David's Boring Blog

I am a bit of a bookworm. I am not as voracious a reader as I was in my youth. I blame this in part on a significant improvement in both the quality and quantity of escapes available to me as I get older. Once upon a time the engine of my imagination guided and fueled by a book was the best possible escape into another reality. Now, I can spend quality time adventuring from the Two Rivers to Shayol Ghul complete with the beautiful company of Egwene Al'vere with a few button presses on my TV. I have to say Amazon Prime is less wordy than Robert Jordan. May he rest in peace and satisfaction that his work has given him a form of immortality.  Last year as I began my replay of the Final Fantasy video game series (still waiting on FFVIPR as I write this) I started thinking about the number of hours of my life I have spent on video games, comic books, movies, tv shows, books, and how valuable was that time. I was a bit surprised in my reflections to decide that I do not regret any of tha

 Argh! I just tossed out another pot of potato soup. This is the third pot of potato soup that I have attempted that has failed completely by tasting of disgusting scorched mess. Silver lining of this go round is that I smelled the fail as I was bringing the potatoes to boil so I stopped, tasted, and threw out the pot before adding some of the more expensive ingredients. I also have a pound of crisp bacon to nibble on.  The ingredients I had to dispose of represent about $18. I have wasted more money on less noble pursuits than a failed lunch. It is irritating to not be able to bring off a recipe I have made successfully dozens of times. It is by far my best soup. It is one of the easier dishes I make and yields this nice pot that makes leftovers for several days. I like that.  I start the soup off by frying bacon. I typical fry up a pound of bacon since that is one package. I remove the bacon leaving the grease in the bottom of the pot. I decided to be smart this time around since thi

 I have had a challenging week. It has not been traumatic or even dramatic, but the stress level this week has been elevated in some expected and unexpected ways. Things sort of crescendoed Tuesday evening and rode out an unpleasant ominous rhythm on my soul throughout the day Wednesday. Pardon my very belabored poetic license there. You have to remember when reading this that I do enjoy hearing myself speak even when it is just narrating my blog posts in my own head. Writing about what stresses me out is tempting at times. I believe that played a big part in killing some of my old blogs. When things get too real and too personal the blogs stopped feeling like a somewhat cheeky narrative of the things I observe and feel about the world and started to feel like the bitter musings of a sad, sometimes lonely man. To compartmentalize, I do all my bitter diatribes within the confines of my journal which you can find at www.davidsjourn... No. I am kidding.  Monday evening I knew I was buildi

 In recent reading I stumbled across the idea of,"resetting the room." I believe it was in Atomic Habits . The basic concept is that before leaving a room you reset it to a state of prepared cleanliness. I imagine a living room full of books, movies, and comfortable places to sit.  Picture this: A person comes into this living room. They bring with them a cup of hot cocoa and a small plate of cookies. They sit down in their favorite chair. They pull a cookbook down from the book shelf to do some meal planning. They grab a notebook and pen along with a remotes for the TV, DVD players, and surround sound system.  Cookies are eaten. Cocoa is drank. Meals are planned. Notes are taken for grocery lists. Movies are watched. Music is listened to. Relaxation is achieved.  What happens next?  Well, if I were this person in my twenties then the room is left in that state. There is a 50% chance that includes leaving the plate and mug resting on the nearest to hand horizontal surface. Mo

 This latest round of sickness to run through the house has been awful. I am pretty sick of not being able to breathe without wheezing. I am tired of having to go through the disgusting process of clearing away drainage each morning. I am worn out on coughing, sneezing, and generally feeling fatigued and exhausted most of the time. I have been battling various degrees of this since the week of Christmas.  I surrendered a bit to it. Not being able to breathe well doesn't promote winding yourself with cardiovascular exerting exercises. I took a break from the exercises with the exception of a little sporadic pedalling, some archery which was as much for the fun of shooting, and some light weight lifting. I hate breaking my routines even more when they are having the desired impact.  I haven't completely wasted the time. I have been working my brain pretty heavily. I have researched a diet that I think I can make work for me. I am not going to say that I will love cutting things d

I spent about an hour pecking out a post on the conspiracy that big box stores (read that as Walmart and Amazon) and the automotive industry and using the pandemic to maximize profitability. I went on to point out that since our current state of affairs makes them much more money than the prepandeic status quo that they are utilizing their power and influence to impact political decisions and the media narrative to prolong the current state of affairs.   I wrote all of that with passionate and outrageous examples. I read over what I had written and decided I did not want to post it. The reasons for that are simple. While I think there are some efforts being made to prolong facets of the pandemic, I have no proof beyond pointing a finger at the companies getting more profitable. Since that is the function of all for profit businesses it is probably the only course that companies could be expected to take. I also felt like the post was an emotional call to action without giving any reaso

 Picture it, an idle Monday evening, I am reading through Just Tell Me What to Eat!  and starting to plan out what a healthy diet for steady weight loss is going to be. I am looking at breakfast options surprised at my carbohydrate choices and very pleased to see that Raisin Bran is an option. The catch is the recommended serving of Raisin Bran for breakfast is 1 cup of cereal with a 1/2 cup of skim milk. This is far from the brobdingnagian super bowls of cereal that I would like to have of a morning.  My thoughts stray to portion control.  I figure a cup of Raisin Bran is about the size of my upturned, cupped hand. I will find out later that I am not far from wrong, but my thoughts are not on that now. I am thinking about portioning out my Raisin Bran of a morning. I want this to be scientific. When I start my diet I want to be fully compliant. I want to have a plan. I want to have measures. I want a new measuring cups! This is the danger of modern shopping convenience at its finest.

 I have felt a bit stuck since mid- December. I really felt like getting through Christmas and starting the New Year would shake that feeling. It did not. I was surprised to find myself feeling just a stuck as 2022 began. I was even more surprised to figure out that a big part of the reason I felt stuck was Final Fantasy V.  I have been working my way through replaying the Final Fantasy series since the launch of the Pixel Remaster last August. I finished the first game in about a week. I spent a little more time on FF2 because I did not feel like I ever really invested time and energy into it. FFIII got a few weeks of my time. FFIV, one of my favorites of the series, felt very dumbed down and short with the Pixel Remaster. I finished FFIV in less than 25 hours of gameplay. Maybe that was the start of my disappointment. I have rationalized this feeling away quite a bit. At minimum my September 2021 replay of FFIV was my 6th or 7th run through the game since the original release. It mig

 I normally write my Monday blog posts on the Saturday or Sunday before. Likewise, I typically get the work done on the Thursday post Tuesday or Wednesday. Between feeling bad and a busy week at work that just has not happened this week. Here it is nearly 21:30 on Thursday night and I don't really have a lot to say here. The narrative voice in my head that normally smoothly dictates these posts to my fingers as they race across the keys trying to keep up is only giving one message. It is grumpily saying," Go to bed."  Once upon a time, I had a sticker on the back of my car which read," I do what the voices in my head tell me to do." That sticker felt quirky and a little rebellious back in the late 90s. It was probably just pathetic. Thinking back, I don't know that there was all that much going through my head. I did most of my plotting and planning with other anatomical systems which were probably getting superior blood flow. Then again my Mom would have be

 I am in the second day of 2022 as I write this and I am not optimistic about the direction the year has taken thus far. I am pretty careful to not actually be the cynical asshole that I played at being on the Printed Panel Podcast. That character rang super true because it is an aspect of my personality. I play misanthropic curmudgeon excessively well, but I do not enjoy being that guy and work hard to keep the doomsaying to a minimum.  Let's just take this year right from the start. It isn't quite 36 hours old as I am writing this so it shouldn't be too terrible a story to tell.  I am going to start late the night before. Set the scene in your mind. It is a dark, muggy east Tennessee night. The winds are howling outside my office window and fireworks and shots from various guns around the area are peppering the night with intermittent sharp reports. From my desk I can see out the window, but none of the flares from the pyrotechnics are showing across the cloudy sky that a