It’s been eighty-four years since the last post. (Just kidding, it’s been two months.)

On April 22, 2021April 21, 2021 By StevenIn Life At Home, The D-M-V14 Comments

Today is Pepper Day!   While Nano Poblano is only in November, Pepper Day is the 22nd day of every month, so it's extra Peppery!  Post something today.  A blog, a photo, a poem- anything at all! Tag it PepperDay!  Enjoy, and Happy Peppering!

I didn’t intend to take a two-month break between the last post and this one, I just didn’t have anything I really felt like writing about. It’s not for lack of content though- I was fairly busy through March and April.

First of all, there was so much movie and tv action. Shows I love like The Flash came back, Marvel’s Falcon and the Snowman started up, and we got movies like Godzilla vs Kong, the four-hour Snyder cut of Justice League, Raya and he Last Dragon, and Coming 2 America. All in all, it’s been a good few months to be stuck without a lot to do. Speaking of which…

I attended a bunch of virtual lectures. Profs & Pints is an organization that gets professorial types to lecture about various topics in bars, hence the name. Most lectures are 60-90 minutes and conclude with a question and answer period. Since lockdown began, they’ve moved online, which allows you to watch interesting lectures about fascinating topics from home. There was a really neat one about Krampus back in December. I’ve attended lectures about Persephone, about social media, about sexual deviancy, about introductory Irish, about the history of pinball, and more. Each lecture is $12, with forever-replay. That link again: https://www.profsandpints.com/online-talks, and there’s one tonight about the 1814 Burning of Washington, which promises to be super neat.

I went through a bunch of dentistry. I don’t think anyone cares about the details. Let’s just say that the whole process was stressful and expensive, but that’s dentistry for you.

I flew again! Specifically, I went down to South Florida for just a few days. Flying was different now, but also reassuringly the same as always. Delta has been blocking off their middle seats, which made for a less crowded flight, but my return was on Jetblue and that plane didn’t have middle seats. The Florida visit gave me a chance to see my mom and my siblings, and I spent some time with my best friend. There was even a hockey game (Panthers beat the Redwings handily.) The trip was also supposed to be timed for the unveiling of my dad’s headstone, but those plans didn’t pan out so I’m going back for a lightning-fast weekend toward the end of May. There was even the briefest of visits to the beach, which is now required since I don’t live in Florida anymore:

I visited the Silverball Museum. On the Florida trip, I ticked another box off on my long-standing list of places I wanted to check out. The Silverball Museum is a pinball and vintage game museum in Delray Beach, Florida, but this museum takes the form of a playable arcade. All the machines are set to free play, and admission to the museum allows you to play anything you like. They have all kinds of amazing vintage pinball games from the 1950s to the present. They also have game cabinets with MAME setups that include all kinds of early 1980s arcade games. I played much pinball, some skeeball, and enough Joust to prove that I remembered how.

I ran a 5k. DC Fitness did the “HerStory 5K” on March 20th, and I ran it. It was a virtual 5k so everyone ran their own path and then submitted the results later; I was something like 144th. And by “ran a 5k,” what I really mean is that I ran>fastwalked>ran>gasped>wheezed>ran some more>gasp-wheeze-grunt>fastwalked>ran a bit… and so on. My endurance has suffered from being inside for most of the last year. I want to enjoy running, but honestly, I don’t enjoy it at all.

I finally saw the Cherry Blossoms in peak bloom. I’ve been trying to see the cherry blossoms in peak bloom for years. Either I’ve missed them by a few weeks, or I’ve been unable to travel to them like in 2020. I even missed the cherry blossoms in Tokyo by just a few weeks. After years of just missing them, I finally managed to see these things in person. All it took was living less than three miles from the Tidal Basin.

I got the Covid-19 vaccine. My state has been trucking along, and as of this writing, 40% of the adult population of Virginia has had at least one dose of vaccine. I was given the one-and-done Janssen vaccine on a Saturday, and I spent the following two days recovering. About twelve hours after the shot, I had chills and body aches like crazy. The next day I was burrito-wrapped in a blanket on and off for the entire day, just super tired and cold. I slept a lot. Each successive day after that I was much better than the previous day, and by midweek everything was completely normal again. I never measured a fever of more than about one degree over my normal temperature, but I was still sweating like crazy while I slept. The weirdest side effect was a problem with escalation changes- I didn’t go out much during the few days post-vaccine, but I did take the elevator down to the lobby to pick up food at one point, and going down my head felt like it was going to explode. All the side effects are behind me now, and now I’m just waiting for my inevitable superpowers to form. [/obligatory vaccine/X-Men joke.]

I amused myself with Photoshop. I bought some corn starch so I could try a new recipe, and the brand name of the corn starch suggested a joke that made me giggle. I Photoshopped it into reality so that I could share the laugh with everyone else. (You can see what it looked like originally over here on Amazon.)

I celebrated Rex Manning Day. It’s every year on April 8th, and you mustn’t dwell. National Egg Cream Day was also March 15th, if you’re tracking that sort of thing.

I am absolutely certain that I missed something else from the last two months, but this seems like a good place to pause.

What have you been up to for the last two months?

9/52

PS, It’s Been Twenty-Five Years

On February 22, 2021February 22, 2021 By StevenIn Life At Home20 Comments

Today is Pepper Day!   While Nano Poblano is only in November, Pepper Day is the 22nd day of every month, so it's extra Peppery!  Post something today.  A blog, a photo, a poem- anything at all! Tag it PepperDay!  Enjoy, and Happy Peppering!

As part of my annual goodreads.com reading challenges, I just finished “Postscript,” Cecilia Ahern’s followup to “PS, I Love You.” “PS, I Love You” was a story about a woman named Holly who starts receiving helpful letters from her recently-deceased husband. The letters send her on a journey where she rediscovers herself, finds a new path forward out of her grief, and so forth. It became a movie with Hilary Swank and Gerard Butler. The sequel picks up about seven years later, with Holly in a new relationship. When she retells the story of the letters from the first novel on a podcast, she gets pulled into helping a group of terminal patients who want to do the same thing, leaving messages behind after they die.

Ahern writes about grief with such insight that I was positive that she was writing from personal experience. As it turns out, she’s just a really gifted writer of fiction and a keen observer of humans being humans. In her own words, “when I wrote PS, I Love You, I was 21 and a lot of people asked if you hadn’t experienced grief. How can you write about it? But I do think that grief is made up of so many emotions that we do experience from the moment we’re born. We know what it’s like to feel loss, to feel alone, to feel uncertain, to lose a sense of ourselves and our identity. Grief is all of those things.”

Yesterday was twenty-five years to the day since the death of someone I loved with all my heart. I don’t talk about her as often now as I used to, but the people who have known me the longest know all about that part of my life because I wouldn’t shut up about it. Truth be told, I thought I had mentioned this countless times already on my blog, but I searched my own words tonight and I don’t see a single post talking about it.

For the three or four of you who don’t know the story, she died suddenly on February 21st, 1996. It was tragic and unfair and it really fucked me up for a long time. In the years that have passed since then, I’ve made an uneasy peace with some aspects of her passing. Twenty-five years is a long time to ponder things. I believe now that she didn’t love me as much as I loved her, but that’s not important. I know what she meant to me, and how that has shaped my life in the years since.

Which brings me back to Postscript, and the part of the novel that pushed me into writing about it here:

There is so much about me that Gerry wouldn’t recognize. I am older than Gerry ever was, I know things that he never knew, that he will never know. And it’s the little things that stop me in my tracks. He never lived to hear the word “hangry.” Every time I hear the word I think of him, he would have loved it when his belly was full and hated it when it was empty. The invention of things he would appreciate. New phones. New technologies. New political leaders, new wars. Cronuts. New Star Wars movies.
“Postscript,” Cecelia Ahern

…and this is a true thing. She would barely recognize the person I am now, despite my mostly-never-changing face. I’m more than twice as old now as I was when she died. Pre-1996 Steven was much more of a live-action Muppet than present-day Steven. I’m quieter now than I used to be, less boisterous. Her death was a catalyst for the path my life took afterward.

I’m certain that my friends have noticed in the years since that I take a truly insane number of photographs. I take pictures at family gatherings, parties, special events, and even just regular day-to-day things. (Seriously, let me show you my astonishing collection of photos of the avocado toast I’ve eaten over the years.) I’ve taken tens of thousands of photos in the last decade or so, and part of that is because of her. There are no photographs of her and me together. I have only one photograph of her, just one. It’s off to the right there. I realized years later that I needed more photographs of all the people in my life because you never know when you won’t have another chance to take their picture.

Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if I had been able to save her. The question, “what if I’d been there that day,” is a slow-burning poison, because it’s not something that can be changed. And if it could be changed, it would unravel the fabric of the person I’ve become in the years since. Less than two years after her funeral, I made a decision to enroll at the University of Central Florida to finish my degree. In the years since then, I’ve owned a home. I’ve traveled extensively. I’ve had more than a few failed relationships. I’ve come to know my own heart more precisely than younger me did. I’m not certain that any of that would have been in my path if she was still alive. It’s a dark trade-off to consider, but it’s another true thing.

Whenever I write about her, I feel self-indulgent and mawkish, and it’s NEVER what I was trying to say. My words are never equal to the burden of my heart. I will probably delete this post after a day or so.

Here’s to you, Vanessa. You changed my world when you were alive, but you changed it even more when you died.

Would a younger you recognize the person you are today?

8/52

Mulled Wine on a Cold Day

On December 22, 2020December 20, 2020 By StevenIn Life At Home4 Comments

Today is Pepper Day!   While Nano Poblano is only in November, Pepper Day is the 22nd day of every month, so it's extra Peppery!  Post something today.  A blog, a photo, a poem- anything at all! Tag it PepperDay!  Enjoy, and Happy Peppering!

A few weeks back, I mentioned the seasonal return of eggnog and Glühwein, and while I’ve been thoroughly enjoying my nog all this time, it wasn’t until a few days ago that I finally had a chance to crack open the bottle of Glühwein I picked up from Trader Joe’s.

A quick refresher about the beverage: Glühwein is mulled wine, served warm. I’ve talked about it a number of times on this blog. It’s usually part of my retelling of going to a Christkindlmarkt (Christmas Market) with friends.

I don’t think I’ve ever talked about sharing Glühwein with office-mates, though. I spent three Decembers working in a German office, and it was a semi-regular occurrence during the season that someone would heat up a bottle or two of Glühwein or Glögg on the stove, and then would summon everyone to the office kitchen to share in the drink. (Glögg is also mulled wine like Glühwein, but it’s from Sweden instead of Germany.)

We would linger around the kitchen and enjoy the drink and chat about absolutely anything. Sometimes there were seasonal treats, like Stollen, which I do not like at all. Even the Muslim guy who didn’t drink alcohol would still come to the kitchen and hang out. Technically, drinking at work was against the rules. I don’t feel bad about spilling the tea though, because the company no longer exists and it’s fairly unlikely anyone will get in trouble now.

Connoisseurs of Glühwein will tell you not to heat it in the microwave, since the delicate blend of spices can be easily damaged by that much rapid heat. Instead, you should pour your preferred drink into a pot and heat it gradually over the stove. Stir it often, and don’t let it come to a boil!

Once the drink is heated, pour it into an appropriate vessel to drink it. Coffee mugs are fine, but I chose to use my glass from the 2013 Kuchlbauer Christmas Market in Abensberg. In hindsight, I wish I had thought to keep one souvenir glass from every Christkindlmarkt I attended over the years, but I only ever brought this one home.

Have you had Glühwein this year?

53/52! Goal achieved!

A Fork in the Road

On November 30, 2016November 29, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home7 Comments

As we roll into day 30 of National Blog Posting Month and Nanopoblano, I find myself surprised to have completed the entire month. When Rara asked me in late October to participate, I initially said that my life is too crazy-busy right now to do a blog post every day. Nevertheless, on the first of November, I posted a thing. On the second of November, I posted another thing.

One a day, every day, until we reached today. I didn’t even write ahead and schedule posts to go up in the future until Thanksgiving- I wrote a new post each day, or had three-fourths of a post almost ready to go in the drafts folder, needing some polish.

The truth is that I’m kind of grateful to this little project, because it’s been a wonderful distraction. I’ve mentioned only a few times in the blog that my employment is ending on the fifteenth of December, but I haven’t really shared just how terrified that makes me. Writing something new every day has helped me to stay sane and to keep the stress at bay. I didn’t know that my blog could do that- I’ve never really used it that way before now.

I didn’t realize until just recently how much of my identity is tied up in what I do. And I also wrote a while back about how my highly specialized product knowledge will be useless after this job ends.

This is a fear that I have- I worry that my skills won’t transfer to a new job, or that even after more than fifteen years doing tech work, I won’t be any different than any other resume on some hiring manager’s desk. I worry that I won’t stand out enough to get hired. I worry that if I do get hired, I’ll hate the job and be stuck in a soul-crushing perdition from which I cannot escape.

I worry, also, that this might be the last time in my life that I can really choose a career path different from the one I’ve been on. I’m two days from 44, and I still haven’t got the foggiest idea what I want to be when I grow up.

I don’t really know if I want to keep doing this kind of work. I don’t really know where I want to live, although Orlando and Portland are both very appealing to me. (And, frankly, Orlando is the more likely of the two because it’s right there and it has Disney!)

The image attached to this post is my laptop wallpaper right now, because I find myself at a fork in the road. For just this moment, I’m not attached to a lease. I have, thanks to some creative application of time off, roughly six actual days left in the office before I’m unemployed.

And I don’t know what to do next.

Except to keep blogging, I guess. Probably not every day, though, because I have a feeling things are about to get a lot busier around here.

What was your favorite post from my last thirty days of bloggery?

Editor’s Note: I’m attempting to blog every day in November with CheerPeppers. I don’t expect to succeed because life be crazy, but any blogging in excess of my previous post-free month is a win, right?

My Favorite Scream

On November 29, 2016November 29, 2016 By StevenIn Life At Home2 Comments

Have you ever heard of the Wilhelm Scream? It’s been in over 200 movies, and it’s so recognizable that if you didn’t notice it before reading this post, I’m sure you’ll start to notice it everywhere.

It was introduced to modern cinema by all-around amazing sound guy Ben Burtt when he was designing the sound for Star Wars in 1977- he used it for a sequence where Luke shoots a Stormtrooper across a chasm while trying to escape the Death Star. When the trooper falls, you hear the Wilhelm Scream.

Ben Burtt didn’t create the sound, though- he just found it in the studio sound archives, on a reel labeled “Man being eaten by alligator.” The scene described there is from the 1951 movie, Distant Drums. In that movie, a cowboy in the Everglades was indeed eaten by an alligator, yelling out the scream as he is dragged underwater.

The scream was used again in the 1953 movie, The Charge at Feather River, and it’s heard by several different people as they die. One of them is a guy named in movie dialogue as Private Wilhelm, and he makes the scream when he is shot in the left leg with an arrow.

When Ben Burtt found the sound on the “Man being eaten by alligator” reel, he also found the Private Wilhelm footage, and it was Ben Burtt who named it the Wilhelm Scream. He went on to re-use the Wilhelm in all the remaining Star Wars movies as well as the Indiana Jones movies. It wasn’t long before other sound designers started to use the Wilhelm in other movies, and now it’s all over the television and movie landscape, including Toy Story, Batman Returns, Aladdin, Howard The Duck, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Hobbit, Lethal Weapon 4, and many many more.

Everything up until this point is material that I knew as I began to write this post. There’s one interesting fact that I didn’t know until I started researching to write this up: It is now widely believed that the voice of the Wilhelm Scream is none other than Sheb Wooley, known to most for his novelty song, “The Purple People Eater.” Ben Burtt found notes at Warner Brothers which indicated that Wooley was on a short list of people who recorded dialogue for Distant Drums, and he recorded material for several types of screams.

Here’s two short compilations of a bunch of Wilhelm Screams: