Hey everyone! Above is my finished (finished!) oral history interview project about my grandpa Pops’ life. Clocking in at around 2:40h, the interview is broken into 16 clips by topic and arranged chronologically. It covers everything from growing up during the Great Depression to reflecting on a life of raising six kids, 12 grandkids, and countless great-grandkids (single MP3 version).
Whether it’s your cup of tea or not, Rob and I (and a number of friends) have really enjoyed playing and keeping up with EnterPLAY’s My Little Pony Collectible Card Game (MLPCCG) over the past few years. After hurriedly learning the game the morning of the 2nd set’s pre-release (May 2014), we’ve traveled to Regionals in both Atlanta and Miami, played multiple years at GenCon, and even threw our own pre-release (rented out a room at Dunkin and everything!). It was something we were able to really invest in together and meant a lot to us.
We recently decided to redo our living room and bought a small coffee table for IKEA hacking—we planned to replace the removable plastic top with a piece of stained pine. Along the way, we had this crazy idea to create a collage of memorable MLPCCG cards on the flip side of the wood top. Over the course of a few weekends and through a series of much-more-involved-than-we-first-thought steps, we:
Taking the idea from silly concept to finished table top was more work (and more costly) than I think I was ready for, but it was a super fun project nonetheless. Many thanks to Erik for the tools and know-how to get something like this done. It’s a shame the game itself doesn’t have much of a following anymore, but we’ll always have the good memories.
PS: We’ve still got two unopened boxes of Seaquestria and Beyond if anyone local would like to do a draft or something!
It’s that time again! Just got home from our monthly Budget and Goals dinner and I’ve got some updates on goals!
Entered Sweetwater Cabin Lottery: There is a small, private spring and cabin in the heart of the Ocala National Forest, rentable by the week. It’s one of the only springs I’ve never been to in Florida, mostly because you have to win a lottery to even pay to reserve it. Threw in my entry for this year–here’s hoping!
Posted Weight Loss Blog: In case you didn’t see, I’ve lost a lot of weight in the past few years! Read about it in my recent blog post.
Finished Reading Leaders Eat Last: As part of a work book club, I finally finished reading Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don’t. A common selection for leadership, it’s a really good basic look into what powers actual motivation and how you can respect that in your leadership style. Worth a read for sure.
Performed Some Car Maintenance: Typical stuff, but changed the oil in the Fit myself for the first time (thanks for the assist Erik!) and had the tires rotated and balanced (a good combo with oil changes as a rule of thumb). Next month I’m rolling it into the shop for some major, milestone work: all new brake pads and rotors, a brake fluid replace, a complete transmission fluid flush and replace, and new spark plugs.
Planned Charlotte / Blowing Rock Trip: In an effort to see some possible move spots, I’m taking a trip with Vic for an extended weekend to see Charlotte for a couple days and chill in Blowing Rock in between. Too much driving but should be a good time.
I’ve never been a smaller dude. I had a pretty average build throughout grade school and never paid much attention to developing healthy habits. I started putting on the pounds in college as I had less and less structure to keep me away from bad habits. Starting a full-time desk job continued the increase, both from the lack of activity and the increased stress and pressure to eat out and snack. I was a motivated person back then, but food was a comfort through bad days and bad times.
By the end of 2013 I’d grown as a person, been put in charge of a team at work and bought a house, but I was still turning a blind eye to the weight (then around 245). Christmas photos started to get under my skin and clothes shopping was a nightmare but I was pretty comfortable with my life overall and didn’t have a lot of motivation to change. Besides, I knew the only way to lose weight was to develop a love for salads and exercise all day and that was a nonstarter. I maintained a weight of just under 250 (my peak) through March 2015.
I‘d always joked that some medical issue would be the motivation I’d need to lose weight, but I wasn’t expecting it to actually happen. One stressful Sunday about halfway through March, I started experiencing pain in my left big toe. I remember walking around my neighborhood unable to put pressure on the right side of my foot. That night the pain was so bad I couldn’t fall asleep; I’d jolt awake every time my toe would move or even brush against the covers. I rode out this swelling for four more days, working from home the best I could with my feet in a tub of cold water for hours at a time.
Budget Updates: In our efforts to continuously approve, Rob and I augmented our budget tracking to include a record of our amount over/under budget for each month. We also added a “now” column to record the actual amount in each savings and checking account just to stay aware of the bigger picture.
ART and Massage: I’ve been kind of on-and-off-again about massages; they seem to help by lower back issues but they’re a little expensive. To try to get back on track, I got a handful of one-a-month visits scheduled through summer. On the kind and helpful advice of one Colson, I also kicked myself into gear about finding a permanent solution to these nagging pain issues. After searching around for an ART provider I came across a PT in a sports medicine / gym facility and attended an eval session that really could not have gone better. She walked me through everything, sated my appetite for a high understanding of the issue and way in which we were going to tackle it, and her prescribed exercises assure me it’s being taken seriously. Also a bit expensive, but looks like I’ll be hitting that 2x a month for a little bit.
New Videos: I released a couple fun project videos in February: a Celeste video walkthrough of a difficult level and a montage of footage from all of my Florida Springs trips from the past several years. I probably need to commit to a little less editing and perfectionism for the actual ROI I get out of this, but I’m glad to have made both. Check ‘em out!
Car Maintenance: One of the larger goals I have this year is to get my 2010 Honda Fit all of its appropriate high-mileage (80k+) maintenance (and I’m still figuring out all that entails). This month I tackled some easy stuff: new engine and cabin air filters and a new battery.
Landscaping Refresh: I put a good bit of work into redoing the landscaping around the front and sides of the house in October 2014, but I haven’t really had to do much since then other than nips and tucks here and there. This winter we had a few freezes and it was enough to knock out most of the potted plants. We all spent a Sunday picking up several new plants (mostly crotons) and rearranged the original brick tree ring. I don’t know how long it’ll last, but it looks really nice right now!
Throughout the last decade or so, I’ve had the privilege of visiting most of the springs in Florida. I had a lot of personal, amateur video lying around, so I thought I’d throw together a little fun clips video to share my adventures. Enjoy!
Hey all! Some quick updates from me, trying to get in the habit of reflecting on what I accomplished or did in the month prior.
(And now that it’s 2/19, I should probably go ahead and post this. >_>)
I recently turned 32 (October birthdays, woo!), so here are 32 stream-of-consciousness topics that came to me as I forced myself to write about 32 topics.
Irma’s finally gone. I’ve lived through the “threat of an oncoming hurricane” phase enough times in my life to have lost count, but the harbinger period of the last week felt like an eternity. Even as early as the day after Labor Day, local stores were mostly out of bread and water. Newscasters love to talk about Floridians’ “hurricane amnesia,“ but it was pretty clear there was a good bit of healthy fear for this one.
I waffled between dismissive optimism and speculative anxiety all week, well after we stocking up on tons of food, water, gas, batteries, and flashlights. By mid-week, we’d decided to pack valuables in plastic tubs, move furniture and electronics away from the windows (I even plastic-wrapped our dining room PC and desk), and set a milestone for deciding to evacuate or stay. I was even able to take advantage of my parents’ Christmas gift of a drone to take some video of the roof and surrounding area, just in case. You can only do so much of this kind of preparation work before the dread sets in.
As fate-tempting as it felt, we enjoyed a rainy day at the Magic Kingdom on Friday, mostly to take advantage of the strange opportunity and to try to cut through the anxiety we were all feeling leading up to landfall. When things started closing around mid-afternoon on Saturday, you could really feel the unease set in everywhere you went. Back home, we focused on completing Overcooked (fantastic) and Tomb Raider (better than Uncharted, fight me), but as I went to bed that night, I knew, finally, tomorrow was going to be “the day.”
“During your times of trial and suffering, when you see only one set of footprints, it was then that I took away heath insurance from the sick and poor and gave tax cuts to the healthy and rich.” #wwjd (at T.H. Stone Memorial St. Joseph Peninsula State Park)
Ringtail Quest 