Eh. Now I feel like I built up stuff too much and I can't deliver the goods. Well, that's how SEO works. Feel free to judge me in the comments.

 

Let's start with the deck. Our home is a "townhome" (it ain't no brownstone...). 2 floors, 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, no garage, 0.02xxx acres. It's the end unit of a string of 5. When we moved in, the house was 8 years old and, while the neighbors all had fairly large decks (at least the same floor space as the living room) ours had a stubby little porch that was just big enough to hold a small grill and a folding table. Looking at the cut marks in the wood I'm pretty sure that, originally, it was just a 4x4 stoop and steps down to the ground and then the original owner expanded it to about 6x11. (Yes, those are feet, not meters. Just as was handed down in teh bible.)

 

Anyway, while we had done all the maintenance needed to keep a deck usable over the years, by the beginning of the lockdown the little "deck" which we never used was in really bad shape - and during 2020 we repeatedly failed to find a contractor to fix it and it became more and more of a health risk. With the rapid decline of my spine I couldn't imagine trying to do the work myself. So, figuring that I would be allowed to expand my deck to full size (please hold the jokes, there are children present) and figuring that would be more attractive to contractors (stop it. I see that look on your face. Let. It. Go.) I decided to pitch that idea on the internet.

 

Still no takers. I even had a contractor come out, look at what we wanted, and then return the deposit a month later. (STOP IT) Finally, an experienced professional took the job (Okay, I surrender, go ahead, make your joke.) in the winter of 23 and now we have a shiny new TREX deck. Along the way, SWHTL had given me Danny Trejo's cookbook as a gift and, given our tradition of calling our holiday party "The Festival of Leftovers" I decided we would have the "Festival of Leftover Tacos" and it was a solid success although we had a few hiccups, most notably that everyone assumed that everyone else still drank like they used to which means that SWHTL and I have an unreasonably large supply of tequila and margarita mix for two people who don't even know what the salt is for.

 

Also, because of where we are in our community I am now socializing more with neighbors than I have ever done in my entire. fucking. life. To the point that I am now running for a seat on the HOA because, god as my witness, there will be an f'ing speed bump at that stop sign or I am not an award-winning bozo!

 

But what about the bike trail? I hear you asking... (No, seriously, I swear I can hear you asking... (cups ear)...) Well, basically, last year when I was in the depths of my depression about the state of my spine and how I needed to accept that the cycling part of my life was over I took all the money I had saved for a serious Fred* bike and donated it to a group that was trying to raise funds for a mountain bike team and training facility in my little town. Afterwards, I remembered that $MEGACORP had a charity matching program and filed a form asking for them to chip in. I told the bike people that $MEGACORP might chip in another $500 or so.

 

Instead, $MEGACORP matched the entire f'ing amount. 

 

This pushed my donation into, well, let's just say that they're naming the beginner's trail after Porkchop. This. fucking. rocks. Seriously. I texted my little sister (the ICU nurse who I have accused of being smarter than me) about it and her reply was, "You crack me up. You’re not an attention whore. Just count it as an honor!" I mean, I spent 20 (twenty? AYFKM?) years smearing makeup on my face and visiting kids in hospitals but no one has ever recognized me for doing this stuff before. I'm still alternating between feeling giddy and feeling like an f'ing attention whore looking for a fix. But there you go.

 

As far as the spine goes, this is only a teaser because... I don't know just yet. The 1 year anniversary of my surgery is approaching like the hot kiss at the end of a wet fist** and my brain is doing little somersaults as it tries to wait patiently to find out how I'm healing. My old 4-man cycling team, "To (b)Oldly Go" (which feels more appropriate than ever since 3 of the 4 of us have had major medical issues in the past 4 years) are planning to drag me out this Friday for a bike ride which is insane considering one of them is still dealing with a transplanted heart valve and the other is staring down the barrel of a pacemaker. They want me to commit to a 50 mile ride in September and part of me wants to shout "Okay! I'll do it! But only if you don't!"

 

Finally, I've started getting questions on reddit where people are un-ironically asking me "how things used to be" as a programmer. Oh, God, the urge to just troll the hell out of the babies is becoming overwhelming.

 

* Fred is a legendary figure in cycling. By tradition he's a dentist who has far more money than sense. Fred wears all the gear, has all the accessories, and buys the bike that every serious cyclist lusts after but knows they can neither use nor, honestly, need, because they aren't that good a cyclist.

 

** Yes, thank you, that's a Firesign Theatre reference.