JUL 08

2025

Tuesday: spent the morning as productively at work as I could (including another day in which I started an hour early), as in the afternoon, I had to leave or a medical appointment at the Navy Yard. Since Julie had stayed home to go to an appointment of her own in the morning, the car was available for me to drive myself, so I didn't have to spend an hour on public tansit. I spent the extra time at the doctor's office trying out the new "Lost City of Un'Goro" constructed metagame in Hearthstone, focusing on a shuffle rogue deck in wild. It's fun.

After our shift, Julie was concerned about the cost of going to trivia, so I offered to pay on my card this time. I had been running laundry, and the game I was playing went long, which made us late enough that our normal table preferences at POPE were all occupied. They eventually cleared space in the back room, where we sat and ate under the TV near two other teams. Round one was based around the events of 2001 (like the Enron scandal, The Matrix, a Britney Spears song I didn't recognize, etc.); round two was "summer jams," which Julie mostly carried us through despite not having time to review the playlist much in advance this month. Round three was about movies with robots, and it's still shocking to me that Julie has never seen Robocop. We might make plans to fix that sometime soon. Thanks to our strong performance in the last two rounds, we were the best-performing two-player team again this month, and we came home with an LL Cool J record and coffee table book for our efforts. (Still wound up being fifth or sixth overall. "Who You Calling Hoegarden" and "Math Adjacent" are too consistently strong to beat.)

While the scores were being read, Julie got a call from Chris about her dad's latest conundrum, and the gist of it is that his financial situation is turning out to be a lot more precarious than he'd let on for various reasons. Together with our own monetary precarity (physical therapy expenses, rising rent, the risk posed to Julie's job by the cuts to Medicaid, etc.), we are starting to feel the stress, as well. Julie's considering taking on a second job next month, and I want to explore some options of my own to improve my income to expenses ratio. It's too much to hope that my ko-fi might provide an unexpected windfall without some reason to encourage people to tip me, right?

2024

Monday: started the day off by taking Julie to the airport for her latest trip to Kentucky for work. I had a typical day at work, but they're having me take over chat support for the closing shift, tomorrow. It was hot enough that we finally texted the landlord about the problems the A/C has had keeping up with the summer tempratures. He'll have somebody come out Wednesday morning. In the evening, I spent some time lounging with the cats (and fell asleep for a while), after which I had more chili. I watched more Dawntrail streams and played some Hearthstone while sweating.

2023

Saturday: the plan had been to go shopping in the morning, but Julie had plans to meet Megan for a movie, so we just had eggs and chilled in the apartment. While she was gone, I started watching a new Disco Elysium LP. We had some afternoon showers, but the weather must have hit while they were in the theater or the subway, so Julie's spirits were not dampened beyond a bit of resentment that she never gets to use the hammock sit it's always wet. After cleaning up for the evening, we had leftovers and watched more Futurama. I went to the office after Julie went to bed to catch up on MMO stuff. It doesn't seem like much when I lay it out like this, but this was a great day.