🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
New Job🧑💼
Happy Times🤗
Small World ⚾
Buckle up. It’s story time. Today I made a reservation for Ruth’s Chris steakhouse on Sunday for me, Wifey Poo and Boys The Elder and Younger. The Core Four is getting dressed up.
Keep in mind, we are not Ruth’s Chris people. It’s not that we don’t love good steak, but $50 hunks of meat are not a part of the budget Wifey Poo and I creatively stretch every month to pay for things such as our boy’s education, basic clothing and the electric bill. It’s not that we’re poor; we’re not. But we’re certainly not “Let’s hit Ruth’s Chris on a Sunday because we don’t feel like cooking” people.
Rather, the reservation comes because, today, I stopped relying on other people’s promises (a completely different kind of OPP than Naughty By Nature sang about) and created a brighter future for the C4 myself.
The story begins …
I’ve been living on OPP — first from Shriners Children’s, which promised me that if I, indeed, did what I had told them in my interviews I would do, I would be rewarded, and lately by The Best Dang Real Estate Team on Either Side of the Mississippi. The amorphous promises of the former didn’t materialize despite my success, and so I took a position with the latter, whose promises were much more defined.
Here’s where math comes into our story, and I hate math, so take all these numbers with a grain of salt. They’re probably wrong. And Wifey Poo will let me know about it.
For simplicity’s sake and because I don’t feel like talking about my actual salary, let’s just say Shriners paid me $100 a year with vague notions of making $100 + ?. I was fine with the ? for awhile, but then Bossman came calling with from the real estate world and offered $100 + unlimited ? based on the success of the team. The projected first-quarter 2022 ?, when I looked at their forecast, was $100 + $40, a pretty damn good percentage for one quarter (about 40%, if my math is correct).
“Even if their forecasts are off by half, $100 + $20 is still better than $100 + nothing. And that’s just for one quarter! And surely their projections have to be at least half-accurate.”
Then I set about doing my thing. And I did it well. Yet there are many things great marketing can’t do. It can’t change a culture overnight. It can’t bring strength to people who need to hold others accountable if there’s going to be real change and growth. And it can’t change the forces of the free market.
So when the first quarter ended, there was no $100 + $40. There was no $100 + 20. There was no $100 + $1. There was $100. Period. Full stop.
Well, that’s not entirely true. Not “full” stop. Stop, but promises. And I believed them because I believed (and still believe) in the Bossman. He’s a great real estate guy. He knows his stuff.
So I got back to work doing my thing. The mission had been clear from the start, and we’d agreed upon our strategy — build brand awareness and build a lead generating machine. I had done both. Brand awareness isn’t built overnight, and it’s not built in a quarter, yet we were making progress. A lot of progress. Search Engine Optimization is an art and a science, and my work was artistically effective. It was working.
Let’s jump out of the math and rewind to December 2021. Me and Bosslady went to lunch, and there I told her that my 25th anniversary was coming up and I really wanted to take Wifey Poo to Alaska in the summer of 2022 to celebrate. “We’ll make that happen,” she said. It wasn’t quite a promise, but you can give it promise-adjacent authority when it comes from the Bosslady.
When the first quarter ended with $100 + nothing, Bosslady was kind enough to give me and Wifey Poo a gift card for Ruth’s Chris, and said, “I know it’s not Alaska, but we’ll get there.”
Promises.
So I asked: Can I please have a look as the second quarter goes on into the second quarter numbers so I can track what’s happening and make plans for my family?
I can’t stress this enough: $100 wasn’t enough to make the budget work. I have a kid in college. I have a family to support. And I needed to have at least an idea of what was coming.
As all of this was happening, I revived my side business and picked up some marketing work to make ends meet. I love creating. In many ways, this side gig is my hobby, not another job.
I waited to see the numbers.
And then I was told those numbers were visible only to “leadership,” which, based on what I had been asked to contribute far and above my role as marketing dude, I had pretty much considered I was. In fact, the Director of Operations had told me I was. Yet when I asked for transparency, I wasn’t.
Do you see what I saw?
So I let Bossman know: Yes, I wanted to be with the team for the rest of my career. But I had a family to think about. And I was told about what was coming, what was going to happen, what was just over the horizon.
Promises.
Yet I had reached a point where I couldn’t just accept the promises of someone who wouldn’t give me visibility into the foundation for those promises. So I polished up my resume, and I let the LinkedIn algorithm know I was available should anyone want to talk to me about what I have done and what I can do.
Enter Samantha.
Sam is a former first-round draft pick in this here country’s women’s professional soccer league. She had a good career doing that, then coached collegiate women’s soccer — and now she works as a recruiter. She sent me a message about a new opportunity — one that paid, going back into the math world, $100 + $50 or $60 as a base, with bonus and profit sharing opportunities. $100 + $50 or $60 is a gamechanger for my family, so I listened.
Over the past week, I’ve had three interviews with the company, and today they offered me a position for $100 + $60. Five more vacation days than what I’m getting. Three more holidays.
Five minutes after saying “I do” to them, I turned in my resignation, effective in two weeks, giving Bossman the first shot at securing my creative services as a side gig at various levels and for various prices. He and his wife/Bosslady are considering their options over the weekend. If they don’t sign on, I have good relationships with other Realtors in the area. I’ll be fine.
And so it came to pass that I made the Ruth’s Chris reservation. We’ll dine on the generosity of Bossman and Bosslady. It’s not Alaska. But it’ll taste good. Irony sometimes does.
And so I texted the C4 to let them know of the reservation. And I told them who’d be paying for the first large chunk of our meal. I told my boys: “Yes, the irony will taste good on Sunday. But I say this as a lesson to you. It’s OK to trust people and believe in people. Be careful whom you trust and believe. And make sure you hold people accountable for their promises. And know this: People can promise you a lot of things. But ultimately YOU make your future. Don’t ever put it heavily in another person’s hands for very long.”
This is the lesson I take from the past 17 months or so. I think it’s a good sign of growth that I can look back at my younger self and think “Damn, he was an idiot.” I was.
But I’m not anymore.
And then I left for the office for the day. I can do what I do from anywhere, so I did what I do from a sculpture park. It was a gorgeous day. I smoked a cigar to celebrate. I took a lunch break and read my book (Stephen King’s Later, which I highly recommend.). It feels good to be me right now, and that hasn’t been a thing until very recently.
It’s a small world. Over the course of my time talking with Samantha The Recruiter, I got to know that her fiance is a member of the Rocket City Trash Pandas. What the hell is that, you ask? It’s the Double-A affiliate of the Anaheim Angels, and that team name is freaking awesome. So I was telling Boy The Elder about this.
“Her fiance is Braxton Martinez,” says I.
“I know Braxton Martinez!” says BTE.
It seems as if, when Braxton was playing independent baseball while trying to catch on with a team affiliated with MLB, he played for the now-defunct River City Rascals, based right here in my section of Missourah. One day when BTE was 16 or so, he, his brother and his cousins went to a Rascals game with his grandparents. That night, Braxton went off and hit some big homers. After the game, my crew went up to the railing to get autographs.
BTE disappeared down to his bedroom and returned a few minutes later with an autographed ball. I texted a pic to Sam. Yup. It was her Braxton’s signature.
Small world.
In Other Writing …
SoS15: So Far Away
Welcome to Songs of Significance, chronicling the songs that have helped shape me and people across generations. So Far Away, Staind, from the 2003 album, 14 Shades of Grey Line of SignificanceNow that we’re here it’s so far away/And I feel like I can face the day, and I can forgive/And I’m not ashamed to…
Keep readingI can tell you that I haven’t felt the lyrics of a song as much as I’m feeling these today.
Now that we’re here
It’s so far away
All the struggle we thought was in vain
All the mistakes
One life contained
They all finally start to go away
Now that we’re here it’s so far away
And I feel like I can face the day, and I can forgive
And I’m not ashamed to be the person that I am today
Fuck yeah.
Today’s Reasons to Keep Living
- A new job awaits.
- I want to know what it feels like to comfortably meet my expenses with income. It’s been awhile.
- Wifey Poo and I have a breakfast date tomorrow.
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🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩A Good Self 👋Urgent Care, Revisited 👩⚕️Slow Down 🐢 I remember this time back in sixth grade when a trusted adult was talking to me as I struggled through what turned out to be a pretty life-defining traumatic experience. The friends I’d grown up with since I was a small boy…
Keep readingDeer Drama — Nov. 30 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Shooting a Fake Deer 🦌Time Spent Poorly ⏰Child Support 💸 About midway up my left shin underneath my leg hair is a scar about three inches long and the width of a deer antler. Well, a fake deer antler, anyway. “Deer-antler width” is hardly a standard unit of measurement, I know,…
Keep readingMetallica! — Nov. 29 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Gods of Music Deliver! 🎸Insta-Anger 😠Unpleasant 😓 I was in need of something good to happen yesterday. Desperate need. The gods of music delivered. Metallica is coming to St. Louis in concert in 2023 for a two-day show at the Dome at the America Center. I found out about this at…
Keep readingDouble Ear Infection — Nov. 27, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Urgent Care 👂👂Alone Update 😔Rest 🛏️ It’s never a good sign when, less than two seconds after sticking a light in your ear and gazing through the little viewfinder thingy (patent pending), the doctor says, “Oooooooooh.” That was followed by a diagnosis of a “nasty” left ear infection and the question,…
Keep readingFitting in — Nov. 25, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Alone 😔Christmas Changes🎄My Two Skillz 🔪 I would venture to guess that most of us like the feeling of fitting in somewhere. Even the most self-confident, secure person likes to have a tribe. We’re social creatures, and to have a place we just seem to slide into safely is a blessing.…
Keep readingSpouse+ Subscription — Nov. 23, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Marriage Talk 💑Requesting Money 💰Murder-Free 🔪 If you’ve been married as long as I have (rounding the corner and heading toward 26 years), you understand that conversations between spouses can sometimes be awfully weird. I mean, Wifey Poo and I have known each other more than 30 years now. How much…
Keep readingCoffee Hand — Nov. 22, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Man Cold? 🤒Balloon Analogy 🎈World Flop ⚽ If you want to know how my Monday started yesterday, I poured coffee all over my hand. It isn’t that I don’t know how to pour coffee. I’ve done it a billion times. It’s that, on this particular Monday, somewhere in between the start…
Keep readingZoo Signs — Nov. 20, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Gorilla Harassment 🦍Brother Love 👨👦👦True Crime 🔪 My love of wild animals was fostered early in my childhood. Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom was appointment viewing for my family. I grew up with scenes of hungry cheetahs chasing down baby gazelles that included what’s not included on nature shows today ……
Keep readingNo Slides Allowed — Nov. 17, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Presentation Skillz 📽️No Tribe 😔Fuck 45 🖕 There was a time not all that long ago, cosmically speaking, that the mere thought of standing up in front of a crowd and giving a talk would have made me want to throw up in my shoes. In fact, there has been a…
Keep readingWhat’s Funny? — Nov. 15, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Boss Kudos 🙌Chill Time 😌One In 8 Billion🧍 It always feels good when the Big Bossman comes up to you and shakes your hand for a job well done. That happened last night when El Presidente of our company congratulated me on the video I wrote, shot and produced for our…
Keep readingEngaged — Nov. 14, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩BTE and Div 💍Brother Greetings 👨👩👦👦Travel Day ✈️ The morning after Boy The Elder was born, I awoke in the hospital to his sweet cooing and his momma’s deep-sleep breathing. Scooping him up carefully and holding him nervously, I sat in a rocking chair in the pre-dawn darkness and talked to…
Keep readingDying Democracy — Nov. 11, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Election Message 🗳️School Priorities 🏫Tickets Aplenty 🎫 It would seem to me that if a common sentiment from wise people following an election is that it’s a good thing the results were so muddled because it means not much will get done in the next two years, you’ve got yourself a…
Keep readingFairy Tale — Nov. 9, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Stephen King 🕮Legal Weed🌿Public Schools🏫 I read my first Stephen King book when I was in high school. It was summer, if I remember correctly, and everywhere I went, I carried a worn library copy of Pet Sematary. Since that time, King’s words have been a regular companion through every stage…
Keep readingYear In Music — Nov. 5, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Concert Craze 🎵Back Crackin’👩⚕️To-Dos Done🚗 My year of music is over. And, my God, has it been good. It started on a sweltering mid-July afternoon at Hollywood Casino Amphitheater in which Wifey Poo and I watched my Backup Wife Jewel do her thing. It ended last night on an evening that…
Keep readingUpdate: My Favorite African — Nov. 3, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Little D’s Return 🏥Irony 🔨Planet Killer 🌎 Being a host parent to a little boy from Africa (Burkina Faso, to be precise) was one of the hardest and most rewarding things I’ve ever done in my life. And now, that little boy is returning to the United States. For those not…
Keep readingMega Billions — Nov. 2, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Stupid IT Rules 🖥️The Bend 🚑Is The War Over? ✌️ Tonight, there will be a lottery drawing in which someone could win $1.2 billion. That someone won’t be me, as I didn’t buy a ticket, but it didn’t stop me from thinking about what I would and wouldn’t do with that…
Keep readingFun Family — Nov. 1, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Family Dynamics 👪New Mattress 🛏️To Share Or Not To Share? ❓ Let’s say the only cracker you’ve ever eaten is a Saltine. You have no experience with any other crackers. In fact, you don’t even know that there is such a thing as other crackers. You might not love the Saltine,…
Keep readingHalloween Haters— Oct. 31, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Ghosts of Halloween 👻Wrinkles 👴Words Spawn Action ✍️ Wifey Poo made a bold declaration about her opinion of Halloween on our drive back from Springfield, Missourah, Saturday afternoon: “Halloween is a great time for kids to dress up …” If you think there’s more to that statement, nope. She added: “Period.”…
Keep readingHow I Do Me — Oct. 27, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Empath Life 🤗Earthquake 🌎Revolutionary Failure 😶 About six months after I started my career as a professional journalist, I started walking past this job opening in our company every time I walked in and out of the building. It was for editor of a weekly paper routinely ridiculed by those who…
Keep readingSchool Shooter Match Game — Oct. 24, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Game Time 🎮Family Picture📸Marriage Tips 🪢 I remember when it was simple. Horrible, yes … but simple. There was Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and they matched up with Columbine — which, side note, would have been my high school had my parents not moved to NY when I was 2.…
Keep readingHelping the Homeless — Oct. 23, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Helper Bags 🆘What’s In The Bag?🎒Mini Golf ⛳ I was raised to avoid the homeless. Avoid eye contact. Avoid conversation. And most definitely avoid giving them anything they asked for. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this, which doesn’t make me feel any better. What was instilled in me as…
Keep readingMarcus F’n King — Oct. 21, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Books & Covers 🕮Seeking Balance ⚖️Weirdo🤪 We’re taught at an early age to not judge a book by its cover. If I remember correctly, that was impressed upon me sometime around the first grade. Yet to be honest, I don’t think it’s a lesson that ever really sunk in. I imagine…
Keep readingPolitical Ads — Oct. 20, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Illegals or Guns? 🤦Scrolling Through Stupidity 🖱️Worst Nurse Ever 👩⚕️ If there’s anything I hate more than politics and politicians, it’s political advertising. Cutting the cable cord has lessened its intrusiveness in my life, yet it still manages to seep in. Case in point: I was watching the Padres-Phillies game last…
Keep readingChocolateman— Oct. 19, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Passion 🍫Sarcasm 😜Poop 💩 I appreciate people who are passionate about something. Well, except politics. Then I’d prefer it if you’d just keep your mouth shut. But if you’re super-interested in photography, goats, cooking, geocaching, quilting, etching … whatever … your enthusiasm feeds my soul. Which is part of the reason…
Keep readingTop 5 Things From The Past Week: Oct. 10-16 edition
Welcome to Issue No. 9 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. No. 5: I pledged to finish something I am a writer. If I’m going to be a…
Keep readingEvolution — Oct. 17, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Monkey Crap 🐒BTY Day 👨👦Incomplete Stories 🖊️ If you’re of the belief that human beings evolved from apes, I’m not here to try to dissuade you. What I am here to say is that, if evolution is true, we sure have come a long way. I say this after a trip…
Keep readingBasement Water — Oct. 15, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Personal Growth 🌱Mad Mom 😠Oh, Jeffrey 🧠 About a year ago, Arti The Wonder Therapist waited patiently for me to finish yet another of my amazing monologues detailing just how I felt about the various situations I was attempting to address in my life at the time and then calmly asked…
Keep readingDeath! Death! Death! — Oct. 14, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Cue the Outrage 🔫Animal Extinction 🐆Eye Update 👀 Even back in the day when I considered myself a Republican (before the dark times … before the Trumpire), I never quite understood the death penalty. Perhaps it was because I looked around at the other nations that still killed people as punishment…
Keep readingCorneal Complications — Oct. 13, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Hello Darkness, My Old Friend 👀COVID Costs 🦠Jackass Jones Verdict👩⚖️ I’ve spent much of this week so far in forced darkness. After I wrote on Monday morning, my right eye started to get blurry. Then it got real blurry. Then it became utterly useless. In this, I have reprised my role…
Keep readingMattress Shopping — Oct. 10, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Awkward Shopping 🛏️Disingenuous Holiday 🗓️Help the Homeless 😔 If there’s a more awkward retail excursion than mattress shopping, I have yet to find it in my 48 years. Wifey Poo and I went to a high school gym to do exactly that on Sunday afternoon. The bed we’ve been sleeping in…
Keep readingSo Long, Cards — Oct. 9, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Playoff Disappointment ⚾Oh, Britney 📲Friendship Failure 😔 In the span of just more than 24 hours, I went from the excited expectation of being in Busch Stadium to watch the hometown St. Louis Cardinals eliminate the Philadelphia Phillies and advance to the next round of the playoffs to watching those Phillies…
Keep readingPlayoff Baseball — Oct. 6, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Baseball Gear-Grinders ⚾Sunrise Woes 🌄Heavy Pumpkins 🎃 There are a few baseball-related indignities in my home that, as the saying goes, grind my gears. The first is that there is a state championship trophy on the mantel above the fireplace in our Humble Country Home with a gold-plated baseball player, bat…
Keep readingThere Will Be Blood — Oct. 5, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Weird Wound Treatment 🧂Phillies Bring Doom ⚾Meetings Suck 👎🏽 Apparently, I’ll take medical advice from waitresses and allow myself to receive medical treatment from busboys. This, I learned last night. I have a tendency to get hurt in really interesting ways. When I tell you that I once got a concussion…
Keep readingTop 5 Things From The Past Week: 9/26-10/2
Welcome to Issue No. 8 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. No. 5: I held an epic car concert If you were anywhere in the vicinity of my…
Keep readingPlace Your Bets — Oct. 3, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Football Picking God 🏈Fish Story 🐟Free Floating ☁️ A few months before Boy The Elder was born, I had about $100 set aside to buy Wifey Poo a gift that I intended to give her after she ushered our child into the world. It was the least I could do for,…
Keep readingSliced Bread — Sept. 30, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩New Route Home 🏎️Confirmed Weirdness 🤪Here’s Your Sign 🤦 I took a new route home from the western part of Missourah yesterday after doing the whole open-house thing for work in St. Joseph. Rather than shoot down to I-70 and traverse the state on that familiar road, I went across Hwy.…
Keep readingRental Tank — Sept. 29, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Woo-Woo vs. The Beast 🛻Dart Throwers 🎯My Job 📋 I am not used to driving a tank. My normal vehicle is Woo-Woo, AKA The Shitty Little Car, AKA a Nissan Versa. It’s practical. It gets great gas mileage. I hate it. Woo-Woo normally accelerates as quickly as a child asked to…
Keep readingLinkedIn — Sept. 26, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Unwitting Guinea Pigs 🐹False Bragging 🦹♂️Put Me In, Coach 🚀 My regular readers (hey, you three!) know that I have a hatred for social media’s influence on society with an intensity rivaled only by the heat of a thousand suns. The latest bit of “Are you fucking kidding me?” comes from…
Keep readingTop 5 Things From The Past Week: 9/9-9/25
Welcome to Issue No. 7 of Listicles, the feature that presents the Top 10, Top 5, Top 3, Top 100 or Top 1,000,000 of whatever it is you want to know about. Email your Listicle suggestions to johnagliata@gmail.com. No. 5: I reached out to a friend I have not been shy about sharing that I’ve…
Keep readingiPhone Envy — Sept. 25, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩More Stupid Human Stuff 📱KC Trip ⚾Miserable Missourah 😠 Quick: Take a look around you. If you’re in a room with five other people, one of them thinks you’re financially struggling if you don’t have the latest iPhone. That’s according to a new survey following the release of the iPhone 14.…
Keep readingHuman Babies — Sept. 23, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Loser Species 👶Email Win 📧Dad Pride 👨👦👦 I’m pretty sure I’m not normal. Normal people respond to that statement with, “Oh, John, nobody’s normal,” which is just a sign for us non-normies that the person we’re talking to is normal. Yesterday, I was waiting for Wifey Poo to pick me up…
Keep readingIn It — Sept. 22, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Concert Thoughts 🧠Marriage 💍Drunk Idiots 🧉 There’s this scene in the 2004 movie Garden State in which Sam (Natalie Portman) looks at Andrew (Zach Braff) and notices … … And yeah, that resonated with me then and resonates with me now. Ever since then, being “in it” has become a thing…
Keep readingRemembering Sarah — Sept. 21, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Sadness 😥Beautiful Skies ⛅Two Terms For 2022 ✌️ Back in our early days at Pound Ridge Elementary School, Sarah was the fastest girl runner in the class, which bought her some serious playground cred. There were only a few of us boys who could hang with Sarah in the 50-meter dash…
Keep readingSmall Ear Canal — Sept. 19, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Ear Flushing👂Grunge God🎶Tech Guy📺 If you have to have a doctor tell you a body part or yours is small, I suppose one of the least offensive would be the ear canal. That’s what a doctor told me this morning, after I finally broke down and actually went to said doctor’s…
Keep readingSunday Randomness — Sept. 18, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Two, Four, Six, Eight👑Tips💰Book Buying📖 Some random thoughts from the week that was: Today’s Reasons to Keep Living
Keep readingNominee Day! — Sept. 16, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Toys in the Hall🪅Idiot Governors🗳️Flopping FedEx✈️ Last night in my hotel in Springfield, Missourah, I set out a glass of milk and a plate of cookies before going to bed. It’s not that I don’t know how to read a calendar or have any particular belief in a fat man in…
Keep readingSpringfields Aplenty — Sept. 15, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Which One?🗺️Leave Introverts Alone🤫Oxford Commas🤪 I’m on the road for work this week, in Springfield. Ahhh, but Springfield what? There currently are 35 populated places in the United States named Springfield, spread out over 25 states, including five in Wisconsin. In addition, there are 35 Springfield Townships, and Ohio owns 11…
Keep readingF’n COVID — Sept. 13, 2022
🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩Surrounded 😷Wood Splitter 🌲Morons 🤪 I’ve had COVID. Twice. The first time fucked up my life for a year. I’m still not back to the me I was before it came into my home, and I’m pretty sure that now, nearly two years later, that’s not going to change. The second…
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