Back from Limbo

Yes, I took January off from The Hopper. Had no choice, really.

My night job as a tax preparer has been in full swing for nearly the entire month. It’s going to be a busy season, and not too many clients will be happy meeting the 2018 Tax Cut and Jobs Act up close and personal. I’ve already done eight clients and have a handful of returns on hold, and so far most people are getting less of a refund than the year before or actually have to pay. More on this, later.

The day job was over the top busy with year-end tasks combined with an upgrade for our 650-user time and attendance software, which did not go smoothly and hitchlessly. I was so overwhelmed I actually took a mental health day two weeks ago which flew by mercilessly. (Hmm – side note – should I write more adverblessly?) Just only now starting to get a hold on it, as my To Do list is now down to a single page. Why do I do this? It ain’t for the money and it ain’t for the love. Well, maybe for the money.

Patch has sprouted up and is nearly as tall as her older sister, the not-so-little-herself Little One, now a high school freshman. Patch is long and lean and all muscle, and she plays travel basketball, rec basketball, and has started her winter travel soccer practices. Every other day she has a practice somewhere in the county, and weekends are chock full of games. If I’m not driving her the wife is, and if she isn’t, we’re working the texts with other parents to get her to and fro her workouts. It’s crazy hectic.

Little One no longer plays sports, but I’ve been bonding with her over Thursday-night sushi and the Stephen King adapted teevee show Under the Dome. We’ve binge-watched season one and are halfway through season two. More on this, too, later. She also went with her photography club into Greenwich Village for a day-long field trip, and took some beautiful pics. And the Mrs., well, she had a four-day business trip followed by a weekend in Dallas for her father’s memorial service, leaving me here in frigid northern New Jersey to play Mister Mom.

I still read to escape this madness, and in January I put away four books and made serious inroads into two more. The ones I read: a book on Christian Science, a science fiction war novel, a slim primer on the geophysics of the interior of the earth, and a published dissertation mishmashing Zen, Existentialism, and Christianity. I’m currently moseying through a biography of the Beatles and journeying with Verne 20,000 leagues under the sea. Some possible reviews upcoming, possibly.

I took in the new M. Night Shyamalan movie with my buddy a few weekends ago. The Fosters Oil Can and chocolatini I drank in the parking lot was better. But … more on that one, also, later.

Thoroughly disgusted with politics, from all sides, though primarily from the left, as well as thoroughly disgusted with the leadership of the Catholic Church, primarily from the pope on down to my local bishop (“Nighty-night baby” Tobin). I have some radical actions I’m contemplating in response to both, which I may or may not write about in the upcoming days. We’ll see. Not much to hope for, from where I stand, except to just grin, bear it, and outlast it.

After a few days on the paleo I’ve gone ten sheets to the wind, diet-wise, and have gained about ten pounds. Too cold to get out the door at 6 am to walk (due to this polar vortex thing that’s descended on the upper U.S.) and too tired to lift weights when I get home at 9 pm. So the thing I’ve opted for is lots of fast food, ice cream, and Fosters Oil Cans. I have no choice but to put the brakes on this madness as I’m having trouble fitting in to all those new dress shirts Santa just brought me.

I missed blogging to be honest. But I think I want to structure it a bit more. I went from a daily post to a post whenever I felt like it. Now I think I’ll aim for a weekend post and a one during the week, plus a regular “Musicalia Monday,” as I’ve been listening to a ton of music lately and have learned a lot of tunes on the guitar as well. But we’ll see …

So it’s good to be back. Talk to you later …