Arlee
It’s something like tradition for me to pause today to observe and celebrate the winter solstice. I’ve always been finely attuned to and affected by the amount of light around me, even more so as I’m getting older. This darke...
some ansible code
This post is primarily to prove out the new server I built for this blog this week. I need to make sure the content management system I use, Hugo, is configured properly, as well as the various other subsystems that make the machin...
I knew it was hopeless. At 3:15, I reached up to turn on the little halogen lights in the headboard, then reached over to pick up my phone and turn off the alarm. 5:00 would get here soon enough. That’s the thing about events that play out over exce...
For the real running nerds out there, or the morbidly curious, here’s a detailed recap of the race, mile-by-mile. This might make more sense with the map in front of you.
Marathon Route 2024
And a preemptive, general note: at no point did I wet my pa...
Waldheim Cemetery
It’s hard to avoid them. The western part of Cook County is essentially one long band of cemeteries running north-south at approximately the longitude of the Des Plaines River. Presumably, about 200 years ago, shortly after c...
Cassiopeia A (see footnote 1)
I kinda feel like I lost the first half of this year. The first four months were largely consumed by taking care of my dad, and then the next two in dealing with the aftermath (emotional, logistical, financial) of his p...
hospice window
People who know their way around the hospice experience will tell you about “the rally,” or the bounce-back. Terminal lucidity is the more formal name. For reasons science can’t speak to definitively (though there are theories), patie...
1IL2 -> 4IS3
Dad heard it first. “What the hell is that?”
I wasn’t entirely sure right away, either, but it was obviously coming from outside. A repetitive, mechanical thumping sound, distant yet growing steadily louder. Was it some piece of main...
photo by Aaron Burden via Unsplash
I don’t know where I saw it today. I was idly skimming around the internet, wasting time while waiting for some long-running job to fail and issue a series of cryptic error messages that would take me the next hour...
from a window seat
It turns out that the actual solstice doesn’t occur until 9:27 CST tonight. I thought I’d missed it. Most of us think of this day, December 21st, as the “winter solstice,” and this day is over. It’s been dark for two hours. But in...
