Well, this morning my 7-day course of ciprofloxacin ended without one single hurling episode (thank you, Zofran), and I am happy this experience is now behind me. I will be spending the next however-long-it-takes recolonizing the mausoleum of my digestive system with friendly bacteria: antibiotics are amazing triumphs of science to be used in extreme moderation, and I have not used a broad-spectrum antibiotic since I was in college. Yesterday, feeling a bit nauseous, I decided to chance the gym (I chose the machine with a garbage can within barfing distance); I ate solid food for the first time in 10 days and even had a few cocktails. Today I survived my full hour on the stair mill. It feels good to be healthy again, friends. That was a close one.
Given I no longer feel as though my days are numbered, I am ecstatic that I am wrapping my life up and transporting myself and my dog (I hope) to Denver in a few short months. It’s only Tuesday and it’s already been a hellacious week; I’ve already been added to my new team’s channels, boards, calendars and meetings, and I still have a few days left with my former team, which is not really how this was supposed to go, but it is what it is, and I appreciate their eagerness to have me on board.
The next two weeks are filled with travel, and when I get back I expect to start figuring out my timeline for getting my stuff moved out of here. I am grateful for the months I have to find a place to live, though I will probably have to head to Denver for a few days after Thanksgiving regardless. I am anxious about this piece, but I am sure it will work out. 
My dog’s bully breed is a major struggle, as it always has been, which is tragic and ridiculous, and it will cost me thousands of dollars on top of my own costs to situate her. I’m torn, to be honest, on taking her with me, as she has a family she knows well that would happily adopt her here, and she’d have far more frequent company with a family than she’ll have with me working from the office half the week. It is extremely taboo to say things like this, I realized months ago, as people anthropomorphize their pets and think they’re crying themselves to sleep at night when they’re apart, which is not typically the case, and certainly not the case for mine. That said, I’ve had this dog for 6 of her 8 years of life, and she’s bonded to me, so she will probably be coming with me at my expense anyway. I can’t imagine parting with an animal that was my sole companion through the pandemic, and if you can be proud of a dog for what it has become character-wise in the time you’ve owned it, I am proud of her. This dog would not even let people near her when I took her in; she loves everyone now, and everyone loves her.
Regardless of how that transpires, I am fairly sure Fuji will be my last pit bull; my years of trying to do the right thing and taking in behaviorally fucked-up adult shelter dogs to turn their attitudes around and make them normal are probably over and I am tired of the price I’ve had to pay over the years for reforming the lives of these animals. A few months ago I came across a breed that will probably end up being perfect for me in the long run, and asked my sister to find me a breeder in the next 3-5 years so I can get on a wait list: the dogs look like huge muppets but are extremely protective and powerful, and excellent for security training.
Alas, we’ll see how it goes. There’s a lot to do.
Rewinding a bit, my vacation was fantastic. I spent a week in Myrtle Beach with my parents, and a week in Mexico at an all-inclusive resort. 
My family has been traveling to Myrtle Beach since I was born, though I have only very vague memories of the place. A bunch of years ago my parents purchased a condo in the building we always used to stay in, which was a huge deal for them, and it has pretty much become their Shangri-La. I was skeptical at first, as MB is known as the “Redneck Riviera,” but the area has changed unbelievably since we were kids, and is now one of the fastest growing metro areas in the country. My parents’ building is well operated and maintained, and the ocean is so loud you can hear it inside, which I love.
My relationship with my parents has improved markedly over time, due to various factors, and I actually enjoy spending time with them, which was almost never the case until 2-3 years ago. I also just love their condo, I was over the moon at the prospect of swimming in the ocean every day, and I had an amazing time. (Yes, I blurred out my dad’s nipples. Ya welcome.)
My experience at my first all-inclusive resort in Mexico was also surprisingly good. 
Some things could have been better, especially the food, but given their typical audience I think the quality was acceptable, and they had a buffet, which was great. Despite not even being a pool person, the first three days there, we barely made it past the quiet, lazy river-ish pool outside our building. The beach was beautiful; the ocean was warm and amazing and there were huge fish swimming with us. I could’ve stayed for longer… a lot longer. 
I had intended to spend a day or two off-property, so one day we went to Rio Secreto, which was mind-blowingly cool. The second day we went out to Chichen Itza, we swam in a beautiful cenote, which we inexplicably had entirely to ourselves. Dug up some cochinita pibil on the long drive back. I would go back to this resort in a hot second, though the 60% sale I booked with would have to be available… there is no way I’d pay full price for what we got. We got a killer deal at $370 or so a night… I wouldn’t pay $500. All in all total kick ass experience, no regrets.
Quick rundown of what I’ve read this month, no summaries, just links to Amazon. Most of this stuff was good, nothing was great except for Cultish, which I really enjoyed. Woke, Inc. is worth a read, too. Age of Addiction was not really what I expected, but there was a lot of interesting history, which made it unique.
Dress Codes: How the Laws of Fashion Made History | The Age of Addiction: How Bad Habits Became Big Business | Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism | Saving Normal: An Insider’s Revolt against Out-of-Control Psychiatric Diagnosis, DSM-5, Big Pharma, and the Medicalization of Ordinary Life | Woke, Inc.: Inside America’s Corporate Social Justice Scam
I also watched the HBO remake of Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes From A Marriage, which I decided I didn’t hate as much as I thought initially. I do hate some of the modernizing efforts, particularly the open marriage that is their friends’ relationship in the beginning, but I am skeptical of this trend in society, which isn’t really a sufficient reason to disparage its presence in the remake. I also don’t love that they switched the genders in the original plot, but I could’ve gone either way I suppose. It’s as complex and emotional as the original, though I find the original to be timeless and not in any need of modernizing whatsoever. I still prefer the original, which is one of my favorite films of all time, but I think the remake was a good effort.
That’s all for now, but I imagine I’ll be writing again soon as things continue to develop.
September is too soon for this. I was hoping to get out of here (for vacation) before this happened; I’m grateful I managed to at least put studded tires on my truck in time (my aesthetic improvements are looking good so far, speaking of, though the only two fun aspects of driving this thing are 1. the feeling that I can run over other vehicles and 2. the dog sticking her head out the back window, which rolls down).
and each time I’ve been down there in the last month I have seen our 
one of my few remaining friends left this morning to move to Juneau, and I’m proud of him for making a change that will increase his quality of life. I will miss him. My aunt-in-law visited from NJ a few weeks ago, and my roommate got back from Iraq recently, so it’s been really nice to have some company after forever alone. I’ve tried to really assess what my social life situation is up here at this point, and it’s not getting any better (which makes sense, given my zero effort in making new friends); it’s something that will need to improve in the near future. In the meantime, hopefully the next few weeks will net me some ocean & beach time, sun, and sleep.
This year I’ve been talked into a wreath, I initiated a flickering-light-lit fireplace (which looks awesome) and now look out onto a beautiful brightly lit patio with two classy af reindeer (seat cushions are en route). My parents think I’ve cracked up. Maybe I have. It was bound to happen eventually.
I also watched the Netflix adaptation of Hillbilly Elegy, which received terrible reviews all around. The cast was amazing and it made for a decent movie if not being compared to the book, which told a much more comprehensive story. Glenn Close and Amy Adams were excellent… Glenn Close was a perfect fit for her character. This book was really pivotal for me during a really tough period of my life, so I felt like I’d hate the movie adaptation more after reading the reviews, but I didn’t. I’d still recommend the book to anyone half-listening. Even if it bears no resemblance to your life, it’ll probably help you understand someone around you.
I didn’t love Autumn or Winter as much as I enjoyed parts of Spring and Summer, which have more of a story within instead of being broken up into random chapters on things ranging from frogs to vomit (seriously). Like all of his stuff, the monotony is worth it for the great parts and his many often beautifully written tangents. I came to the conclusion after finishing My Struggle that I often find him distasteful, selfish, self-absorbed, occasionally pathetic, as I’ve written in past posts…but after all of those words, endless details of his life, I somehow feel close to him, I admire him, and this series is in some ways such a wonderful gift to his daughter (to all four of his children, actually) — all his work is — but this especially, being such an expansive (although random) collection of his thoughts on everyday things. I will continue to read/listen to anything he writes, because I can’t think of anyone who has expressed so much of himself, both the mundane and outrageous in the way he has. His unrelenting honesty and lack of much of a filter is so respectable. I’ve thought at a few junctures about whether he really knows himself, because people often portray themselves differently (often more positively) than they are in reality, but you get a sense of who he is and his flaws because his words explain the actions of his life, and he doesn’t skimp on the times he behaved poorly. That’s been a takeaway from my life over the past few years: that words are often pretty meaningless, especially when someone is speaking of him- or herself; his autobiography speaks to the actions within his life, and so it is so much more him. This was well-timed for many reasons, one of them being that so many people are losing their parents to COVID: his children will have an unbelievable collection of their father’s life and thoughts to reflect upon long after he is gone.
The Neapolitan Novels: My Brilliant Friend; The Story of a New Name; Those Who Stay and Those Who Leave; The Story of the Lost Child | I didn’t expect to read over 1600 pages so quickly, but I couldn’t help myself, and will be passing this boxed set onto one of my closest friends. Worth noting the covers of the books are terrible: they look like sad middle aged cat lady romance novels. In reality each book is wonderful, also filled with horribly imperfect people, and the books revolve around a friendship between two girls growing up in Naples who proceed in completely different directions in their lives: the main character, whose voice the book is written in, goes to college and becomes an esteemed writer, travels abroad, marries an educated man. Her closest friend drops out after 5th grade, marries a local shopkeeper, has a kid, her life falls apart and she ends up clawing her way into relative stability. Both women are highly intelligent; the latter is brilliant, but troubled. Their lives start in the 1930s and proceed to the 90s, and at that time Naples was violent and shitty; it was commonplace to beat your wife and kids, and murder and domestic abuse abounds.
Madame Bovary | I finished this awhile back and still am not sure what to say. I’m glad I read it. I hated the main character, but I felt some sympathy–some–for her in the end. I hated her baseless idealism and romanticism and all the disappointment that comes from having such great expectations. The story is tragic because at that period in time, women had no power and few rights, and were totally dependent upon men for any kind of stability or status. That said, knowing the time she lived in and the constraints on her freedom, why did she harbor such ridiculous hopes and dreams? I read some articles about this book after finishing it and it seems people often sympathized with her and found her dullard of a husband to be the one to despise, but I’m not sure I agree with this either. Emma Bovary, like many people today, are disappointed if not depressed because they have unrealistic expectations of love and of life. Emma slowly destroys her own morality chasing this pipe dream and in the end it destroys her, her husband and her child. For what? Quite frankly this book irritated me more than anything else; despite my acknowledgement that she lived in a shitty time for women (for everyone, really), I don’t know that the spoiled millennials of the modern age are much different: they may not expect so much of love, but they do of life. Life owes you nothing. It seems people needed to be reminded of that at any and all points in history. Instead of being annoyed to have read it, I’m grateful I did because it bothered me so much. It’s beautifully written: Flaubert was truly gifted, and he writes in such a way that he wants to flex your sympathy one way or another throughout the novel. Despite my annoyance, this novel tells of a person’s unwillingness to accept the emptiness and disappointment of life: perhaps something I’ve done, and so can read this and scowl at someone else’s hopeless idealism. I believe I’m still here today and enjoying life for the most part because I accepted early on that life is meaningless and often disappointing, that everyone is alone forever no matter how many people one is surrounded by. I think that’s a harder pill to swallow for most, certainly for Emma Bovary, who swallowed arsenic instead.
I’m surprised by how much I didn’t like this book. I liked some of the characters, but it all became way too fantastical for me very quickly. I think the best part of the entire story is the way people talk to each other and how they react to one another: otherwise, this was a tedious not quite waste of time, but close. The constant nods to Faust in various reviews and other write-ups about The Master and the Margarita were also confusing to me; this book did not remind me of Faust at all, other than the devil character being present. All in all there was too much overt allegory, too much time travel, and a giant black cat (wtf?)… next.
(Reread) She’s Come Undone | I read this book at some point in middle- or high school, and when I began The Neapolitan Novels I kept returning to this, and some other coming of age stories. This book shares few parallels with Lenu and Lila; I actually found more similarities in another classic I had loved as a young kid, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but I returned to She’s Come Undone nonetheless. Rereading books I read as a kid has often been an entirely different experience than the first time around: this one is a bit cliché and contrived as an adult, but the concurrent sarcasm and shabby idealism made it a pleasant (re)read. Worth noting that I frequently come across people who want to return to their late teens or 20s, I would sooner drive into oncoming traffic. My late teens and early 20s were the worst time in my life, by a long shot (and trust me, my early teens were awful as well, so I have some stiff competition)… I read books from my youth sometimes and shudder to think of how awful my life was before I was in my mid-20s.
Speaking of, one night a few weeks back I finally bit the bullet and watched The Lovely Bones, which I had avoided for years because the book creeped me out so deeply. I was surprised when years ago it was turned into a major motion picture; I still have a tough time understanding how this story was so widely marketable, and the movie had a Disney feel despite its subject matter. It’s a story of a 13- or 14-year old girl who is raped and murdered in a root cellar and ends up watching her family grieve for her and search for the man who killed her. The end was unbelievably stupid, but what bothered me so much about the book (and the idea, even) is that as a young kid I had a recurring nightmare that I was dead and hovering over my mourning family. I had this nightmare for years and years, and it probably resulted in an even more stubborn unwillingness to give up due to how miserable it was to see, even in dreams, people suffering as a result of my untimely end. The movie, all in all, was OK… the book was excellent.
The Chaos Path 