The Month That Was - March 2022

I spent an inordinate amount of time doing taxes this year.  Mostly because I moved my main investment account and I ended up having to track down two sets of 1099s.  Also, I use H&R Block's online service for self-preparation and filing and they've "improved" their interface to make it much harder to use.  One thing I am grateful for is my background in accounting and finance (and also software) that allows me to prepare and file my own taxes.  I also do my brother's and, on occasion, friends who need a hand.  It saves me, and them, a fair amount of money.

The transition to Spring brings with it a lot of measuring what's coming for the rest of the year. More below.  I made a weekend trip to Houston where I attended the annual Houston Rodeo which is a capital "T" thing.  Also more below.  

I did not get back to my manuscript but my plan is one last proofread then the mechanics of pushing it to Kindle begin.  That also means I'll be cluing you in on it soon.  FWIW, I would call it esoteric and unlike anything I've written before.

[House and Home] Rites of Spring

[Travel] My First Rodeo

[Good Links] Links from the Mitten

[House and Home] Rites of Spring

While I am certainly ready to be done with Winter, as I always am at this point, I will miss the excuse it gives me not to do anything.  With warmer weather on the way, I am now obliged to get things done.

Yard work.  I need a fair amount of yard work done including a couple of small landscaping projects.  I'm hoping my current landscapers will come through -- I have called already in an attempt to get on their schedule -- as last year they barely had the manpower to keep my lawn mowed.

More importantly…

Wrapping up the house.  It's time for me to sell my house.  Actually it will be in three years or so.  I am 61.  I was almost forced into retirement last year, but in a stunning turn of events I was granted more responsibility and money in my day job.  This was very good for me.  I needed a few more years to pad my retirement savings.  Still, it is undeniable that I have limited lifespan (at work).  When that day comes I am Florida-bound.  The plan is to live down in FL, hopefully near the Gulf, and vacation up north during the hottest months.  That means the house goes on the market.  (Per Zillow, I should make a solid profit.)

That also means somehow disposing of 12 years of accumulated junk.  I have had a long term house guest for nearly five years now and that is ending sometime in the Fall.  That will be my trigger to start clearing things out.  I believe the best thing for me to do is get one of those dumpsters that you fill up and they haul away.

Also with that there comes the question of whether to do any renovations.  The kitchen is hopelessly dated and the appliances are on their last legs.  The master bathroom is worse.  The window blinds are falling apart.  All this stuff has been on my list to fix for ages.  Now with a sale coming, does it make sense to even do them?  Probably not.  Real estate people will tell you that renovations are never recouped in sale price. Still, I have to live there for a few more years.  

Part and parcel with that is finding a retirement home.  That search has been ongoing, but I'm still not comfortable with making a commitment.  That is almost certainly the wrong way to look at it financially.  Housing isn't going to get any cheaper.  I should commit now and sell at a likely profit if I change my mind down the road.  But a home is more than a house.  I really don't want to spend my waning years moving around like I did when I was in college.  I really hope where I settle for retirement is the end of it.

Given all this, sell-everything-I-own-and-get-a-one-room-shack-on-the-beach sounds awfully appealing right about now

[Travel] My First Rodeo

This month's adventure was the Houston Rodeo.  Long story short -- it had highs and lows, but it was never boring.

The rodeo proper is a lot of fun, much more than I expected.  It's not just a rodeo.  It's really a rural themed festival.  There are amusement park rides, dozens of food trucks, a shopping expo, a livestock show, live entertainment, and so on.  The traditional rodeo events are much more interesting than I thought they would be and they keep it well paced, almost rhythmic.  Every minute or so some combination of bovine, equine, and human fly out of a gate and perform some explosive act, complete with commentary and big screen replays.  It's all rather fun.  

Once the rodeo proper is over, the stage is given over to a musical act -- usually, but not always -- a country singer.  In our case it was Brad Paisley.  Honestly, I couldn't name a Brad Paisley song, although he is quite renowned and famous, and not just in country circles; he was a judge on a couple of those American Idol-type shows and pops up on TV now and then.  My observation is that he is quite a good guitarist.  His music sounds to my ignorant ear like pretty solid mainstream country hit music, which is to say it could be called traditional old-school rock-and-roll run through a twang filter.  The sound system was notably awful though -- muddy and distorted.

Post-concert we hit the food trucks which, this being Houston, were heavy on the BBQ and Tex-Mex.  Following this a sweep through the market/livestock area where you seemingly could buy anything from simple homemade crafts to high end John Deeres.

All-in-all it was a fun time and I wouldn't hesitate to go again.  However…

Getting in and getting out was a gauntlet of hardship.  In an attempt to save money we commuted to a tram station and took a tram to the NRG Stadium (home of the Houston Texans NFL franchise).  I think since the start of the pandemic, this is the only time I have ever felt truly "at risk." We were literally packed like sardines, crushed together as bad as anything you've seen in those videos of rush hour in Japan.  There were signs around saying "masks required" but virtually no one had one on.  I lean to the skeptical side about masks and am generally sanguine in interpersonal interactions, but this was the paradigmatic superspreader event -- people packed tight amidst poor ventilation.  And people had been taking rides like this many times a day for the entire two weeks of the rodeo.  For context, average daily attendance is well over 100k, and the day we were there was about 180k.  Nearly 2.5 million people attend the rodeo over its duration.  I suppose the fact that there was no outbreak is pretty much verification that the pandemic is over.

Getting home was even more desperate.  The line to get back on the tram was beyond ludicrous, so we decided to order a Lyft, effectively negating any money we saved by taking the tram in to begin with.  Except the pick up spot for ride-share was close to a full mile walk & shuttle ride away and only achieved by sorting through conflicting sets of directions from various "helpful" people.  Then, once the Lyft was ordered the driver requested that we leave the designated pick up area and meet her across the street because the designated area was so backed up with cars and cabs that she would have never gotten through.  So we scampered across a city street to some BBQ restaurant where we finally got picked up and driven back to the parking structure where we left the car. At the structure, the signs told us to pay in the office before leaving but it was so late the office was closed, as were the elevators, so we got to trudge up to the fourth floor and hope the kiosk at the exit was working (it was).  All in all, it took two hours to cover the 20 minute drive home.

But like all hassles, it fades away in memory and the good stuff remains.  Like I said, I wouldn't hesitate to go to the rodeo again, but I will gladly pay through the nose for the most convenient parking there is.

[Good Links] Links from the Mitten

Michigan oriented links.  All of these are downers.  I'm going to have to do a balancing post about all the amazing stuff there is here. Si Quæris Peninsulam Amœnam Circumspice.

• 10 Weird Things Found at the Bottom of the Great Lakes.

• A documentary about Detroit’s faded Boblo Island. I vaguely remember a childhood trip or two to Boblo. It decayed and degraded like all of Detroit.

• Evidently Michigan is where you do not want to own a home.

• You would think now that pot is legal in Michigan the Hash Bash would no longer be needed.  Nope.  It's so important to people to pound their chests in righteous protest that they continue to do it after they win.

• Speaking of which, the dominoes continue to fall in the race to legalizing psychedelics.

• A whole slew of TV shows set, at least in part, in Michigan.  It consists of Freaks and Geeks (top notch), a couple of mediocre comedy series, and a ton of forgettable (if you ever heard of them to begin with) shows that hoped to get some sort of atmosphere or identity with Michigan, and especially Detroit, references.  Apart from F&G, a sad list.

The Month That Was - February 2022

Another month in the depth of winter. My only travel this month was to the frigid plains of Nebraska, but I hope to remedy that with a trip to warmer climes soon.  Winters can start out quite lovely.  A gentle blanket of snow can be picturesque.  There is football and hockey to watch.  No yard work staring you in the face. The cold can be bracing -- to a point.  The problem is that by the time February rolls around, the sun is gone, the Super Bowl is over, the white frosting of snow becomes a muddy gray, the wind will sear your ears, the road salt covers your car, and you'd do anything not have to bundle up for every outdoor activity.

Still, I've seen enough winters to know that it will end and I will survive and perhaps, one day, I'll spend a year without a winter.

There was also good news.  One mild day I was actually able to run 5k on my arthritic toe without too much pain.  I finished what I hope will be the last editing session on my next novel (although I have said that before).  I got to see some new friends and jostle with some highly energetic children.

I'm still above ground and as long as every month brings new engagement with the world, I'll count my blessings.

[Movies] Flick Check: No Time to Die

[Movies] Flick Check: The French Dispatch

[Books] Farewell P.J. 

[Tech, Cars] Stuff Status

[TV] Toob Notes: Reacher

[Movies] Flick Check: No Time to Die

Well, it appears that the intent of this is that James Bond is over. It's been 60 years since Dr. No so it's probably for the best.  The franchise has been quite a rollercoaster of quality.  Unexpectedly, the very best movies-as-movies happened in the final incarnation (Skyfall, Casino Royale) although the best portrayal and aesthetic remains The Connery.  Their cultural relevance dwindled long, long ago, and the attempt to rejigger the films as standard actioners never really panned out until the Daniel Craig ones I mentioned as the best.  The symbolism of Bond has been reviled and worshiped, often simultaneously.  And it all leads up to No Time to Die it seems.

Bluntly put, No Time to Die is not a good movie. Craig doesn't seem to know if he wants to play Bond or some sort of Chris Pratt character. The entire movie is a pastiche of Bond tropes.  The daffy, skin-showing, bond-girl who turns out to be an effective agent, the Q-armored Aston Martin, Bond as a rogue agent, a villainous madman bent on world domination from an island lair. Even the core personal story follows the plot of On Her Majesty's Secret Service right down to the "All the Time in the World" meme.

So, yeah, it's just as well that it ends. There really is no purpose to this franchise anymore.  Mission Impossible does everything better in this specific sub-genre and as for action films in general, Mad Max: Fury Road, any Avengers film, or even the Fast and Furious franchise, will put it to shame.

Personally, I would love to see them reboot Bond stories set back in the '60s.  Same aesthetic, same morality (or amorality); done seriously, like Mad Men was.  To quote Never Say Never Again, "I hope were in for some gratuitous sex and violence."

Since everyone else is going to do it, here are my thoughts on essential Bond films:

• Casino Royale and Skyfall are the best quality movies.  They are top notch action films that stand up well.  Many will also offer Pierce Brosnan's Goldeneye for quality and I will not gainsay them.

• Dr. No, From Russia With Love, and Goldfinger constitute the core of when The Connery burned bright and the cultural icon was made.

• Roger Moore had a couple of decent outings with Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun, but camp had long overtaken the franchise by then.

• The only campy one I really enjoyed was You Only Live Twice, which mashes up Bond and chopsocky and cranks the blatant sexism to 11.  Lousy as a movie, but it makes me grin.

• Timothy Dalton I barely remember.

• Pierce Brosnan got to do some great sequences but to my mind none of his were strong end-to-end.

• The most beautiful bond girls are not in the main canon, to be honest.  For that you must go to a Casino Royale parody from the '60s, which starred David Niven as Bond, Peter Sellers as Fake Bond, and Woody Allen as his little brother Jimmy Bond.  The movie was inane and incoherent, but the girls -- and there were many -- were ridiculously beautiful in that way women were in the 60s and are not today.

[Movies] Flick Check: The French Dispatch

I found this movie delightful.  It is the most Wes Anderson of Wes Anderson movies.  Effectively a paean to the halcyon days of the New Yorker under William Shawn it doubles as a love letter to the written word, the literary written word.  I love movies like Wes Anderson makes, and to a lesser extent the Coens, that are forthrightly self-conscious about their storytelling.  In a sense, there is no need to suspend disbelief here because belief in the film as representative of reality is never intended.  

Another thing I love about it is how it is all done in the service of the personal.  Love, grief, loneliness, resentment, aspiration, family -- the motivations of the characters are almost exclusively personal.  One particular section that is set during the Paris student uprisings in the 60s seems to explicitly belittle any political notions. The acting is as wonderful as you would expert given the hi-end cast.  A stand-out among stand-outs being Jeffery Wright as Roebuck Wright.

The audience that appreciates humanity and the written word over socio-political motivation and basic exposition is dwindling fast.  We have to be grateful for every breath of fresh air we get. I hesitate to recommend this movie to anyone. The vast majority of people would find it merely curious, or worse: boring.  Most movies are positioned for the largest audience possible. The French Dispatch is positioned for me.

[Books] Farewell P.J.

The best line from Matt Labash's obituary for P.J. O'Rourke: "Good writers make you want to read, Great writers make you want to write."  P.J. O'Rourke made me want to write. He had one keen eye inherited from Tom Wolfe, and one gimlet eye inherited from Hunter Thompson. But he didn't eviscerate his targets like Wolfe or stink bomb them like Thompson.  He simply laughed at them. No -- scratch that. He laughed with them. However ridiculous his targets came out, he never suggested that he was any better, in fact he often targeted the man in the mirror.  He once pointed out that Hunter Thompson schtick was being a crazy guy looking at normalcy.  His schtick was being a normal guy facing all the crazy.  As a result, no matter how incisive and biting his critique, you had to love him.  In the end, this made his words all the more powerful.  It was a remarkable thing to see.

Me taking up writing back then was me saying "I want to be able to do that."  I am comparatively weak sauce, but I like to think my first three books were absolutely in that vein.  You can get a feel for how much he influenced me by searching the early days of this blog (largely greater than 15 years ago) for all the references to him.

I'm lucky to have lived during his tenure on Earth, and hope he's found all the good bars in Heaven.

[Tech, Cars] Stuff Status

I got a new phone.  The old Moto G6 was beginning to show signs of failure, it was out of storage space, and it had become slower than dial-up to get anything done over wi-fi. I should have retired it earlier.

My frugal, "you don't need that" upbringing prevents me from buying a flagship phone, although I desperately lust after a Z Fold.  I take pains to limit the amount of Apple and Google in my life, or at least bias myself against adding any more, so I skipped iPhones and Pixels even though, in the strictest sense, they would have been #1 and #2 respectively in a purely practical decision.

In the end, I settled on a superseded, sub-flagship phone: the Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G. Essentially, it's the flagship phone circa 2020. It is a revelation in comparison to ye Olde Moto.  I was surprised to find I actually had 5G service in most places. (I was under the impression that 5G was still in slow roll out and rare beyond key cities). It's fast enough that I have to remind myself to check for wifi wherever I go…yes, I still don't have an unlimited plan. 

It's a sweet phone.  Recommended.  Mine is a lovely shade of red so I had to spring for a clear Otterbox to show it off.

Next, I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't time to get into the car market.  I know prices are through the roof, but hear me out.  My Acura has been occasionally frustrating, but mostly astonishing. 

In its life it has left me stranded twice.  The first time was an Electronic Power Steering failure.  I had purchased an extended warranty so it didn't cost me anything but the tow to the dealer.  Interestingly, this turned out to be such an issue with my model that Acrua extended the manufacturer's warranty to cover it.  The second time it seems some water got into the battery and froze it -- if you know anything about modern cars, you know everything is dependent on the electrical system, even brakes and transmission, so a dead battery is a dead car.  Had I known it was the battery I could have replaced it myself, but there was no telling and frankly, if your electrical system is down, you'll be lucky to get your car out of Park.

Still, whenever I drive it I am impressed with its overall excellence.  It has 135k miles and it is as tight and rattle-free as when I bought it 7 years ago. The engine is strong and responsive.  I gather it is the same engine you could find in a V-6 Accord, but slightly more displacement and a more aggressive tuning.  It's a real joy -- smooth and powerful and refined at all times.  Handling and steering and dead on precise.  Honestly, I think a skilled driver (not me) could really do amazing things with it. It is utterly rock solid and wonderful to drive. But…

The user interface is waaay out of date.  No Android auto.  Navigation and phone interfaces from 20 years ago.  It gets good mileage; mid-twenties overall, but requires premium fuel (I just filled the tank at $4+/gal).  It is not particularly roomy, certainly less roomy than my old Camrys, and low on storage.  Bags for three travelers at most, anything more and someone will have a bag on their lap. Trips to Lowes are nearly pointless.

Frankly, I think if I had Android Auto I would readily accept the other issues. At the moment the key is that with prices up where they are, I will likely never get as much money for a trade-in.  Anything new will be correspondingly expensive to buy but there is an alternative I'm twirling around in my brain.  

Suppose I was to do a one-pay lease.  A one-pay lease is where you lease a car, but you pay the entire lease up front.  You save on your lease this way because you get out of all the interest payments baked into it.  You should still pay less than an outright purchase and you can gamble that when it comes time to turn in in 2 or 3 years cars will be more plentiful and available and prices may have come down to reasonable levels.

I haven't pulled the trigger yet but I am pursuing this line of thought.

The last piece of stuff I need to replace is my laptop.  Keys are starting to fail, there is power supply weirdness, and bluetooth has become dubious.  I have no thoughts on this at the moment other than the Surfaces look appealing, so I guess I'll spare you a third rant in this post.  Lucky you.  For now.

[TV] Toob Notes: Reacher

Reacher was not especially coherent or particularly well done, although I did enjoy it in a time-wasting sort of way.  More significant to me is that it seems like a validation of something I said a few months ago.  Specifically, the medium of TV, which reigned artistically supreme at the outset of this century, has regressed 50 years.  We are back in the '70s with game shows galore, cheesy soaps about corrupt business people, and instead of bad sci-fi we have bad fantasy.  Reacher is the dramatic equivalent of loner private-eyes who take no prisoners in the name of personal justice. Kind of a hyper-violent mash-up of Mannix and Then Came Bronson. And like most of those old shows, dramatically it's crap.  If there is a positive side, at least it's not woke. We once had The Sopranos, The Wire, and Deadwood all at the same time. Now "at least it's not woke" makes the cut. Season 2 should come next year.

The Month That Was - January 2022

The latest symptom of mortality.  I have arthritis.  Hallux rigidus, to be exact.  It has kept me from running for a few months and quite possibly will continue to do so forever.  There are treatments so I guess we'll see.  And the fact is that as long as I don't overdo it and can deal with pain, I should be able to resume some running, at least a few miles.  To quote the great philosopher Dalton, "Pain don't hurt."

Also under the heading Getting Old, below there is a write up on The Villages based on a recent retirement investigation visit.  I'm beginning to realize that the reason old people always talk about how old they are is because that's what dominates your life after a certain point.

I shall resist the urge to wallow in my agedness with all my might so...Happy New Year(?)

[Travel] The Villages

[Roaring 20s] Round-up

[TV] Cobra Kai

[Travel] The Villages

Having, above, promised not to wallow in my agedness, let me update you on my latest adventure looking at retirement properties.  I spent three nights in The Villages.  Exploring the community and hoping for some winter warmth.

For those who have never heard of it, The Villages is an enormous retirement community just shy of an hour north of Orlando.  When I say enormous I mean nearly 130,000 in population (depending on your source), five and a half square miles.  Probably 15 times bigger than my current home of Dexter, MI, approaching the size of the nearest significant city to me, Ann Arbor.  Other cities of comparable size are Pasadena, CA or Waco, TX.  Except The Villages is all retirees.

Well, almost all.  They have a couple of areas where under 55s are allowed to live, mostly in an effort to maintain a labor base for the needed services.  And just because you're over 55 doesn't mean you're retired -- work-from-home to the rescue. But the bulk of the population is seeking The Good Life on the back nine, so to speak.

So what is the big deal about a huge pile of oldsters?  Well for starters it's one of the fastest growing cities in the country.  They can't build more homes fast enough.  For another, there is very little crime, for somewhat obvious reasons.  Oldsters generally don't go around mugging and vandalizing each other.  Oh there is some, mostly domestics, DUIs, and spillover from the surrounding areas.  And there was at least one case of an illegal drug operation/golf cart chop shop.  But you can feel very comfortable walking around anytime night or day without fear (other than drunken golf cart drivers).

One point of pride for Villagers is that everything in the city can be accessed via golf cart. Now, it would be a long golf cart ride from one end of the city to another, but there are three -- soon to be four -- central commercial areas loaded with shops and restaurants that are easily accessible via golf cart.  Each neighborhood has multiple rec centers with pools and activities, each group of neighborhoods has a regional rec center that is even more impressive.  There are in excess of 100 pools of varying accessibility throughout the city.  In fact, if there is one thing Villagers really, really love about the Villages it is how much there is to do.  Pretty much any sort of activity you can think of is available, and probably has a club around it.  Here is an event calendar if you are curious.  I have not found a club for weightlifting yet, but there are clubs and clubs and clubs.  The bias for activity is pervasive. My real estate guide suggested that pickleball is huge as is pool volleyball, with archery coming on strong. The guy who rented me a golf cart couldn't wait to tell me about his fitness routine and his golf habits.  

The best salespeople seemed to be the existing residents.  On more than one occasion we were greeted with "Welcome to paradise."  In my travels I have occasionally encountered people who live in The Villages and I have never heard anything but enthusiasm. A few notes, before I get to the negatives.

• There were recent semi-comical news stories about a breakout of STDs in The Villages.  That was fake news.

• The Villages are a big enough force for employment that when, at one point, they were planning on reducing the speed of their expansion, the State of Florida stepped in and made concessions (tax breaks) so they could keep going.

• They needle Disney by calling The Villages the real happiest place on Earth.

• It is one of the few places in the world where Polo (horse, not water) is popular.

• I forgot to mention golf.  Probably because I don't golf.  But there are 48 golf courses, including 10 "Championship Level", whatever that means.

• The Villages runs its own charter school for children of employees -- 99% graduation rate, 93% enter college.

So what's not to like?

Interestingly, the housing is not all that impressive.  The house designs are straightforward mostly, with extreme premiums for certain locations that give you nice views or privacy.  On the whole the houses are very close together and fencing is controlled so your option for not having your neighbor keep an eye on your activities on your lanai is a hedgerow of some kind.  I should note that housing is not exclusively, or even majorly, high-end.  Small bungalows abound and there are even apartment-style condos.  All the neighborhoods have a mix of housing, so it's not like there is a rich area and a poor area.  Still, I have seen much more appealing housing options in other places.

Location is another point of concern.  It is realistically an hour to get to any sizable city outside the bubble; that would be Ocala to the north and Orlando to the south.  The upside is almost everything you could need is available in The Villages so you hope you don't need to make a run to the big city too often. If you are struggling with a specific health issue, though, location could be the deal-breaker.

Along the same lines, either coast, Gulf or Atlantic is a couple of hours away.  A day trip. In my image of retirement I am near the beach, but most people who retire to a beach town will tell you they hardly ever go to the beach.  (The joke in Florida is that no one on the beach is from Florida.)  So as far as that goes, I have to explore whether my image is realistic.

My final analysis is that The Villages really could be paradise…for extroverts.  An extrovert here will always have new people to talk to, always have something to do, and be able to feel completely safe and secure in engaging that way.  But what about us introverts?  Will I be able to sit quietly by the pool and read a book, or will I be forced to discuss matters of the day with the woman who takes the chair next to me?  Will I be able to focus on my workout or will some guy step off the elliptical and regale me with stories of his osteopathic adventures?  Will I be able to hide myself away from that block party, or will folks be ringing my doorbell to remind me to come out and meet all my neighbors?  Can I sit quietly at the bar with a bourbon or will I have to make small talk about pickleball?  To someone like me, The Villages can seem a little…intense.

Still, The Villages is a great and unique place and, I say this sincerely, a tremendous accomplishment of human engineering.  No less impressive than Disney or, say, the Vegas Strip.  An awful lot of people are choosing to live the life that is offered there and while it's easy to scoff at popular trends, very often everyone is doing it for a reason.  I don't know if I will actually end up in The Villages, but I suspect if I do, I won't be disappointed.

[Roaring 20s] Round-up

Since we haven't revisited this topic in a while, some notes:

Brain implants.  Thoughts to text.  Sight to the blind.  Thoughts to text is getting stuff out of a closed brain.  Sight to the blind is putting stuff in.  I have been one of the belittling majority on the Metaverse.  But if you happen to have a brain that won't let stuff out or in (or both), getting the Metaverse injected in your brain could bring astonishing relief and meaning to your existence.

Free power.  The combination of astonishing progress in renewable energy sources (which I have been skeptical of for years, but am I on the verge of yielding) along with advances in battery storage means the cost of energy will continue to drop and may even approach zero.  Probably not in my life, but maybe millennials will see it.  This is not an unmitigated blessing.  It would provide us with the ability to reshape the world in ways we can barely imagine. But, like the atom bomb, it would also make it very easy to destroy ourselves.  Also, it will be wasted if it's just used so the masses can exit the job market and play video games in the metaverse all day.  It will only be of use if we have a strong culture of building and creation.

Web3. Have you heard of it? It is effectively a catch-all word to cover the possibilities of crypto/blockchain technologies in the world.  I have been trying to follow it for a while and I barely understand it.  I feel like I should involve myself in it in some way just to keep up with where everyday life might be soon.  Still I think I have a vague idea of where they are going with this, at least in the crypto arena.  Short description that I may expand on in the future:  They are attempting to treat fiat money as a feature, not a bug.  Our current monetary system amounts to an act of faith that everybody will continue to agree that our currency has value.  Most folks see this as a problem, as a risk, as something make-shift.  The Web3 guys think, no, it's perfectly human to have faith in that which will benefit you to to have faith in, and we can leverage that for Dogecoins and Bored Apes and such.  I have no idea if they are correct.  I have no idea if I am correct about their intentions, for that matter.  Here's a primer if you can make sense of it.

We are only in year 2 of the decade.

[TV] Cobra Kai

Yes, I am late to this party, but the Cobra Kai Netflix series is just about perfect popcorn TV.  Ralph Macchio and William Zabka do a terrific job with adult versions of their Karate Kid characters and I'm sure it wasn't easy to bring them to life without descending into camp or cliche.  We usually celebrate transcendent performances from actors, but we should also take time to appreciate it when they just hit the perfect balance for a role that could so easily be screwed up.

The episodes are only a half hour-ish so the writers have to make the most of it. And they do.  In the first season (all I've seen so far) there are really no wasted scenes, no padded dialogue, no extended exposition.  The whole crew manages to hit exactly the right tone -- underlying serious plot covered with wit and irony.  The cinematic dark arts of pacing and tone are 100% on point.

Lastly, I love that they are not afraid to have characters behave in politically incorrect, completely un-woke ways, and not turn around and crush them with poetic justice. They still get to be human beings. Johnny Lawrence calls kids horrible names, bullies them, treats them in ways you could probably get arrested for, but he is not portrayed as a force of pure evil and some of the kids even respond positively.  A rare pro thick-skin-and-resilience message.  In the end, all of the characters are finding their way between acquiescence to the world and going too far to control it.

I called it popcorn TV, but it really is better than that. It's not throw-away entertainment, there is real quality and craftsmanship here.  Looking forward to more seasons and hoping they keep the quality high.

The Month That Was - December 2021

2021 was a rough one.  I have a couple of nagging injuries that, in a frightening preview of the future, have not been healing.  I nearly lost my job.  I got Covid (more below).  Still, every time I feel myself yielding to sorrow I acknowledge that I have it better than most, perhaps even WAY better than most.  I don't need to count my blessings, they are always evident.

I find New Year's resolutions silly, but I do like to renew the two rules I try to live by:

1. Enhance and enrich the lives of the people I care about.

2. Fight sloth (the Deadly Sin, not the adorable forest creature).

If I can do those two things well, everything else is gravy.

[Covid19] Covid For Everyone

[TV] Binge Monkey

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[Covid19] Covid for Everyone

So, yeah, I got Covid.  Delta variant I believe.  It truly kicked my ass.  It was as sick as I ever remember being in my life.  That said, I never felt like I was in mortal danger or considered going to the hospital.  But, at its peak, it did keep me in bed for three days straight and kept me near bed for a couple days on either side of that.  As I write this, perhaps three weeks from my first symptoms, I still have a bit of a cough and my endurance hasn't yet recovered.  Here is the full timeline; more than you want to know probably:

11/28 - It feels like I might be getting a cold.

11/29 - Yep, definitely feels like I'm developing a chest cold.

11/30 - Um, this is getting bad; I should get a Covid test just in case.  I stop at several pharmacies and none have a rapid test available.  I snag a quick drive-thru lab test appointment at CVS, wait in the drive thru line for 45 minutes, get to the window and they no longer have my appointment and won't give me a test.  I am done with CVS forever.  I make an appointment at Rite-Aid for the next day.

12/1 - OK this is bad, I'm coughing incessantly and I have the sorest throat in recorded history.  I made a few short, futile attempts at doing work (from home) and got to Rite-Aid for my test.  Otherwise bed-bound.

12/2 - This is awful. It's Covid, I just know it.  A couple more futile attempts at work, but I'm pretty sure this is not a bad cold and, since I had my flu shot, it's probably not the common flu.  Even without my results, I'm pretty sure it's Covid.

12/3 - Is there any way I can be unconscious until this is over?  I don't even make an attempt at work.  I sleep as much as possible.  Going through cough drops at an alarming rate.  Acetaminophen and Naproxen are my best friends.  Finally, at 6pm on Friday, I get the email verifying that I have Covid.  Duh.  I consider contacting my primary to see if I can get the monoclonal antibody treatment, but my primary won't be around until Monday.  I consider calling urgent care, but I am not in a high risk group and they will tell me to keep taking OTC stuff and let them know if it gets worse.  

12/4 - Worse?  How could it be worse?  Well, the fact is that, yes, it could be.  It's awful, but in truth I am nowhere near death's door and I'm breathing pretty freely.  I write off seeking treatment.  Suck it up buttercup.  It's Saturday.  And my third day bedridden.  If there's no improvement by Monday I will call my primary.

12/5 - I'm hungry.  I'm actually hungry.  This is great!  I eat some soup, which I realize may be the first thing I have eaten in over 48 hours.  The soup tastes like a pound of salt has been dumped in it.  Some people lose their sense of smell or taste and others (like me) experience everything tasting like salt. Cough and sore throat are still with me, but I have the strength to actually get out of bed and watch an hour or two of TV.

12/6 - I think I'm going to survive. I still can't work a full day.  I'm weak and fatigued. But, from this point on each day is an incremental improvement.

As I write this I guess I am in what might be called the long tail.  Coming up on three weeks since my first symptoms.  I am back to working full days and light workouts at the gym.  I have a minor cough that doesn't affect me other than to possibly scare people (when in fact I may be one of the safest people in the world to be near at the moment). My quarantine is over, and I am flush with antibodies.  The process has made me terribly jealous of those who have mild or no symptoms and deeply sympathetic for those who are in mortal peril.  

If you're curious about my status, I was vaxxed.  Regular readers know that I was vaxxed as part of the Astra-Zeneca clinical trial when they were trying to get approval by the FDA, a thing they appear to have given up on.  My second shot was 10 months before my infection.  To my knowledge Astra-Zeneca has never issued guidance on boosters. A week or so before I contracted Covid, the folks who are running my part of the clinical study (Michigan Medicine) finally just threw up their hands and said to go get the Pfizer booster, I just hadn't gotten around to it yet.  So for those of you obsessed with the vax, I can think of three possibilities.

1. The vax did me no good.  I got full on Covid anyway.

2. The vax worked for a while, but eventually wore off and I was too slow in getting a booster.

3. The vax worked because were I not vaxxed I would really have been at death's door.

I have no idea which of these is correct, although I suspect (2).  In any event, I'm going to live with my natural immunity for two or three months, then I'll probably go for a booster.

In terms of Covid response gripes, I have 2:

1. We really need more rapid tests.  I understand in the UK they give them directly to households for free.  Here I couldn't even buy one.  This would have saved me a couple of days of wondering and may even have permitted me to get some treatment.

2. Treatment should not require extra steps.  If you get a positive Covid test, the prescription for treatment should come along with it.  No trying to track down your doctor and explain yourself and beg and have to prove how bad off you are.  "Here's your positive test and here's your treatment," should be the goal. (I understand production of treatments may not be ramped up enough to do this yet.)

Sorry, but I can't resist further rumination.  The latest expectation on Omicron is that it is much more contagious, more resistant to our current vaccines, but significantly less deadly than previous strains.  Also interestingly, I read somewhere that it follows a pattern of how the 1914-18 Spanish flu subsided. Newer, less deadly strains began to dominate eventually leading us down the road to where we are now -- most everyone can handle the flu, or respond well to treatment, and an annual vax for high risk or anyone else who wants it is available.

It's beginning to look to me like that's where we are going to land in a couple of years with Covid.  I stand by my original prediction from more that a year ago, which is eventually, we will all get Covid.  It will just be in a form we can handle for the most part.  That suggests we should stop over-emphasizing masks and travel limits and start focusing on ramping up treatments and having a regular vaccine available, perhaps even a combined flu/covid vaccine. 

Anyway, I really don't want to deep dive back into the state of Covid like I did when I was doing a monthly update.  I'm just weary of it and am confident that, over time, it will sort itself out and not be a concern anymore. 

Related: A variant-proof vaccine is getting closer.  This could be another huge step forward.