Life undoubtedly has changed. A global pandemic will do that. I haven't worked in a little over a month. My employer did what was right and paid everyone for the first two weeks of this whole shutdown, and I've used some vacation time I had saved up. Just this week I filed for unemployment for the first time ever. That felt weird. There are some changes that have hit harder than others and some aspects which have had little to no personal impact.
The big impact that most people are dealing with is just being home all the time. Even when I left my previous job, I didn't take any time off. I just went to a new place of work the next day. This is the first time since 2005 that I haven't been working. I know that this is only temporary and eventually I will be back at it, but I would be lying if I said that I didn't enjoy not working every once in a while. Don't get me wrong, there are days where I just aimlessly wander around the house looking for something to do. It helps to get up and walk around for a bit just to get the blood flowing.
We all knew that our screen times were going to skyrocket and I have tried (with some success) to keep my time down. On a typical work day, I'd average around two and a half to three hours on my phone. On a good day now it's up to around four hours but most days hovering around five hours. I mean, you can only watch so much HGTV and Netflix right? We don't have sports to waste the day away right now (christ I miss baseball). To combat the screen time villain, I've been spending time putting puzzles together for an hour here and an hour there. Just for something different to look at. Last week I dug out my records and just sat and listened to Led Zeppelin I. I've started re-reading The Walking Dead. All of these things little things can add up to staying away from the phone. I highly recommend it.
At the moment, my wife is also off of work. She worked for about a week longer than I did, but she had the opportunity to work from home. We have taken on some small projects around the house. We've painted our main floor bathroom and replaced some fixtures. I cleaned up and reorganized the basement. The garage has been swept. A permanent rod has been installed in the laundry room. We blocked off some space in the backyard for growing wildflowers. All these things would have eventually gotten done, yes, but now we're needing things to do to pass the time.
The largest impact on our lives has been not going out when we feel like it. Over the past month we have left the house once maybe twice a week. I'd say in a normal month we'd go out to eat five or six times. That doesn't seem like much, but when that option is off the table it makes you miss it that much more. And yes, if we really wanted to we could order for take out we just haven't done that. We should to support all the local restaurants, but we're also watching what we spend.
Luckily, we are child free. We do not have to schedule time to do home schooling. Good on all you parents out there that are having to put that on your plates. This seems to be one of the largest hurdles the general public has had to overcome. Not only are we all staying home, but most are having to juggle work and life all day every day. Good on all you parents out there rolling with the punches and drinking heavily to get through your kids' school day.
Just remember to take care of yourselves. And if I hear 'now more than ever' even ONCE after this has passed, I will lose my shit.
24 April 2020
02 August 2019
A Choice, A Change
If you stop and think about it, life is just a choose your own adventure book. The only difference is you cannot look ahead to each choice and then take the better option. Everyone that ever picked up a choose your own adventure book did this. You cannot lie about it, you know you did that. I'm not talking about making choices like steak or chicken for dinner, I'm talking big choices. Choices that can change your life. Sometimes these choices aren't yours. For example, I have thought about how different my life would have been if my parents decided to stay in the Detroit area instead of my dad taking a job in the U.P. This decision was not mine to make as I was seven at the time, but if they didn't make that choice, I would not have met my wife. That's just bananas to think about, isn't it? That's also super scary to think about. How different are all of our lives based on decisions that aren't yours to make? When I sit down and think about those kinds of situations, my mind always comes back to two different choices that were made that impacted our (mine and my wife's) lives.
The first choice wasn't even really ours to make. After college my wife got a job with Cessna Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas. When we were graduating college we agreed that we would move to the first place where one of us found a job and that is just how we ended up down there. But this isn't the choice I'm talking about. Moving to Wichita seemed like a pretty easy decision. It was either move and be gainfully employed or stay unemployed and continue to look for a job. So we moved and worked down there. Found a great group of friends. Adjusted to life with no winters, no trees, and being far from family. We even started to look at buying a house. It was shortly after we started looking at houses that the economic recession hit and my wife got laid off because of it. This was about four or five years of living in Kansas, so we were fairly well established in the area. It's safe to say we dodged a giant bullet in not buying a house. We would have been in a great financial mess. Shortly after getting laid off, my wife started looking for jobs. We thought staying in Wichita was an option, but there wasn't much happening in her field of work. So she looked into Kansas City. Bigger area, we figured there's a better chance there. No luck. We got to the point where it was 'find a job anywhere and we can move'. With my working retail, and at the time with Target, it gave us some flexibility to move. Transferring wouldn't have been a problem. Here's where the choice comes into play. My wife had a couple of interviews with a company in Charlotte, North Carolina. One was a phone interview and the second was an in person interview. They flew her in, she stayed for a couple of days. We both thought it went well. The company even had someone drive her around the area to see some neighborhoods. After that, I started looking at stores to transfer to, even talked with my human resources manager about the move. Then the company chose to go with another candidate. Heartbreak.
We were on the verge of discovering another city and another state. We were in our late twenties, the time to strike out on your own and make those kinds of moves. To discover new and exciting places, even if it's farther away than maybe you had ever imagined living from your family. You never know what would have or could have happened had we ended up there, and that is kind of the fun part of thinking about situations like this. Would I still work for Target? (short answer is hell no). Would it have been a place we would have hated? Maybe. Or could it have been a city we would have fallen in love with? The answers are always going to be up in the air. Looking back on it, I'm glad the company made the choice to go with that other candidate because it has led us to the second major choice in our lives which has worked out great for both of us.
After about a year of no luck on the job front in Kansas or elsewhere, it was decided it was time to get out of the state. Outside of a great group of friends (our Kansas family) we had no ties to the state. It was tough seeing our actual family two, maybe three, times a year. We wanted to be closer. We wanted winters again. We wanted to see trees and water and not melt when you step outside in early July. We were able to pick and choose where we wanted to go. There were a few qualifiers we were looking at. It had to be closer to home. It needed to be big enough of an area for job opportunities for both of us. The economy in Michigan really hadn't turned around quite yet, so that was out of the question. We thought about Chicago for a split second then realized....ewww, Chicago. The idea of living in Milwaukee or Madison was also on the table. There are a few companies that my wife could have worked at. There were some factors that went into our decision to not move there. Another place was the Twin Cities in Minnesota. We have family and friends that live in Minnesota and they never really had anything terrible to say about it. After looking and talking about all these options, we landed on Minnesota. It was as close to being in Michigan without living there. The economy was rebounding nicely so the job markets were starting to pick back up. This was the second big choice in life.
I look at our move to Minnesota as that second major choice for a few reasons. The big reason is work. My wife found a job that was decent after we moved here and just recently found one that is a little bit closer to home and a much better working environment. I was able to transfer stores while working with Target and that made the move easier. We see our family more than a few times a year as we are now just a nine to ten hour car ride away. As opposed to a flight or a two day drive while we lived in Kansas. The past few years, I have been able to take some time off in the fall and go hunting back home. It is great because I love being in the woods at that time of year. Plus, I'm able to provide plenty of food for everyone in the years that I am lucky enough to harvest a deer. Above all that, I have found a job that I love. By the time my eighth year of working for Target was coming around, I realized that I wasn't going anywhere with the company. It was not fun to work there anymore. That was almost six years ago which is crazy to think about. My move to World Market probably would not have happened if we hadn't moved to Minnesota. World Market has been great for many reasons, but the biggest one is the relaxed atmosphere. It is not nearly as stressful and therefore better for me.
It was probably inevitable that I moved on from Target, but if we had lived in another state maybe I would be working for a different company. Maybe I would have found some random office job if we moved to North Carolina or a warehouse job in Wisconsin, we will never know. Making big decisions like this can be scary, but that is what life is all about. Taking big risks like moving to a new state or leaving a job can impact your life in so many positive ways, but those risks have to be calculated. Impulsively moving without having a plan isn't the way to go. I like to think that in all the other multiverses out there, we made the move to Charlotte and to Madison and to Milwaukee and that those versions of us are just as happy as we are here in Minnesota.
The first choice wasn't even really ours to make. After college my wife got a job with Cessna Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas. When we were graduating college we agreed that we would move to the first place where one of us found a job and that is just how we ended up down there. But this isn't the choice I'm talking about. Moving to Wichita seemed like a pretty easy decision. It was either move and be gainfully employed or stay unemployed and continue to look for a job. So we moved and worked down there. Found a great group of friends. Adjusted to life with no winters, no trees, and being far from family. We even started to look at buying a house. It was shortly after we started looking at houses that the economic recession hit and my wife got laid off because of it. This was about four or five years of living in Kansas, so we were fairly well established in the area. It's safe to say we dodged a giant bullet in not buying a house. We would have been in a great financial mess. Shortly after getting laid off, my wife started looking for jobs. We thought staying in Wichita was an option, but there wasn't much happening in her field of work. So she looked into Kansas City. Bigger area, we figured there's a better chance there. No luck. We got to the point where it was 'find a job anywhere and we can move'. With my working retail, and at the time with Target, it gave us some flexibility to move. Transferring wouldn't have been a problem. Here's where the choice comes into play. My wife had a couple of interviews with a company in Charlotte, North Carolina. One was a phone interview and the second was an in person interview. They flew her in, she stayed for a couple of days. We both thought it went well. The company even had someone drive her around the area to see some neighborhoods. After that, I started looking at stores to transfer to, even talked with my human resources manager about the move. Then the company chose to go with another candidate. Heartbreak.
We were on the verge of discovering another city and another state. We were in our late twenties, the time to strike out on your own and make those kinds of moves. To discover new and exciting places, even if it's farther away than maybe you had ever imagined living from your family. You never know what would have or could have happened had we ended up there, and that is kind of the fun part of thinking about situations like this. Would I still work for Target? (short answer is hell no). Would it have been a place we would have hated? Maybe. Or could it have been a city we would have fallen in love with? The answers are always going to be up in the air. Looking back on it, I'm glad the company made the choice to go with that other candidate because it has led us to the second major choice in our lives which has worked out great for both of us.
After about a year of no luck on the job front in Kansas or elsewhere, it was decided it was time to get out of the state. Outside of a great group of friends (our Kansas family) we had no ties to the state. It was tough seeing our actual family two, maybe three, times a year. We wanted to be closer. We wanted winters again. We wanted to see trees and water and not melt when you step outside in early July. We were able to pick and choose where we wanted to go. There were a few qualifiers we were looking at. It had to be closer to home. It needed to be big enough of an area for job opportunities for both of us. The economy in Michigan really hadn't turned around quite yet, so that was out of the question. We thought about Chicago for a split second then realized....ewww, Chicago. The idea of living in Milwaukee or Madison was also on the table. There are a few companies that my wife could have worked at. There were some factors that went into our decision to not move there. Another place was the Twin Cities in Minnesota. We have family and friends that live in Minnesota and they never really had anything terrible to say about it. After looking and talking about all these options, we landed on Minnesota. It was as close to being in Michigan without living there. The economy was rebounding nicely so the job markets were starting to pick back up. This was the second big choice in life.
I look at our move to Minnesota as that second major choice for a few reasons. The big reason is work. My wife found a job that was decent after we moved here and just recently found one that is a little bit closer to home and a much better working environment. I was able to transfer stores while working with Target and that made the move easier. We see our family more than a few times a year as we are now just a nine to ten hour car ride away. As opposed to a flight or a two day drive while we lived in Kansas. The past few years, I have been able to take some time off in the fall and go hunting back home. It is great because I love being in the woods at that time of year. Plus, I'm able to provide plenty of food for everyone in the years that I am lucky enough to harvest a deer. Above all that, I have found a job that I love. By the time my eighth year of working for Target was coming around, I realized that I wasn't going anywhere with the company. It was not fun to work there anymore. That was almost six years ago which is crazy to think about. My move to World Market probably would not have happened if we hadn't moved to Minnesota. World Market has been great for many reasons, but the biggest one is the relaxed atmosphere. It is not nearly as stressful and therefore better for me.
It was probably inevitable that I moved on from Target, but if we had lived in another state maybe I would be working for a different company. Maybe I would have found some random office job if we moved to North Carolina or a warehouse job in Wisconsin, we will never know. Making big decisions like this can be scary, but that is what life is all about. Taking big risks like moving to a new state or leaving a job can impact your life in so many positive ways, but those risks have to be calculated. Impulsively moving without having a plan isn't the way to go. I like to think that in all the other multiverses out there, we made the move to Charlotte and to Madison and to Milwaukee and that those versions of us are just as happy as we are here in Minnesota.
19 July 2019
A Moment to Remember
While we were home this past week, there was a day when I went into the family room at the cabin and my dad was watching a documentary on the Apollo program. I sat down to watch around the time the documentary was talking about the Apollo 11 moon landing and I was intrigued. Not because I didn't know what was going to happen, obviously it happened, but because I was transported back in time. News reports, home video, recordings from inside mission control, all of it was being shown. We've all seen the video of the astronauts climbing down the ladder and heard the historic communication, but to see other aspects of the landing was...'awe inspiring' aren't the right word....maybe 'engrossing' is the right way to put it.
To see the excitement in the mission control room was amazing. To see the tears in the eyes of people standing on the street watching the landing through store front windows. To see news anchors from around the world be almost at a loss for words was something to behold. And sure, you can see a clip of it here and there, but to see it all strung together and creating a larger story brought goose bumps to my arms. What was more important, looking back, was that clips were being shown from around the world. This was not just an American accomplishment. This was an accomplishment for the world. It was an inspirational moment that brought the world together, if only for a few days.
I want to be alive for a moment like that. Not a moment to be remembered because it is a tragedy, but a moment that can inspire. A once in a lifetime moment that forty years from now, I want someone to ask me 'do you remember where you were when *fill in the blank* happened?' I want to save a newspaper showing worldwide excitement and unity. I'm just afraid that the way the world is now that it will never happen.
To see the excitement in the mission control room was amazing. To see the tears in the eyes of people standing on the street watching the landing through store front windows. To see news anchors from around the world be almost at a loss for words was something to behold. And sure, you can see a clip of it here and there, but to see it all strung together and creating a larger story brought goose bumps to my arms. What was more important, looking back, was that clips were being shown from around the world. This was not just an American accomplishment. This was an accomplishment for the world. It was an inspirational moment that brought the world together, if only for a few days.
I want to be alive for a moment like that. Not a moment to be remembered because it is a tragedy, but a moment that can inspire. A once in a lifetime moment that forty years from now, I want someone to ask me 'do you remember where you were when *fill in the blank* happened?' I want to save a newspaper showing worldwide excitement and unity. I'm just afraid that the way the world is now that it will never happen.
07 June 2019
Lawn Care Etiquette
It's that time of year again when home owners have to drag themselves out of the air conditioning and cut the grass and weed the flower gardens. It's both terrible and satisfying at the same time. You look at the lawn when you finish and it looks so nice. You just have to deal with being out in the heat and humidity when you do it. Or you could pay someone to do it. That's always an option I suppose. Our lawn is small enough that with a push mower I can get it done in less than an hour. I remember cutting the grass growing up and my brother and I would split the work between the two side yards and the front and back yards. It seemed to take forever when we did it, but that could just be because we were so young. Living in a neighborhood where the houses are so close together, I have been thinking about law cutting courtesies. At what time is it appropriate to get out and cut the grass? When is it too early or too late in the day? You don't want to be that house on the block that everyone hates because you cut the grass at the wrong time. If you don't know which house is that house on your block, you might be that house. Don't be.
I first started to think about this because I left for work one day a few weeks back and the owner of the house on the corner was almost done cutting his lawn. It was 7:00 in the morning. My only thought was 'wow, what a dick'. I understand a lot of people, myself included, would prefer to get the grass cut early in the day before it gets too hot outside. I cut the grass this morning around 10:30 and it was already above seventy degrees. It was not pleasant. It is Friday and I figured it was a reasonable time. Most people are at work if they have a standard Monday through Friday type job. If there was anyone around that maybe works different hours like overnight or second shift type jobs, 10:30 shouldn't bother them, right? The last thing that I would want is to be trying to sleep and a neighbor being out with a loud mower or weed whip.
I'm not a huge fan of lawn work in the evening. I always look at the evening as a time to relax and unwind from the day. The last thing that I want to do after work is do more work. Plus, it seems that bugs are more active in the evening. Who wants to swat at mosquitoes and gnats and try to cut grass at the same time? I know I don't. However it could be the only time to do it. It's not that I flat out refuse to do evening grass cutting, I just prefer to do so in the morning.
How early is too early? I suppose it depends on the day. If it is during the weekend, and I want to be outside doing this, I might start a little bit later. Most everyone catches up on sleep during the weekends. During the week, I'll maybe start a little bit earlier than on the weekend. An easy way to know is to just wait for someone else to start. Let someone else be the asshole that wakes the neighborhood up. Personally, I think 9:00 during the week and 10:00 on the weekend are perfectly acceptable times to start lawn work.
I first started to think about this because I left for work one day a few weeks back and the owner of the house on the corner was almost done cutting his lawn. It was 7:00 in the morning. My only thought was 'wow, what a dick'. I understand a lot of people, myself included, would prefer to get the grass cut early in the day before it gets too hot outside. I cut the grass this morning around 10:30 and it was already above seventy degrees. It was not pleasant. It is Friday and I figured it was a reasonable time. Most people are at work if they have a standard Monday through Friday type job. If there was anyone around that maybe works different hours like overnight or second shift type jobs, 10:30 shouldn't bother them, right? The last thing that I would want is to be trying to sleep and a neighbor being out with a loud mower or weed whip.
I'm not a huge fan of lawn work in the evening. I always look at the evening as a time to relax and unwind from the day. The last thing that I want to do after work is do more work. Plus, it seems that bugs are more active in the evening. Who wants to swat at mosquitoes and gnats and try to cut grass at the same time? I know I don't. However it could be the only time to do it. It's not that I flat out refuse to do evening grass cutting, I just prefer to do so in the morning.
How early is too early? I suppose it depends on the day. If it is during the weekend, and I want to be outside doing this, I might start a little bit later. Most everyone catches up on sleep during the weekends. During the week, I'll maybe start a little bit earlier than on the weekend. An easy way to know is to just wait for someone else to start. Let someone else be the asshole that wakes the neighborhood up. Personally, I think 9:00 during the week and 10:00 on the weekend are perfectly acceptable times to start lawn work.
28 March 2019
Hot Takes: 2019 Edition
It is here. The 2019 MLB season starts today! I did this last year so I figured why not do it again? Hot takes are fun when you make predictions based on some hope but also outlandish thoughts. With the Tigers circling the bottom of the standings, you might as well have some fun with it. Here. We. Go.
I cannot wait for the Detroit Tigers to be good again. Most everyone thinks they'll be good again in 2021 which sounds like a long ways away, but it's only two more seasons.
.
.
.
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*begins to cry uncontrollably*
- JaCoby Jones will be a Gold Glove finalist
- Niko Goodrum will have a 20/20 season (I whole heatedly believe this)
- Jordan Zimmermann will have a 15 win season
- Miguel Cabrera will steal two bases
- Christian Stewart will lead the team in home runs
- Nicholas Castellanos will sign an extension with the team
- Shane Greene will be traded, but will still end up leading the team in saves
- Casey Mize will make at least one start in the Majors
- The Tigers will win five games against the Cleveland Indians
- Matt Moore and Tyson Ross are both flipped for prospects at the trade deadline
- Ron Gardenhire will be ejected five times
I cannot wait for the Detroit Tigers to be good again. Most everyone thinks they'll be good again in 2021 which sounds like a long ways away, but it's only two more seasons.
.
.
.
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*begins to cry uncontrollably*
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