To add insult to injury

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The fucking handyman broke my glasses.  Not directly, but as a result of dealing with him, my glasses ended up breaking, and I definitely blame him.  These things cost me $300 back in 2015, and will probably cost me a good bit to replace, even with my insurance credit.

After he royally fucked my yard, and gave his word that he would take care of the repairs, he ended up hanging out at my house until nearly 9 pm, hosing down the scissor lift that was caked in mud, and very likely going to cost me an extra $200 in cleaning charges, plus if there’s anything wrong with it because it was drug around off-road, that’s on me too.  Periodically, I went outside to check on him, and towards the end of his night, we were discussing the next steps in this negative project, and how to get us back to even ground.

But because I’m a responsible fucking person, I’m wearing a mask; but because I’m wearing a mask, and it’s humid-as-balls Georgia, my glasses are fogging up, so I take them off and set them on top of mythical wife’s car.

Long story short, I forgot to take them back inside, and the next morning, I’m doing my thing around the house, and then I get the idea to take my daughter out on a stroller walk, since the weather isn’t too turrible yet.  I’m looking for my glasses, and I can’t find them anywhere, but eventually I just say fuck it, because I don’t need my glasses to go on a walk.  I load my baby into the stroller, and we head outside, and I’m just off the driveway, when I see something on the ground.

Hm, that looks like a lens from my glasses.  I pick it up, and I hold it up to one of my eyes, and it’s at that very second it all comes crashing back to me, where I had left my glasses last.  I quickly start looking around, and then I see one of the arms, and then the mangled frames, and then I see the other lens, somehow bent.

A true FML moment, right then and there, because everything was then as clear as if I were wearing my glasses.

Obviously, it is nobody’s fault but my own, but after the service raping of my yard and fence, I was pretty out of mind for the rest of the day, and clearly it impacted my ability to remember simple shit, like retrieving my glasses, so when the day is truly over, it really is the fault of the fucking handyman.

$450 down the drain, and now a likely $300 more to get a new pair of glasses, because this is one of those rare instances where my Asian-ness kicks in, and I liked having a pair of expensive designer frames.  Fuck this guy

This is a story about pure, unadulterated failure

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As I alluded to in my last daddy brog, I was to have some work done to my house, specifically, fixing up the wood around two very high up windows, so that they would no longer allow moisture into my home.  The day in which that work was to happen has come and gone, and hoo boy, do I have a story to tell, about just how much failure can possibly be packed into a single day of one individual person, being me.

For starters, when it was evident that moisture was getting into my home, I was pretty quickly able to deduce that it was coming from an upstairs window, based on where the water was seeping into parts of my home.  Honestly, this was something that was flagged during my home inspection back before I even came into the home, but it wasn’t listed as something that was critical, but something to look out for in the future.  And the future had arrived, and the seal clearly had worn down to where water was getting into my house when the rain came sideways.

So, thinking it was something fairly minor and maybe a few silicone caulk re-sealing wouldn’t fix, I opted to get a handyman, whom might have a 26-32’ ladder, since my 22’ extension ladder wasn’t tall enough for me to go up there and inspect it myself.  It took a day or two for the guy to show up, as he had cited a child emergency on the first day, and being the new dad I am myself, I was extremely understanding and empathetic to the needs of children first.

When he did show up, we joked about how we both hoped this would be a quick job where he could hop up onto the ladder, slather down some caulk, and be on his merry way, bam, easy $100, but it turns out that it wouldn’t be that simple because nothing in the world is ever that simple.  It turned out that the frame around the window was mostly rotten, and even the ladder coming into contact with a piece of it caused it to immediately disintegrate like Castlevania blocks.

Now this, is the point where I feel like I could have changed history.  Like if I were Cable from X-Force, I could body slide to this point in time and smack myself upside the head and tell me to NOT ask the guy,

Can you fix it?

Because of fucking course he said he could, what handyman is ever going to say no and deny themselves the possibility of getting a job?  And then he quoted be some number that I didn’t find egregious, and frankly I just wanted this shit fixed up as soon as humanly possible, and didn’t want to go through too much bullshit trying to track down a window person to come and re-examine and re-quote song and dance.

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New Father Brogging, #018

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been a little bit in the pits lately, and it’s one of those situations where I think about the things that are making me feel down, and they bring me down more, and starts this cycle of negative thinking that only gets gradually worse and worse if I don’t talk about it and admit that I’m feeling a little depressed.

Firstly, by no means necessary is any of my recent funk on account of my precious baby child doing anything wrong; if anything at all, she’s the one steady and greatest and brightest thing in my life, as should not really be of a surprise, and frankly, my only woes in regards to my child is that I feel guilty that I’m not enjoying my paternity time as much as I probably should.

Sure, I’d love to be able to take her out of the house and go and see things, but in in the coronavirus-addled world we live in, such isn’t necessarily a good idea, not to mention the feed and nap routine we’re trying to constantly reinforce doesn’t exactly make it convenient to leave the house and expect to enjoy ourselves and be back at the bassinet approximately two hours later.  But there are admittedly times in which I feel like I’m failing as a father, by not always having an idea or things to do with my child, and I’m always worried that I’m boring her or not stimulating her enough to where that budding developing brain is actually growing.

I don’t handle with particular stresses very well, and in the case of my house, which has had some recent issues due to the bipolar Georgia weather, I’m frustrated and aggravated at how long and how much it’s going to cost to get things fixed, and if I stop and think about all the moving parts in play, it tends to get me all anxious with annoyance, which doesn’t help.

To boil it down, my skylight issue was an easy solve, since that was basically a $430 caulk job that has prevented further moisture from getting in, but the window issue I’m having, is going to be substantially more, and I’m in this situation where I’m wondering if I had hired an actual window company from the onset instead of assuming it was just a simple caulk job here too, and hiring a handyman, would’ve saved me a tremendous amount of time, money and aggravation, instead of the route that I’m on right now.  But because I’ve already committed, I’m doing myself a favor and not finding out, because if it turns out to be a substantial savings on all accounts, I’m just going to end up way more perturbed than I already am.

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Now that’s how to protest

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seems unprecedented: in the midst of the NBA playoffs, the Milwaukee Bucks boycott their game 5 matchup against the Orlando Magic, in protest of the shooting of an unarmed black man by the police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, prompting the NBA to cancel all games for the day

To my friends, I first made the obvious, low-hanging fruit joke about how the Bucks did the Magic a favor and kept them alive for one more day, seeing as how they were up 3-1 in the best of seven and were probably going to close out the series tonight, but the reality is, I’m actually pretty cool with what the Bucks did.

Far too often, we see celebrities and professional athletes talk a big game about the reach they have and they say a lot of meaningful things on Twitter about how change is needed, black lives mattering, and all sorts of political statements.  But after they hit send, they put their phones down, and then go back to making movies, music, or putting on jerseys and playing sports, for millions and millions of dollars that they make for themselves, and billions and billions of dollars for the people they work for.  And when the day is over, nothing happens, and this perpetual cycle of humanity failing continues on until the next tragic events causes everything to start all over again.

As long as life goes on, there’s little reason for anyone to stop what they’re doing and try and make any changes, of any size or magnitude.  But when the machine is abruptly killed when it is expecting to be churning at its maximum capacity, people will undoubtedly have to stop and look and wonder what the fuck is going on; and that’s precisely what the Milwaukee Bucks did, when they actually did boycott a pivotal and meaningful nationally televised basketball game.  Make no mistake, the rest of the NBA’s games of the day were cancelled in response and attempt to show solidarity, but this doesn’t happen if one team doesn’t make the first move, and that’s undoubtedly the Bucks.

I also love that it was the Bucks that did it, and it’s obvious why the team from Wisconsin did it, but I just think back to when the Bucks were the bottom dwellers of the NBA and that’s all I can ever think of the Milwaukee Bucks, despite the fact that nowadays, they’ve got a ten-foot tall all-star and are basically the best team in the entire league.

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Nike’s Seinfeld Shoes

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Lately, I’ve struggled a little bit trying to get back in to the groove of regular writing.  Between the balancing act of trying do things whenever my child is napping, and the fact that I haven’t really found a good rhythm or inspiration to write about things, I’ve often times found myself sitting at my laptop with nothing much going on, other than scrolling through news sites and feeds to look for something to inspire me before ultimately killing time on YouTube watching chiropractor popping clips or scenes from Marvel movies.

But then I saw an ad, of all things, for Nike’s Alphafly shoes.  Supposedly, they’re causing somewhat of a stir in the running community, and I guess there are some tryhard enthusiasts out there who think they’re illegal or performance enhancing or something along those lines, but I can’t really care enough to delve deeper because I can’t really get over the fact of how fucking hideous they look.  With their gigantic, bulbous and protruding soles, all I can think of is that they’re basically the modern-day equivalent of the jump shoes from that one episode of Seinfeld.

Seriously, my mouth curled into a wtf face after I saw these things.  I gave a cursory google search to see what they were even capable of, but there’s so much noise and chatter about the legality of these things in organized marathons, that I can’t actually find any credible information on what the whole point of these shoes actually are, nor do I feel like expending the effort to dig any deeper.

Regardless, they’re basically Seinfeld shoes, visually.  And much like Kramer was pegged as looking like a special needs person when going out in public in them, I imagine anyone wearing these that isn’t actively in a competitive run would probably look similarly having these thick-ass shoes on while wearing jeans or ordinary pants.  But given the fact that they’re like 3” off the ground, I imagine a lot of height-conscious people might do it anyways, to make themselves look taller.  That’s the tradeoff however, for wanting to look taller than less mentally capable, I suppose.

Why are homes made out of wood?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seriously, honest question.  Why are homes made out of wood?  A flimsy, degradable material that is so susceptible to the elements, that has pretty definitive expiration conditions.  Especially when there’s a world of materials out there that aren’t nearly as vulnerable?

Naturally, with a query like that, it stands to believe that I’ve gone through some sort of negative experience, to which is affirmative.  We’ve had some gnarly rain, and at one point, hail, and then suddenly, there are two places in my house that started leaking.  A skylight in the sunroom breached at first, leading me to put down some buckets to catch water, and what started as one corner that was leaking eventually turned into three corners, leading to my disgust and aggravation. 

Naturally, at the time in which all this occurred, there’s little sense in trying to call anyone since it’s not really an emergency, so I went on with my day, just very annoyed.

And then I heard the dripping; at first, I thought I left my kitchen faucet slightly on, but it turned out that the light fixture above my sink was dripping water.  Worse off, there was a bunch of dripping along the window frame in front of the sink, and thinking quickly, I put a bunch of little Tupperware containers to catch the water, since they fit on the sill, but it was unmistakable, that there was a second breach in my house.

Long story short, I tracked it down to some angled windows in my master bathroom on the second floor, where moisture was seeping in through either aged seals or rotting wood, and trickling down behind the walls and into my kitchen.  Also seeping through some cracks in the tile in the master bathroom itself too.  But it was clear to where it was coming from.

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Now that I’m caught up, I don’t know what to do with myself

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For the better part of the last three months, whenever I had a free moment after work or when I wasn’t tending to the baby, I was basically working on getting the brog back up online.  At first, it was manually backing up the old posts, then it was sorting and organizing all of the unposted posts, and then came the arduous task of manually re-posting every post in chronological order.

As I’ve mentioned before, this whole task took approximately 82 days, and a few more to fine tune and tweak things and get ready for the day in which I would let people know and officially open as if I were some grandiose important entity.

But now that I’ve accomplished the task of getting the brog back up, I really don’t know what to do with myself in my free time now.  Since I’m still on paternity leave, my only real tasks are tending to my daughter, but when I put her down for naps, and she goes to sleep for the night, suddenly I have anywhere from 2-5 hours in the day in which is me-time that I don’t really know how to fill anymore.

Sure, I’m still going to be dedicating time to writing and looking for things to write about, but since there’s no massive backlog and queue behind it anymore, I’m back to the days where posts are mostly going to be one at a time, save for those times where I write a bunch of things and put them in the can for a rainy day.  But otherwise, I’m not going to be spending all my time on my site anymore, and I’ve been perplexed on what to do next now that I’ve accomplished the one big thing for myself that I had set out to do.

There’s always a gargantuan backlog of shit I want to watch on television, which would be nice, but I’m a person who really needs to immerse myself into media to really take it in.  Basically meaning, if there’s any risk of possibly getting interrupted, I probably won’t bother starting it, and what with the fact that my daughter sleeps anywhere from 35-60 minutes, there’s no sense in starting any shows which episodes are in the 45-55 minute range, because inevitably I will have to cut it short to get my child, and then I’ll be annoyed (not at the kid) at having to stop early.

So that effectively knocks out hour-long shows and movies, and limits me to 22-30 minute shows, which are fewer and further between save for signing up for a Quibi account and I don’t want to add monthly subscriptions these days anyway.

I can’t really hit the treadmill, because my usual sessions are 32 minutes, but that’s not including the need to change, shower and cool down, and if my daughter wakes up at the short end of a nap, then I’ll be a sweaty monster that has to dirty up my child which I’m not going to voluntarily do, so that nixes that idea.

So far, I’ve just been dicking around on the internet and watching YouTube clips and seeking out wrestling belts to throw my money away further into.  Otherwise, it’s not lost on me that this is the epitomal first-world problem to be having and when the day is over, I do feel a sense of accomplishment that I’ve got the brog back up and it makes me happy, and that I’d rather be in this position rather than the former times in which I’d wish to have my brog back up, and it weren’t, and my thoughts and words would stay confined to my own digital storage.