Month: November 2020

New Father Brogging, #027

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I was at a Target the other day, and while we’re checking out, I hear this little girl at the in-store Starbucks, ordering a caramel macchiato.  Now I think Starbucks’ caramel macchiatos are definitely tasty, but the thing is that this girl was like, ten years old.  And a Starbucks caramel macchiato probably has ten times the sugar and caffeine that a grown-ass adult ever needs in one sitting much less for a ten-year old twig of a girl.

Basically what I saw was a future Karen in the making, with a child already having developed a penchant for froufrou Starbucks coffee drinks, and for her own sake, it was good that the espresso machine was down, but I’m surprised that she or her completely disinterested looking dad didn’t demand to speak with a manager, and she walked away saying she was good instead.

One of my dreams now is to one day sit with my daughter in a coffee shop and have some coffee together.  However, seeing as how I would prefer for her to not start drinking coffee until she is like 17, that’s going to be a ways from now, but I’m willing to wait it out as long as I don’t risk stunting the growth of my daughter and/or make her a slave to caffeine as much as her dear old dad is.

A sad reminder of how much I miss the gym

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A week ago, I ran 13.1 miles to fulfill the obligations of the Disney Dine & Dash Wine & Dine Half Marathon that mythical wife and I signed up for months ago.  We were itching for redemption to run it this year, as we had to bow out the year prior with lots of sour grapes on how runDisney handled it, because of a little unexpectedly quick turn around on pregnancy, but we signed up for it in 2020, thinking we would have our opportunity to redeem ourselves as well as introduce our little one to her first Disney trip.

Among other things ruined on account of coronavirus, this too was denied to us again for a second year, but we opted to stay registered and run our half marathons virtually.

Mind you, in spite of having obligations of a half marathon, I’ve basically been living on auto-pilot for large swaths of the year, and I hadn’t really done any proper distance training leading up.  I run regularly, but only around three miles per run, mostly for maintenance and health purposes, and not necessarily with a distance goal in mind.  Regardless, because I was planning on doing run/walk, I was still confident that I would be able to pound out 13.1 miles without killing myself.

Sure, some preparation probably would have made things easier, but I did just that, and finished my half marathon’s distance without dying.  I admittedly hit a wall a little faster than I had hoped, and by mile 10 I was running out of gas pretty quickly, and my right calf was telling me that it was very unhappy with my choices in life, but I still finished, and under my goal time of 2 hours and 30 minutes to boot.

I figured I would be in pretty rough shape afterward, seeing as how such was usually the case whenever I’d done any prior 10K or 10-milers in the past, with training, but the following day, it was nothing more than the atypical tender quads and achy ankles, leading me to be quite satisfied that I wasn’t a complete train wreck of a physical specimen after having not been to the gym in literally eight months.

A day ago, as is something that always has to be done this time of year, I went outside and raked leaves, as I have three very large trees on my property, and therefore have a metric fuckton of leaves to have to rake.  It was a massive pain the ass last year, as I had but a cheap wire rake that I had procured from Amazon, so I decided to not be a cheapskate and get myself a real, effective rake, even if it meant that I had to leave my house and go to a Home Depot to buy one. 

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I want to like this more, but the jokes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Impetus: Thirty years after WWF Wrestlefest is released in arcades, some company announces the release of RetroMania Wrestling, the “official” sequel to WrestleFest

As the title of this post says, I really want to like and be excited about this game more than I am, but there are just so many jokes and snark to unleash and get out of my system before I can resign myself to the fact that I’ll still probably impulse purchase this on Steam so that I can play with my brother and my bros.

When I was a kid, I loved Wrestlefest.  I almost always picked the Ultimate Warrior despite the fact that by then, I was already well on my way to being one of those contrarian mark types of wrestling fans and was a by far bigger fan of Mr. Perfect than I was the Warrior, but the cheapskate cheesing kid with very limited quarters didn’t like the fact that Mr. Perfect lacked many power moves, but most importantly the ability to drop a body slam, so there was no way to get cheap easy eliminations with Mr. Perfect when playing in the Royal Rumble mode.  One of my fondest memories of this game was being a such a master button masher, that no matter the fact that I had zero health in a Royal Rumble match, I would still kick out of every pinfall attempt, and I ended up outlasting two other human opponents, with me winning the rumble after back dropping the last human player out.

Hell, even as an adult, I loved Wrestlefest, and I installed Mame and got a rom of Wrestlefest, it was basically the greatest thing on the planet, that I could now play one of my favorite arcade games ever, with basically unlimited quarters, since credits could be added with the press of buttons.  I dabbled with all other characters I didn’t want to waste money with when I was a kid, and realized that the best player in the game was Sgt. Slaughter, who not only had good power moves, but an automatically initializing submission move in the cobra clutch, that anyone slapped into it had like a 20% chance of actually not tapping out of.

Needless to say, you’d think I would be over the moon that when a “sequel” was announced, I’d be more excited about it, especially since at first blush it’s basically the same game, just with different characters, settings and some modern polish.  But you hear the title, you see the roster, and realize that there’s obviously no legal affiliation with the WWE, and it kind of feels like something is missing, and the whole thing kind of comes off like a non-canonical fan-fiction of a production.

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New Father Brogging, #026

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Mythical wife and I were playing some games online with our friends because we’re still very much immersed in pandemic ‘Murica and this is how things are done these days in order to be safe, and as we’re in between games, the topic of conversation goes towards what television shows everyone is watching.  Talking about The Mandalorian and Utopia among other shows, and how some of us might like them, or if they’re not any good at all, etc.

But mythical wife and I haven’t really seen or finished any of them, because we don’t have time.  Story of parenthood now.

We then start talking about video games; mythical wife and I just started playing Man of Medan, and gotten maybe three hours into the game, before we realized it was midnight which might as well have been 3 am for new parents like us, but reality sunk in that we weren’t sure when the next time we’d have a chance to play more of the game, because we just don’t have time, the perpetual story of parenthood now.

Even playing Jackbox games with friends for an evening means not having the opportunity to do another thing that we may or may not have wanted to do with what limited free time we have available to us, because as the story of being new parents go, you just don’t have much of it, because the primary meat of our time is spent raising our infant child and putting her needs first and foremost above everything else.

I do not have a single iota of regret for having a child and I love my daughter more than anything else in history, but as the objective of these new dad brogs go, is to express the realities and genuine thoughts that I have going through my own personal journey as a first-time father, and the reality is that I just don’t have a lot of time, like ever, for myself anymore, and that part is something that’s always going to be a tough pill to swallow, especially in conjunction to our lives pre-children, where we’d sometimes have nothing but time to sit around and literally do nothing at times.

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The only good thing to come out of a season that shouldn’t have been

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Inevitable: Atlanta Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman wins National League Most Valuable Player

Not bad for a guy who went into the season recovering from coronavirus.  But then again, professional athletes with professional athlete money typically can afford to get the best treatment possible, on the dime of their organizations who see them as working assets to begin with.

But I’m going off track here, shocker.  Freddie Freeman has quietly been one of the better players in all of baseball, almost since the day he arrived, and it’s about time that he was recognized as the MVP all Braves fans knew he was going to receive one day.  Sure, there will be many naysayers, myself included if it had gone to anyone not on the Braves, citing shit like partial season and asterisk season and other bullshit, but because it was awarded to one of the guys I’ve been a fan of since the days of seeing him in the minor leagues as a Myrtle Beach Pelican, I cast all the snark aside and can just be happy for Freddie Freeman.

In a massively shortened, 60 game season, Freeman put up gaudy numbers, hitting 13 home runs as well as slashing .341/.462/.640, which is extremely good.  The Braves themselves went 35-25, and actually didn’t choke in the minus round or the first round of the playoffs, making it all the way to the NLCS, where they gave all Braves fans hope going up 3-1 on the Dodgers before Atlanta-ing away three straight losses and getting eliminated.  But as is often the conciliatory remark, they wouldn’t have gotten to that point in the first place, without the contributions of outstanding performances like Freddie Freeman.

What means the most to me though, is that major awards are given with no care or concern to the people themselves, just solely based on numbers and production.  Freddie Freeman is one of those baseball players that has a squeaky-clean image, is seemingly nice to everyone, and his earliest reputation was built on the fact that he was a massive hugger, who hugged all his teammates, all his coaches and all his peers.  He came out to Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe for two years on his own volition, and was one of those guys that clearly played the game of baseball like it was fun, the way it was originally meant to be for children.

There have been loads of grumpy, standoffish tryhards in history that are phenomenal baseball players, but are just kind of dicks as people, who go on to win MVPs and have tremendous individual success.  Sure, those MVPs pave the way for financial success and gain, but it’s always like the bad guys win whenever one of those types takes home an MVP award.

Such is hardly the case for Freddie Freeman winning the MVP award all Braves fans knew he was capable of winning.  It’s like a case of the nice guy actually winning, and the world needs more instances of good people getting great results.  I mean seriously, look at the reaction of this guy when he found out he was the winner; hugs all around first and foremost, and it’s just a guy surrounded by his family, soaking in the elation of baseball’s most prestigious individual award.

There’s really not much else to say about this; this was a season that I personally didn’t think should have taken place from the start, but as the Braves neared the World Series, the obvious hypocrisy of my tone changed, that is until the sore loser emerged from another shortfall from an Atlanta team.  But if there were ever such a thing as an acceptable consolation price to come out of a polarizing season, Freddie Freeman winning the NL MVP was definitely it.  I’m genuinely happy for him, and glad the blowhards in the BBWAA actually got something right for a change.

I shouldn’t be stressed out about this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is the time of year when the thought of buying gifts is swirling around in the heads of many.  I know that I should really start getting ready to purchase things for the numerous people in my life that I’d want to give gifts to, and at least I can say that I’ve already started drawing up battle plans for things I think I’d like to try and get for others.

Conversely, I’ve been asked by several to provide a list of things that I’d want as gifts.  But no matter how much I try and think about things I want or even try to put together lists of things that I want, I simply can’t, and I struggle tremendously; mostly on account of the fact that when the day is over, I’m just a person who doesn’t have much of want, for well, things.

However that doesn’t change the fact that I’m still pressured to put together a list anyway, because I’m fortunate enough to have people in my life that care about me enough to want to get me things for the holidays, which puts me in a position of where I struggle and get anxious and stressed out because I just can’t think of reasonable things that I want, that aren’t like expensive $400+ power tools or wrestling belts.

Like, I can’t really think of a more stupid reason to get stressed and anxious about, oh, people want to buy me shit, why can’t I think of anything??

And yet, here I am, sitting in front of my computer when I should be working, with like 15 tabs open to various eCommerce sites, trying to think of anything at all that I’d really want.  It’s getting to a point where I try and delve into the things that I still do on a regular basis like run, and then I get choice paralysis, because there’s like 50 gozillion options of compression gear, socks and other things, and then I get frustrated and end up with nothing at all.

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The 2020 Election Post

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Over the span of the last week, as I’m sure it’s been for large swaths of American citizens, it’s been an absolute roller coaster of events, emotions and life in general.  I think it’s safe to say that the 2020 presidential election was possibly the most high-stakes, emotional and draining election that there’s been in generations, and it’s probably taken its toll on the millions of Americans who cared about what the end results were.  It certainly has done all of that and then some to my household, and I for one am tremendously relieved that it’s over, and the end result was the one we were hoping for.

But there were still a ton of things that swirled through my mind throughout the week of the election and the long, dragged out process that transpired in order for it to reach its conclusion, and because I don’t really want to make a bunch of posts about it or politics in general, as I’ve made way more political posts over the last few years than I thought I ever would, I’m going to do my best to consolidate it to a singular post and hopefully be done with it, and try and get back to writing about anything else, but probably falling back on the topics of how chaotic my life is as a first-time father and talking about poopy diapers.

As election day came and went, I remember feeling like there was a massively important sports game where I had a tremendous amount of vested interest in – meaning I didn’t want to know what was going on as it was going on, since I always feel like solely me and my participation in watching it will entirely sway the result into precisely what I did not want to see happen.  That being said, as the afternoon rolled into the evening, polling stations closed down, votes began officially being tabulated and counted, and news outlets all turned into gigantic tickers with silhouettes of the states of the United States turning red or blue but mostly red, much to my disgust.

There were many states that it was no surprise to see go red, and the real game was in all of the states that were known battleground states, as well as the few states in which always are the ones that sway most of the elections in the past, like Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.  And because all of flyover America have fewer electoral votes, it’s always disheartening all the same to see the vast majority of the land of the United States glowing red from the onset, and it always creates that feeling of blue team always feeling like they’re playing from behind, and as sports fans, how much it sucks to always feel like you’re playing from behind.

My wife and I both went to bed feeling disgusted with the state of the country, that in spite of the tyranny endured throughout the last four years, all the bullshit, all the abrasion, all the racism, all the flagrant contrarianism, all the lies, deceit and just plain shitty leadership, the baked potato was still putting up a legitimate challenge to the presidency.  I mean, this was absolutely no surprise at all to me, and I’d warned anyone who would be willing to listen that this was going to be the case, and to expect this, but it was still disheartening to actually see it come to fruition, because in spite of my predictions, I always hoped that this would’ve been like a 2008 election where the victor was determined and announced by 10 pm.

But then the following day, America witnessed as Joe Biden’s electoral vote lead continued to grow, while the baked potato’s EV count remained static.  Maps of the US showed the states that had yet to be called showing surprising splits, and fewer more surprising than North Carolina and Georgia, two notoriously historically always-red states that were wavering.  Wisconsin and Michigan slowly tipped over into favoring Biden and were eventually declared wins for team blue.  Meanwhile, Pennsylvania was decidedly in favor of the baked potato, but the tremendous amounts of mail-in ballots that had yet to be tabulated, were speculated to probably be mostly in favor of Biden, and if and when they were all counted, a blue victory was to be expected.

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