Hello! I’m Still Here… I Swear…

As has become rather customary on my blog, I’ve been very silent… at least until I uploaded that blog on horseradish a few days ago. You’d think, what with all this extra time on my hands, that I’d be blogging up a storm. And it’s not like there’s no shortage of topics to talk about. There’s COVID-19. There’s the fact that cops haven’t stopped murdering black people in cold blood in our streets (FTR… justice for George Floyd. Black Lives Matter. Fuck the police. ACAB). More trans men and woman are dying this year. Trump is still president, and an absurdly high number of Leftists still think he’s better than a Democrat, despite four years of evidence that he’s the worst thing to happen to this country since at least Bush Jr, and is absolutely the worst president of my (now 33-year) lifetime.

I genuinely didn’t think things could get worse than 2016. Holy shit was I wrong.

So. Fucking. Wrong.

And yet, despite all this, I stay silent. I’m not here talking about the pandemic, or the protests, or Trump.

Why is that?

Because I just don’t want to.

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Quick Blog and Personal Update (That Ableism Post I Promised)

I can’t remember exactly how long ago it was, only that it feels like it was in 2016, when I promised a blog post about ableism and words like “stupid”. Of course, that never materialized, but I kept posting here about how it would be “soon”.

In one blog post I put up a tiny bit more recently (back in August of 2017), I talked about how I actually had a private deadline. No one will believe it, but that deadline is actually approaching. It’s Monday.

Yeah, I did honestly give myself that long.

Why?

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A New Blog?!? What the Heck is Nathan Doing?!?!?

Relax, relax. It’s nothing too big.

Yes, I created a new blog. No, it’s not a replacement for this one. I know I’ve been inactive here, and there are a lot of reasons for that. But as I’ve already said… I’m not leaving. I’m working out stuff in my personal life. But I will get back to making this blog active again… I promise… (would help if publicize would start working, again… but anyways…)

So. My new little WordPress blog…

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In Memory of Grandpa

Grandpa Sal as a Young Man in ROTC

Grandpa Sal as a Young Man in ROTC

On the morning of Friday, December 1st, I had dropped my parents off at the airport. They were heading to Atlanta for a conference. Later in the day, I drove over to work to get my schedule for the coming week. While I was heading there, Dad had rented yellow Mustang convertible for their week, and had texted me a picture of it. So I got to work, got my schedule, and hung out for a bit.

Then I got a phone call from my mom, who was crying. At first, she could barely talk, and two horrible thoughts went through my head. First, I thought she and Dad had gotten into a bad accident. Then I thought my brother, and best friend, Aaron, had gotten into an accident.

What she finally told me did not make me feel better.

At all.

Her dad, my grandpa, in Connecticut, had had a heart attack. He was in the hospital on life support.

Not long after, Dad called me. Grandma was taking him off life support, so he wouldn’t suffer.

I picked up my parents and my brother at the airport the next morning, and we went straight to Connecticut.

That side of my family is Catholic. The wake was Wednesday. The funeral was Thursday. And we came back home on Thursday night.

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Cassini’s Grand Finale (Why I Missed Wednesday’s APotW)

Hello! You’ll noticed that I skipped Astronomy Pictures of the Week on Wednesday. That… was on purpose.

Today was Cassini’s last day alive. This morning, Cassini plunged into Saturn, sending back some amazing data, but, in the process, ending its life.

Cassini was launched on October 15th, 1997. For two decades, Cassini revealed the wonders of the greatest planet and planetary system in our solar system to us. We learned so much.

But, now, it’s over…

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Great Guitar Solos – Jimmy Page Plays White Summer/Black Mountain Side Live on the Julie Felix Show (April 26, 1970)

Late! I’m so sorry…

Jimmy Page is here on the Julie Felix show, playing White Summer/Black Mountain Side on acoustic guitar. It’s probably my favorite version of the instrumental.

Sadly, the video quality is… poor… but then this is recovered raw footage. It aired on April 26, 1970.

If you listen closely, from 2:57 to 3:21, it sounds like he’s riffing on “Friends” just a tiny bit (different key and arrangement, obviously, but still).

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Quick Life Update

I apologize for the massively decreased posting here. I’m not leaving. A lot of things are in the way right now. So there’s a few reasons for my seeming silence here…

The first is the fact that the publicize feature is broken. In the past, when I published a post, it automatically got sent out to Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, and even LinkedIn. Now I have to do all that manually. I don’t have a problem with this for APotW and GGS, but for more in-depth posts I want people to dig into, the extra step of manually putting these out on my social networks is kinda annoying.

The second is that things in my life have taken an… interesting… turn. I work at Teavana, and Starbucks has announced that it will be closing all Teavana’s by Spring 2018. Unless I’m working at Starbucks by that time (they will have to hire me as whatever their equivalent of a team lead is, or as an assistant manager, and at a higher hourly wage than what I’m making now, which is $10), I’ll post my thoughts on all of this, on Teavana, and stuff like that. I’d call it a “tell all”, but it’s just going to be my opinion, others will disagree, and, well…

Teavana is, perhaps, not the most popular place in the tea community, and there are good reasons for that. But there’s a lot of good at Teavana, as well, not the least of which is that it has actually served as a reliable stepping stone for people interested in giving up soda and coffee and the like and want to move beyond the bagged stuff… so it won’t all be bad.

As for the third thing…

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I’m Heading Back to New York

My flight back to New York is scheduled  for 3:30pm. Assuming it isn’t delayed, I’m probably boarding now. And that’s it…

The end of my awesome vacation with my brother in Georgia.

Back to…

New York, Teavana, parents… life…

I think maybe I should move back to Georgia…