D-Ray Kenobi

And Zathras I am so sorry to hear that.  I lost my grandpa a few months ago, I understand a part of what you may be feeling right now.  Emotions are like waves in times like this, ride them out and lean on someone if you feel like any wave is too heavy for you.

Something positive I learned from the few therapy sessions that did help is that sometimes it's the deeply rooted things from long ago that often come back to bite you.

In my case, it's been a few things.  Feeling inadequate and always having to keep up in unhealthy ways to feel worthy when I was a kid, and then dealing with loyalty and abandonment issues when my parents split around a decade ago.  Whenever I feel like I'm having to compete for attention or whenever I feel like someone has ditched me, those feelings get dug up from deep inside mental storage.

Being able to recognize that those things have been dug up sometimes helps in kind of classifying them and putting them back into storage.  You'll never really get rid of those things fully, but being able to take a step back objectively and define them helps to keep it from spiraling or soaking into other parts of your life.

Best movie I've seen all year.  Maybe in the last few years.  It's one of those kinds of things that requires a lot of work of the audience and a repeat viewing or two.

I wasn't prepared to love a movie that included mom's cum rag, but here we are I guess.

• Pretty much everyone in our circle is fully vaccinated now, so from a "doing things perspective," the pandemic is over for us.  We're already making up for lost time and have gone to theme parks, ballgames, concerts and things like that.
   
• Work is going really well.  I got promoted to a new role again about a month ago and I get to work on some more mission-related stuff so that's pretty cool.
   
• A few months ago, I bit the bullet and treated myself to a Tesla Model 3.  I'd driven my old car for twelve years, this was always my dream car, and I found an insane deal on a used 2018 model.  So I figured why not, I love it.
   
• We're doing a road trip through New Orleans and Austin in a month and a half, I'm excited to visit there again.  I haven't been since I went to SXSW ten years ago and I am dying to get some BBQ.  Also if things go well and borders reopen, we're going back to Thailand in February.

I worry about what I won't do before I die, not necessarily how I'll die.

I didn't think it was bad, I just think that it kind of turned into paint-by-numbers Marvel in most aspects.

There were some solid action set-pieces, possibly some of the best there's ever been in the MCU.  That chase scene in the first episode and that truck fight were amazing.  Also, they really had some good thesis ideas for dealing with a lot of important topics.  But it felt like they weren't bold enough to say anything about those topics, and were more interested in being a standard MCU four-quadrant crowd pleaser.  At the end of episode two, I thought this was going to be something really special.  But a few more episodes in, it just felt like a lot of bland filler to get Sam into the suit.

After WandaVision, I kind of expected it to be more fresh or have something more to say.  In the alternate universe where Falcon and Winter Soldier came first, I might have felt differently.  But the first real MCU TV show set up big expectations for me that Falcon and Winter Soldier didn't meet very well.

Considering how much I liked WandaVision, and how much the tail end of Falcon and Winter Soldier flopped, I'm really looking forward to this.

I've dealt with this kind of stuff for forever.

Most of it stems from a lousy childhood.  Home was fine enough at the time, but I was in a really terrible school situation up until the ninth grade.  The place I went to was kind of a magnet school for all the kids that got expelled everywhere else, so it was a combination of them and the biggest overachievers ever.  Add that to the fact that kids that age are just ***holes in general, and it was a perfect storm of mental torture.  Years of that warps your brain into having the worst conceptions of yourself.  When my parents split right after I moved out of the house, it kind of locked in a lot of things psychologically for me.  I thought for years I at least had a good home life, but it was tough to not see it as some sort of facade after the fact.

These days, I should feel confident because I'm lucky to be in a pretty good spot.  But often times I don't feel that confidence.  I often don't feel like I'm good looking enough, that I'm slowly aging out of relevance, often have some sort of imposter syndrome going on, or any other vague range of insecurities.  Just when you start to feel good about yourself, you remember some past incident or past voice that has a compelling reason as to why you shouldn't.  I've gone to many therapists over the years which have sometimes given me odd ways of trying to retrain my brain on some of this stuff.  It helps to a degree, but I think I've come to conclude that even the most trendy therapeutic methods can only do so much when you had so many things happen as a young person.  Some scars just don't go away, no matter how much makeup you put on it.

It takes continual work, and sometimes it takes a little convincing yourself.  It's work that never really ends either.

 

I don't pop into Nightly these days as much as I probably should, so here's what I've been doing.

Trips - We're going to do a road trip to New Orleans and Austin in a few months, basically just to take advantage of COVID basically being over.  I haven't been to Austin in ten years so I'm excited to be back for some BBQ and the Alamo Drafthouse.  We're also keeping an eye on how Thailand's vaccinations are going, hoping we can go back there for two weeks in January or February.  Also, we *might* go to LA for the next Star Wars Celebration in May.

Hobbies - With Captain Trips coming to a close, live music is happening again.  Just when I thought I was out, they're pulling me back in.  I've already been involved with a little with helping to plan events at Bonnaroo, I might be a guest host on Sirius XM in a month or two, and my entire life has led up to me getting to see my favorite band Tame Impala on my birthday this September.

Work - I got another promotion and am working on a few more mission-specific things lately.  SLS finished Green Run Testing so things are starting to look really real for the Artemis program.  In theory, the first uncrewed mission goes up this November, and I've started to be on a few calls about processes for what IT needs to do ahead of launches.  I love my job, it's blast to even have a small hand in this stuff.

A lot of good stuff is going on, and I'm so glad karma has evened things out from last year's garbage.  My grandpa passed away, another long time friend passed shortly after having a baby, my wife lost her job, my beloved cat of ten years passed away, all sorts of awful stuff.  But she got a cool new job and stuff is going great now.

My wife and I did a weekend trip for our fifteenth anniversary this past weekend, so that was pretty cool.

I had a buddy ask what it takes to keep it going for a while, and honestly I don't even know.  Disagreements and fights happen, and if anybody says that two married people are always on the same page with everything that's just a lie. 

If anything, I think there's just an awareness in the back of our mind that things always level out.  We might have it out and not be able to stand one another on one day, but then probably be cackling and inseparable two weeks straight after that.  The only thing I can think of that I actively do is always have something to look forward to, whether it be some trip we're planning or project we're working on.  That way, even if you go through a rough patch, you still know you have something fun together to look forward to.

Pedro also just made a big splash by making a big show of support for his trans sister.

The world isn't always black and white.

Funny, this just popped up on one of the local news sites this morning.

https://whnt.com/news/huntsville/madison-county-home-values-increase-36-in-four-years/

I don't see it crashing anytime soon.  The main reason it did back in 2008 was because of predatory lending and finance market inventions that largely don't exist anymore.  For the most part, people can afford the houses they're buying and their mortgages aren't tied up in securities anymore.

Even in the last year, supply just seems to be far below demand in most towns.  Places that used to be cow pastures in my area just a year ago are now spiraling mazes of suburbia.  I think eventually it'll change over to a buyer's market when Gen Z can't afford houses or doesn't care about owning a house, but that's going to be a little while longer.

Artists of any medium being involved socially and politically is in no way a new thing.  They just have a bigger megaphone for it in recent years.

I personally feel as if anyone has a right to speak their mind to a reasonable extent.  Blowback is just kind of natural selection for those that take it too far.  

We've been dipping our toes into the idea of getting our next place, we've been in our relatively small house for around thirteen years now.  (Funny how the last year changed things pretty drastically.)

I was shocked at how much the market has changed in what was once a really affordable area.  A house that would have went for around $130K just a few years ago is now pushing $200K.  That's mostly in areas that's within city limits and a quick drive to the government installation or downtown, but it's certainly a harbinger of things to come.  I'm still looking for places outside of town that we might like, but I'm also looking at ways to build onto or improve our existing place.

We've had some ups and downs in the last year too.

My wife got let go from her job of almost fifteen years back around May.   Museum attendance plummeted, and attendance for their camps basically went to zero overnight.  It sucks, but she'd in theory be one of the first back if things ever pick back up enough.  I don't think anyone is counting on that though.

I've heard firsthand from her how tough it is.  For the places that have money to hire, it's definitely a buyer's market because there are so many mid-career professionals looking for work who got cut this last year.  Some remote work is available, but when you work in PR for an organization like she did, you really have to be on the ground to really make it work.

In good news though, we've both made it through a few rounds in the process for civil servant jobs at KSC in Florida.  I basically just applied this time around to get my name in the hat for when things really pick up in the upcoming years.  I really want to be down there when Artemis gets going.  But we'll see.  The way things are only just now finally coming out of stasis, I'm not really planning on anything in the next year or two that I don't entirely control.

 

In most cases, I'm not a fan of cancel culture.  Whether I agree or disagree with the person being cancelled.  It seems too much of a knee-jerk reaction to basically delete someone's career or life from existence because of one or two regrettable mistakes.  We're all human, all make dumb mistakes, and are all always learning and improving.

But in cases like this, she very likely had multiple chances.  She's posted dumb and insensitive stuff before and probably got a corporate talking down and maybe even had someone go to bat for her.  When it's a pattern, and goes to the extent that it had, then you have to eventually take the trash out.

Okay, y'all saying you don't like it that much...

Y'all saying you don't like In n Out is blasphemous to me.  But then again I'm in the South and don't get the Chick-fil-a hype, so I suppose I get it.

This latest season didn't jump the shark for me, but it skipped across some other fishes.

I certainly loved a lot more than I hated.  Doing a soft retcon of Karate Kid 2 was brilliant, giving Kreese a backstory was really cool, and I love how the arcs of most of the kids are progressing.  Hawk went from an annoying side character to having my favorite subplot.

But then a lot else is just getting to be too much.  Kreese sending in snakes or the kids attacking the Larusso house should call for pressed charges and lawsuits.  That bit where they went to the police office and she found out she already had a restraining order was some weak hand waving of that big plot hole.

That dumb stuff is still forgivable though.   This show walks a fine line of being cheap and cheezy but still being fun enough to get away with it.  But if it pushes that stuff more in the next season, it might be a little too far.

I see a lot of places are already selling this for half off. 

I'm about to finish another game, should I trust that the upcoming updates will make this tolerable enough to play on my PS5?

Alright so my new thing these past nine or so months:

After being stuck at home and missing live music, I wanted to pursue just doing something myself.  I can play guitar but I'm terrible at it, and any attempt I've had in the past to work with buddies to play something together never went anywhere.

So instead, I decided to start learning editing and mixing on DJ software.  I'd seen a lot of people mix live on DJ boards in festival campgrounds at impromptu parties and always thought it was cool so I wanted to try i out.  I know enough with creation tools to put a few things together here and there that help with live remixes, the rest was just a matter of figuring out how to adjust levels and BPM's to do whatever I wanted to existing samples and mixes.  Apparently I impressed my wife enough, she got me a new board for Christmas.  Some of the software I use also lets me do some custom visuals which is pretty cool.

I had my first real gig back in September at a small and socially distant camping party and it went over pretty well.  I also did a livestream and then played a small backyard party for New Year's too.

I'm not at the point yet that I'd want to play live for anyone other than a small group of buddies, but I feel like I might could be a that point in a few months once more people become vaccinated and real events become a thing again.

Here's that stream I did a few weeks ago if you want to see what I'm up to:
https://www.facebook.com/TheRealRooBus/videos/237352791121458

I've got two very good friends that have fallen into the Cult of Trump.  One got out, one got in deeper.

The first guy is self-admittedly a die hard libertarian.  He was a die hard on the Ron Paul train years ago and never looked back.  His views tend to weigh more on the old school conservative side of things, he wants limited government intervention into anything, a huge cut in spending, all kinds of stuff like that.  He's a pretty religious guy, but he thinks that it isn't the business of the government.  He was all aboard on the  bandwagon four years ago because he seemed to think that a business mindset to make a lot of cuts was something Trump would be a cheerleader of.  I think he kind of rode he coattails of that campaign and was all about things like strict immigration laws and such as well.

Now, he can't stand anything Trump.  He came around in the last year once I think his rational side saw the ineptitude of everything going on.  And this was prior to COVID.  He has a lot of family who are elderly or have health issues, and unlike most conservatives in Alabama, he's taken it very, very seriously.  It's encouraging to see a once-diehard turn into a Never Trumper simply because of reasoning.

The second guy I know is someone who just treats politics like a team sport.  I've known him over twenty years and I know him well enough to know that he doesn't even care about the issues at play.  If he can work a full time job and then come home to goof off with his kids, play video games, and work on his hobbies, he doesn't care about the outside world.  But he has been very fanatical about things like college football and fanboy topics.  Back in the day, he'd argue someone for hours about why N64 was better than Playstation, often making stuff up to prove his points.  That's translated to his political fanaticism very easily.  I think he just enjoys the "winning" and enjoys picking arguments.

A lot of people would tire of it or just move on to something else, but not him.  He's gotten deep roots into QAnon and other bullshit like that, and it's frankly beyond the point of return.  I hadn't talked to him in around a year until recently, and I just made the decision to not even engage him.  Fact and reason does not matter in this case, so it's just better off to forget it and let it go.

The next month or two is going to be interesting.

In the last few weeks, I lost my grandpa, a very good friend, and my beloved cat.  This was already on top of the hellscape of 2020, where I'd lost out on trips, events, and opportunities like everyone else.

A year or two ago, all of that would have sent me spiraling into depression.  Now, not so much.  I'm not even sure why.  I think part of me is numb and is on auto-pilot so I can just see this all through to the other side of a vaccine or whatever.  Part of me knows how to deal with it better.  Positive distractions help, even if they have to be smaller ones without a lot of planning.  Plus I got a sweet promotion at work which helped too.

The only real problem is that a lot of days are just empty.  It's like one of the montages in Groundhog Day where Bill Murray is just going through the motions and looking for anything to change things up.  Picking up hobbies or splurging on random indulgences has helped, but I know I'm going to need to figure out something else to put gas in my own tank before too long.

I'm venturing into the rabid abyss to vote in person on the day of.

I have no faith in the electoral system in Alabama.  If one dot is different on my signature, I am confident they'd throw it out.  I'm in one of the few blue counties in the state, so I'm sure our area is going to be targeted for exactly that kind of suppression.