I’m thankful for many things this year and, given the year this world has been having, that’s saying a lot. 

Katie and I bought our Christmas gifts for each other tonight. We were doing so good about not ruining the surprise for each other until a Black Friday ad dropped yesterday.

Katie and I were discussing actor David McCallum (NCIS) and we’re debating his age. So I looked him up on IMDb and discovered he and Nathan shared the same birthday. September 19.

Nobody actually got last week's #MiniMusicMonday challenge photo. But one guy got close... twice! Same guy.

Katie said something to me today that caught me way off guard. 

Today is a pretty darn big day for my family. My parents are celebrating their 50th anniversary! In this day and age — oh heck, in any day and age — that’s a huge accomplishment. 

I knew it was coming. We all knew it was coming. That didn’t make it any easier, though, when this popped up on my phone earlier this afternoon...

Like I’m sure so many parents of young ones try to do (unless you’re Donald Trump and likely don’t give a damn what your youngest son sees and hears you do), we try to limit our swearing around Nathan. Additionally, when he sees or hears something involving swear words, we steer him away and explain why it’s bad. 

I follow stuff on eBay a lot. It's a morbid curiosity or "window shopping" sort of thing. I like to find stuff in which I'm interested, follow it, and see how much it winds up selling (or not selling) for. A vast majority of the time, I'm not ordering it. Just watching.

I’m really struggling right now to come up with a photography idea for 2021. I don’t want to do more macro cassette covers. I’m not sure I want to do regular macro photos. I failed miserably when I tried to do short stories based on a photo.

Ah, the rare correct guess proffered up on Twitter by Tobi (@thebitster) with the late, great Robin Williams. Oh, and after re-reading what I just said in the first sentence, "rare correct guess" is a reference to guesses on Twitter, not guesses by Tobi. I swear. Practically nobody guesses on Twitter. I think I've gotten one other correct guess out of, at most, a handful of people trying to guess there. Not sure why it's not a popular outlet for guessing Macro Monday. Weird.

Today was our day to renew our insurance policies through Katie's employer. Not that we had a specific day, we just dreaded it so much that we put it off as long as humanly possible.

I was checking out Instagram today, getting a feel for how their user interface had changed with the most recent update, when I saw that on my profile my number of accounts I followed was a mere five less than the number of accounts that follow me. 

Two weeks ago, our IT Dude from work came by my house to take my MacBook Pro. My battery was going bad and it wouldn’t hold a charge even when plugged in (Zoom drains a battery faster than it can recharge apparently). 

I happened my way down a Wikipedia rabbit hole today and he saw a picture of Sid Vicious. He asked about him and I told Nathan, "That's you!" He looked at me sideways and that's when I showed him this old picture of Nathan wearing his Halloween wig in advance of trick or treating back in 2016.

I completely forgot that with a new Democratic White House, that Ajit Pai, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman, will likely be canned, if he doesn't quit first. To him, I sing (with apologies to Don McLean)...

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it here before or not, but Nathan loves music. Not just listening to music, he loves singing and he’s got a really good memory for song lyrics. 

Not only did Marty nail this #minimusicmonday, but he taught me something. He taught me that this Sammy Hagar album, which I always thought was self-titled, has a title. And it came after the fact due to an MTV promotion. Very interesting.

I’m not sure what to make of the iOS 14 update. I’m still trying to unpack it all. There’s some good and some bad in the little I’ve explored.

This is the greatest thing I’ve seen on the Web in God-only-knows how long. The creativity that went into it... outstanding! Well done, @_gh0stn!

Some think of this solely as a map of the United States showing how Electoral College votes are going in light of the 2020 Presidential Election (thru Thursday, November 5).

Oh. My. God. Have you seen the season 2 premiere of The Mandalorian on Disney+? Wow! Just wow! Just... yowza!

This is my world and I am world leader pretend
This is my life
And this is my time
I have been given the freedom
To do as I see fit
It's high time I've razed the walls that I've constructed

I suppose I thought my challenge photo last week was too obvious. But it wasn’t. Not at all. In fact, the only person to guess it had to be coerced to post the answer because she felt guilty for googling the lyrical clue. 

Some hits. Some misses. Ah, such is October 2020.

I’m not sure how many of you know or will remember this, but we’ve been trying to do themed family Halloween cosplay. 

Time to pick out some books to read in November. I’m going to try to keep the reading rate up from my average of four. Because... why not?

Interview with a Vampire... ‘tis the season for bloodsuckers!

Yeah, Halloween is gonna be FUN!

This post is for Marty, Eric, and Kevin S. who will know this album well from my raving about it.

Marty came up big last week with Collective Soul’s Hints, Allegations and Things Left Unsaid. 

Too much COVID crap going on. Way too much. Make it all stop. Please!

Here we are most of the way through October and I realized I was going to have to start planning and scheduling my Kevin’s 7 year-end lists.

After four or more years with no signs of mice in our house whatsoever, we discovered we likely had at least one. There were bite marks in the fruit we had in a basket on our shelves. 

What’s the oldest photo in the Photo Roll (or whatever they call it on an Android)?