Literary Mountain

Last night I finished reading the longest book I've ever picked up.  'War and Peace' by Leo Tolstoy is now sitting on my bookshelf after being read cover to cover.  I started reading it last year in December and it took me nearly a year to finish.  I did take some breaks from reading it.  If I had forced myself to just read this book, it might have been done a month or two earlier.  Being labeled as one of the great novels of all time it had always had my interest.  I've wanted to read it for forever, it just sat on my bookshelf for the better part of a decade before I read it.  It's daunting.

With over fourteen hundred pages it gives the reader time to grow to love the characters.  Unless that character is Pierre.  He is one of the main characters and dear god is he insufferable.  I just didn't like him at all.  Even from the get go.  The book kept going and going and I was waiting to start to identify with this guy, but it just never happened.  The rest of the characters?  Good, some even great.  Just not Pierre.

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I have done it! I finished #WarAndPeace. It was enjoyable. It was anguishing at some points. I loved and hated certain characters. It took me less than a year!

A post shared by Michael Litzner (@melitzner) on Nov 7, 2018 at 8:14pm PST

This isn't a book report.  Go read it for yourself if you want the rundown.  No more classic Russian novels for me.  One was more than enough. 

Deck Work

One of the great things about owning a house is that you can make any improvement that you want.  The one terrible thing about owning a house is that you have to do the improvement.  Even if you have a decent concept about how much time, effort, and money a project is going to take, there always seems to be a point when you look around and wonder why you would do something like this.  The payoff, however, is great.  We are very happy the way it turned out and cannot wait to tackle our next project.  Even if it is a small one.

A wonderful feature in our house is the back deck.  It is large enough to have our grill, a couple of chairs, and a few more things if need be.  It was in fairly rough shape though.  The paint was peeling in several places and needed to be redone.  We got help from both of our families at different points in this project.  That is another reason why it is nice to live close enough to family to have that network of support.  We are also a stone throw away from our neighbor's house.  One thing that my wife wanted to put in was a privacy fence on the deck to give us just a little separation from them.  As fun as it is to look right into their house, the fence just adds a little bit more to it.

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A post shared by Michael Litzner (@melitzner) on Sep 23, 2018 at 11:27am PDT

This is a picture of the deck after we got everything was stripped and the privacy fence was added.  

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A post shared by Michael Litzner (@melitzner) on Oct 29, 2018 at 9:07am PDT

The color for the deck turned out great.  We used this product called Deck Over which is suppose to fill in cracks and screw holes.  It is extremely thick and is the same consistency of pudding.  We joked that it looked like chocolate pudding and made us both hungry as we were painting over the course of a few days. 

Hot Take Recap

The 2018 Detroit Tigers baseball season has ended.  Sadly.  But also mercilessly.  Anyone paying attention knew that this season was going to be a bit of a struggle as they traded off any and all pieces that made them contenders in the past.  The fun thing about cheering for a team with low expectations is that if they do well for a stretch of games it feels like some grand accomplishment.  While the prospects the team is waiting for are still in the minors, we fans got to see some pieces of the future play throughout most of the year.  Guys like Jemier Candelario and JaCoby Jones played the majority of the season and both showed what they can contribute to the club going forward.  Christian Stewart got a quick cup of coffee with the club at the end of the season and showed off his bad defense and big bat. 

At the beginning of the season, I wrote a post with some hot luke warm takes.  I stayed conservative with most of the takes and didn't go too far on a limb.  When you are having fun with hot takes/predictions for a team that you know will struggle during the season, you can say things like Ron Gardenhire will get ejected seven times.  To recap, here are my ten bold predictions from the beginning of the year with what actually happened:

• The Tigers will go 72-90 (they went 64-98)
• They'll finish fourth in the division ahead of Kansas City (they finished 3rd)
• Jeimer Candelario will hit .270 for the season (he hit .224)
• James McCann will hit 20 home runs (he hit 8)
• The Tigers will send two players (Castellanos, Fulmer) to the All Star game (Joe Jimenez was the lone representative for the team)
• Joe Jimenez will end the season as the team closer and save 15 games (he had 3 saves and was the setup man the entire year)
• Dawel Lugo will end the season as the every day second baseman with Dixon Machado moving to shortstop (yes and no. Machado was DFA'd)
• Both of those predictions will happen because the Tigers will trade Shane Greene and Jose Iglesias before the trade deadline (nope)
•  Miguel Cabrera and Victor Martinez will both hit 25 home runs (lolz, no.)
• Ron Gardenhire will be ejected 7 times (he was ejected 4 times)

Like I said, it's fun to do things like that so you can look back and have a good laugh.  The only thing that I came close on was Lugo being around and where they ended the season in the standings.  I look forward to doing this again next spring when we once again know the Tigers are going to flounder and we'll be there every painful step along the way.  

Moving On Up

When I look back at when I started to work in retail, one of the things I remember was thinking that it was not going to be a permanent profession.  Who grows up wanting to do this for a career?  This was back in 2006.  Fresh out of college and newly implanted in Wichita, Kansas I just needed money and a job.  Yes, my wife was working but I did not want to just sit around all day.  I went from October (2005) to February (2006) without work.  I was applying for jobs in the field I went to school for, history and museum studies, but could not find a job.  I couldn't even get a call back.  After the new year, I just wanted to find work.  So I did.  The rest, as they say, is (work) history.

I received a promotion earlier this week to a position World Market calls Lead Supervisor.  This is one step below store manager and for the most part is the person in charge of running the show on a day to day basis.  This is something that I have been working towards for the past year and a half.  The ultimate goal is to take that one last step and become a General Manager, but that is still several years down the road and honestly, I don't even want to think about that right now.  That is a large looming idea that will only distract from the now.  I have my annual hunting trip planned at the end of October, so this promotion is not going to happen until I get back from that. 

My wife and I joke quite a bit about how there are two of me.  One is the goofy, lackadaisical person that just kind of goes with the flow with whatever is happening.  The other is the professional me.  Whenever she comes in to shop around the store, the employees tell her how much they enjoy working with me and that I am constantly working on something or helping someone out with a project.  It is humorous.  I usually get the 'who are you?!' look from her.  She knows though.  All kidding aside, I do my best to keep everything professional at work but still have some fun.  The results are paying off.

The position will be at another store here in the Twin Cities.  It would have been great to stay where I am at now as this is the only store I have worked in, but that presents it's own challenges.  In order to develop myself into a more well rounded manager, I need to get somewhere new and different.  Is it optimal?  No.  I really enjoy working with the people I work with now, but it is time to move somewhere else outside of my comfort zone and familiarity and develop new traits and aspects of being a manager. 

Twelve is Enough

It is very common to have a conversation with someone about television shows.  It is even more common to discuss how quickly you finish a season of a show, especially with streaming options.  'I finished watching the latest season in a day and a half.' is a sentence that I'm sure most people have said.  The question I have is how long are these seasons that people are watching?  Is it a twenty four episode season that they are watching in one day?  How long are the episodes?  Because if you are watching a forty five minute long episode and if a season you are watching is twenty four episodes, damn that's a lot to take in during a short stretch of time.  Don't get me wrong, I binge watch here and there, but it's three or four episodes and I am done.  My brain reaches capacity for information.

And there are exceptions.  I binged my way through the first three season of 'Fear the Walking Dead' at a rapid rate.  Mainly to get caught up because the most recent season is airing.  Well, right now they're on a mid-season break (which is dumb, why does that exist?), but I am all caught up.     

I am currently watching season two of 'Jessica Jones' on Netflix.  It is thirteen episodes long.  A season you could watch in an entire weekend if you chose to.  I'm watching a two or three episodes at a time for a couple of reasons.  I enjoy the show so I want to stretch out the experience as long as possible.  I also want to ensure that I don't get to a boredom moment where I mentally check out on an episode and then miss something that is happening.  Streaming services make it too easy to watch the next and the next and the next episode.  It takes control to turn the t.v. off.

Another show that I watched is 'Arrow'.  It has been a while since I watched it after I finished the second season.  I like to jump around after I finish a season of something just to watch a new show and keep it fresh.  The problem with 'Arrow' is that the seasons are twenty some episodes long.  It is very daunting when you are starting off a season, especially when the episodes are forty five minutes long.  I like to finish watching a season of whatever it is that I am watching before moving on to the next show, so I have been very hesitant in starting the next season.  

A third example of a show I have watched is 'Frontier' (another Netflix original).  Two seasons have been released and each season is six episodes long.  That is almost too short of a season.  The nice thing about such a short season is that there are no throw away episodes.  No episodes that are around just to make sure that the season quota is met.  Each of the six episodes is carefully laid out and builds up the next one.  The problem is that you want the season to keep going.  You want to find out what happens next.  

Three different shows, three different season lengths.  So which one is right?  They're all right in their own way.  The main difference between the shows is that one (Arrow) is on t.v. while the others are exclusively on a streaming service.  With 'Arrow' the season is as long as it is, I'm assuming, because it is needed to fill the time slot and to earn money for the t.v. channel.  That is the nice thing about the streaming shows, it can be as long or short as the creators want.  The better the show, the longer the next season could be or the more seasons there can be.  I think that twelve episodes per season is just the right amount.  It gives time to develop both characters and story line without having to have an episode or two where you're wondering why it is even in the season.  Most shows have an episode like that.  You finish watching it and are left wondering why you even spent the time watching it.