what a year.

saturday, november 29th, 2025.

Sorry for not writing for most of the year. It's been a bit of a wild ride— mostly good things though! To begin with, we got into a car wreck in April that took me off of my bike for a good little while as we dealt with insurance, injuries, and all of that fun stuff. Cars are stupid and highway speeds are dangerous. We got T-boned while driving the speed limit in the right lane of a mostly empty divided highway with clear visibility, which caused us to flip over off of the road, as seen above. Nevertheless, we're all mostly mended with niggling aches and pains and an open medical claim case with a lawyer. It could've been worse and I'm just incredibly thankful to be alive and well.

If I'm being entirely honest, however, most of my lack of writing has been due to really digging in to learn to play Flesh & Blood well. I think I've reached a journeyman level of competitiveness and have been enjoying playing tremendously. One of my good friends, Michael, also got my Arakni, Huntsman signed by the artist, Isuardi Therianto!

I really enjoy Huntsman's playstyle and have come to a level of expertise with them where I can sort of autopilot my way through matches and focus on my opponent's play and how to react to it. It's a very zen-like experience! We've got a great local community and I enjoy playing with them a lot. Hopefully this upcoming year, I'll be able to actually put some Living Legend points on Huntsman and get my name on their roll of honor.

But enough about Flesh & Blood— We've made a lot of great friends this year and have a big ol' neighborhood friend group now! Pictured above is a Halloween party we hosted at our house this year with more folks out of the frame of the photo. Y'all, having a community is amazing. Highly recommend. We've been playing Dungeons & Dragons with them, going out to trivia nights, seeing local plays (The Rocky Horror Show was great!), and having Friendsgiving together. Our lives are certainly much better for having each other in them. 🥰

What else? I've started a playthrough of the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection. I'm working my way through Final Fantasy I. It's a very simplistic grind of a game, but they've really made the playing experience quite nice in the remaster. The CRT filter and remastered soundtrack are phenomenal and the gameplay improvements like auto-battle make the random encounters less of a slog. Zippi even made me a Perler bead Black Mage, which I now keep on my desk at work.

Shaky Knees was a blast this year. We were a hot, sweaty mess but our hydration packs came in clutch. My life's definitely improved for having stopped drinking alcohol and my wallet was certainly happier for having not bought a bunch of $16 beers. Pictured here, Zippi and I were laying on the lawn under the shade of a tree while listening to Franz Ferdinand. There were a ton of great performances. Every year, there's always a band that surprises me with an amazing performance. This year's was The All-American Rejects. Their front man is an absolute kook of a man and really knows how to work a crowd! The music was great and they even wound up unofficially marrying a couple that got engaged at the festival.

Some bucket list performances we managed to catch as well: Alabama Shakes and The Black Keys, both back from hiatus and solo careers. Blink-182 closed out the weekend with Sunday's headlining show, pictured above. Technically sound and a good performance, but the puerile "your mom" jokes hit different when the jokesters are 50-something. We wound up leaving early to catch an empty-ish train back to our hotel. Had a great time over the weekend, though!

All the kids were here over the Thanksgiving break and helped us decorate our Christmas tree yesterday. I've got so much to be thankful for and I'm looking forward to the rest of the holidays with the family as we move into winter and all of that goodness. For all the tumult that this year has brought, it has also been incredibly kind to us and I am filled with gratitude.

I'll try to keep my writings here updated more often than I have been! I've been journaling plenty, privately, but I really shouldn't let Bluesky be my sole outlet of public writing like I have been. Social networks come and go, but good ol' HTTP is the keystone of a free and public Internet, after all!

But, I digress. What a year it's been and I'm glad for having experienced it.

Until next time, be well! :)