Hello?  Is this mic hot?  I’ll just assume it is. I haven’t written in this thing in a long time. It’s been at least 7 or 8 (or 9?) years. ‘So why now?’, you ask?  Well, what happened was we texted our old neighbor that we haven’t spoken with in a few years. The topic of how I used to write in this blog came up and that sparked a conversation between Jen and myself that went kinda like this:

JEN:   ‘Esmerelda (not her real name) and I were texting back and forth and she mentioned that Jim oughtta think about writing in his blog again.’

ME:    ‘Really?  That was nice of her to say. I don’t know though, that was an awful lot of work.’

JEN:   ‘What do you mean, ‘awful lot of work’?  What else do you have to do? 

ME:    ‘Fair point. But I doubt that people wanna hear about my boring and mundane life.’

JEN:   ‘I disagree. I think people like reading about your incredibly boring and mundane life. Besides, you rather enjoy talking about yourself. Not to mention, you doing something semi-productive with your time will pull you off my back occasionally and give me a much needed break.

ME:    ‘You’re right. I do rather enjoy talking about myself at times. It placates my inner narcissist. I don’t know, maybe I’ll take it for a spin.’

Except for me cleaning up all the F-bombs that Jen dropped all over the place, our conversation pretty much word for word went exactly like that.

So, I pulled up my account that contained all my old blog entries after resetting my expired password and ‘lo and behold!’, all of my old stuff was still there. (That was the first time, and probably the last, I’ve ever used the phrase ‘lo and behold!’)  I guess there’s some truth to the saying: ‘The internet is immortal.’ Note to self: I should resist the temptation to reread something I’ve written years earlier. That’s because my previous attempts at being humorous that I thought were pretty funny or even, dare I say, hilarious, were probably anything but funny or hilarious. At best, my earlier writings might’ve been mildly amusing. At worst, downright embarrassing or cringeworthy. It’s like when you see a picture of yourself or hear your own voice on a recording. ‘Yikes!  Do I really look (or sound) like that?’ It’s probably best if that stuff just exists in the dark cracks and crevices of the online world, never again to see the light of day. Another note to self (random thought that just occurred to me): Jen tells me, and I totally agree, that I get kinda wordy when I write something or even type out a line for my computer to “speak”. She’s right, I can feel myself doing it.  It’s like I overcompensate using the written word since I can’t use the spoken word. I need to pay better attention to that, I think I’ll start tomorrow. For example, my previous ‘Note to self:’ took me thirty minutes to write because I lost my train of thought about 15 times, and I kept having to reread the same sentence over and over. Also, having your ‘Led Zeppelin’ playlist blasting in your ears while trying to organize and write down your thoughts is a less-than-ideal situation.

A lot has happened in our lives since the last time we talked. We’ve had three kids: Max, Josephine and little Jimmy Jr. – ages 5, 4 and 2 respectively. I’ve written a couple books. Neither of them made the NYTimes Bestsellers List, there are a few lousier books out there but not many. Jen has taken up painting and opened up an art studio. Also, we moved to Steamboat Springs, CO a few years ago. Actually, none of that stuff is true. The two of us are still living here over on Colby Ct. in St. Peters, still doing our thing like always. Jen’s still working for NISC, taking care of me, doing all the household stuff, being Facility Manager, etc., etc. As for me, I’m keeping busy too: I’m getting more than my fair share of audiobooks, shows, movies, podcasts and music. We’re like the mullet couple – she’s all business in the front and I’m the party in the back.

Speaking of her job, she’s gonna have a big birthday in a couple weeks. The R-word has started coming up recently and it’s sounding like she’s ready to take a leap into the unknown again, this one in a few years. As far as her birthday goes, I’m smart enough not to divulge her age. Every now and then, some women can get kinda sensitive about stuff like that and I don’t wanna risk getting smothered in my sleep. So let’s just say that her age on 2/14 will rhyme with “nifty” and we’ve also been getting a lot of junk mail from AARP lately. There, now I haven’t been speaking out of school and I can sleep soundly tonight.

We saw ‘Six’ at the Fox today. That almost didn’t happen. Our daily routine doesn’t allow for a lot of wrinkles AND a trip downtown to see a show – but wrinkles were apparently on today’s docket. Add to that, Jen read a hilarious opinion of the show on Nextdoor the night before. It read, ‘Saw ‘Six’ down at the Fox. It was a cross between a bad Spice Girls concert and a high school musical. Ugh!’ Haha!  Needless to say, neither of us were real pumped about going to see it by the time we finally backed out of the driveway. But it was pretty good. Not awful, as we expected. But then again, I’m not exactly the “go-to guy” to get quality reviews of musicals. I’m the guy who fell asleep during last summer’s production of ‘The Book of Mormon’. Also, we’re the ones who sold our tickets to the world-renowned show ‘Hamilton’. That’s because a week before the show, we barely got through half the movie because we realized that the entire show was one very long rap song. Nothing against rap music, if that’s your thing, but it isn’t ours and it was pretty much unintelligible (to us). We had no idea what was going on, it may as well been in Latin, and we got on StubHub right then and there. I freely admit that I’m not a “musicals guy”, try as I may. If that makes me uncultured or whatever then so be it – guilty as charged.

I guess I’ll get going now (I can feel myself getting wordy again). A little late to be worrying about that now – but still. Time to go over and jump on YouTube like I do every few weeks. I save up a buncha trailers, concert videos, Daily Dose of Internet(s), SNL sketches, Kurzgesagt(s), whatever other junk looks fun… into my “Watch Later” playlist and then watch it all at once. The trailers I watch are for shows and movies that I might wanna check out some time but in reality, I’ll probably never get around to actually watching all of it because there’s just so much stuff out there. We have KTRS on every day (talk radio junkie here) for several hours and one time I heard Julie Buck say that there were 625,000 options available when it comes to streaming a particular season of a show or watching a movie online. That may not be 100% accurate, she can be kinda dramatic, but that feels about right.

Anyway, writing this has been fun. I’m gonna try not to let another eight years go by until I do this again.

Danke und gute Nacht! 

– Jim

P.S.  One last thing, I promise (for real this time). WordPress.com is the website where this blog lives. I don’t really know much about it, and I definitely don’t know anything about its inner workings. I’m doing good to Cut (ctrl+C) what I’ve written from my Word document, Paste (ctrl+V) it into the “Type your entry here” window and then find and click the “Publish” button. Hopefully, the list containing everyone’s email address that wished to be notified about my latest entry’s existence is still intact and working properly. If not, then I guess I just spent the last 3-4 days talking to myself and an empty room (wouldn’t have been the first time).