Yesterday was a travel day. Sarah and I have found that it’s better, when you’re traveling, to consider any day when you have a flight as a day when nothing else gets done. That day is just for travel. Don’t try to meet anybody, don’t go see any sights, don’t go eat at any particular […]
From the archive
Category: Family
I don’t know what I expected. Maybe that I’d be better at handling loss than I am. Maybe to believe the mid-west adage that there’s nothing more curative than WORK WORK WORK to take your mind off things. Whatever the case, I have been struggling. I feel like I’m doing a terrible job at school […]
Here are some words I did say at my father’s funeral: Yeah, it was a little sappy. Neither of my brothers were particularly jazzed about the idea of saying something at Dad’s gravesite, so I had a little speech typed out and in my coat pocket. I won’t put all of it here on the […]
When someone you love is slowly dying, one thing no one really tells you about is just how much goddamned sitting around you have to do. Something like 75% of the whole shebang is time spent just sitting in a chair in a little room with the people you care about waiting for something bad […]
I’m going to take a little break from Dungeon Crawler Carl. I have nothing against it, to be honest. It’s been a great series–it’s just had the unfortunate distinction of being the series I was reading while Dad was getting sicker. I listen to audiobooks when falling asleep, and for the last several weeks, the […]
My dad died early in the morning on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026. What had started out as a trip to the E.R. for abdominal pain spiraled into more and more problems until, eventually, the cancer was just too much for his system. It feels too personal to go into details, but my memory hasn’t been […]
This is going to fall under the category of “Posts People Probably Don’t Want to Read on Account of Their Being Overly Morose,” but here we are. My dad’s cancer is getting worse and worse. Yesterday, he was unable to make it to his radiation treatment because he was having some intense pain in his […]
Sarah got me a bidet for my birthday. It’s a little attachment that goes under the back of your toilet normal seat. Not a separate appliance, but just a little one that you add on to your regular toilet. It plugs into the water line like a Super Nintendo only instead of turning to channel […]
The city of Lincoln waits for you like a big red splotch, as if a great glob of glued-together Republicans fell from the sky and splattered over dozens of square miles of pasture at the heart of the Great Plains. They spread out, repopulated, all started building. First, ranch-style homes. Next, steak houses. The fact […]
I’ve had these moments for the past several days where my body will suddenly stop whatever it’s doing, as if put on pause, and an incredible and inescapable sense of ennui will wash over me like a layer of quick-dry cement. I’ll be just walking down the hallway with a cup of tea on my […]