2025-11-22 13:00:00
I've gone from weekly updates to bi-monthly to monthly. That is not a good trend line. I need to work on that.
My birthday was on Tuesday, celebrating my 58th trip around the sun. I always say I don't feel my age, and physically that is true. A lot of GenX friends talk of always dealing with some low level nagging pain. I don't have that issue. I feel pretty damn good most of the time. However I am looking at my life and thinking about when I get to slow down a bit. Due to two layoffs and starting my own company in a 7 month period this year, we took no vacation time in 2025. The best we did all year was a couple of 4 day weekends timed to coincide with a national holiday. I've worked harder since going freelance than I have in a long time.
My workload has caused me to start playing with numbers and thinking about how I can exit the rat race sooner rather than later. If I lived somewhere where I could live on $4500 a month I could mostly check out tomorrow. I'd need to hang on to one PT consulting client, otherwise I'd be free and clear. It's tempting. Very temping. For comparison, $4500 is the sum of my mortgage and health insurance effective January 1, 2026. There are a lot of countries where $4500 a month all-in would be a very comfortable middle-class or better life (for two people).
Anyway, I had a very nice birthday. Michelle took me to Les Crepes, a Latin inspired crepe restaurant. It was fabulous. My crepe had chicken, mango-cranberries mix, caramelized onions, caramelized apples, brie cheese, and a sour cream-mango sauce. It weighed about a pound. And because it was my birthday they gave us a Nutella dessert crepe on the house.
On Thursday my smiling face was on the front page of NPR.org for a few hours. It has been an interesting couple of weeks for me online. NPR interviewed me then featured me in both an audio segment during Morning Edition and in print on the website. Also, George Takei commented on something I posted online.
Also on Thursday we attended the annual Thanksgiving potluck with the Richmond Audubon Society, which is highlighted by a slide show of bird photos taken by members during the year, many from far flung locations on birding trips. There are many seriously talented photographers in the club. I was inspired to try to up my bird photography game.
The shit status of the country is ruining my Christmas mood, so far. I'm just not feeling it at all. We don't do a lot for Christmas anyway, it is normally just a quiet day at home with controlled gift giving. But I seriously haven't been able to even think about it for a minute without it depressing me. Maybe I need to plop a nickel on Lucy's desk and have a chat with her, or volunteer to direct the Christmas play, or something.
Last weekend we attended the annual Christmas light show at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens. It was pretty, as always. We go every year as our membership gets us in free on member preview night. It was 60F and we were walking around in light jackets. Not exactly Christmas weather.
We do have a date night planned for tonight. We are going to go out for drinks then attend an Improv comedy show. And we plan to go birding in the morning and then hit a couple of fall festivals in the afternoon. With me glued to my desk 8-6 every day I need to do a better job of getting more outside time.
Watching
We binged season 2 of Nobody Wants This on Netflix this week. It was not as good as season 1, but entertaining enough. The previous week we binged season 3 of The Diplomat, which was exceptionally entertaining.
Reading
Make Me Commissioner by Jane Leavy is a humor learning look at the state of baseball today, and what needs to change to make the game more entertaining.
Nuclear War by Annie Jacobsen is a deeply researched scenario of one way we might destroy the planet with nuclear weapons in the near future. The scenario is terrifyingly plausible.
More detailed reviews of both books are on the books page.
Listening
I've got Kevn Kinney's catalog on shuffle play as I'm writing this. I also just discovered Jesse Welles and I'm obsessed with his Woody Guthrie / Dylan vibe. The guy has released 4 full albums this year and a hard-left folkie getting Grammy nominations is something that gives me a little bit of hope for the future.
And that is it for this week. Remember, in a world where you can choose to be anything, you can choose to be kind.
2025-11-16 13:00:00
As members of Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, we get to see the annual Christmas light display at no extra cost the weekend before it's opened to the public. It was light jacket last night, so certainly not "Christmas weather," and last night did nothing to get me into the Christmas spirit. With all the shit in my life and the world currently, I'm not feeling the holiday spirit at all.
2025-11-15 13:00:00
Last week someone on Mastodon posted a link to an article on NPR.org looking for people that wanted to talk about health insurance. I happen to have some very recent history in this area so I completed the form. Earlier this week NPR reached out and did a 3-minute interview, of which one sentence ended up in the story. But it was the lead!
Yesterday NPR reached back out asking for a picture, as they are turning the Morning Edition audio story into a print story. I have not seen it online yet, but when I do, I'll add it here.
Keep pressuring your representatives. Trump has lost Marjorie Green Taylor, who was very much acolyte #1 in the cult 12 months ago. Once Trump falls MAGA goes with him. JD Fucking Vance is not going to inspire that type of loyalty.
Ironically, the Republicans have now decided that insurance companies are the problem. They are not wrong, but of course they have no interest in actually fixing the problem. They've been unwilling and unable to produce a single plan to fix healthcare since Trump promised it was days away in 2016, but now that the voters have spoken, they are producing healthcare reform over a couple of evenings of cigars and coke in the basement of the House building.
What could possibly go wrong?
Meanwhile, I watched a YouTube video last night about 10 countries where I I could live for about $1000 a month. I'm sure the video is making all kinds of assumptions that don't apply to me, but even if they are off by a lot, $2500 a month plus whatever insulin pump stuff may cost would be a very dramatic improvement in my life. It definitely bears further research.
I used to occasionally wonder what it was like to live through the fall of an empire. Did the average Roman know the empire was falling? I guess I'm going to get an answer to that the question the hard way, by living through it myself.
2025-11-05 13:00:00
I'm just going to leave this here where I can find it later.
2025-11-01 12:00:00
Phone: Ring ring. (my ring tone is an old school mechanical phone ringer)
Me: Hello. Chris speaking.
Caller: Hi Chris, this is Mark Warner calling from DC.
And that is how my call with Senator Mark Warner started. He was doing a call blitz to constituents and my email a few weeks ago urging him to keep fighting to protect the tax credits got me on the call list. We only talked about 3 minutes, but I learned that he has a daughter with Type 1 diabetes so he understands the expense of managing that disease.
So do you have an extra $1300 a month for health insurance?
The answer for most people to that question is a resounding no. However, it's a question I'm forced to deal with as that is the increase in my health insurance premium for 2026. My health insurance premium and my mortgage are now within 5% of each other. That means in 2027 it's likely that my insurance premium will exceed my housing cost.
I'm better off than most. Even though our savings have taken a hit this year as I worked through 2 layoffs in 7 months and then started my own business, I'm actually in okay shape. My consulting business is doing good and if not for the health insurance thing I'd be comfortable about my personal financial situation for 2026.
Instead, after spending a morning doing cash flow projections for next year, I'm resigned to 2026 being a year of getting by, which in this economy is probably still an achievement. To be clear, by "getting by" I mean living a normal middle class life. I've still got money in the budget for date nights, dining out occasionally, weekends in the camper, etc. But I probably won't be rebuilding my savings or making up for this lost year of retirement savings. And I'm certainly not planning a 2-week trip to Europe. Although I probably should be looking into moving to Europe, or South America, or somewhere. 120 years ago my great-grandfather left Ireland to come to America for more opportunity. In 2026, it's not clear that America is a land of opportunity for anyone other than right wing grifters and corrupt religious leaders. Or are those the same thing?
What I'm really lacking in 2026 is flexibility. If the shits hit the fan again in my life I don't have the flexibility to deal with it because no matter what, I have to shell out $2155 for health insurance every month. I could zero out everything in the Wants budget of my life, but the main lesson we took from my wife's cancer in 2017 is to not be so worried about the future that we forget to live in the present.
I know that given the number of people who will simply have to abandon health insurance and the millions and millions that didn't have savings or insurance in the first place, I really shouldn't be complaining. But I am.
2025-11-01 12:00:00
Last night's statistics.
One couple with a toddler who won't remember anything. But he was very cute in his cat In The Hat costume.
4 teens, only one of which bothered with a costume. They very pleasant and polite so it's fine.
2 sets of parents who left the kids in the car and came to the door for candy. I really should have told them to bugger off. If the kids are tired or cranky or not into it just take them home. Just the driving in this neighborhood is ridiculous. I live in a townhouse / row house community. My property is 20 feet wide. That's not a low number for effect. That is literally the measurement on the plat.
I really can't remember the last time we had a bunch of kids in cute costumes with friendly parents stop by the house on Halloween. It has never happened in 3 different neighborhoods over our 7 Halloweens in RVA. I think I'm done. Next year maybe we will go out for some adult fun. We could also go camping. Some the campgrounds in central VA have fairly elaborate Halloween celebrations.
