Words On Wednesday

I really wanted to write up some big post about Christmas, but… I’ll be honest. It’s not going to happen. This whole “Year of the Dates” initiative I took with Words On Wednesday was almost geared specifically toward Christmas. It’s my favorite holiday, and obviously the one that I would speak the most about. Unfortunately, I am just so spent, I can’t even be bothered to write up a discussion of why I like Christmas so much, or talk about our family traditions. So far, this term of school has been just the worst. I realize that it’s only my second term at SNHU, but the stark contrast between my first class and this one is just baffling. At this point, I’m just hanging on until the end of the term. As the adage goes, “C’s get degrees.” If I can pass, whatever. I’ll get my reimbursement check from work and continue onto the next class. Shopping is awful anyway, but the fact that we’ve had to do every bit of shopping for basically entire family for our kids is so frustrating. I don’...

Thanksgiving day is tomorrow, and despite Christmas music on the radio and decorations up all over the place, it is still a celebrated holiday. I understand that Christmas is a lot easier to get excited for than Thanksgiving. For one, it has tons and tons of music. I don’t have any sort of tentative figures on it, but I’m sure there are hundreds if not thousands of Christmas songs just in English. How many songs have you ever heard about Thanksgiving. In addition to the music, Christmas decorations are as prolific and varied as holidays get. There are trees and ribbons and lights and garland and even flying spaghetti monster tree toppers. With so many decorations available, you can doll up your house and yard however you want. The sky's the limit, often literally with the size of some Christmas trees I’ve seen. Let’s not forget presents. The holiday season brings people out of the woodwork to go shopping, and companies often hold off new releases until late in the year, just...

The baby face that I have sported for the past few months is about to be engulfed by a big, burly beard of manliness. While I normally keep my facial hair to just a goatee, or occasionally shave it clean, November (and possibly into December or even January) comes the time when I grow it all out in support of testicular cancer awareness (or something like that). In all honesty, my beard isn’t really all that impressive. I grow facial hair ridiculously slow, so it takes a few weeks before anybody can even notice a difference. Day to day, that’s great because I can shave once or twice a week and never look all that scruffy. In November, though… Everybody else has a forest of beard while I still have what some would consider a five o’clock shadow. Last year, I kept growing it out until soon after Christmas. My intent was to get picture proof of my 2-ish month old beard with all the Christmas photos. No Shave November because Don’t Shave December, but fell short of Just Don’t Shave J...

I do not care about Halloween. There, I said it. Everybody I know seems to love Halloween. Tons of people consider it their favorite holiday of the year (as if something could dethrone Christmas). They go to spook trails and haunted houses nearly every weekend during October. They decorate their houses with elaborate graveyard scenes and the like. These people go all out for Halloween, and I just don’t get it. That isn’t to say that I *dislike* Halloween. Before I had kids, we used to go to a spook trail or two each year. If we could get reliable child care now, we probably still would. We take the kids trick or treating, but I feel like that’s a big fuss about nothing when we usually end up throwing away half or more of the candy anyway. Lots of adults I know throw parties for Halloween, but how does that differ from any other weekend during the year besides donning a costume? You want to have some friends over and get trashed, that’s called a normal Friday night for a lot of peo...

I started blogging three years ago this week. Technically, it isn’t 3 years to the day. I started on August 27 ( https://jakehennett.wordpress.com/2014/11/06/words-on-wednesday-august-27-2014/ ), but considering this is Words on *Wednesday*, I figured it best to mark the date as the last Wednesday in August. Inevitably, there will be a few years where the last Wednesday in August will fall on the 27th again, but that won’t be every year. At this point, I don’t really know if it feels like I’ve been blogging for longer or shorter than 3 years. When I think about starting, I remember myself in college, but I had been finished with school for a year before I started. Logically, that would also put my start before getting married, but I got married a few months before then. It’s like I don’t remember a time when I didn’t keep a blog, but it truly wasn’t that long ago when I started. Obviously, I plan on continuing the blog for as long as I can. I’ve still got quite a few finished ...

In case you haven’t heard, there’s going to be a solar eclipse next week. Considering how rarely they happen, it is a bit of a big deal. Solar eclipses are far from frequent, and being within a few miles of the path of totality is obviously even more rare. It’s something I want to take advantage of, since it won’t happen again for a long time, and next time would require actual travel plans. Glasses Eclipse glasses have been selling like hotcakes everywhere, and most places seem to be completely sold out. Optometrist offices are giving them out to patients only. Any stores with free displays have been out for at least a week at this point. People are going mad on social media trying to figure out other options. My mother asked me 2 weeks ago to grab her a pair from a local apparel store that was advertising free glasses. We were tied up for a few days, so I put it off until some time last week. We went by the store, but the sign on the front door indicated that they were out ...

‘Murica. If I had to describe Independence Day in one word, it would simply be “‘Murica.” I’ve always had a weird relationship with Independence Day, or “the fourth of July” as I tend to hear more often. As a kid, we did Independence Day big. And I don’t mean we went somewhere to see professional fireworks shows. We shot fireworks at home. And not small, gas station fireworks. We had hookups with people who shot professional fireworks, and somehow managed to acquire some of these for our own purposes. As such, I’ve always been intimately familiar with fireworks. That includes the mishaps that can go along with amateur firework shows. We’ve had a dog run by and snatch up an actively firing cake of Saturn Missiles, shooting off as we chased her around the yard. A larger cake of balls with report tipped over once, pointing directly at where the entire audience was seated. Another time, a rocket shot up into a tree and caught the top of the tree on fire. Someone had to climb up an adj...

It’s that time of the year again. Summer Games Done Quick 2017 (or #SGDQ2017) starts this weekend on Sunday, July 2nd. Source: https://cdn.mobipicker.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/red.png For the uninitiated, Games Done Quick is a biannual conference where people from all over the world come together and play video games quickly in order to raise money for charity. It started back in 2010, and has become a massive undertaking since the early days. Across every event, the conference has raised over $10 million. Awesome Games Done Quick 2017 raised over $2 million alone. To a lot of people, watching speed runs is nerdy and pointless. “Why watch them play when you can just play the game yourself,” is something I’ve heard more times than I can count. My rebuttal is typically, “why watch sports when you can go outside and play them yourself?” I won’t go so far as to praise video games with the same sort of athleticism as sports, but people who are particularly good at video...

Father’s Day, as a complement to Mother’s Day, has always been a vastly different holiday. For one, and I’ve mentioned it plenty of times before, my own father has been gone for a decade. I have other male relatives in similar positions, uncles, a grandfather, even other men who have acted as almost surrogate fathers to me, but my own biological father hasn’t been in the picture for years. That sort of absence puts a different sort of spin on the holiday. I don’t want to downplay the roles that any other guys have had in my life, I appreciate them tremendously. Still, it just isn’t quite the same. Beyond that, I myself have been a father for now 4 years. I could never be a mother (obviously), so Father’s Day is more personal to me. Not that I’d want to latch onto it as celebrating me, I feel like that’s entirely too narcissistic. But I feel like it serves to make me evaluate myself, and whether I’m being the best father that I can be for my kids. I’m not perfect, no parent is, but...

Mother’s Day is this coming Sunday, and it is a holiday that I have come to appreciate more and more as I’ve gotten older. Growing up, I didn’t really care that much about Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. Not that I didn’t love and appreciate my parents, but it was more or less just another day. As a child, each parent got the other a gift. Once I got to the age where I would buy them a gift myself, it was mildly stressful. I’m not good at buying people gifts, so I have a hard time getting something sentimental even for people I’m close to. The first thing that gave me a better appreciation for Mother’s Day was the death of my father. I’ve mentioned it before , but it deserves to be mentioned here. Suddenly going from having both parents to only one really makes you appreciate the remaining parent. I may discuss my father’s absence more, but his death gave me much more gratitude for my own mother, and all she continues to do for me. Into adulthood, I gained even awareness for Moth...