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The dog needs a longish walk every day, even with her within five months of turning 11. For more than a decade, a good percentage of those walks occurred at night. The mornings and afternoons were busy with work and kids, and finding an uninterrupted 30-60 minutes proved a challenge. So, after Lori mostly retired for the night and the boys were off doing their things (and, earlier in the 2010s, after they went to bed), or after we completed whatever evening activities the boys had, I would get Popcorn out for her walk. Of course, winter expands the night so that even an earlier walk is likely in the dark. That's why early-evening walks in April and May are so nice -- we can get out at 7 p.m. and still have sunlight.  For years, I guess I never really minded the night-time walks. But as I've grown older, the late excursions have felt more and more unappealing. Although some of this surely is a craving for sunlight during winter -- and the loneliness winter nights tend to evoke w...

We've just passed about two weeks without snow in Salt Lake City. December was snowy after November was anything but wintry, but now, most of the snow has melted, an inversion has set in, and there's no precipitation forecast until Friday while highs hover in the low 40s. Not that I mind that much ... Yeah, I've come to despise winter, even the relatively mild Salt Lake City winters that don't quite compare to January in the Midwest. This is our 22nd winter here, and though we've dealt with inversions since we arrived, the winters seem tamer and tamer as the years have gone by. Winter storms are fewer, and the snow melts quicker when it does hit. That's not so bad for me, but not so good for reservoirs and ski resorts. That said, I think I strained my back after shoveling following the last winter storm, when we got about seven inches of snow. Earlier in December we got hit with about 14 inches. These are pretty significant snow events for here, given the droug...

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.