adapting to these new changes pretty well.

I haven’t touched soda at all this month.

I’ve been drinking a lot more water.

I’ve been able to avoid the temptation to grab food while I’m out and about … which there are surprisingly more opportunities out there than I realized between grabbing lunch at Wawa when filling up gas or donuts with the kids after school on Fridays!

And it’s less tempting and more just frustrating now to go grocery shopping and walk past so many shelves of cookies and snacks and stuff that’s nothing but sugar – that looks delicious, yet I know is antithetical to my goal.

But I’ve been cooking more – eggs and ham for breakfast sometimes, or HelloFresh dinners. I even made jerk shrimp the other day which was incredibly spicy, but pretty good!

This week I had a couple of appointments with my doctors and the results were about neutral, which is good for me, so I’m really hoping that when I follow up this summer I can show some decent progress if I keep all of this up. I feel like I’m starting to get a good foundation in place – the next steps are simply keeping it up and maybe making a few small tweaks along the way.

I know for next week I really need to do better with sleep because this week I only averaged 5-6 hours a night when I’m shooting more for 7. Less sleep means more naps and ultimately less accomplished during the day, so that’s what I really want to focus on next.

book thoughts … Not All Fairytales Have Happy Endings

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I got this book from the kids for Christmas, but hadn’t started it yet because I honestly don’t have a lot of time to read and the few books that I have been going through lately have been audio books.

That said, I absolutely devoured this book!

I literally blew through it in five days because between the nostalgia factor and the intriguing insight from Sierra’s leader, I just couldn’t put it down. I was a huge Sierra fanboy back in the height of their fame, but only being a kid in high school and with the Internet only just beginning to grow, I had no idea of the business happenings taking place that ultimately led to my favorite game company’s untimely demise.

I think what I loved the most about this book, and what made it such an easy read, was that Ken’s writing really flows like an old friend telling a story. Grab your favorite drink and pull up a chair by the fire, and watch the hours just melt away strolling down memory lane with all sorts of great details that only the co-founder of the company could have to share.

Plus, he’s an earnest storyteller and has no problem admitting his own faults along the way, which is a refreshing perspective from a former CEO after now having spent a couple of decades in the corporate world myself…

It’s really amazing to read through the entire story and fully realize just how many products Sierra released – there’s a timeline at the back of the book that’s literally 12 pages long, listing every single one from 1979 through 1999! And I had a lot of them on my own shelves growing up, from the usual favorites like King’s Quest and Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry to more obscure titles like Rama and The Incredible Machine and even Mission: Asteroid that started it all for me before I even knew what Sierra was!

It was neat to read all of the insider stories behind these beloved games and the thought process for how Sierra grew to become the powerhouse that it once was. I’d like to think that if I wasn’t eight at the time, it would’ve been a really fun place for a guy like me to work. 😉

Always pushing the edge and never afraid to try new things, it’s hard to imagine a software shop today operating with the adventurous spirit that maybe comes from pioneering the genre of adventure games! It wasn’t until the bittersweet end that you saw that risk taking attitude and ambition give way to marketing projections and stock prices as the whole thing eventually came crumbling down.

By far I think my biggest takeaways from this book – what really made up the essence of Sierra – was their passion for making games and telling stories, and their commitment to quality, and how they set a standard that still today most don’t achieve of making the enjoyment of their customers the most important thing in their world.

To cobble together a few different quotes from Ken that embody this message…

“I wanted the customers to identify with the values of the company. Our reputation for quality and customer happiness were everything. We were running a giant fan club in which we listened to what customers want, found people who were passionate about it to build the product, and then delivered it to our friends (the customers).”

As someone who still hopes of running a creative company one day myself, there’s a lot to take away from Sierra’s story … and not just the part about selling it to a global conglomerate lead by a bunch of fraudsters! It’s so clear that for the 20 year journey of this icon, the people behind it were having the time of their lives. Sure, there were lots of ups and downs, but they explored lots of new avenues that nobody else had done before them, they prided themselves in creating vast, new worlds for other people to enjoy, and they built a brand around personal enjoyment during a time when personal computers were big and bulky and games were the last thing on the operators’ minds.

I can’t highly enough recommend this book for anyone else who grew up on Sierra’s legacy, and now I really want to find a computer that will still run some of these things to see if I can continue this fun trip down memory lane!

#HealthBlog, Version 2021

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For about the last week and a half, I’ve been trying to be more conscious about my health – specifically around what I’m eating and the amount of sleep that I’m getting at night. And some parts have been easier than others…

Sleep has always been a real struggle for me, even after I wrote about it a couple of months ago.

Ironically, last week I got several good nights of sleep in a row namely because our week got turned on end thanks to Sara having a multi-day training class at work and our other car not starting, resulting in me having to get up super early to drive her back and forth. There were days that I was in bed before 11pm, which sounds nuts but apparently that’s what it takes for me to get the 7-8 hours of sleep that I need when I have to get up before 8am the next day.

Regarding food, I’ve made some admittedly pretty big changes:

  • Swapped out soda for my Diet Snapple, which still has caffeine but is only 5 calories a glass.
  • Started actively tracking my water intake on my Fitbit, which has drastically increased the amount of water I’m drinking.
  • Avoiding pretty much all junk food … no chips, crackers, candy, etc…
  • No fast food. Sadly, this had gotten to be a big one and is probably, along with the soda, the driving factor in why I’ve gained weight lately.
  • Eating more fruits and vegetables, and having them readily available for snacks.
  • Making lighter meals like quesadillas, eggs, and rice-based dishes.
  • Trying to avoid bread … mostly in the form of oversized sub sandwiches that fit a day’s worth of calories into one meal…

It was very noticeable the other night when David and I went out in search of a dinosaur toy that he’s been longing for because while I grabbed food at Target for him to eat, I kept passing more and more things that normally I would’ve grabbed to snack on along the way but now I’m actively trying to avoid!

Chips, a candy bar, a slushy, or maybe something quick from the drive-thru – I guess I could’ve grabbed some fruit or carrot sticks or something, but instead I just waited and made up a plate of rice once I got home.

In the mornings, instead of grabbing a breakfast sandwich or a couple of donuts, I’ve been having a banana and some other fruit, or maybe a little yogurt … although I’m not crazy about yogurt.

The other day I actually took an extra ten minutes and cooked up a chicken breast to have over some rice for my lunch where normally I would’ve made a run to Wawa or ordered pizza instead!

I don’t want to muse about the past and future too much because I’ve already done that before, but so far it’s seeming to go pretty ok. I’ve had a couple of days that really hit me with grogginess mid-afternoon – I think on the nights when I got less sleep – but I had a cup of tea and the caffeine boost helped push me through.

As an aside, unlike how I was binging on soda, I’m not drinking nearly the equivalent of tea, so at least for now I think that’s a worthy substitute.

My goal for the next three months is to lose a meager 10 pounds, which I figure should be reasonable without putting too much stress on myself. I haven’t really thought about “cheat days” yet because I don’t want to tempt my susceptible tastebuds this early in the game, but I think instead of using them to binge on my old habits I’d like to explore some new things – maybe making pizzas at home or even more complex recipes.

I watched a video the other day for someone making keto-friendly peanut butter cups that didn’t look too hard, so we’ll see.

Will share some updates as things worthwhile present themselves, but right now I’m just content with the changes I’m making and I think that’s good enough for me.

Coronavirus, Day 396 – Land of Confusion

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Throughout this whole pandemic, I think one of the biggest things that we as a nation have fumbled on has been political cohesion between our various levels of government. Whether it was Trump shrugging the virus off and thinking it would just “magically go away when it got warmer – around Easter!” or local governments dueling over safety precautions, we’ve never really had the whole lot of them on one unified place to confront this thing together, and at least for me that’s been incredibly frustrating.

Case in point – kids wearing masks in school.

Right now they’re a requirement for all kids in public schools in my community, however soon they might not be…

This is because yesterday my county rescinded their local mask mandate, leaving it up to local businesses to require masks on their own whim.

Today our Superintendent of schools reported that masks could be made optional in schools by the end of April. He later clarified that although he thought they should remain in place for the rest of the school year, because we no longer have a local mask ordinance in place, the school district is relying on our governor’s emergency order for the State of Florida to require masks in our schools.

That order, unless the governor chooses to extend it, expires at the end of April.

…the same governor who’s been on a tirade for the last week about how vaccine passports will never happen in Florida, despite support of the cruise industry who he’s also desperate to see re-open again…

It’s just scary because all across our country, we’re seeing safety procedures entirely played out along partisan lines – red governments at all levels think COVID is a bunch of baloney and want to see “everything back to normal” while blue governments are trying to keep restrictions in place. And as a result, instead of coming together and agreeing on how to address the pandemic, we’re left fighting among ourselves – people who want mask rules in place vs those who don’t, vaccine supporters vs anti-vaxxers, etc, etc…

From day to day, everything swings very delicately in this balance and it’s incredibly frustrating both waiting to see where the next card falls and also trying to figure out what we’ll do if the next changes aren’t along the lines that we’re hoping for.

Dream Journal : Address Unknown

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Riding around town with some people, I randomly had the memory of a place where I used to live, but – for some reason – I just didn’t anymore.

Whether I had left abruptly or never finished moving in was unclear, but I remembered enough to drive us to the other side of town where this random apartment complex was found. I couldn’t remember the address itself, but I had what turned out to be a mailbox number, which surprisingly matched one of the keys on my keyring. When I opened it, the box was packed with mail – mostly junk mail – but a couple of pieces had my actual address including the apartment number, so we drove around until we located which of the two large buildings the unit was allegedly in…

Walking through the building was immediately impressive because it was as if the holiday season was in full swing, with decorations and performers everywhere! I’m talking dancers roaming the halls, a fancy lounge with a guy singing at a piano, lots of lights and trees and snow … the works. 

The apartments were intermixed within these public areas, and eventually we found an elegant flight of stairs which we took because I had remembered it being the first time that I’d lived on the second floor (which wasn’t actually true).

At one point I remarked to a friend who was with me that if I actually did live here, I’d better work from home because I’d never want to leave again!

Upstairs was even more extravagant – there was an ice skating rink and snowmen, elves and a place to meet Santa. I wandered away from the group I was with and started looking for Apartment #12 which was supposed to be mine, but when I got to those numbers the range skipped and there wasn’t a door marked with my number.

Instead, I saw a couple of random signs that everything I was seeing around me wasn’t quite real and that if I wanted to find #12, I had to go home.

Walking back to where all of the holiday action was, I knelt down and talked to some kids who gave me the impression that for some reason they saw me as part of the scene rather than myself. Soon someone in charge came by and ushered the group I was with “back to work” making toys, thinking that everyone was elves, however I was able to slip away to continue on with my search.

When I finally got back to my car, which was now more like a bus and much larger than when we had arrived, we counted up and realized that two people were still missing.

Those people were Barack Obama and George W. Bush.

I looked around and frantically searched for Obama while the area started looking more like a theme park than an apartment complex, but I had no luck. Eventually I went back to the car and waited as we saw streams of people suddenly leaving.

Suddenly someone opened the door to the car and ducked inside. It wasn’t either of the former presidents, however she said that she’d located Obama and I quickly followed her to his location where I found him hiding in a corner acting like a poor person – tin cup and all – which was apparently Presidential Protocol to keep people from mobbing him if he got separated from his group.

As I helped him back to the car, he immediately told me that he was fine and then I begrudgingly informed him that I had lost George, too.

Back in the car, everyone scrambled for a phone number either for him or someone who would be able to help, but the dream then faded away before I was able to find the other president or my mystery apartment.