Life of Bryan

Explained Independence Day to my inquiring 5-year-old son today, as best I could. He responded:

But dad, war is not good. People get hurt and that’s not something that we should be remembering.

Couldn’t argue with that.

I just want Apple to allow me to choose “natural” scrolling for the trackpad, and regular scrolling for the mouse wheel. Is that too much to ask?

I love that my personalized radio station played me Ja Rule - Mesmerize on my drive home today.

I’m 43 and just now feel like I have enough PTO to stay somewhat sane, yet enough responsibility to feel guilty using it.

We’ve got a camping trip with friends this weekend that we booked in January (you have to do that here), and now it’s supposed to be around 100 degrees each day. Seriously considering sleeping in the Tesla and testing out Camp Mode.

Several days later, all 20 years of emails — 117,006 messages at 11 gb — have been imported to iCloud. After setting up mail forwarding, I no longer need to keep Gmail in Mail via IMAP because it’s all searchable. Delayed retrieval is also solved by forwarding. Perhaps the most boring post ever.

Can I filter words out of the timeline with Micro.blog? I don’t like unfollowing people just because of occasional content, but I also try to throttle certain political posts.

Sometimes I’ll be on my back deck and hear some kid scream at a video game, or someone practicing the trumpet, and I think: “how dare they disrupt my peace!” Then I remember what it must be like to live next to us.

Took the kids out in the canoe on the Willamette this afternoon with our friend P, who brought her paddle board. Great drop-in point in Newberg. Beautiful, calm day for it. The old 18.5’ Wenonah is still a champ. 🛶

A person is sitting in a canoe paddling down a calm river surrounded by lush greenery.A smiling adult wearing sunglasses and a blue cap is holding a young child who is wearing a blue TYR shirt.A person wearing a blue cap and a black life jacket is sitting in a canoe paddling on a calm river, with a smiling child also in the canoe surrounded by trees and a cloudy sky.Two people are sitting on a paddleboard floating on a calm, reflective body of water surrounded by lush greenery and trees under a cloudy sky.

Remembered a lyric that has nothing to do with my current situation but is just so simple and clever, I wanted to write it down.

The sadest part of a broken heart isn’t the ending so much as the start. — Leslie Feist

I slept in today because of the sleeping pill I took in the middle of the night, but I was productive despite how groggy I felt when I woke up. I took 5 big bags of bottles back for the deposits, picked up groceries, and vacuumed my car. I picked up the backyard a little bit and blew the leaves off the deck.

S’s dad came for a visit today, who was in town for work. It’s been nice having him swing through more often the last year or so, but sometimes the heads-up is short, and there’s a lot to do to make the place presentable. S worked her butt off yesterday and today getting the place cleaned up. We try to keep up on it, but having to little kids makes it difficult.

After grandpa showed up, we took the kids to the nature park and went for a couple mile walk through the woods. They were wild, but I think they had fun. It was warming up, but the dense canopy kept up cool.

I had prepped some BBQ before we left and put it on the grill, but it still needed a few more hours to cook after we got back. The family watched a kids’ movie for a bit while I went upstairs and messed around with my blog. The ribs turned out pretty good! We rounded out the meal with some mashed potatoes and corn on the cob.

This evening we folded laundry while the kids took baths. It rained tonight, which is kind of strange for this time of year in the Northwest. June has been strange in general. My garden seems to be loving it, though, and thankfully for that given the issues I’ve had with the drip irrigation recently.

Tomorrow we’re taking the kids to some park on the Willamette, meeting up with some friends to go paddle boarding. I’m considering brining the canoe. It’s supposed to be cloudy but there’s no rain in the forecast yet. I’m sure the kids will enjoy it.

Considering putting my big in scouts this year and of course I ended up on an Etsy page for alternative merit badges. Link

Uploading 20 years’ worth of email to iCloud. Hoping for a completion date sometime before 2027.

A screen displays an email application moving 5 out of 117,160 messages, with folders labeled Sent, Social, and Trash visible.

Ice cream truck audibly enters the neighborhood…

2-year-old daughter: “what’s that noise?!”

Wife: “it’s an ambulance.”

The candidates are very bad, but worse still is the media manipulation and corruption. Between the 2016 and 2024 elections, I’ve lost all faith in this system. The only reason I even vote anymore is because of SCOTUS.