General update

It's the 4th of July and our country is in a terrible state. The stupid bill passed and how will that affect us? Probably just cost more to live. It's others that it will affect more, especially around Medicaid and health care, etc, as well as immigration and the color of one's skin. Though I am a "POC," it's not something I will lose sleep over and I hope I am not being naïve about it all.

So, what is new? I just rearranged my desk situation. I got a new monitor recently and decided I wanted to go 3-wide. In theory, it's pretty awesome, but it made me have to change out my table. My old desk was a throwaway from work, a standing model that worked great, but was not wide or deep enough, especially to support 3 monitors. Luckily I had this free dinner table I got off of Buy Nothing a few years ago. It sat behind my desk as a junk/craft/hobby/bass setup table. Most recently, it was just holding crap.

Last night I was inspired to try switching it, so I did it. here's the result.

The plusses? More real estate. I have room for more stuff, not just the monitors. I can run one vertically, like I do at work, which I really like. But at work, I always have Teams on and I ain't doing that here, so TBD on best use case at the moment.

Minuses? The desk is a little lower than I'd like. I can adjust the chair, but it's still sort of low. I also keep banging my legs on the underhang of the table. I might be able to saw/cut it, but we'll see how it goes. Also, the left screen is a little far away. I might be able to pull the arm closer to me, but then that throws off the alignment of the whole setup. We'll see how it goes.

Work is changing. IEC is officially closed and even with my new lofty role of "Immersive Experience Demo Lead," Austin and I are sort of in limbo until we can get over to the EBC/EC One in the near future. We are both studying for the AZ900 Azure Fundamentals cert, as well as the legendary CompTIA A+. It's about time I get some certs.

Financially, the new job is providing once a week, rather than once a month, which is nice. But despite the frequent payments, I was sort of used to once a month. Daresay I preferred that? Maybe I'm still trying to get into the rhythm of it all? Anyway, the greater pay is nice and the hope was to start paying stuff down. That is happening, but now I'm skimming $250 off of each check to help Riley with his summer tuition. And now Marci's starting school to get her Master's degree, which is awesome, but that's going to cost money. And we are paying for her's and Haley's new glasses, Riley's contacts, the list never ends! So much for lifestyle creep!

BUT, I am and we are very fortunate to be in the position we are in. No complaints, just a vent sesh.

Just looking at my calendar for July, it's pretty busy on the music side of things. After a pretty dry first half of the year with only 6 gigs, looks like July may have 5 gigs. First up is next Friday at the Central, with Sunset Grooves. We are opening for Fred Speakman's 80's cover band, the Valley Guys. We've learned some 80s hits and adding a friend on sax for some songs, so that will be fun. The next Friday, we're playing the Sand Point Golf Club again. My old high school acquaintance, Alan K., hooked us up with that. He's seen me play with Embers and Planets in the past few years.

It looks like we have a private party booked as of yesterday the night after Sand Point. It's either on Mercer Island or Medina, we are still waiting on details. The Friday after that, the 25th, Planets is booked at Tim's Tavern with Full Life Crisis and the Riffbrokers. And then the next night we had a tentative, but just heard that they "customer" never responded. So 4 gigs it is, apparently.

With all the music and busy-ness, Marci will be out of town visiting Judy. It's about 2.5 weeks and it will be boring for me. I always like the free time, but I do get lonely. Good news, though, Haley will be here! With graduation and getting her home, she's been chillin here and working. She works a mid-shift most days so I'll have to figure out the dinner thing moving forward until Marci gets back. I'll have to handle the Mom stuff too.

Which is another thorn in my side. Since February/March, I've been trying to get Mom into some sort of assisted living situation, either moving to Aegis Gardens down the street, or having a Kin On caregiver visit a few times a week. AG is the best path forward, but it is so expensive, about $6k a month after the one-time buy-in fee of $10-15k. Crazy. But she agreed to have Lucy, a Kin On caregiver help out this month. It's been going OK, I think. Lucy proposed to do some sort of "under the table" agreement with Mom. I'm not crazy about that, but if Mom gets help a few times a week and gets food and it lightens the load for the rest of us, well, I can live with it.

Been playing the F out of Pacific Drive, something like 50 hours in now. I just finished the main storyline last night. Will do some more exploring. With this new monitor and a new DisplayPort 1.2 cable, I've unlocked greater than 60fps. PD runs great, Division 2 runs about 80-90fps and it's so smooth. Only downside is this monitor maxes out at 1920x1080, but I don't really notice as I'm playing.

I have been trying to save $$ for a TTL payment for a new car, but due to the new expenses noted above, doesn't look like that's gonna happen anytime soon. As it stands, I have about $90 in fun bux and there is a Steam summer sale going on. There are some games I've played before (No Man's Sky, Subnautica, Prey, GTAV) that are all on deep discount, but with games still to be played (Jedi Survivor, Dying Light, Hardspace Shipbreaker), maybe I should try/finish those first. Plus, with a newly acquired Meta Quest 2 VR headset, Hardspace Shipbreaker is supposed to be great. It may scratch the gameplay loop that PD, Div2, NMS and Subnautica scratch as well.

I think that's a good update for now. Time for a run. Which I'm still doing, but I'm still being a pig on non-run days. I don't think I need to lose weight, just stay consistent, which I am (⁓160 give or take). Reading every day, games at night. TV and hangs with Marci in-between. I gotta do some yardwork too, what a drag that is.

Mom's house

Mom's been out of town for a month and a half. We've all (me, Marci, Knight and Shannon) been going over, getting the mail, etc. S&K decided to remodel/refresh Mom's kitchen as they have a few extra bucks laying around. As a result, their contractor (Mom's 4th son), Dana, has been going over to do stuff and has replaced the cabinets and countertops.

He went over Sunday to do the floors and when he arrived, he noticed things seemed off. Stuff on the floor in the foyer, cabinets open and dumped. Then he thought he heard noise upstairs. He called Knight, who called me to say that Mom's house had been broken into and robbed.

Marci and I got dressed and, after alerting the cops, headed over. When we got there, we parked down the street. Dana and a police officer were at the bottom of the driveway. Over the next few minutes, 3-4 more Bellevue police showed up. Knight showed up and parked at the top of the street.

One of the cops came over and told us to stay where we were, got permission to go sweep inside to see if anyone was still inside. Eventually, a K-9 unit from Seattle showed up (apparently no K9 in Bellevue?) and went in to sweep the crawl space. After a short time, including searching the neighbor's yard and cul-de-sac around the corner, nothing was found. We were told we could go in, but couldn't touch anything as the fingerprint people were coming to take prints.

At this point, it was like 1pm, so Marci and I headed home to make a few PBJs to bring back. We got them back and ate with Knight, who was waiting there for the print person to finish. She was done shortly after so we went back in to assess things. I did a walkthrough video but Blogger won't let me post it for some reason.

Needless to say, the crook/s made a giant mess. Weirdly, though little damage. They just rummaged through everything. They dumped out cabinets and closet in the front. Dining room and table was already messy due to the kitchen being emptied out from the remodel, but not much seemingly missing there. The Buddha room was a mess, cabinets opened, desk opened and stuff dumped out. Couldn't even walk in there, but much of it was from the kitchen as well.

The crooks got in via the back window in the sunroom. I had left them open for ventilation when I went over the previous Tuesday, but I'm pretty sure I locked the sliding glass door to the house. Shannon had gone over the next Thursday, but I don't know if she went in the sunroom or not. Either way, whether or not I had left the back window open or if Shannon had opened the sliding door, the crooks would've gone in regardless.

The laundry room was messed up and the garage had a couple file cabinets opened. Upstairs, my old bedroom was dumped. The closet was pretty much emptied onto the floor. Knight and DC's old room was messed up, Mom's bedroom was dumped and the master bedroom was also dumped.

Once we assessed everything and got over the shock and anger, we got to organizing a little. Mainly it consisted of putting stuff back in cabinets for the time being. We sorted through garbage and recyclables and made fast work of the foyer and living room. Knight worked on the Buddha room and before long, stuff started looking normal again.

We were unsure of what was taken because we hadn't called Mom yet due to the time difference (she's +16 hours and it was the middle of the night). We didn't see any missing furniture or anything but found lots of empty pouches and jewelry containers. Eventually, we headed home and I had to go to band practice.

After practice I learned that Mom had kept a backpack full of valuables in the Buddha room, within a bookcase cabinet that was tossed. Knight had found the backpack and it was empty. What we found out for mom was that bag had stuff in it that she wanted to give to us. Don't know if it was inheritance or what or how much it was valued at, but that was the main score of the bad guys.

I talked to Mom on Monday night and she was in good enough spirits; don't know if it was denial or a defense mechanism, but she really sounded fine. She actually used the words, "no big deal," and was laughing and just having a normal one. I think she's releived that she's there and we are here to handle it for her. As far as the stolen items are concerned, I'm more mad that Mom and Dad's legacy of working, making money, spending it on things they wanted is pretty much gone with that theft. We were going to inherit some stuff, but we can't lose what we didn't have, so I'm not bummed about that too much.

That said, we have a bunch of stuff to work through with the bank and safety deposit box situation, insurance and culling/throwing out stuff at the house. Updates to follow in the future.

Slow posting month

Well, not much seems to be happening in my neck of the woods. I'm definitely noticing a slowdown at work due to the infamous economy. I have a few things I'm working on to turn it around but it'll definitely be a slow process.

Mom is doing great. She's got a little daily routine going on and is taking care of business left and right. I'm quite proud of her!

Riley's surgery is in 10 days or so. He seems to have some allergies now, or possibly a tiny cold. Hopefully that's all it is; if he does get sick or is sick at the time of the operation, they'll postpone it, which would be LAME!

In other Riley news, I gotta show Riley how to pee better. I got home today and he said he had an "asiwent" (accident) at school. Evidently his "penith" got stuck to his "bumpth" and caused him to pee all over his leg. Sadly, the teacher at his school only had shorts that we gave her at the end of summer for a change of clothes. So, he had to wear shorts for the day. Luckily he had PE (no pun intended) and got to run around to warm up a bit. Kind of funny, I suppose.

I've been playing a ton of music lately. Friday I had a gig at the Sunset. Sunday I played at church, then rehearsed with Emilio's band that night. No Lunds on Monday, but had a productive Scheme practice last night and will do it again Friday night. We gig on Saturday (twice for me) and then I have God Rock on Sunday morning. Whew!

Meanwhile, I've been sleeping kind of lousy lately. Doesn't help that I stay up too late, but last night, Rye got up at 1:00am (I'd only been asleep for 1/2 an hour). The night before, he was up at 5 or so, having wet the bed. I'd woken up 2-3 times that night anyway. Usually, I don my sexxxxy CPAP and I'm out for 7-8 hours. Past few nights, not so much. Hopefully that changes tonight.

I am going to hit the hay. Goodnight.

Making progress

Since Dad died, we've been spending a lot of time with Mom. As the days have passed, we're still going up to the house, but not as much. It helps that my brother and his family are staying with her, but they leave for Ireland on Sunday morning.

Mom has been pretty dang incredible. She's been by herself for parts of the days recently and she's been fine with it. Night time has been different, though. She's had Yumei stay up there with her when Dung and the family are unable to.

Tonight Dung, Ruby and the kids went to Ruby's mom's house for some facetime, leaving Mom alone at home. Dung and I arranged for me to go up there to keep her company until I had to go to band at about 8:45 or so. A little later, Mom called to tell me Dung said he probably wouldn't be able to get back by then. She then said she'd just keep the lights and TV on and she'd be ok. I told her I'd come up to keep her company til I had to go, but she said it wasn't necessary.

My mom is growing up! Sniff!

So we ended up having dinner and, though Mom was ok with hanging out solo, Marci went up to get a break from the kids and to use a massage chair (and to hang out with Mom too!).

It'll be good for the girls to hang out a bit. It's been very busy most of the times we've been over and for me or Marci or the kids to get some "alone" time with Mom is good.

We'll see what happens next week when Dung and family are gone. We'll probably go over more as it'll be less hectic, but we'll miss them terribly too. Once they go, it'll really be back to "real life", as it were.

Stuff, vacation, cancer

I hate writing titles for the blog. I can never come up with anything witty, so I usually just write about what I'm going to write about. What's the topic today? Nothing special, I suppose; just a recap of stuff since I last wrote.

Biggest thing that happened is that me and the family took a little 3 day vacation to Mt. Rainier. I hadn't been there in a looong time and we took Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of this week to go there. I took many pictures and put some of the best ones here. We had a great time driving up and down the mountain, eating lots of food at the Copper Creek Inn and seeing beautiful sights. To have Mt. Rainier 1.5 hours away is a pretty cool thing.

On the musical side, Sean was finally to nail Jonathan down for some studio time. We'll be going in on 8/26 for me to lay down about 12 bass tracks. Sean sent me some ideas for a great song of his, Only You, as I was having a hard time coming up with a tasty line under the verses. He came up with a great octave type line and I incorporated it into the other ideas I'd had previously. I'm pretty happy with the ideas and I think he is too. Now I just have to nail down what I'm going to do so we're not wasting time in the studio coming up with stuff. Also, my new bass simply CRUSHES when recorded. If it sounds this good to me through my little mixer into my computer's sound card, I can only imagine how good it will sound (and hopefully Sean likes it too, 'cause he's really leaning towards a Sterling bass on the recording) recorded by a Real Live Engineer!

What the hell else is going on? Well, Julie is back at work now. After two months of recovery at her house after breaking her ankle in 3 places, she's back on a consistent basis. And it is good to have her back. She's the Bad Cop to my Good Cop (or Wussy Cop, if you will!). Plus she has some brains to back it up. Me? I'm just making things up as I go...

Riley has his 3rd birthday party tomorrow. When we asked him what kind of party he wanted, instead of asking for a Cars or Transformers or Finding Nemo or Bob the Builder party, he asked for a Monkey party. Now, what the hell is that? I have no idea. Marci, on the other hand, went nuts. Or, more appropriately, bananas. :)

Anyway, she made about 20 cupcakes that look like monkeys, made a cake with Curious George bursting out of it, found a giant-ass inflatable monkey (which is now shoved in her passenger side seat in the car; looks funny!), and basically decked things out with all things simian. The party will be at our local swim club (of which I have not worked out at for several weeks. For shame) and all the cool kids will be there. Hopefully it doesn't rain. :crosses fingers:

Oh. Found out today that my dad was going in for a colonoscopy today. Huh, wha? This is news to me. My aunt told me today at work that he'd had some "issues pooping" and thought it'd be prudent to get 'scoped. Evidently I was the last to know. It's kind of important as Dad went through chemo for cancer about 3 years ago. He had non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and went through about 4-5 weeks of chemo. Lost the hair and everything, but came back and was healthier than he'd ever been, I think.

Anyway, I guess my brother and his wife were at my parents' house last week and (TMI ALERT ABOUT POOP! WATCH OUT) Dad was on the can, constipated. Apparently he'd been plugged up for some time and because of that, was also vomiting as he was trying to poop. Yikes. (My brother has two dogs and he says that one of them will also puke when constipated. Ugh.)

Needless to say, my bro tried to get Dad to the ER, but, of course, he refused (stubborn old man). Anyway, Knight called one of his many Dr. friends, who recommended some Maalox. So Knight & Shannon ran to get some and as they were at the store, Dad was able to relieve himself. Anyway, fast forward to today and he had his colon checked. Initial thought is that there is some sort of blockage or tumor there, but they won't know if it's cancer or not for a few days.

Let's hope it's not fucking cancer again.

Funny thing was, when Dad had the NHL a few years ago, he was so laid back about it that that's how I handled it. Not once did I worry for his well-being or health. I figured he'd be fine, and, thankfully, he was. This time around, even though we're not sure of anything yet, it's a bit freaky for me. Maybe part of it is because I've been reading a journal by a local reporter about a local little girl dying/suffering from a form of cancer (intense blog here). It's pretty emotional and intimate and is a very touching story. She's in very bad shape and they're praying for a miracle, but who knows what will happen.

So for Dad to be potentially sick again is a bit unsettling for me. They've finally retired (Mom and Dad, that is) and are really, really enjoying their free time. They're traveling or at one of the many local casinos, supporting the local Native American tribes. I know Dad is still taking the, "What, me worry?" angle of attack, but still, it worries me.

Well, this was a backwards blog. I write about some trivial stuff, then, KERPOW! Cancer? Bad meat? Who knows?

Love your parents!

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Now playing: Muse - Space Dementia (live)
via FoxyTunes