Those @#$%ers Stopped Making Pennies

Today I had to tell my co-workers, who did not see the news on social media, that the United States has discontinued the penny.*

Look, the world has a lot of problems, and apparently it costs $0.04 to make a penny, which is why they stopped, but..  dang, man.  It feels like we should have been consulted.

The penny is a huge part of culture here in the United States.  Now what the @#$% am I supposed to pick up and all the day have good luck?  Riddle me THAT, US Mint.  

What will the name now mean when we meet a Penny?  We might as well call women "Doubloon".   

What giant coin will Batman have in the Batcave?  A NICKEL?  Like a common nickel hoarder?   

Are we supposed to read the Dime Saver?  Offer a quarter for your thoughts?  At gas station cash registers, are we to give a Sacagawea dollar, take a Sacagawea dollar?   

This is bullshit.  I would have been happier had they said "no more dimes and nickels.  A penny is now a dime.  Everyone round up."  

*Thanks, Nathan!

One Week and Counting Since I Posted the Only Review of the Lacey Chabert Ornament

This year Hallmark is offering an actual Lacey Chabert Porcelain Ornament.

Maybe the ornament is a little weird, but so is Hallmark.  And as long as they make ornaments for pretty much any other media franchise under the sun, it makes sense that eventually they'd want to float a trial balloon of what they have to offer from their own networks.  And what Hallmark has leaned into of late is "Hallmark Stars" - of which Chabert is a bit singular.

And so it seems, rather than go all in on, say, the entire cast of Three Wisest Men, they've decided to go with one of their biggest stars who has more than a decade with the channel.  

So why the review?  

Foot Follow Up

I've already posted this elsewhere, but for the next few weeks it will be the biggest thing happening in my life.  

So, here's the post on how we got here.  And the picture above is what they showed me shortly after I came out of sedation at the Texas Orthopedic Surgery Center.  

This is kind of what happens when you enthusiastically agree with your doctor that the ideal outcome of surgery is that you never, ever want for your foot to break again.  You wake up with a titanium screw put into your foot that will mean your pinky toe shall ne'er bend again.  

In my head, this was going to be an inch-long screw.  For scale, I wear a 14 wide.  Apparently, and in no way does this surprise me, they learned my bones are very dense and so my surgery took longer than expected.

Surgery was Thursday November 6th, and it's now Sunday, November 9th.  

Does it hurt?  Not like you'd think.  If I have it up, there's a low ache between a 2 and 4.  Nothing I can't sleep through, and I can say that here on day four, it hurts less, and I'm only taking a real pain killer before I go to sleep.  Aside from that, I'm sticking to HEB brand acetaminophen.  I find if I take real pain killers I just fall asleep or can't remember proper nouns.  

If I move around or put my foot at an angle where the surgery site has weight on it, yeah, I can feel it, but I'm not weeping.  I've got crutches, so I can sort of lurch around.  I've been upstairs for a shower and will do so again today.  Back to work Monday/ tomorrow

Anyway, they say I should be back to normal (whatever that is) within 6 weeks.  So that literally puts me at the week of Christmas for walking around just fine.  Which would be nice.  But it does mean I am unsure what holiday decorating will look like this year, and shopping is going to be all-Amazon-all-the-time.  No holiday strolls for me.  

Anyway, yeah, it's going to be a nice, long slog to get through the holidays wherein I am sure people will be losing their shit with me for not keeping up.

Dodgers Win World Series in 10 innings in Game 7

After the Cubs lost out to the Brewers in the NLDS, I wasn't sure if I'd stick with MLB through the post-season (but I always do these days).  

As a Cubs guy, I mostly follow National League, but was vaguely aware the Blue Jays, over in the American League, were having a great season.  I was also aware the Dodgers had loaded themselves up with talent valued the highest in the MLB and some of the best players plucked from Japan on their roster.  

You can choose to be jealous of other teams having Shohei Ohtani or enjoy watching one of the best to ever do it get to do his thing.  And that's true now of Yoshinobu Yamamoto on the mound as well.  But the team came in at a highly respectable .574 entering the playoffs in a competitive NL West.  

I busted my foot

my fracture is further toward the toe, my skin is not invisible and I have fewer radiating concentric rings

So, a while back I was walking Emmylou and noticed my foot was hurting.  But, look, I am aware I have some mild arthritis - which I've had for a decade at least, so sometimes things just start hurting for a while.  If I adjust this or that, it gets better.  But if I do something really repetitive, like push-ups, my wrist will start yelling at me.  

Anyway, I assumed this was that, and I would just get some new shoes and Dr. Scholl's inserts and all would be well.  Well, not so much.  

I woke up one morning and my foot was just hollering at me, which is not a great sign as I am a fellow who prefers to sleep horizontally and had barely used my feet all night.  

Immediately, I got online and got an appointment with my Primary Care doctor, and that appointment was a week out.  After a ten minute visit, I got an appointment for an x-ray so she could get a look and direct me to an orthopedic doctor.  That x-ray was *supposed* to be two weeks out, but I fixed it and it but a mere week out.  

30 Years With Jamie

 

Jamie's 30th Birthday in San Diego

I met Jamie in fall of 1993 during a party off-campus at Trinity University in San Antonio.  We didn't start dating for about two years after that.  

When we met, both Jamie and I were college freshmen, me at University of Texas, and Jamie at Trinity.  My friends Denise and Madi, chums from high school and fellow Longhorns, drove us down for the evening as it was a Saturday in the dorms and we had no plans.  I called my brother in San Antonio and he knew of a party and knew Denise and Madi.  

No sooner had we arrived than I had enjoyed my first Goldschlager and Jagermeister.  Out of the crowd, other high school pal Erica appeared and introduced me to her suite-mate, Jamie, and my memory is that Jamie stepped in front of me and I got hit by that thunderbolt you read about but think is nonsense, something I'd say was a ridiculous bit of fiction had it not been my exact experience.  

It is very odd to have a moment that is going to change the entire trajectory of your life occur, but this was that.  

Immediately, I became acutely aware of my state, and that whatever tools I had for navigating speaking to this girl were nowhere to be found.  I was going to have to just bumble my way through.

Cubs 2025 Season Ends

Well, dang.

The Chicago Cubs made it to the 2025 National League Division Series versus the Milwaukee Brewers - something that hadn't really occurred before.  We lost two games, then won two games, but lost the fifth game in Milwaukee.  

But I'm calling it a great season.  

We started with the Tokyo Series, and then played lights out through the All-Star Game.  The back half of the season was more uneven, but we pulled out of a nose dive to make the play-offs.

Our Wild Card round was against San Diego, and I wasn't sure how we'd do, but the answer was "just fine".   I guess we had never played the Brewers before in the NLDS, so that's neat.  And we did pretty good against a team who had a lot more rest than the Cubs did coming in.

The team this year was so much fun to watch, which, really, is all you can ask for.  Pete Crow-Armstrong (PCA to fans), and my guy Seiya Suzuki, were in a weird pairing as the two outfielders wound up with dozens of home runs each, often keeping up with one another in the homerun count.  Pete would get one, then Seiya would get one the same game or the next.  Crow-Armstrong wound up with 31, and Suzuki ended up with 32 - not exactly Roger Maris, but pretty good!  

Dansby Swanson was phenomenal as Short Stop, and we got lucky with Michael Busch at first base.  Work horses Nico Hoerner and Ian Happ produced consistently all season on offense and defense.  Kyle Tucker was solid as both a fielder and at bat.  Carson Kelly delivered as both catcher and at bat, too.  And having Justin Turner in the dugout and playing sometimes was really cool.

Pitching could be spotty.  We lost Steele immediately.  Imanaga suffered an injury that he didn't fully recover from.  And the rest of the rotation was up and down and unpredictable.  But, hey, they got us where they got us.

Anyway, great season, Cubs!  Would have been fun to have made the NLCS, but I'll take a 3-2 game NLDS series against a team as good as the Brewers are this year.