When tomorrow is four years away

So, what brings me back to this dump this time? Another pandemic? Maybe YouTube is down for the afternoon? Some kind of injury that renders my lower half useless but leaves my brain and typing thingies untouched? Hardly.

This time, it’s at least a bit less disaster-dependent – even if this blog has always been a disaster. This past Easter I was chatting with my brother Andrew from Randomization about the excellent YouTube vlog, Vlog Brothers. I was expressing how that back-and-forth was interesting and might be something we could try.

Andrew, being the more reasonable and realistic of us two, noted that editing a video every week sounded an awful lot like work but that we did still have those old blogs kicking around – maybe we could try there?

So, we’ve assigned each other a day a week to post and… let’s see how far this goes! Be sure you’re subscribed, liked or glonked over at Randomization so you can catch his first post on Thursday!

Reading my last post, I’m surprised at how much has changed in the last 4 years. I can almost report as much change in the last four as in the eight before. I didn’t realize, but I was enjoying my last few months with the beautiful Leika when I wrote that, we said goodbye to her in October 2020. Choppy would go outside that following summer 2021 and never came back. And Shadow lived to the ripe old age of 18, leaving us in December 2022.

But each of those departures opened a door for a new entrance. Ahsoka the enormous Newfoundland dog would come live with us shortly after Leika left. She’s big, slobbery and about the sweetest animal I’ve ever met. In the spring of 2021, a family friend passed away and we adopted his Great Pyrenees/Border Collie cross, Liberty. He’s a very energetic and slightly neurotic chap who loves to play and guard his family – especially his mom, Rhonda, who rescued him from the house where he’d been stuck with his departed owner for nearly a week. Finally, in December 2022, we welcomed Bubba (who I just call “Chip) the same week that Shadow departed. She's a grey tabby cat who loves getting in trouble and is so fast and agile that she’s called “ninja” in most circles.

It would be easy to say that I and my family survived COVID unscathed but it’s not quite the truth. We got the poke, we got a bit sick, we got better but it’s undeniable that life is just different now. We’ve had some painful breaks with family and watched our already at-risk neighbourhood slip into a state that can only be described as desperate. We’ve all come away a little less social and a lot more frustrated. It’s only in the last year that I’ve looked at where I landed and started to make choices and decisions to try and get back on my social horse.

Perhaps it’s best to leave things at that for now. Plenty to look forward to, especially if we manage that weekly schedule. I’ll be back next Tuesday with another post!

-Pilot