The Bloggy Blogface!

  Hello, you may remember me from posts about my hockey journey , the Quad City DJ's , and tweets that received the fewest interactions ever . I'm here to let you know that after my very long and probably necessary hiatus here, that I am back! I am back because a lot of things have happened. Namely, people in my life passed, and other social media I've been using have gone to shit. And so, here we are. Let's compile a rundown of events lately, shall we? THINGS THAT HAVE HAPPENED: Well, plenty! The last Bloggy Blog appears to be August 2021. Certainly feels like a long time ago. Perhaps in that time you got married, had a child, or won the lottery. Who knows! I certainly didn't do any of those things. Winning the lottery sure would have been nice, though.  I had to relocate for a little while. Maybe permanently? Who the hell knows anymore. I'm fresh out of ideas and patience with my life anymore.  I finally paid for professionals to cut my hair (see Bloggy Blog ...

      About twice a year, I put myself into some unnecessarily stressful situation. It is something that could be remedied fairly quickly, but I seem to much rather hem and haw over the logistics. And not just for one day, when the time comes I will do this for weeks on end, very much annoying those around me in the process.  I'm not sure why I go about it this way, but I do. I don't have to, you see. A sensible solution to something that isn't even a real problem could be made within minutes, and without needing an appointment, probably completed within the hour. Then I would come back to my little abode, stop with the indecisiveness, and get on with my life.  Obviously, what I am talking about is getting a haircut.  There's a couple of reasons why I put myself through such a useless self-imposed torture chamber. The first excuse is that I never know how to clearly state just what I want done to my hair. Growing up I would always just tell them to shave th...

  One of my neighbors seems to have multiple homes in the area. Sometimes during the day, I'll spot him pedaling up the street and around the corner, where he'll lean his bicycle against a wooden post in the small carport next door. I have never seen him enter this house, and in the evenings I never see the lights on. Behind the carport sits a white garage, where throughout the week he'll park that bike, open the garage and get to work. For the next few hours, all of the noises coming from the garage are the same ones I heard in high school shop classes a thousand years ago.  Around six in the evening, he'll close up the garage, hop back on the bike, and ride back to wherever he rests his head at night.  With his grey tousled hair and wiry frame, I like to think he retired here from a northern state somewhere. Maybe he's a Vietnam veteran, like my father. He seems to be pals with another similar-looking fellow across the street from his garage. They'll sit outsi...

Ever since I endured another rotation around the sun this month, I have been having trouble sleeping. In the beginning, I would toss and turn for hours, until my brain decided enough was enough. It was usually five or six in the morning until I finally zonked out, followed by twenty to thirty minutes here and there of dreams until I would wake up again. By about ten in the morning I would be sick of this pattern, and just begin my day.  Lately this pattern has shifted to the nighttime. I'm finding myself dozing off around ten or eleven at night, which apparently leads to waking up for good at around four-thirty or five in the morning. Whenever I find myself awake in both circumstances, I can't help but reach for my phone. I'll flip through some apps, over to some news aggregator sites (Farker since the mid 2000's. Look it up) then back to some of the same apps that haven't updated content because, well, it's five in the damn morning, and most people I follow the...

I think I can speak for just about everyone that 2020 can go get fucked. There is no need for any end of the year reviews for this colossal dumpster fire. 2020 is that pain in your leg you know exactly what it is but just let it fester. 2020 is that incoming phone call you know who it is but you'd rather not answer. It is that bug flying around inside the lampshade you just can't swat dead quick enough. It is that dryer you've been picking clean clothes for the next day out of for weeks on end. 2020 is that book on the nightstand someone gave you that you don't really feel like reading, but they keep asking you about it. 2020 is that monthly bill from that Fortune 500 company of the service you need but can't afford to pay. 2020 is that package marked FRAGILE but still got smushed into your mailbox. It is the garbage nobody else wants to bring to the curb. It is the knife that is now too dull to slice when you don't have a sharpener. It is the roommate eating al...

  My brief and illustrious hockey career started and ended in ninth grade gym class. Believe it or not, a public school in upstate New York somehow afforded twelve flimsy hockey sticks in its inventory, in addition to some makeshift goals made out of the finest vinyl netting and PVC pipes. Half of us donned blue pinnies that smelled of sweaty onions, then soon we were off to do the hockeying. And the puck? A plastic, hollow version of the real ones. Better safe than sorry.  Our gym teacher for this fifty-minute class was some barrel-chested redhead who I think was also one of the football coaches. We started with our usual warm up stretches and sit-ups, absolutely the best exercises for the upcoming absurdity at hand. The school building had two gymnasiums, and we were scheduled to use the more run-down one on the second floor. None of my gym classes announced what we would be doing beforehand, so it was sort of a fun surprise to see what we were about to get ourselves into on...

Thanks to quarantine, my exceptionally chiseled physique has fallen into such sad atrophy. Unscrewing jars with my left hand has now become a silly, yet challenging task. Twice in the last couple weeks I have managed to sprain A) a knee and B) an ankle while doing things I always do - getting into a car, and walking. Looking forward to falling in the shower.  And speaking of walking, the only appropriate time I can do it is very early in the morning. Sure, maybe seven or eight in the morning doesn't seem that bad to some, but it is to me. It's too damn early! And there's too many people, with their dogs and cats and chickens or whatever they're walking up and down these streets. So I have been "postponing" the walking, to later, or mostly not at all. My cardiologist (if I had one) would be proud. My local grocery store has been playing some corny, yet timely, overhead announcement lately. The last line she utters is  "we're all in this together."...