The 43

I've been off work all week, having taken PTO in between the holidays. We initially had hoped to visit my mom in Texas this week, but airfare proved to be too expensive, and with Omicron raging, not traveling right now is probably for the best. I've mostly been uninspired all week, and it's felt good -- I need an extended break, and used only four PTO days (and I have a bunch to spare) to get a 10-day respite. I did want do something non-lazy this week, and Lori wasn't going to mind if I got both boys out of the house. We had such a video game Christmas that a little road trip to Clearfield and Ogden to look for used video games seemed like a good adventure for a Thursday. Snow wasn't expected until the evening, and we left at about 12:30 and headed north on Interstate 15. We were in the HOV lane just south of Layton Parkway when Ben heard something from the underneath the car. I heard it, too, but figured it was just a piece of ice that had been encrusted on the ca...

(I may have blogged about this previous Christmas before, but I'm not in the mood to look and see if I did. Stories are allowed to be retold ...) When Lori and I moved to Madison in 1995, it was the farthest I had lived from Chicago in my life. While in Milwaukee, I made it home for Christmas every year. My first two years at Marquette, I lived in the dorms, which closed for the break anyway, but after that the trip back was a bus or train ride or a 90-minute drive.  Madison not only added an extra hour to the trip (without any easy alternate transportation options), but also a funky work schedule. Although I worked for an afternoon newspaper, on holidays, we were a morning paper and had to produce the section the night before. With a small staff, if I worked Christmas Eve night, we couldn't leave for Chicago until the morning. Then, I would need to be back for the early-morning shift on Dec. 26. In 1995, that was the case -- I worked really late on Christmas Eve (Lori and I ex...

The NFL is in Week 14, which means there's not much left to the regular season and Christmas is coming up. Seemingly every September, I watch Week 1 games, with its accompanying highlights and enthusiasm, and think to myself, "There's so many weeks of this left." Inevitably, I get to this part of the season and am surprised it went so quickly. This isn't a recent phenomenon -- I've felt this since the 1980s, then watched it amplify once I began working as a sports journalist. December football isn't just about the passage of time -- it has a distinct vibe compared with the rest of the season. With college football mostly over (except for the bowl games), the NFL invades Saturdays with one or two games on a couple Saturdays during the month. I can remember times out Christmas shopping or out and about for the holiday and settling in somewhere for lunch and watching a Saturday NFL game. Furthermore, the NFL regular season is such a fall occurrence that in De...

That's the summer! Work has been so busy that I don't even know where the last eight days went. I vowed not to work over the holiday weekend and ended up putting in hours every day. Today was especially a blur of "I know I worked all day and into the evening, but what did I actually do?" The end of August and beginning of September is always like this with my job, and I need to better account for that next summer by ensuring I still do summer things as the days wind down. The last days did have their moments. Ben and I walked the dog to get a sno-cone, only to discover the shack had already been disassembled for the summer. We instead bought ice cream at Walgreens and admired the sunset from a lawn next to Parley's way. I went to the pool Monday on my own and lounged for a few hours. The water felt good, and the safety breaks (no kids) were extra long, so relaxing was easy. I also jumped off the diving board for the last times in 2021. I ran Sunday and Monday morn...

The smoke is back, and it sucks. Summer is going out with a bit of a whimper, as being outside doesn't even feel appealing. That said, I'm not in a hurry for it to end. The last five days have been uneventful -- and over the weekend, that wasn't a bad thing. I skipped going to the pool because it just seemed like work and I didn't feel like lying out in the haze. Michael and I went up to a video game store in Layton on Saturday, right after Lori and I went to lunch in the Chinatown Supermarket complex in South Salt Lake. (There isn't a real Chinatown here but a kind of shopping center of Asian businesses that we're just now discovering.) I'm still antsy and anxious about work. I'm hoping the long weekend ahead helps. My goal is to try enjoying these last days of summer without exerting too much effort.

Following each of my first two years of college, I returned to Chicago and spent the summer at home. I worked full-time doing custodial and maintenance work for a small suburban school district, helping clean the schools and prepare them for the next term. When I wasn't working, I hung out with my high school friends, partied on the weekends, watched MTV, played a lot of Nintendo, and both eagerly looked forward to returning to school and wishing the summer wouldn't zip by so quickly. "You should be drinking more, Joe, instead of taking pictures of us!" By the spring of 1991, I was already working at one of Milwaukee's daily newspapers part-time. The  lease for my next apartment would begin June 1, and I wasn't particularly excited about trying to find someone to sublet my spot. The decision was easy: I would stay in Milwaukee for the summer and not go home. As I think about it, college students get only three summers (maybe four if you were on the five-year ...

The first three workdays of the week have been so busy, and I find myself not being able to adequately wind down. And I'm still not totally at peace with something, which is probably amplifying the lack of wind-down. I entered this evening in a bad mood (after Monday and Tuesday were good days) and then discovered the fantasy football draft started an hour earlier than what the email had told me (damn ESPN didn't account for the time change). That said, the weather has been nice, although we have some lightning tonight and I think we might get some rain. And yesterday, Michael and I did a quick jaunt to a used video game store where I found a copy of Pitfall -- lacking a label, but the store gave it to me for free because both of us bought games.  Maybe running in the morning will help my mood. Some thunder just rumbled as I sit outside, and the rain is starting to fall but it's not sure if it wants to pour or subside. The patter is soothing, though.