January
Michelle and I do a date night to start the year off. Kentucky Shakespeare does Twelfth Night at the Kentucky Center for the Arts, because outdoor plays are really unfun in January.
I help celebrate Old Rasputin Day at the NABC. By getting schmammered on high alcohol beer that tastes delicious (It was scheduled for January 22nd, was delayed due to snow. I will be on the lookout for it to happen again this year)
A pic I take from the terrace at work is used in an ad, and it wins an award (!?)
You don’t understand anything until you learn it more than one way
— Marvin Minsky
February
Boring people have opinions about Beyonce at The Super Bowl
Harper Lee and Umberto Eco die on the same day. I’m not going to talk a lot about deaths of famous people in this, I just thought that was interesting. That two of the 20th centuries beloved literary figures die on the same damned day.
I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.
— Harper Lee
March
I took a month off of Facebook (it didn’t help enough)
I can’t remember why, but we spend a night in West Baden hotel, and before hand visit with some elephants who are staying at a ranch in Indiana. Just google it up next spring.
Read Parable of the Talents and Parable of the Sower, a couple of dystopian science fiction novels in which an evil, small minded man is elected president running on the slogan of “Make America Great Again”. Published in 1993.
Where I work we’ve been giving away amazon gift cards and custom bobbleheads of my boss as rewards for a few years. I solicited everyone who’d ever gotten one to bring their bobble head in and set up the creepiest photo shoot in company history.
April
Michelle presents a paper she’s worked on in Indianapolis. She wants a ride up there, so I take the opportunity to visit the Kurt Vonnegut museum and also get to witness a protest against Governor Mike Pence’s particular brand of misogyny.
Everett’s mother passes away. She was a strong woman who endured burying her husband and 6 of her 8 children (3 died in childbirth)
Michelle makes me attend a live show based on a podcast again, and I ended up subscribing her to a Haunted Mansion gift box thing through Disney. She has passed me in nerdity.
In one of my favorite traditions we’ve developed, Michelle and I run away the weekend of Thunder over Louisville. This year we ended up in Bloomington, had a nice lunch and strolled through IU’s campus and saw some museumy stuffs.
Life is just a party, and parties weren’t meant to last.
— Prince
May
Fathom Events is this service that rents movie theatres across the country to do weird events. Like big anniversaries of famous movies, or broadcasts of concerts and plays. Lawrence of Arabia, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, that LCD Soundsystem concert film, all brought to the theatre 2 miles from my house by Fathom. I recommend adding it to your “what can we do this week” checklist.
The Frazier Museum has a Thomas Merton exhibit, and Michelle and I finally join.
An injured family member causes us to cancel a big family vacation on Memorial Day weekend. So Michelle and I tourist around town instead. I get her her first Hot Brown.
A niece and nephew both graduate high school. Reminding me I’m old from both sides of the family.
June
An overnight trip to Nashville for a friend’s wedding is a tiny little precursor to our eventual real road trip. The wedding is held on the grounds of a winery owned by someone big in country music and is a small, lovely affair.
My friend, Lila Cundiff, puts up her own Little Free Library. Kids today do some really great things, y’all. Even the menaces have their good sides.
Muhammad Ali’s funeral shows Louisville to the world, and the memorial speeches were so very beautiful. [My favorite]
A man who views the world the same at 50 as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.
— Muhammad Ali
July
Pokémon Go comes out, and the internet explodes with really strong opinions. Whodathunk?
Kentucky Shakespeare is once again performing their free plays in Louisville’s Central Park. This year we see The Two Gentlemen of Verona, A Winter’s Tale and Romeo & Juliet. Culture is important, y’all.
Hamilton Chicago casting announcement, “Miguel Cervantes” is playing Hamilton. It seems like a sign directed right at the guy that likes to go by “Quixotic” on the internet.
August
My great grandmother, Moms, died. She was 97 years old, and was active and fun up until the last couple of months, after a fall and subsequent complications. When visiting her earlier in the year I snuck a photo of her talking to my father (her eldest grandchild) that has become my favorite family pic.
For my mother’s birthday, I give her a scarf from Litographs.com, printed with the text of letters and stories Everett had written her. Good gift. Even though she didn’t cry.
I read a book called Paper, then one called The Book, then one called Bookshelf and then one called Library. Afterwards, I change my middle name to “Thematic Consistency.”
Discovered https:twitter.com/dog_rates, it’s one of the best things on the net these days, kids. They’re good posts, Brent.
If I can make my wife laugh, I know I’m on the right track.
— Gene Wilder
September
Another wedding, another good time. This time doesn’t require travel though, it happens to be held in the same building my reception was held in, but on the top floor in some much cooler space. Doug from 8 years ago is jealous.
Sitting on the back porch with my dog and a neighborhood hawk tries to catch a squirrel and plows into our fence. It flops around for a bit, eventually righting itself and taking off. Einstein and I look at each other and decide we’re too old for this shit, and go back inside.
October
The first week of the month a potentially devastating hurricane plows into the Atlantic coast. Luckily for us, and our upcoming vacation, it mostly stays off shore at Tybee Island and Charleston.
Since the Southeast seaboard was mostly spared, we rent a Lincoln Navigator, and drive from Louisville to Nashville to Birmingham to Savannah to Charleston to Asheville to Home. We stay in a Holiday Inn Express, a Bed & Breakfast built in the 20s, a gigantic mansion built in the 1870s and a boutique hotel that just opened after gutting a historic old house. The last day we drive up the Blue Ridge Parkway for a few hours and marvel at vistas and the engineering it takes to put a motorway through and along a mountain range. 1800 miles in 6 days, 4 hotels and a bunch of meals later, we have definitely made our anniversary the highlight of the year.
On our way home from another date night that included Kentucky Shakespeare (Titus Andronicus, in a tiny little theatre in Portland, for Halloween), we get t-boned by an uninsured driver. This is my first car accident that happened at more than 10 miles an hour. It’s quite frightening and we both end up with bruises where the seat belts did their jobs. My car ends up totaled and in gratitude for how well it handled our safety in a moment of terror, I just buy a new model of the same exact vehicle. (Well, the new one is a little sportier)
A friend, and our very first dog sitter, Kevin Richards passes away. He is honored by a private event at his favorite pub, with a keg of his favorite beer. His picture hangs on the wall in the best tribute I can imagine.
November
Not even a plurality of Americans ruin the holidays.
Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
— Leonard Cohen
December
Built a logo Wall-E with a 9 year old. It’s pretty darned awesome, and I’m really really glad to have done it. I wasn’t bitten by the lego bug, but I have a whole new appreciation of it.
Louisville finally finishes it’s two new Ohio River bridges. These things had been talked about since before I could drive. Now we will have tolls. And people will complain, but at least we’ll have a couple more ways for traffic to flow. Cars are the the devil.
My grandfather, Bob/Papa/Pops died. He’s the relative that bought computers first, he’s the one who let me type in programs from the back of magazines. He’s the one that let me break some stuff, and put it back together. He was my mom’s step-father, but he was my grandfather. He had been increasingly trapped by his body for the last decade or so. After spending the previous 25 years moderately trapped by strokes that robbed him of movement, but not mentality. His funeral was the first bad funeral I’ve ever been to, hateful people rightly angry about things in the past and not caring that it was the wrong time to exorcise those demons. The event made me realize just how lucky my particular dice roll on family has been.
To me, there is no greater calling … If I can inspire young people to dedicate themselves to the good of mankind, I’ve accomplished something.
— John Glenn
Recommendations
- Charleston Grill (Charleston, SC)
- The Rice Bowl (New Albany)
- Drinking to forget. (just kidding, Ma.)
- Shoving some of your favorite photos through Prisma
- We Rate Dogs
Old Years’ Writeups
One of the definitions of sanity is the ability to tell real from unreal. Soon we’ll need a new definition
— Alvin Toffler
