Not the laziest Sunday, but close enough

 

Yesterday, I had a lot of plans for today. But when my alarm went off, I thought to myself I should get a little more sleep. And then I got a lot more sleep. And then when I finally decided to get up, I decided screw all my other plans and I'm just going to be lazy.

And it felt good. 

I feel like every weekend this summer I've been doing something and/or going somewhere. I needed a break. Honestly, I could probably use a little more of a break, but this will have to do for now.

I still did my meal prepping for the week, or at least most of it. And I did some laundry. But there was a decent bid of other household work and a couple errands I had planned and none of that got done. I think not running the errands was the most important part. For the first day in a couple months, I didn't open my garage door or deal with dumbass Anchorage drivers - and that was a nice change of pace.

I'm not sure when the next time I'll get a chance to do this. At soonest, some time in August when I'm planning on taking a week off work. But I also know there's a good chance I'll be busy most that week.

Anyways, yay for lazy Sundays.  

Song of the day 

Trying to take stock

 Went to REI today to buy new hiking shoes and possibly a new backpack.

The shoes I assume I need because I bought my current ones last summer and I've been told hiking shoes should be replaced at least annually (more if you're putting a lot of miles on them). The backpack I really want because I'd like to have a backpack I keep on hand in my car in case I get the itch to suddenly go for a hike while out and about - I know from experience if I run home to get my gear first I end up staying home most the time.

So I got to REI and started perusing their shelves. And then I really got to thinking. Do I really need new shoes? The ones I've been using haven't been hurting me at all and still seem in pretty good shape. I also have quite a few pairs of shoes in my closet I haven't looked at in years; maybe something in there will work. 

As for a backpack, I know I have another one somewhere around this house I bought a couple years ago. I didn't like it much, so I threw into the back of a closet and forgot about it. But when it comes pack for sudden afternoon hiking, I don't need one I'm in love with. I need something that holds the essentials for a short-to-medium length hike. So what if I don't like way the bag looks, I won't be looking at it much anyways.

So I left REI without buying anything (which happens way more often that it used to I might add, but that's a conundrum for another time). 

The thing I really got to thinking about as I left is how often I buy shit I don't need simply because I want a new one of those things. Or I'm not sure what I have at home, so I buy one anyways and then get home to find I now have two of something I definitely only need one of (if I really need any at all). It's a habit I've had most my life and it's one I definitely need to rid myself of if I'm hoping to one day buy and fix up a van for roadtripping around the country with. 

Of course, old habits die hard and even as I write all this, part of my brain is back to thinking about what new hiking gear I might "need." Part of my brain is trying to convince me that if I buy more gear, I'll make time to hike more. But it's never worked like that. Not for hiking, not for Magic or jiu jitsu or any hobby I've had. Except maybe drinking - if I bought more beer I definitely drank more beer. But a lot of the times I was buying more beer than I need, I was telling myself by drinking more beer I'd have a better palate  for when I started brewing my own beer. And we see how that worked out...

Anyways, I have too much shit. And I need to stop buying new shit as though any of it holds the key to me finding some internal locus for eternal happiness. And one of these days, I need to get off my ass and start selling off a lot of this old shit. 

Song of the Day 

Who am I even writing these for?

 For those that didn't know, Blogger keeps track of how many people visit your blog. For me those numbers are minuscule. When I had social media and posted links to the blogs on there, it was usually 40-50 unique visits. Once I got rid of social media, it went down to 2-4. As of late, it's been zero. 

And that's OK. Right now, I'm writing to make a habit of writing. Hopefully. 

Who really should these be written for anyways? At one point, when I was talking about quitting drinking a lot, there were a couple people saying those posts helped them. And that's awesome. But I shouldn't be thinking in terms of writing for those people. Or anyone that might read this really. 

This is just a random internet blog for my random thoughts that aren't so personal I feel I need to keep them in a journal. Or maybe never write down at all. 

Anyways, the home office conversion is going very slowly. Don't know why I want to rush it - I'm gonna need help moving the bookshelves downstairs safely and the person most likely to help with that is out of town for at least another week. That said, I've been moving my books downstairs and whenever I move books around, I'm amazed at how many books I own that I've never read.  

Song of the Day 

What to do with a house that doesn't feel like home?

 I've been struggling with what to do with my house since my ex-gf left. In an ideal life, I'd sell the place and get something closer to hiking trails. (Or I'd buy that van I talked about in my last post, but that also may not be a wise idea yet). But that's just not in the cards for me right now and while I normally love to do nothing about a bad situation except wallow in self pity, I decided this time to make do with what I have. So I did some upstairs rearranging (what little could be done) and more importantly, I decided to turn the spare bedroom into a room I'd always wanted - a tabletop gaming room.

 I'm not gonna lie, I was kind of proud of that room. It wasn't my dream gaming room by any means, but it was undoubtedly a gaming room.There was just one real problem with it - I don't do a lot of gaming. 

It's not that I don't want to game more. Given the opportunity, I'd likely be playing some TCG or RPG damn near daily. But I don't really have that opportunity these days. And I certainly don't have the opportunity to do so with friends at my place.

A couple weeks ago a friend needed a place to crash for a few days. So I cleared out the table in the game room so they could put an air mattress in there. Then when they left and I went to put the table back, I realized it's kind of pointless. I had a room I occasionally used for organizing cards, but that was it; it never got used for its intended purpose. So I decided I need to do something else with the room.

After a few days of inner deliberation, I've decided I'm going to make a home office out of it - another room I'd have in my ideal home. Of course it won't be my ideal home office (not much of a view from the window and the wall is a pretty thin wall shared with neighbors), but hopefully it gets more use than the gaming room did.  

Song of the Day 

This video is fueling my daydreams lately

 I don't know what it is, but I've been watching this video near daily (and sometimes multiple times a day) and imagining myself living some nomadic life traveling the country (maybe even the world!) in a van like this. I've even begun looking at ways to do something like this with my Ford Bronco. Supposedly it's possible too, but there's better models for doing something like this and it wouldn't be nearly as comfortable as a van like this likely would. 

Granted, in the video it's just some dude's road trip and I'm sure he goes back to his real life at the end. But for my daydream, this becomes my real life. Of course, I'm daydreaming so I also find a companion to join me and Hamlet is there as well. Regardless, it's crazy how much I've been thinking about it lately.

Maybe it's more midlife crisis or maybe it's more realization that everything I own is just stuff that'll one day be dust and my attachment to it is more hindrance than help in finding actual happiness. 

Song of the day is the already embedded video. 

Another Straw on a Camel's Already Broken Back

 A couple years ago, I decided to "quit" playing Magic. I didn't like the direction the game was headed in and the fact the company that makes it, Wizards of the Coast (WotC0 and its parent company, Hasbro, seemed more concerned with sales than the actual game itself. I get the American capitalism wants to do its thing, but I've always felt there should be a limit to how much of that thing companies try to do. And WotC was breaking that limit. That "quitting" phase lasted about a year before I got pulled back in.

I've said it before, I think Magic is an amazingly designed game and overall I love it. It's a hard game to just leave behind, even when the company making it has shown themselves to be evil corporate suckers of satan's cock. (That last part if a Bill Hicks reference, RIP).

That may have changed today. They were previewing and upcoming set. (A Star Trek set at that!) And in this set in certain packs will be cards autographed by the actors from the show. 

WotC has truly jumped the shark for me on this. They're using an old shitty gimmick from sports cards and adding it to Magic. And it's only in an attempt to boost sales by getting Star Trek fans that have no interest in the game to buy up packs, creating a demand for the packs that creates artificial scarcity that in turn justifies a future price increase of the product. It's honestly fucking sickening.

So it's a bit early to say, but I think I'm done buying Magic. Well, to clarify, I'm hoping to be done buying sealed Magic/product direct from the company. Like I don't think I'll actually quit playing - it's a fun game! - but the idea of buying all the product that I once was makes me feel ill at this point. So instead I'm just going to be one of those nerds that plays commander and buys singles for their commander decks. I would also say I'm hoping for the news of Chris Cocks and/or Mark Rosewater (CEO of Hasbro and lead Magic designer, respectively) being caught up in some huge scandal that ends their careers and sends them to jail for the rest of their lives, but I know in this day and age, they'd just be replaced by people as equally vile as that are (I'd say more vile, but not sure that's possible for either).  

 Song of the Day (not a song today)

 

Re-Certified Possible, but not likely, Killer

 Today (technically yesterday at this point, I had to qualify on the M4. For those that don't know what that means, I went to a shooting range and fired a rifle at a target and so much as I hit the target a little more than 70% of the time, the Air Force says I'm good to be deployed. Somehow, and I really have no idea how, I qualified. I went in there with no sleep and the safety glasses they game me had a giant scratch right in my line of fire, so I took a lot of shots I wasn't sure of. 

 It was a day away from my normal job and that's usually nice. However, guns kind of bore me and if it hadn't been for having a friend in the class to joke around with, I might've fallen asleep mid trigger pull. 

The thing that really annoys me about it though is that we're required to qualify. I get that this is the military and most of us should know how to fire a gun and the basics for doing so effectively. But it seems like a bit of pressure on some people to say they need to hit the targets so many times when the reality is that if people in jobs like mine are being issued gins to fire at the enemy, we screwed up long ago. Chances are, if I'm in a combat zone and I'm looking down the scope on this thing, my life is already considered forfeit and I'm just trying to buy some time for our command staff to evacuate. That being the case, we could save the AF a lot of time and money tailoring these classes to that idea and not worrying about how accurate the shooters are.

Thankfully, the people that run the class seem to know this and I'm pretty sure they often count shots that should be misses as hits. That said, in my lowly but not so humble opinion, we could save a whole lot of time shortening the class to half a day where we cover the most basic of shooting fundamentals and then everyone is given the chance to fire a few shots so they know how it feels to pull the trigger and they're not scared of the weapon should they have to use it.

Song of the Day