November 2023 Check-In

December 3, 2023

I can’t believe Thanksgiving has come and gone and that we’re already into December. November was a good month, after a 2 week vacation I had to come back to the real world and back to work, but I still had some good breaks during the month. As I mentioned previously, my wife and I spent 2 weeks that second half of October in Aruba to celebrate our 10 year anniversary. After spending a glorious 2 weeks in a tropical paradise without a care in the world, we had to come back to reality and return to the workplace. It wasn’t the end of the world of course, but I’d rather be sitting back on the beach with a cocktail.

Writing - Umm, Not as Much

I went into this month planning to do more writing and even take part in NaNoWriMo. The month started out strong, I was writing 1,000+ words a day. Then it all got away from me and I hardly wrote much at all. I want to get back into it to some extent.

Some Smaller Trips

The middle two weekends of the month I ended up taking two trips. My wife and I first took a long weekend to go down to Cape May, New Jersey for her to go to a cross-stitch retreat she had been looking forward to. I got to spend the time checking out the local breweries and enjoying the surprisingly mild weather.

The next weekend, I drove down to Maryland to meet up with my best friend to go see The Menzingers play in his neck of the woods. Like my previous times seeing them, they put on an awesome show. The opening acts were pretty good too.

The Fun of Home Ownership

Halfway through the month, I happened to notice that our hot water heater was leaking. There was some water in the drip tray so there was probably a pinhole leak or slight crack in the bottom of the heater. So that had to be replaced. Fortunately my father-in-law was able to help me out and we were able to get a new one in place in a couple hours.

This led to the next problem. The old hot water heater wouldn’t drain. Apparently the drain got gunked up with mineral deposits. It’s still sitting in the basement while we try to come up with a plan of attack. This led me to the next day cleaning out our water softener in an attempt to help prevent the gunk from building up in the new system. I’d known that it needed to be cleaned, I just didn’t realize how bad it had gotten. That was a fun task with a shopvac and a broom handle to suck up the water and break up all the salt.

Buy a house they said…it will be fun they said…harumph!

A Sick Thanksgiving

Unfortunately for us, I got sick on Thanksgiving, and my wife caught it shortly thereafter. Just a rather nasty cold, but it kept us home and muted our plans. It wasn’t a huge deal, just a lot of relaxing on the couch which was nice. I’m not a huge turkey fan, so it was nice to have an alternative menu for dinner. I ended up feeling well enough to cook up some steak and seafood.

Now…onto the holiday season!

Monthly Round-Up

🏃🏼‍♂️ Running & Biking

Running: 15.43 miles
Biking: Nope

🏋🏼‍♂️ Lifting

I’ve mostly gotten back into my PHUL routine I started back before Aruba.

📚 Reading

Finished

The Forge of God by Greg Bear
Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear
The Creative ACT by Rick Rubin
A City on Mars by Kelly & Zach Weinersmith
Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Dr. Travis Bradberry & Dr. Jean Greaves

Started

American Whitelash by Wesley Lowery

✍🏻 Writing

Continued my reading logs
Wrote about the media and democracy
Wrote about the default apps I use
Wrote about the fit-vids web component

🎮 Gaming

Continued to play Horizon Forbidden West
Started Super Mario RPG

📺 Watched

Continued Schitt’s Creek

🎬 Movies