Tag: personal (Page 2 of 7)

Some More Old Man Shit That Has Nothing To Do With Golf or Other Hobbies

February 12, 2020 / DB

It’s been awhile since I wrote way too many words about something relatively personal. So strap yourselves in – or just skip this post if you’re not interested – for some old man news.

For the past few months I’ve been undergoing a series of tests to try to determine why I had two lengthy episodes of irregular heartbeat late last year.

The first episode was in October, the week that I was taking steroids and not sleeping because of my poison ivy. On a Saturday I had a few drinks at dinner with friends, a couple when they came over after, and just before bedtime, my heart started beating strangely. It was kind of a fluttery feeling, like my heart was out of synch. I had no chest pain or tightness, no shortness of breath, no numbness or anything else that would indicate a heart attack or stroke. S was already asleep, this sensation was not totally unfamiliar, so I went to bed figuring it would pass. I woke several times during night it was still present. Same in the morning when I woke up. I had checked my pulse with my Apple Watch a few times and it was always normal. I finally thought to use the ECG app, which told me I was in atrial fibrillation, the fancy word for irregular heartbeat.

“Well no shit,” I thought. I finally told S, she used her stethoscope to listen for herself, and then started looking up ways to counter AFib. I held my nose and blew out, like I was trying to pop my ears. I dunked my face in ice water. I ate cashews and drank cold water. Eventually my heartbeat corrected and I felt fine. When it didn’t happen again over the next several days and weeks, we both chalked it up to the steroids, lack of sleep, and alcohol combining to make my heart beat strangely for 12 hours.

Fast forward to mid-December. I was reading, about three sips into my only beer of the night. Suddenly I felt my heartbeat slip into AFib again. My watch confirmed. Stupidly, I just went to bed without telling S, thinking it would pass quickly. When the AFib was still present in the morning, though, I did tell her. She did some Googling and threatened to stick two plastic spoons down my throat. Apparently triggering the gag reflex can reset your heart beat. I refused because, again, I otherwise felt fine and wasn’t interested in gagging.

However, she was now concerned since I had experienced two episodes of AFib that both lasted over 10 hours. More importantly, my dad had AFib, and we believe he died because of complications associated with it. As soon as she got to her office she walked over to my doc on the family medicine side of her practice and spoke with her. They quickly got me an appointment with a cardiologist later that week.

So, two weeks before Christmas I began making rounds at medical offices. First came the trip to the cardiologist. Then one to my PCP so she could run some thyroid tests. Then came a heart stress test and heart echo. At that appointment I was given a heart monitor that I had to wear for a month. After the holidays I met with a sleep specialist and then did a home sleep study a week ago.

So, first, the good news: I aced all the heart tests. The stress test and echo – I walked and ran on a treadmill until my heart rate was over 150 BPM then laid down so they could shoot images of my heart – all showed my heart is healthy and functions normally under stress. Same with the heart monitor: it showed a normal, healthy heart. No thyroid issues, either.

I’ve also had no further bouts of AFib since December. Although my cardiologist told me to not make any lifestyle or diet changes while I was wearing the monitor, after the holidays I did almost completely cut out alcohol. It was more about needing to drop some pounds after the extra drinks and desserts of holiday break than heart health. But there was also the knowledge that alcohol may be a trigger for my AFib. On the nights I drink I do so nervously, waiting for my heart to slip out of rhythm. Since January 6, excepting nights we’ve gone out to dinner with friends, I’ve had maybe three beers. And then always lighter stuff rather than the 6–7% ABV beers I prefer. Hey, I’ve lost as many as nine pounds, too!¹¹

I saw my cardiologist again last week and she was very pleased with all these results. She is sending me to get a heart scan, but other than that, I left without any prescriptions and without needing to see her again for a year. Provided I have no more AFib episodes.

My visit to the sleep specialist and resulting sleep study was to determine if I have sleep apnea. There are strong ties between sleep apnea and AFib. I bet you didn’t know that because I sure didn’t. This was viewed as more of a formality, as I don’t snore, neither I nor S have any memories of me waking up gasping for breath in the middle of the night, I’m not overweight, etc.

However, the sleep study was a damn nightmare. I had to strap a monitor across my forehead and then stick two tubes into my nose that would measure my breathing activity while asleep. They assured us – five of us picked up our monitors at the same time and got the spiel together – that we could sleep in any position. Well, I’m a stomach sleeper and you damn sure can’t sleep on your stomach with this thing on. I often fall asleep on my side, but even that was difficult with the monitor on. They also told us not to sleep around a partner who snores because the monitor could pick that up. S snores when she is getting a cold, which she was doing last week. So I decided to sleep in the basement guest room.

Between being forced to sleep on my back and being in a strange room I had soooo much trouble relaxing and falling asleep. When I did sleep, I managed to knock the monitor askew around 4:00AM, which set off an alarm that woke me to reposition it.

That night kind of sucked.

I got a call Monday saying that the sleep study showed that I indeed have sleep apnea. The specialist I spoke with two weeks ago said just because you don’t snore does not mean you can’t have apnea. And the more I read about the symptoms of sleep apnea, the more it makes sense. I’m always tired, even if I sleep well. I figured that was just because I rarely drink caffeine anymore but perhaps this is the explanation.

For now they’re going to put me on a CPAP machine for two months then reevaluate me. Unfortunately the sleep specialist doc is not in the office this week, so I don’t know if this is just a preliminary step or if I’m stuck on the CPAP machine forever. I’m holding out hope that it was a shitty sleep study that triggered the result and maybe I’ll only have to wear the machine for a couple months. I would not place bets on that being the case, though.

Here’s where those of you who have had real medical issues can laugh or shake your heads/fists at me: this really bummed me out. I’ve been a stomach/side sleeper my entire life. When I attempt to sleep on my back, I can never get comfortable and often jerk awake just as I begin to slip into sleep. And now I have to wear a device that forces me away from my preferred sleep position? A device I thought only elderly or exceptionally obese people had to use? That sucks.

As I thought about it more, though, I realized it is obviously a good thing to figure out what is causing the AFib so I can get it and keep it under control. While I don’t know many of the details of my dad’s final weeks, I’ve obviously seen how not managing your AFib can be a life ender. Also, as I noted, I had felt that sensation of an arhythmic heart before the October episode. I don’t know how many times or how often it has happened, but I know my heart has done that in the past. Just never for more than a few minutes, so I never really thought much of it. The lengthy episodes might be unusual, but the condition is not new.

Beyond the AFib effects, perhaps wearing the CPAP machine will mean I’m not walking around yawning all the time, or trying to not fall asleep when I sit stationary for a few moments during the day. It’s one of those things that has become so normal that I almost don’t notice it; in fact I don’t think I mentioned it to any of the docs, again because I assumed it had to do with the lack of caffeine in my system. But maybe I am exhausted all the time because I’m not sleeping normally, which is also triggers my genetic link to AFib and causes my heart to wig out occasionally. Wild, man.

So this all sucks. But at the same time it doesn’t. I am making some lifestyle modifications. But my overall good health has been confirmed. There are worse outcomes for having heart issues. There are far more serious diagnoses than sleep apnea.

An Old Faithful

August 29, 2019 / DB

What is the oldest piece of clothing you own? Before you throw out a Christening dress, First Communion dress, or some other thing from your childhood that you’ve saved to pass down to a future generation, allow me to narrow it down a little more. What is the oldest piece of clothing you own that you can still wear?

For me that’s easy. I still own two items that I bought in my first weeks as a student at the University of Kansas in August, 1989. You know, 30 years ago right now.

One item is not that exciting. I bought a blue, pullover, rain jacket that has a generic “Kansas” stamped on the breast to wear to class or football games on rainy days. Although it was only ever used occasionally, I, or someone in my house, continues to use it a few times a year. It is still in our coat closet, ready and waiting to fulfill its mission on a rainy soccer day or camp week.

The other item, though, has somehow managed to survive 30 years despite being a bit of an oddball purchase, initially being grossly mis-sized, and having had multiple different uses.

My very first purchase at the KU Bookstore during Hawk Week 1989 was an extra large, red, t-shirt with Kansas written across the chest in a gentle arc in blue letters with white trim. Your generic 1980s college t-shirt that you saw on every campus.¹ (Here is where I would post a picture of it if my old web host would allow me to add images. No, I have not completed the move to my new host yet because I totally jacked it up and am trying to figure out how to fix it without getting on the phone with someone from India.)

It was an oddball purchase because I went with red rather than the more traditional KU blue, or even white or gray. I guess I figured red would set me apart from the crowd a little. I was also a fan of schools that had third colors back before that became a thing everyone did, and always wished that KU would bust out red uniforms for basketball on occasion.

Buying an extra large was probably ambitious. I believe I went to college weighing about 165-170, and while I was tall and had broad shoulders, I certainly didn’t have the girth to fill it out. Especially since shirts weren’t tailored for an “athletic fit” in the ‘80s. But I did wear XL in some shirts back then so I grabbed this off the rack. However, when I got it back to my dorm, cut the tags off, and then tried it on, I realized that it was likely more of a double-XL than and XL. It fit me like a muumuu, dwarfing my skinny frame. It really looked ridiculous. I distinctly remember wearing it onto campus one day the first week of classes and thinking that I looked like a total idiot and 30,000 other Jayhawks were making fun of me. I’m sure that I washed it in hot water to shrink it to no avail. So phase one of the shirt’s life was spent shoved in the back of a drawer, brought out only when there were no other clean t-shirts.

Phase two kicked off the next May, when I went home for the summer. Despite my pipe-cleaner arms, I decided to cut the sleeves off and use it as a basketball playing shirt. Although the length of the entire shirt was a little long and the chest too broad, it was really the sleeves that were the problem. They stretched past my elbows and billowed about my meager bi- and triceps. While showing those guns off to the world was a whole other problem, I decided that was the lesser of two evils. That shirt got me through many, many years of outdoor hoops. The extra fabric meant there was always somewhere dry to wipe the sweat from my eyes. And when everything got baggy a few years later, I fit right in!²

Phase two lasted over a decade, until my pickup ball career ended. The shirt again went into the drawer. It had shrunk some over all those washings and I had added some weight, so it actually fit well. The color had begun to fade, too. Really, I should have tossed it in the trash sometime around the turn of the millennium. But I kept it for sentimental reasons. That was the first shirt I bought as a college student, after all!

Phase three began when S and I got married and moved to Indianapolis. Suddenly I had a yard to mow on a regular basis. What better shirt to wear than my trusty, red, KU shirt? I could get some sun on my upper arms while also displaying my school loyalty to all my new neighbors. Even better, since the shirt was an afterthought at this point, if I got stains from grass, dirt, gas, blood, or oil on it, it was no big deal. I didn’t wear it every time I mowed the grass, but I did wear it at least once a month.

Over the last 16 years it has aged quite a bit.³ There are a couple holes in it. The color has faded even more. But you know what? It still fits halfway decent. If I was playing any pickup hoops, I would proudly wear it.

A year ago when we moved and I was purging old possessions, I gave some thought to throwing away my trusty red KU shirt. I only have to do sporadic yard work these days since we hired out the mowing. There’s no pickup ball in my life. While I often go sleeveless at the pool, I prefer a shirt that is a synthetic blend rather than 100% cotton. I think I was close to tossing it until I realized if I kept it one more year, I would have owned it for 30 years.

So it remained and remains. Although we’ve now passed its 30th anniversary, I have no plans to toss the shirt. I may not ever wear it again, but it’s not hurting anyone. So it will stay in the bottom of my dresser drawer. Another 30 years might be asking a lot, but I’m hoping to keep it there a good, long time.

1. The first of approximately 749 KU shirts I’ve purchased since.

2. Someday I’ll have to share the story of how I, not the Fab 5 and not Michael Jordan, kicked off the baggy shorts trend.

3. Haven’t we all?

Anatomy of an Obsession

May 22, 2019 / DB

Over the years I’ve had plenty of obsessions that dominate my attention and time. Sometimes it was a person – sorry to all the girls I was a little weird about back in the day. Sometimes it was a band – there’s a long list of artists that I got way into and would listen to, non-stop, for months at a time.

And sometimes it was an activity/hobby. Photography has been the most recent example. Before that there was modern electronics/tech in general, Apple products in particular. Running, Dungeons & Dragons, shortwave radio, Atari games, Pac-Man, the Star Wars universe, and baseball cars are others. There are dozens more I’m forgetting.

Over the last, what, eight months? I’ve shifted away from doing shit with my camera to wanting to hit golf balls. Thus I’ve turned over all the things I pay attention to that are ancillary to the main obsession and cause me to obsess even more. Through that process I’ve both examined how my addictions grow and laughed at myself for how deeply I fall for things that interest me.

Here’s a run-down of how my obsessions take over my life along with some observations of how they have changed over the years.

I’ve always been an information junkie. Throw in that I grew up as an only-child who was often confined to the house because my mom was constantly working, and from an early age I got creative in how to be obsessive within those constraints. I’m guessing it’s more fun to take on a new hobby when you have a sibling who is either interested in it, too, or that you can force to be interested in it. I learned how to make-do, though.

The first step was always reading everything I could find on a topic that interested me. I’d go to the library and check out books. At bookstores, I’d spend hours looking through the magazine racks finding issues that highlighted my interests, or searching the aisles for newer books than I could find at the library. Then I would read the hell out of this stuff. One thing about my family situation was that there wasn’t a ton of money to throw at whatever my latest infatuation was. So I often had to wait to get the gear I needed to actually start doing the activity. In the interim I always figured if I read everything available on the topic, I’d be ready to dive in once my birthday or Christmas rolled around and I received the equipment I needed. I wonder if there’s some master magazine subscription database somewhere in which I could look back and see how many strange magazines I had one-year subscriptions to because of one stupid hobby or another.

The modern addition to this is, clearly, the web. As my hobbies shift in my adult life, so too do the websites that I read and plug into my RSS reader. With social media eclipsing the traditional web for sharing information, I’ve rolled my interests into Twitter, Instagram, and the podcasts I listen to. Looking at all these accounts over time will show how my the people I follow wax and wane as my interests do the same.

If there is a TV angle, I’ll pull that in as well. When I was really into Italian soccer, I would tape the weekly highlights show that aired at something like 2:00 AM on the Prime Sports Network. The summers I’ve been most into baseball, I’m as likely to watch the programs dedicated to baseball news and discussing the game as the actual games. CNet used to have a really good computer show in the late ‘90s that I made sure I watched each week. In the case of golf, I’ve added the Golf Channel to my most watched channels after years of ignoring it.

I think most of us take on hobbies not just to participate in something, but as an excuse to buy things. No matter what your pastime is, there is always something shiny and new that you can go out and buy in hopes of making your experience better. I’ve tried to temper this a little bit, but when I was younger I would sign up for every catalog available for whatever I was interested in at the moment. Our mail carrier was probably like, “WTF is wrong with this kid?” after seeing all the random catalogs that he had to jam into our mailbox. I remember passing golf equipment catalogs around in class my freshman year of high school with other geeks.

My current version of that is stopping in at my local Golf Galaxy or the PGA Tour Superstore at least once a week. I don’t buy something every trip, but I will test putters for half an hour, look at club sets or clothes, all while trying to avoid the sales people who really want me to go through a club fitting. It is both more fun and more dangerous than flipping through catalogs. More fun as the products are right there in my hands. Dangerous since it is awfully easy to walk out having bought something I really don’t need.

It’s worth throwing eBay in, too. You can spend hours looking at used camera lenses or discontinued putters while doing the mental math on whether the savings is worth the possible issues with each item.

Put this all together and I realize that I often spend more time considering an obsession than actually doing it. That’s not unusual; the guy who rebuilds old cars on the weekend will likely spend more time from Monday through Friday planning for his projects, shopping for parts, etc. But my ratio is probably a little more extreme than most. Because of that, I often am better at knowing about things than doing them. I believe that all goes back to my childhood when I sometimes had to put the doing part off until my mom could afford the new toys I was interested in.

Anyway, I’ve laughed at myself a lot lately for how much time I spend thinking about golf. It has been funny to realize I’ve been doing that my entire life and there are clear patterns to how I do so, even if the technology changes.

Here are some of the ways I’m wasting time these days, mostly centering on golf.

Podcasts I listen to regularly:
General: Roderick on the Line, Back to Work, Road Work, Reconcilable Differences, Omnibus
Tech: Accidental Tech Podcast
Golf: No Laying Up, The Shotgun Start, Chasing Scratch, The Golfer’s Journal Podcast
Photography: The FujiCast

YouTube channels I subscribe to:
Golf: No Laying Up, plus a lot of random videos that get suggested
Photography: Denae & Andrew, Matt Day

Forums I Read: No Laying Up’s Refuge

Throw in books and magazines and S was telling the truth when she told her med school buddy we went out with awhile back, “Have D tell you about his new golf obsession.”

Timeless Fashion (I Hope)

May 9, 2019 / DB

We’ve had a lovely run of weather lately that has kept me out of the house much of this week. Running some errands. Hitting some golf balls. Coaching and watching sports. Good stuff.

Today the weather broke a bit. It is warm and muggy, but there are thick, ominous clouds racing across the sky as steady gusts blow. Storms are supposed to hit soon. Which is a real pisser because we have a very important kickball game on the schedule tonight and we’d like to get it in tonight before the weather turns much cooler tomorrow.

Fun With Utilities

February 18, 2019 / DB

Have I mentioned my issues with our gas, water, and sewer utility before? Well, I’m about to!

These people suck. Seriously.

Here’s a list of the issues we’ve gone through with them over the past eight months.

First, our builder did not drop any grass seed until the week that the water line was supposed to be connected. They had a firm date from the utility – this was the week we reached a deal to buy the house – and leveled the torn up ground and then covered it with seed. They also planted some small bushes and ornamentals. And then the water line did not get put in. For 10 days. When it was crazy hot and dry.

Thus, our yard looked like shit all summer, more weeds than grass because all that seed had died. Which, you know, whatever: unless you’re laying sod you figure it’s going to take a couple seasons to get the yard in good shape. But, still, would have been nice for the first summer not to be a total waste. The bushes held on, only because our builder came over every night and watered them until we closed.

Next, when we opened our account with them we signed up for all the easiest stuff: budget pay so our bill only changes once per year, auto pay so we don’t have to think about the payment going through, and paperless billing so we don’t get a bill we won’t really look at. Each month I got an email with the amount due and confirmation that that amount would be paid on date X.

Well, we never went online to look at our bill until deep into August. When we did, we found that A) they hadn’t been checking our water meter and B) they hadn’t switched the sewer service to our name with the gas and water. We actually discovered B because we got a message from the accounting department at our builder that said, “Hey, dumbass, get this fixed.”

So I call and talk to a few people, several of whom seem befuddled that our gas meter would get read but not our water meter. Finally I reached someone in the meter reading department and he knew what was up. “I bet,” he said with a hint of ‘Ah-ha!’ to his voice, “that your meter got covered up when the landscaping was done. I’ll send someone out to locate it, uncover it, and you should be good.”

Magic!

In October we got a bill that, sure enough, appeared to be for about three months of water. All fixed, right?

Well, no. See, the thing is, our water line comes in from under the main street our house sits off of. And they put the water meter way out by that street, roughly 200 feet from our house. I don’t think it was ever buried; the meter reader just looked around our house, couldn’t find it, and gave up. In fact, when I first called they said he had marked it as “Behind fence.” We have no fence. Anyway, I found it by following a straight line from where the line comes into our house to where they tore up the street last June. There it was, painted blue by whoever had come out to locate it.

In November our gas meter was read, but not our water meter. Now, sometimes a meter won’t get read because of the weather. So, dumbly, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and another month. Oh, and our November bill was estimated based on our previous month’s bill. Which, you may recall, covered three months of service. So we were billed for three months of water/sewer in November.

December was going to be correct, right?

WRONG!

Once again, no water meter read, we were billed for another three months of service.

So I hop on the phone and work my way to the right people again. The guy I spoke with in the meter reading department couldn’t have been nicer. When I told him how high our bill was because we had been billed for, basically, six months of water in two months, he promised to send someone out that week to take a new reading and said to call back in a week to get an updated bill. He also, allegedly, put notes into “the system” that would let the readers know exactly where our meter was located.

You will no doubt be shocked to learn that when I called the next week to get an updated bill, no new reading had taken place! In fact, the lady I spoke with said the man who informed me there would be a new reading and a new bill “never should have said that.” Oh, goodie. She reviewed our account and said we should have gotten some kind of notice from them that the meter was not readable, but since that letter was never sent, she gave us a credit of $150. She was very nice, and I hoped this would be my final call.

Just to be safe, when meter read day rolled around in January, I took no chances. I cleared the snow off of our meter. I put a big, bright orange, yard stake next to it. And I put a poster board sign next to our gas meter that said the water meter was located behind the big tree, marked by a stake. And then I hoped for the best.

Miracle of miracles, they actually read our damn water meter in January! All that estimated use got backed out and we went from a $550 balance to a credit balance of nearly $200. I sent thoughts of thanks out to the folks that had helped us.

Last week was meter read day. I put the sign out again. I made sure the yard stake was still by the meter. Saturday I got the email saying our bill was ready. You probably never would have guessed this, but they didn’t read the water meter! And in order to do the estimated read, they had to go back to our last read. Which, if you’ve been following closely, you will remember covered three months of use. So we’re back to up a $500-some balance.

I was not getting back on the phone and sitting through hold music, then bouncing around until I was connected with the “right” person again. I went to the website and looked for some other way to send in feedback. I found a page that you can add comments and submit them. I carefully typed out the whole history of this disaster and pasted it into the text box. When I tried to hit Submit, I got an error message that said “Comments may only contain letters and numbers.”

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

My message didn’t have any weird symbols or ancient ruins in it. I took out the dollar signs where I noted what we had been charged and tried again. Nothing. I Find/Replaced every punctuation mark with empty spaces. Goodbye periods, question marks, and commas. And good grammar, for crying out loud. But, again, no luck.

Over in the corner of the screen there was one of those annoying “Need Help? Let’s Chat!” buttons. I clicked on it. “Sheryl” said she’d be glad to help me. Since I knew she was just the front door, there was no way I was going to lay out the whole story. So I just told her about the issue I was having with the website. After a pause her response was, “I’ll let IT know. Try again in 30 minutes.”

OHHHHHHH, FUCK YOU “SHERYL”!

I was literally banging my desk as hard as I could with the palm of my hand. All we want to do is pay the appropriate amount for the water we use. Should it really be this hard?

I guess I’ll try again in 30 minutes. And next month, on meter read day, I might set up a chair next to our gas meter and wait for that motherfucker to come and force his lazy ass to walk out and check the water meter too. I have a baseball bat. I’m tall. I can be intimidating.

BTW, the house next to us remains for sale. There was an open house yesterday and we strolled over to take a peek, since we knew they had staged it for this one. As we walked up the driveway, I saw their water meter, also 200 feet from their house. If anyone ever buys that house my head will literally explode if they have a perfect water bill their first month there, and each one after.

Starting Off Strong (In Theory)

January 2, 2019 / DB

Happy New Year! Hope your celebrations were safe, happy, and the headaches/stomaches that resulted have passed.

Our New Year’s Eve went well. The Pacers game was good. Well, other than spending 15 minutes to travel three blocks right before our parking garage. Not sure what the hell was going on but traffic was a nightmare. The Pacers won by 8, the girls seemed to enjoy it, and our seats were decent. We were actually in the same section I sat for the KU-Michigan State game in November, just 17 rows higher and slightly to the side. Still low enough to clearly see the game.

New Year’s Day was our standard, put away the Christmas decorations while watching football day. Always weird to see your home after six weeks of having a tree and decorations fill the open spaces. Our house feels much bigger today.

Ah, but the highlight – to me at least – of the week has been a musical discovery. Or rediscovery, rather.

I had forgotten there is a station on iHeart Radio that plays nothing but old American Top 40s. I haven’t checked it in months, maybe over a year. I don’t listen to it often because the countdowns are random. Unlike the ones on local radio or SiriusXM, they do not correspond with the same week back in the day as the current calendar shows.

For some reason I decided to check it Monday afternoon before we left for the game. The song playing was something not immediately familiar, but likely from the late ‘70s. So I decided to listen until the end of the song to place it properly. That’s when I heard Casey say he was counting down the top 50 songs of 1979. Nice! I enjoyed the next 90 minutes or so of listening to the end of that countdown. There were some great songs in there.

Anyway, the 1979 countdown ends and they roll straight into the 1980 countdown.[1] You might see where this is going…

I listened to a little of 1980 before we left. I caught a little of 1981 later in the evening. And we listened to a big chunk of 1983 while taking the decorations down. With 1984 coming up, you might think I would huddle up for six hours and listen to the entire thing. Somehow I resisted that urge, and only listened to a couple bits here-and-there, along with a longer stretch when I went to the gym. And I listened to a long chunk of the ’85 countdown while reading before bed. As I write this I’m in the middle of the 1987 countdown, which was right when my listening preferences were beginning to separate from what was on AT40 each week.

As you will expect, I’ve really enjoyed listening to these countdowns. Lots of fun trivia. Several songs I’ve mentally flagged to write about if I hear them later this year. Plenty of notes I’ve texted several of my brothers in music about. And tons of great songs. To be fair a lot fo really shitty songs, too.

I was going a little crazy when I couldn’t matchup the songs Casey was playing with the lists I found online of the Billboard Hot 100 from each year. It took some digging, both online and into my memory as I think I’ve battled this issue before, but turns out the radio show’s top 100 was based on a December 1 – November 30 year, while the official top 100 was based on January 1 – December 31. I was going crazy especially in 1984, when Casey insisted “Say, Say, Say” was the top song while every list I’ve ever seen lists “When Doves Cry” as the #1 song of that year. Knowing the radio show cut back into 1983 made that make perfect sense, as “Say, Say, Say” was huge at the end of ’83.

I suppose, when much of the countdown was put together without the use of computers, it was a huge effort to count the songs, gather interesting tidbits about the list, and then record the show in-between the regular December shows in time for its late December release. Makes sense that they had to start several weeks early to meet that deadline.

The more you know…

Finally, I was reminded yesterday about how I’m getting older.

I consistently go to the gym 3–5 times each week. I’ve been on that schedule since the girls went back to school in August. I’m on ok shape, although I haven’t switched my routine up for awhile. I have been on a medium weight, high repetition program since mid-October.

I mixed things up yesterday, moving to a plan for men over 40 I found online. I would be using lighter weights, almost exclusively dumbbells, and focus on form. For example, rather than doing leg presses on a machine, I would do squats with dumbbells. Easy enough, I thought. Those had been part of my routine until October, when I went to pressing more weight on the machine.

I decided to throw in shoulder presses at the top of the squat, something I used to do in every strength session. It’s a great movement that hits your whole body. After the first set, my legs felt a little weird. After the second I thought all the supporting muscles in my upper legs were going to tear. On the third, my back seized up. Terrific.

This morning my back is still crazy tight, the legs are sore. All this just from doing different exercises with 15 pound dumbbells, much lighter than what I had been lifting last week.

Getting old sucks.

1980 seems to be the year that the year-end countdown went to 100 songs. ↩

Finally!

December 10, 2018 / DB

Man am I excited to finally be writing this post.

Yep, after six long, painful, frustrating, maddening, inexplicable months, we finally freaking sold our old house! We closed on Friday, so it’s really real this time.

“Wait, what?” I can hear some of you asking. “I thought you sold it already?!?”

Nope. Astute readers should recall that we thought we had a deal the day we moved into this home, but it fell through over some complete bullshit and we had to go back on the market. After that we were pretty disheartened and I decided not to write about that house again until we sold it. Little did I know…

For the past six months I’ve been over there about once a week mowing the yard, maintaining the other landscaping, cleaning gutters, checking through the house to make sure it was ok, and turning lights on and off before showings. That 10 minute drive came to be filled with a lot of bitterness as the weeks and months piled up.

I won’t give you the whole story, but our realtor warned us when we went back onto the market that July and August were always the slowest months. True to his word, we barely had any showings in those months. I remained confident: it was a nice house in a great neighborhood and the market was strong. We would sell. S, on the other hand, was very bitter after the initial offer fell through. Despite our realtor’s warnings, she couldn’t understand why we weren’t getting showings. She would spend her evenings scrolling through listings in our area and watching as other homes dropped off. “What are we doing wrong?” was her constant question. I was there to keep her steady and remind her it would happen eventually.

Our realtor said the market always comes back after school starts. But he did say some years that happens on August 1, others after Labor Day, others not until October. August was barren for us. September picked up a little, but no offers came. The feedback was generally positive, and we know we finished second at least three times over the fall. A lot of folks struggled with the size of our basement – it was small – and the number of trees in our lot, which our realtor told us not to touch. “If they don’t want trees, they can cut them down after the buy it. You can never put them back in, though.”

October rolled around and I was still cautiously optimistic while S was beside herself that we were still sitting on that home. In the middle of the month we had a showing and a week later got feedback that the people had high hopes for it, but were disappointed when they walked through and decided to buy another house in our neighborhood. That other house, to be fair, showed a little better than ours. But it also didn’t have a single update to it, where ours had a new kitchen, new master bath, new kid/guest bath. All the complaints they left on their feedback would cost less to fix than what they would have to put into the house they bought in order to get it to the 21st century.

This is when I lost it. I got pretty angry for a couple weeks. I stopped reading the feedback emails because I couldn’t deal with them anymore. With winter coming soon, I saw us hanging onto the house for a full year with it being empty.

We discussed finding a renter, but decided against that for a variety of reasons.

The first weekend of November our realtor came over to talk strategy. He said if we hit January he wanted us to close the house and winterize it to prevent mechanical issues. When we asked about taking it off the market and re-listing later, he said the home would have to be off the market for 90 days to reset the listing. We agreed that if we hit December 1 without an offer, we would take it off, winterize it, and try again in March.

When he left it was really quiet in our house for awhile. We could not believe we were even having this discussion. Remember, our next door neighbors had listed their house in early May, got two offers in 48 hours, and accepted one over their asking price. We decided to be aggressive on asking price because of that. Between the early fall-through and some other homes coming in the market in that neighborhood quite a bit lower, we ended up dropping our price three times, which was a total bitch.

About a week after that conversation we had a good run of showings. Our realtor was out of town but sent us a message one Saturday that he expected an offer on Monday. We had a showing scheduled for Sunday, so S and I went over for our fall ritual of blowing leaves and cleaning gutters. While I was running the mower in the side yard, I saw a woman with a stroller come up and talk to S for about 10 minutes. That was a little weird; it was 10:00 on a Sunday morning, it was about 33 degrees, and the lady had parked down the street. When she left S came over and told me the woman had said they were looking at houses in the neighborhood and decided to come take a walk around and ask people questions. S told her how long we had been there, how we bought it with no kids and moved out with three, how our girls loved the ‘hood, how safe it was, etc. We wondered if she was the showing later in the day.

Monday rolled around and I was hopeful to hear something from our realtor. But when I hadn’t by noon I figured once again the interested party had decided to go a different direction.

About an hour later he sent the offer over. And it was from the woman who had talked to S. She and her husband had been in the house three times that week, including the Sunday showing! We did some back-and-forth and agreed on a price on November 13 with an expected closing date of December 14. There was some excitement in our house that day! The girls knew we had an offer and were negotiating. C was first to get in the car after school that day and asked, “Did we sell the house!?!?” I held up a finger and waited for M and L to get in. Then I told them. They all screamed, C high-fived me, and we had a really good moment. Remember, these were the three girls who were in tears the day we moved out of that house.

Of course, we sweated the inspection, since that’s what blew up our first deal. Shockingly all the gigantic red flags the first inspector threw up did not come up this time. Asshole. We did have to fix some things, but that was to be expected in a 27-year-old home. The deal was on and the buyers were asking to move closing up. “Hell yes!” was our response.

So Friday I went in to sign away the home. Unfortunately the buyers had to reschedule and came in a couple hours after I did, so I was unable to meet them. S really liked the wife from her 10 minutes talking to her that morning in November. We took our girls over to the old neighbors’ Saturday morning to make Christmas cookies and they had met the couple the night before and confirmed they seemed really nice. That gets lost a little in these things, since you end up being so focused on the money. But it made us feel good to sell to some people who seem nice and will fit in with the people who love who still live around them.

So Friday afternoon was fun. I rushed home from doing my signings and called the utilities and insurance companies to officially untie us from that home. Our realtor rolled in just after 4:00 with a nice check. We finally owned just one home! We took the girls out for dinner that night and started making a list of the places we want to travel now that we no longer have a summer home or a second house we’re trying to sell.

Just in time for Christmas, too!

Listen, we are very, very fortunate in that we were able to handle the financial impact of trying to sell a house for six months, and then having to accept a lot less than we had hoped to sell it for. So I don’t want to make our situation seem dire or worse than people who have real problems.

But it was an incredibly stressful six months. I think S and I did a good job of balancing each other, and picking each other up when we got down. But I shamefully admit there have been a lot of shitty, “Not until we sell the other house!” responses to both the girls and other family members who have asked us about making big purchases, planning trips, etc. There were a lot of nights where we looked at each other and wondered what the hell was going on and what the hell we would do if we couldn’t sell that house. Thank goodness that immense weight has been lifted. Now we can go back to only yelling at our girls only because their rooms are complete disasters or someone broke a brand new glass without telling us rather than our anger stemming from being stuck with an extra piece of real estate.[1]

So that’s our Christmas miracle for 2018. Hmm, I said I wasn’t going to share the whole story, didn’t I? Apologies. But it is 11:53 on Sunday night and I’ve had a Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale and a rather tall glass of Buffalo Trace.

Yes, someone broke a brand new glass, left it in the cabinet, and did not tell us this weekend. All in an effort to get to the Christmas candy that was next to it. Candy they failed to re-seal making it obvious what happened. No one admitted to it so we’ve banned Christmas candy and cookies for a week. ↩

Trust the Process

August 28, 2018 / DB

Finally a day of calm. After about two weeks of constant activity by contractors, we have wrapped up whatever phase of the Fill the House cycle we are in. The latest projects were building a work station for S and adding a large, built-in to our main office. That involved custom cabinetry, some serious painting, and a lot of me sitting around either waiting for people to show up or monitoring them while they are here.

Other than a couple small paint touch-ups, I think we’re done. Our decorator is coming over later today to hang some lights and blinds for us. And I have someone coming to pick up an old desk we are getting rid of. After those items are checked off, we’ll be calm for awhile.

I’m excited to reclaim my office. My computer has been sitting on a table in our bedroom for two weeks, which has kept me out of any kind of music routine over that stretch. Sadly, the huge, ugly, but sweet sounding speakers I had been using will not fit the layout of the new room. I’m bummed about that because they sounded pretty awesome, and now I’ll go back to computer speakers. I think I’m going to have to upgrade those at some point, because I had become used to warm, room-filling sound since I claimed those speakers from my in laws last year.

After tonight’s final touches we will go back to waiting for furniture. We have a big shipment that should arrive in about a month now. We also just ordered some outdoor furniture that should be here in October. We have an outdoor area that needs a TV, so I’ve been reaearching the best way to get one mounted out there and then the TV itself. I’m looking forward to some cool fall evenings, sitting out there watching a game with the fireplace on. (Humble brag)

We still have a ways to go to get the house to some kind of new normal, but we’re getting there, slowly but surely.

Insomnia Notes

June 18, 2018 / DB

I had been sleeping better for the past couple weeks. Well, kind of. Instead of lying awake for hours making and remaking 1000 mental lists related to our real estate adventures, sometime about 10 days ago I began falling immediately and deeply asleep, not waking until morning, and then feeling as though I had only slept for half an hour or so. I’m not as exhausted as I had been, but neither am I feeling 100% rested like I normally would have 8–10 hours of deep sleep.

I say had been because I’m typing this at nearly 1:00 AM Monday morning. I don’t know if it is the heat or my brain getting wound-up for what promises to be a crazy-busy week, but I could not sleep tonight. So seems like the perfect moment to get all ya’ll caught up on what’s gone down over the past week and what’s on the calendar for this week.

Our main home remains unsold. Although Sunday night we heard that a potential buyer requested some more information about our house, whatever that means. We went ahead and scheduled a painter to come in next week, after we move, to make some changes that our agent believes could help us. Yay, spending money for other people to enjoy!

Thursday I went down to the lake house and met the buyers, who wanted to take the boat for a test drive before deciding whether to buy it. That went well on several levels. The test drive went well and they decided to buy the boat! Granted, we had to drop our price a bit, but we set the original price high anticipating that. Negotiating 101, fools.

The other aspect of the night that went well was learning about the family that is taking our place. Just the wife came, with two of their three kids. After we introduced ourselves and started toward the dock, she asked, “So, which one of you is the Jayhawk?” Turns out she has two degree from KU – we were on campus at the same time although she was in law school when I was an undergrad – so that gave us some immediate common ground. She had seen a couple KU things in the house and said, although she already loved everything about the house, that’s when she knew it was the house for her. Her husband went to IU. Those of you who have been to our lake house know that each weekend we spent down there, we hung IU and KU flags from our dock. With a Hoosier and Jayhawk taking our places, S and I decided to leave our flags for them. We laughed at folks who know us stopping by when they see the flags and then getting confused when there’s a completely different family there.

One bad thing happened that night: I lost my wallet. Or at least I thought I did. On my way home that night I passed an Indianapolis cop shooting radar on I–465. I was going about 77, as was the car in front of me, but the cop must have been hunting bigger game, as he didn’t even look our way. I chuckled to myself and thanked the traffic gods for their help. A couple hours later, as I was getting ready for bed, I realized I couldn’t find my wallet. I searched through S’s car, which I had driven that evening, and couldn’t find it. I looked in all the stuff I brought back from the lake house, no sign of it. I looked everywhere I had been in the house before and after my lake trip. Nothing. I went to bed for 10 minutes, got back up, searched through S’s car again. No luck.

So I stressed through the next couple days knowing we would stop at the lake house Sunday when we took C to camp. Sunday we looked all through the lake house, up and down the yard, checked every nook and cranny of the boat, and again nothing. I was deeply perturbed. We hadn’t had any strange charges on our credit cards, so I figured it was safe, but had no idea where it could be.

When we got home I took another look through S’s car. After about five minutes, wouldn’t you know it, I found a “secret” shelf in the central console that I had apparently pushed my wallet into at some point in my drives. Stupid. I say secret shelf because neither S or I knew it was there, and she’s had the car over a year and had one almost exactly like it for three years before that. Apparently the engineers at Jeep are cleverer than we are.

Dropping C off at camp went well. She was super excited to get down there. Two classmates are in her cabin and at least one other St. P’s girl is too. It looked like there was a group of 4–5 girls from another school together in her cabin as well. Hopefully they all get along. It looks like she’s going to have a hot, muggy week down there.

As we were driving down S looked at the car’s temperature display, saw it was 95 outside, and wondered, “Why does it always have to be in the 90s when we drop them off at camp?” My response was, “Well, at least it’s not pouring,” and we laughed.

So of course on a day when there was a 20% chance of rain, there was a pop-up storm that sat right on top of camp and unleashed heavy showers from the moment we parked until the moment we got C to her cabin. Seriously, it was rain stupidly hard. We were thoroughly soaked, but at least it was rain and not sweat like normal.

Oh, last Thursday we also had our home orientation. It was a two-plus hour walk-through where we learned about the home warranty program and then went room-by-room through it pointing out things that needed attention like nail pops, paint touch-ups, etc. I guess that’s the good thing about buying a brand new house: everything should be in perfect shape when we move in.

Friday L got her new bedroom furniture. She bumped up to a queen bed and added a new dresser and side table to replace the stuff we bought for her sisters when they bunked up 10 years ago. She was very excited. We haven’t gotten her a new mattress yet, so we have an air mattress on the new bed frame. I kind of think she’d be just fine if we left it like that.

We have a steady flow of other Amazon deliveries bringing various items for the new house. And we have a long list of big furniture purchases that we are actively searching the perfect piece to fill.

Now comes our big week. Wednesday two of my sisters-in-law have rented a Uhaul to come clear a bunch of stuff out of our home that they’ve either been storing here or that we are handing down to them. Thursday we have a final walk through at the house, close at 1:00, and then will start taking stuff over on our own. Friday C comes home from camp; one of her friend’s parents volunteered to bring her home so I can work on moving stuff. And Saturday the movers come to do all the big stuff. Next Saturday night we’ll be sleeping in our new home.

That Real Estate Life

June 5, 2018 / DB

The first week of summer was exhausting. Not because we did a bunch of fun stuff. Rather because it was spent putting two houses onto the market.

Our main home went on the market last Tuesday, although the sign didn’t go into the yard until Wednesday. So there was a seemingly endless list of cleaning and straightening and other tiny projects to make the house gleam as much as it can. And then the constant checking of things to make sure if we got a call about a showing we could get out of the way quickly and still have everything in order. The girls did a pretty good job with it all, although they are already beginning to chafe a bit under the restrictions we’ve put on them to keep the house in decent shape.

Then Saturday we went down to the lake house to get it ready for our realtor to come take pictures and put her signs up. That house officially went on the market this morning.

All this is new to us, as we’ve only bought houses before, never sold before.[1] As I said up top, it is exhausting. Especially with kids home from school who want nothing more than to relax and make messes and not have to worry about them for a week or two.

All that physical stuff wears you down enough, and then there’s the mental side. The waiting for notifications that a showing is scheduled. Each time I get a text message there’s the hope it is from the booking agency. It could be a text with totally awesome news from a friend or relative, but I still feel a little let down if it isn’t a showing notification. Little things catch your eye as you walk through the house, “Man, we really should have had that fixed. Who’s going to buy a house that has that?!?!” The girls are clearly having some issues, too, which weighs on us. There have been emotions and some acting out which we are assuming come from the stress and uncertainty they’re feeling. Oh, and I’ve not been the best dad, snapping at them for little things.

This isn’t meant to be some “Woe Are Us” post. We are lucky that we are selling our homes because of decisions we made, not because we have to sell them. We knew what we were getting into and could have adjusted our timing if we wanted to. But now seemed like the right time to jump all the way in. I think that will prove to be true in retrospect once we get through everything. But, man, this first week was tiresome.

Now that all the prep work is done, and the first week of being on the market is out of the way, I do hope I can relax a little. We had hoped for more attention on our house in week one. As I mentioned, we have neighbors who had two offers on the first day they listed their home, and our entire area is lacking in inventory. Those unrealistic comparisons/expectations weighed us down, too. Sunday we told ourselves, “We have a great house, in a great location. Someone is going to want it.” Selling a home in a month is awesome, and there’s still plenty of time to do that. It’s going to happen, just on a more normal schedule that our neighbors.

Oh, the girls and I did go pick strawberries one day last week. Which was a lot of fun until someone – no one claimed responsibility – decided to wash all four pounds at once and then put them back into the fridge. We had to freeze them before they turned into a mushy, mess, which was kind of sad. We will have good smoothies for weeks, though!

And, of course, there are all kinds of other stresses associated with buying our new home we’re also dealing with. For example, spending roughly an hour just trying to get a mortgage statement from our current lender, who seem to operate on systems that were built in the 1970s. ↩