I should be sitting outside during the coolest part of the day sipping my coffee, but I also need to organize my life in blocks of time, and I’m overdue for this post. 
I have many unanswered emails and other things to do, but instead of knocking them out, I started cold-stratifying bonsai seeds as I think growing a few different bonsai trees (obviously a very long-term project) will be fun and low-investment. I’ve always been pretty interested in plants, this is the first time I have enough real sunlight to do so. When I was a kid, I had a hydroponic vegetable garden (before hydroponics were cool) and a terrarium full of venus flytraps and pitcher plants, which are not the easiest plants to sustain, especially in upstate New York.
I learned a lot this summer about plants, heat, sun and altitude: my morning glories dutifully covered my porch, but they only flowered twice, and they drink too much water to be feasible in full sun in the future. My bougainvillea grew up to the roof of my house, but it never flowered, so either the days are too long or I overfertilized it. My sword lilies popped beautifully, and I will probably buy more bulbs for next year, even though their foliage is ugly and they take forever to flower. My dahlias bloomed but the colors were ultimately disappointing and I’ll probably buy cuttings next year instead of relying solely on seeds so the blooms are bigger.
To my delight, I have two beautiful elephant ears indoors. Of the three shitty-looking sprouted bulbs I got, two survived and one is huge. It took me a few months to find the right solution to tiny, annoying little aphids, and I had to spray everything down with Neem oil and buy sticky traps, but the combo worked perfectly. I walk past a house every day with HUGE tomato plants so I will be doing Jersey tomatoes next year, I felt unsure about my success this summer but I’m pretty confident now.
Keeping plants hydrated here in peak summer is a major pain in the ass. And I talk about next summer, I suppose, because I think there’s a reasonable chance I’ll stay here for a bit longer, given I still have no idea what I want to do next in my life. The job postings I was waiting for were posted while I was gone, but have restrictive office requirements that would require immediate relocation (again), which I think is stupid, and consequently am not applying. I hate the heat here and am growing more frustrated as these 90 degree days continue; I used to get crankier and crankier as the summer continued back East, but I suspect it will stay warmer longer here than in the Catskills. I hate it. I will never be a summer person, but I’d be a lot worse off if it was also humid. I will say life has been easier now that I’ve fully given up and begun wearing shorts, though I will not wear them to work.
Speaking of, I am actually pretty happy with where I’m at in my job. While I lost my peer group bestie to a promotion, I also lost the peer who annoyed me the most. Given my major complaint about this job has been the other managers in my group, I am almost out of the woods on that. Managing 19 people (soon to be 20) in 3 different offices across two states is not particularly easy, but I am definitely not bored. My primary team is performing well; this co-located Texas team is not. We (Denver) went through business reviews this week, and Monday I’ll head to Dallas, then to Austin, to prep the other team for theirs the following week. The process of onboarding new people, training them up, dealing with two very different levels of tenure and competence and assuring I provide support for all three offices is pretty interesting and forces me to be as efficient as possible.
I will probably continue to do this through the remainder of 2022, and potentially into 2023. To be clear, this job does not spark joy, but for an industrious person, doing the job of two people instead of one is very rewarding.
I realize I’m rambling about plants and work when ultimately I’ve been away for the most of the month; 
my trip abroad began with (of course) a typical Turkish Airlines delay that forced me to run from one end of Istanbul airport to the other in 15 min to make my connection to Tbilisi (they literally closed the door behind me); my bag did not make it onto the plane, but showed up later in the evening. I was happy just to actually get there on time and feel like I was comfortably away from my life in what at this point is definitely my favorite foreign city (New York is still my favorite American city, sorry not sorry). I was slimy and exhausted by the time I got there, but I was over the moon to be there and we went straight to our standard breakfast spot to stuff our faces with khachapuri.
Departing from JFK was a good opportunity to drop in on my sister, and my parents ended up driving down for dinner. 
My sister and her husband finally moved out of their shithole garden level unit in Belleville and moved into a really beautiful, sunny apartment in Rahway. My sister and I are very different — she has very few hobbies, no college education and is mostly a homebody — but she got a second pug and has been showing her, so I’m pretty stoked she is busy and doing stuff she’s genuinely passionate about. I really wish they’d get the hell out of New Jersey, but as I said, we are very different people. I’d love for us to eventually live closer to one another: we hated each other when we were kids but we are very close now, and she continues to look creepily similar to me as she gets older.
My grandmother passed away the last day of my trip, which was incredibly sad but was not entirely unexpected. My parents were in Africa and I’m sad she died alone, but it seems like it happened pretty suddenly and no one would have been able to make it there regardless. I think a lot of people feel regret when their grandparents die: that they should’ve spent more time, paid better attention, learned more from their parents’ parents. I do not feel that way. I called her every weekend from the time I left for college until fairly recently (it was increasingly difficult to reach her, she had no phone and the facility was not always able to transfer me). I saw her in December when I was home, and every other time I went back to the Northeast, and I had a pretty special relationship with her. She was a very cranky person when we were kids (I’ve referred to her many times as the Slavic Olivia Soprano): I found this hilarious and endearing. I’ve learned to make all of our family’s food in my adulthood, from pierogies to cabbage rolls to Russian cutlets (they are like flat, pan fried meatballs). In the past decade, I’ve retrieved all of our family’s naturalization records, birth certificates and other documentation to nail down what happened and when, as many people in her community never talked about the “old country” and only ever wanted a fresh start in America. Every year of my adult life that I’ve been in the US for Christmas, I’ve done Ukrainian Christmas (Eve) dinner, whether I am with my family or (more often) not.
My grandmother only got so far as elementary school: she started working as a child and worked hard her entire life. She had my father at 17, and my grandfather was significantly older. She lived a very modest life; she never flew in an airplane, never left the US, my parents had to drag her kicking and screaming on any adventure farther than the grocery store. She lived in two houses as an adult: the one my parents live in now, and the one across the street. She never tasted a drop of alcohol or smoked a cigarette. She lived vicariously through all of us as we grew older and began traveling (especially my parents, who did not venture abroad until I went with them the first time, and now have been all over, from the Amazon river to Galapagos to Greece and Africa). My one regret is that she lived through my cousin dying of a heroin overdose (and was lucid enough to suffer emotionally as a result), and my piece of shit aunt — her fuck-up daughter — calling to try to collect his modest life insurance policy payout. My parents buried him. Conversely, I’m happy I went to the trouble to have the beautiful French chairs I always wanted from her house reupholstered and shipped here so I can look at them every day. I have a piece of her life in my house and will for the remainder of mine.
My trip also concluded with me getting COVID. It took me 2 years and 8 months and going overseas to test positive. I actually believe I ended up with the lightest symptoms of anyone I know, though I just may have higher tolerance for suffering. Razorblades in my throat, a very mild dry cough and a VERY runny nose, with a half day of feeling like my own voice was bouncing off the insides of my skull and some severe nausea/clamminess. I recovered quickly, though I had a lingering wet cough and congestion and was sleeping 8h+ a night for awhile, which is not typical for me. I sadly missed out on my trip to Chicago, but recovered with negative results in time to get back into the office later into the week after I returned. Having COVID actually forced me to chill out and recover from the trip, so it was ultimately a mixed bag.
My trip was wonderful, and it was equally wonderful to get home. 
I had hired a dog sitter off of Rover to drop in on Fuji 3-4 times a day and while he has the best reviews of anyone in the area on Rover, I was not impressed: he did not walk her once despite committing to do so, he failed to show up one night and never communicated that he was not coming (according to him, he was in a car accident, and yet showed up the next day in the same car which was unharmed), and he spent very little time with her. Thankfully my neighbors were around to pop in periodically and we’ve decided to just trade off on drop-ins for each other’s pets for the foreseeable future (I am taking care of their husky and cat now, and they’re on Fooj duty next week). This was an ambitious experiment to determine whether the dog was better off just staying home alone for 3 weeks, and despite my dog sitter not meeting my expectations, she was in a much better mental state than she would’ve been if I had kenneled her the entire time. I checked on her couch-lounging regularly and tossed her many Furbo treats, and she was just fine, so I will definitely opt for her staying here alone overnight versus worrying about putting her in a kennel or boarding facility. Fuji’s dog aggression is annoying AF but otherwise she’s pretty much perfectly behaved.
The time away helped me further appreciate my living situation, and while it still pains me to pay so much to live here in this neighborhood (there is nothing for sale in my neighborhood under $800K except for a $570K empty lot, to give you an idea of the insane prices in Denver), I’ve spent a lot of time and money making this place somewhere I want to be, and it’s paid dividends. I can’t say I’m in love with Denver by any means, but it’ll do for the time being, and it was actually pretty fantastic to have so many of my new friends at Brutal Assault and in Prague to end the trip. Last weekend, two excellent people got married at a Czech bar here and it was a blast. I think my life is set up pretty nicely all around… it took some time, but my priorities were spot-on and everything is how I want it to be.
My FitBit Charge4 somehow broke into about 6 different pieces when I got home, and while I was tempted to buy another fairly inexpensive FitBit (well, first, I tried to superglue it back together, but too many springs popped out and I gave up), I was intrigued by Juan’s Garmin watch and figured I’d cough up the $ for something that will actually track my exercise (the FitBit never reliably tracked the stairmill workouts). I ended up with the fenix 6, which retails at $549 and was on sale for $350. I am extremely pleased so far, and it’s been about two weeks. No ragrets, and this thing actually tracks my workouts correctly. It is kind of a manly watch for me, but what it lacks in femininity it makes up for in data quality.
I also noticed yesterday that I’ve logged 35 days of PTO for the year, which is a vast improvement over the 10 I took last year. I bunched my time into the middle/end of the year as I wanted to master my responsibilities first, but I’m coming up on a trip back to Mexico in a few weeks and I am really looking forward it. Heading back to NY/NJ in November, then my parents are visiting, and I’m considering on dropping in on a friend in Vegas for a weekend in December. Outside of that, I plan to stay home alone for the holidays and relax… I have always hated flying back to the NY metro area at the busiest time of year.
I’m actually going to stop here, and drop in some photo galleries and thoughts around the destinations in the next few posts, coming soon (possibly tomorrow and/or Monday).
I was surprisingly invigorated by my Texas trip: it was a pretty quick trip, but it reminded me of my old life, Life Before COVID, always en route, packing or unpacking. I shared with my boss that I’d like to find a way to get more of that back; I have never been the settling type and I’d like to ping-pong around more in the fall (and I will, starting in Chicago in August, 3 days after I return from Prague). My road warrior life — the life I lived for many years without complaint — was exhausting, but so rewarding. Sometimes I feel like I’ve lost more than I realized initially, the free-wheeling that has collected this cloud of COVID doom in these past few years: what if I test positive? What if I get sick? What if I get stuck? What if the hospital is full?
came to visit in May, and that has been one of the highlights of the past 7 months: first, virtually all of my favorite pre-AK life people live in New York. These two guys came in to see our other friend’s band one night (they are based in San Francisco). I talk frequently to another friend here about how thus far, Colorado people aren’t really my cup of tea (or his), but it was glorious to have more friends in town: we ate amazing food, watched sci-fi movies, listened to metal and drank on my porch. We managed to get into In-n-Out 5 minutes before they closed at 1:30am the morning they left, and the entire trip was amazing. Apparently there are dirt cheap Frontier flights from Albany to Denver, and I’m hoping my people keep taking advantage of the relatively inexpensive airfare. Bonus round, the headliner for this show was a 
I beat myself up for being pretty introverted, but I’ve built a fairly robust community here in a short period of time, and while I’m spread thin, it’s nice to have the option to do things. Today was the first day in awhile that felt like what a weekend day should feel like: yesterday I hustled to hit the gym and walk the dog before making a giant broccoli salad and heading up to a BBQ in the mountains. I spent today cooking a week+ of food to save myself the hassle next week, and I’ve been taking Fuji on 2 long walks a day (1 with a 16lb weighted vest, which I thought would be heavier and challenge me more than it has). The dog spectacularly failed her boarding interview a few weeks back; I figured I’d at least see if she’d be happy hanging out with other dogs and the answer is hell no, she was having none of that, so I finally gave up and found pet care on Rover for my lengthy trip. She’s turning 9 this year and has not slowed down at all. I am thankful. Having a dog and wanting to be on the go all the time is a pain in the ass, but she has been an anchor for me and it has been more than worth the trouble and expense.
It’s actually pretty incredible to me that I survived this brutal move and all of the suffering that went along with it without having another hyperthyroid episode, but my most recent labs came back perfect and it’s difficult to express how grateful I am that this hasn’t gotten worse. For the most part, even with the heat, I seem to be acclimating fairly well here; the summer temperatures are horrible and I feel hot all the time, but my July goal is to shave off another 10lbs or so before I go to to Tbilisi, which is derived from an Old Georgian word that means “warm place.” Every pound I can drop is less I’ll be sweating through my damn clothes, in the land where “air conditioning” usually means a dirty old fan or a window that you can prop open with a water bottle. I also noticed today that Turkish Airlines once again fucked up my return flight with their schedule changes, so hopefully I can figure that out this week: Turkish is the only airline I’ve ever flown on where you almost never get the flights you pay for, because they constantly change shit and don’t even send you a courtesy e-mail.
I am never satisfied with myself, and I think that is a blessing and a curse; people either drive themselves into the ground or are lazy as shit and don’t care about progression… I still believe I am somewhere in the middle (maybe a bit more driven than I need to be, but violently turned off by people’s lack of motivation). I did very little on my actual birthday; a friend from work decided it was unacceptable for me to spend it alone (she is young, she’ll understand someday), so she came over for tacos, a shitty grocery store lemon meringue pie (the only kind of pie I wanted, and could not find a better one on short notice, and I refuse to bake anything beyond keto muffins and key lime pies) and 
I’ll maybe pick that tradition up again by 40. I took the day off work and ran a bunch of errands, and that was enough of a gift for me. All in all it was awesome to not be working and have a second of three 3-day weekends in a row.
I ended up grudgingly agreeing to read Brene Brown’s latest book, and it wasn’t bad, to be honest. I realized in refining my business/self-improvement book Excel sheet (yep. I have one of those) that I had read her previous book and enjoyed it. She says the same thing over and over again, which is annoying, but what she says is not untrue. David Goggins’ book Can’t Hurt Me was also not bad: a guy on my team loved it and I traded him for Jocko’s Extreme Ownership, which I definitely like much more, but it was enjoyable. The guy basically grew up in a dumpster and became a Navy SEAL+++, an ultramarathoner, etc etc. He has incredibly strong will and determination and also has beaten the shit out of his body, which will catch up with him sooner or later. As I said before you’re either lazy or you drive yourself into the ground, this dude is all the way at the “needs to hurt himself physically or he is depressed” end of the spectrum. Dan Ariely’s Honest Truth About Dishonesty was OK as well, it was suggested to me by another person at work, and I had read his others, I actually liked Predictably Irrational a lot more, and was already familiar with most of the studies in Dishonesty.
I had not read this guy’s precursor, but I feel well versed enough having a team of millennials. The title is misleading in that it implies he blames millennials for being stupid, ultimately he puts a lot of blame on educators. I’m not even “dumb” is the appropriate word: I’d use “dull.” The Dullest Generation Grows Up. This book better-articulated a lot of my struggles than I could and has allowed me to outline more of a problem statement at work, which is that the people I’m managing lack a lot of history and knowledge, and as a result their daily lives, struggles and challenges are not placed in any context. It is a really, really, really hard problem to solve when you’re trying to develop young people who do not have the attention spans to read a single KB article in its entirety. I don’t want to be too general in grouping people by generation, and I am an older millennial myself, but there seems to be a distinction, and I see it every day at work: a lack of curiosity, an inability to connect the dots and link concepts together, a completely missing sense of imagination. It is very sad, and my company, and I’d imagine many other companies, are not equipped to upskill because they do not understand the entirety of the problem. Very strong recommend, although it’s quite depressing to see some of the results: the gradual plunge of SAT, ACT, ASVAB scores over time, the declining reading comprehension, the complete failure in STEM subjects. IQ increased over time for many decades, and it is now declining precipitously. Even worse from my perspective, people have lost their interest in the world, the awe of experiencing even the smallest joys, the ability to persevere through hardship by anchoring themselves to history. It is a tragedy.
I’m not sure whether or not I had mentioned that I finished Vol 2 of Gulag Archipelago, but I did. I am patiently waiting my next Audible credit so I can pick up Vol 3. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Gulag Archipelago is the most brutal, horrifying book I’ve ever read, and this is my second time through this series. While I’ve been waiting, I started and finished One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, which was good, but had nowhere near the breadth. Darkness at Noon was another classic I had not bothered to read and finished it in about two days: it was good, but not high on my recommend list: it is too much like 1984, and not nearly as harrowing as many others. There were some memorable passages, though.
I somehow managed to make it all the way through Picketty’s Capital in the 21st Century years ago, and while a lot of his data ended up being disputed, I actually really enjoyed the anecdotal material, and his ideas. A Brief History of Inequality was a lot shorter, obviously, and easier to digest. Quillette reviewed it and has a lot more text than I’m willing to type out, so that review is 
The route from Myrtle Beach to Denver is 1,745 miles, and it would’ve been feasible to clock 1000 instead of 900, but 1000 is probably my limit. It’s not easy, but it’s doable. I realized on the way home I think I like these trips because (a) I love to plan, and the logistics of travel can be challenging, and (b) I am extremely goal oriented. Long drives require discipline and grit. 900+ miles in a day requires determination. I have all of those things, and I love to suffer to test my own endurance. I’d go so far as to say that’s why I’m here, in my life, in Colorado, in good health, why I haven’t crawled into a hole with booze or pills or God knows what else. Determination is also helpful in avoiding the descent into a homicidal rampage at the ineptitude of other drivers, who clearly have not heard of cruise control, and love to chill in the left lane driving under the speed limit.
I only took Friday off after failing to swim M-Thu (riptides, rain and other trash weather disrupted my plans), and Friday was windy and cloudy, but I did end up in the ocean, thankfully. I had the mornings to myself (in EST, working on MST), and I loved chilling on the balcony reading: I finished four books (more on that in my next post), and got enough down-time to sustain me for awhile. I went out there to swim as much as possible, as whatever micro-creepy crawlies the ocean has to offer do wonders for my skin, but I loved my time down there anyway and I’m grateful to have access to a beachfront condo to visit any time I please. One of the two happiest moments of my life was as a young kid, lying awake on a twin bed in my grandparents’ house on Long Beach Island while my sister slept in the bed next to me, smelling the bay breeze waft in through the windows and thinking to myself, “let me hold onto this.” Even as a kid I knew life was fleeting, years pass in an instant. Every time I’ve eaten an oyster in its salty water or walked out onto a dock in Alaska I’ve remembered those nights, gratefully awake, the smell of the sea.
I think I am fully out of whatever dark place I was trapped in for months, if not longer, feeling hopeless and empty and devoid of any direction, any value, any purpose. I took that trip to remind myself of who I was before the pandemic: a road warrior, a lone wolf, someone who just wanted to be out and immersed in the world, someone who rarely stopped moving, who wanted to see and experience everything. I have unbelievable appreciation for this country, for the different landscapes and people and histories of the different regions, and I have always been so fascinated by how other people live. One of the top pros of moving back down here was to be able to drive anywhere again, and I’m happy I prioritized that for myself: it’s still a huge part of who I am. I’m even grateful, seeing so many cars with blown out tires or broken down on the side of the road, to have a reliable vehicle, and a furry little derp to come along for the ride, and the funds to afford to take such a trip.
my belongings are still sitting in Seattle due to bad weather. I’ve been wearing the same 10 items of clothing for roughly 2 months now, and I am super tired of eating off of paper plates and drinking wine out of a jar I shoved into my bag before I left my parents’ house. I’m disappointed but not surprised, and my compartmentalization-friendly brain is very sad at the prospect of finishing this move in the new year instead of coming into the new year with the process completed. Since the moving company has not fulfilled their contractual obligation, I’m going to begin processing delay claims on Monday and squeeze them for every penny they’ll reimburse for. All said and done, my stuff is scheduled for delivery on Jan 8. I can only hope these pussies can find some snowflake-free days to get moving. I’m not a materialistic person, but it’d be nice to put my stuff in my house and have the rest of my clothes and real dinner plates ffs.
I wake up every morning and take the dog for a long walk iN tHe SuNsHiNe which blows my mind. After all the hassle of getting her paperwork in order, we walked out of her breed evaluation with a “mixed breed” categorization, which will save me a lot of trouble in the long run (she is not a “mixed breed,” but if they say she is, I’ll take it). I’ve hit Costco twice, which is only a few miles from me, and despite not being an electronics-oriented person, I marveled at the prospect of owning what to me is a giant (58″) TV for under $500. I bought patio furniture, since it’s sit-outside weather 90% of the year. I bought morning glory seeds for the spring, since that will come sooner than I am accustomed to. I spent some time browsing European delis in Aurora, and I made it to House of Bread, where I found some OK Adjarian khachapuri and some meat-stuffed khinkali. I learned a hard lesson in Anchorage: that I am woefully homesick without a deli where I can get the weird shit I grew up eating (primarily 
truly amazing — meal right down the street. It also was a good excuse to drive around a bit: for whatever reason, every time I come back down here I feel anxiety about driving, which is absurd after spending the first 28 years of my life in NJ, NY and Boston. It was good to get out on the road, though the 4Runner will mostly stay parked until I can swap my tires.
I flew back here on Monday. Fuji left Anchorage a day late, but showed up on time, and I met her in the 4Runner at the airport. She has been sleeping practically since we got here, and I think this was a pretty rough move for her. Despite the face-melting expense of her transport, I am really grateful she’s with me, and she will eventually benefit enormously from the much more mild weather.
I’ve spent the last few years with very low living expenses, and some of those savings have been invested in slowly acquiring nice things that will stay with me for many years. The smartest thing I did for myself during this move was to stow a huge Caucasian rug in the trunk underneath the cargo liner, and it’s amazing to have it spread out here now in this living room… I’ve been sitting on some of these items for years unable to utilize them. My landlord and a friend I have here from work were super helpful to me, dragging stuff that arrived early into the house or garage. Some other friends of friends have continually checked in on me, and I feel like I will eventually be able to build the kind of social network here I never was able to completely construct in Alaska.
I can understand the appeal of living in CA if you can live somewhere that allows you to conveniently ignore the gross mismanagement of the homeless, but I think this is one of the most poorly managed places in the country, filled to the brim with hypocrites who will lecture anyone about how to live and yet allow people to shit on sidewalks in broad daylight. California seems to operate on the assumption that homeless people have more rights than people who have housing, jobs and lack drug problems, and I find this both insane and revolting. I admit my perception is heavily influenced by trips to downtown San Francisco and LA. I find myself increasingly disgusted by the entire West Coast in terms of cities, and these downtown plights have spread to Seattle and most notably Portland, OR in recent years. Not going to say much more about the books I’ve been reading, but I started and finished 
I don’t do a whole lot of typical Vegas stuff; I like to wander around and watch people, dabble on the slot machines, eat good food. Unfortunately all of this travel quickly following being as sick as I was has created some annoying challenges over the past two weeks, and I unfortunately had a (somewhat rare at this point) syncope episode and hit the floor on day 2. I seem to be predisposed to passing out, especially from heat, so that was fucking embarrassing. It hasn’t happened for many years, so I am a bit rusty on catching myself; I was horrified at the prospect of people thinking I was drunk, when I was actually just hot and dehydrated, and as soon as I hit the floor I wake back up, so… oops. Unfortunately the consequence of that beyond having to explain to paramedics that no, I don’t need an ambulance, thank you, is that I’m afraid of it happening again, so I’m happy I was with my roommate and my other friend there. I think I still may have a bit of an electrolyte imbalance. It did not happen a second time, and I had a lot of fun regardless.
When I started at this company, I had to go to a conference shortly after onboarding, and it was overwhelming (but fun). Virtually every role change is baptism by fire, and after being up here in AK alone for so long I was starting to doubt the breadth of my social skills leading up to a week in one of our giant metro offices. I was shocked by how stoked I was to be there and around other people, though there’s a limit to how much socializing I can take: I left our very large happy hour the last night a bit earlier than my peers after the volume and the sheer amount of people there started to feel exhausting. I’m grateful for my social muscle memory, and I think the week went well considering it was three long, long days of planning meetings and interacting with entirely new people. Especially after this past week (and signing my lease) I’m over the moon to press on with my life and my career. I can definitely do this, and cope with all of these changes. I love my new peer group: they are all extremely competent and, perhaps more importantly, different from each other, and from me. I feel like I am on an equivalent level of competence, and many of the challenges we have to solve together in 2022 are difficult ones. I will learn a lot, and will have to do so quickly.
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.
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.
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 
The Chaos Path 