Last Updated on: 21st October 2025, 06:32 pm
I thought I was finally starting to get a bit better at the posting thing again, but I’ve hit another wall, it seems. So maybe I’ll try jotting some stuff down and posting it when it feels right. Making myself do this in the usual ways hasn’t worked in years, so maybe this will. It’ll be like Twitter, but all at once and I’m the only shithead.
- Some of you know us so have an idea of what I’m on about when I mention not being able to write, but for the benefit of everyone else, I’ll lay a couple of recent happenings on you.
- Over the summer, I lost my grandpa. Someday I hope to write a whole post about that, but I don’t know when that day might be. I’m having a horrible time getting started, and once I do start, I’m not sure I’ll know where to stop. His house was like a second home to us, and in some ways he was much more a dad to me than my actual dad. I have so many memories, and it’s been extremely hard to settle them down enough to form them into something coherent. If I’m being honest, I don’t think I’m close to ready for it yet. I’m sure it’ll feel good when I am, but for now I feel better experiencing it with people I love when I have to than talking at a world full of strangers about it. He was such a presence in all of our lives, and we’re still figuring out how to move on without it. Slowly but surely we are, but it’s especially difficult when you’re just starting to learn what it’s like to live through some of his favourite things without him. We got to spend a year longer with him than we thought we would, which is a blessing and a curse. The blessing part is obvious, but to call that year a struggle would be so charitable of me that I should probably get a tax receipt for it. the feeling of watching the clock run out on someone with no idea when it’s going to hit 0 is damn near indescribable and not something I would wish on almost anyone.
- Then, a couple of weeks ago, I got a call from a friend I hadn’t heard from in a while. Because those sorts of things don’t happen for fun reasons a whole lot these days, the news she had was that one of our mutual friends had died of cancer. From what I was told, he didn’t want many people to know he was going through it or how bad it was. Knowing him, that sounds about right. The two of us didn’t talk much in later years beyond a how’s it going or a here’s something funny now and then, but we had a lot of fun together back in the day. We were constantly cracking each other up with just the dumbest shit. Sometimes it was even fit for public consumption, like the Bob and Harry announcements we did to promote our school’s staff vs. student hockey game. We were in a band together. No disrespect intended to the rest of us, but he was easily the most talented guy in that thing. If there was a style he couldn’t drum at least decently, I don’t remember it. He was a pretty good cook, too. He loved sports more than anyone I’ve ever met. I’m not sure it would be much of an exaggeration to say that he knew things about sports that I didn’t even know were sports. We didn’t always see eye to eye on certain things, which is, at least from my side, why we wound up slowly drifting apart. There was never a big blowup and I never held a grudge, which is comforting now given how things turned out and how hard it hit me. I’ll miss ya, buddy.
- I could keep on with this theme, but naah. I know Carin is trying to write something of her own about it, so I’ll let her take it from here. But she’s kinda in my boat. Words are hard when life isn’t always into letting up.
- Good things do still happen to us sometimes, though. Over the summer we got to see Weird Al in Toronto. I don’t have many dream concerts, but that was definitely one, and it was everything I could have hoped for. If you were to ask me to complain about anything it would be that some of the songs I hoped to hear in full ended up crammed into a medley, but when you have that much material there’s no way to get it all in. But what an amazing, funny, energetic night. So good I didn’t even mind the rain, and I haaaaaaate getting rained on.
- And in the last couple of weeks we also saw Honeymoon Suite and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. Really enjoyed both, but I think as the years go by the Dirt Band will stick with me more. I don’t know what I was expecting going in, but whatever it was, they blew it away.
- We’ve got plans to hit a bunch more shows before the year is out and even a few lined up for 2026. I don’t know when exactly we got back to thinking about these things in terms of that would be fun instead of are we sure we have the energy or the mood for that, but it’s nice.
- I still can’t frigging believe that the Jays are going to the World Series. You wana talk about blowing away expectations? That’s it, right there. When the season started I expected nothing beyond that it would be spring and then summertime, because that’s how orbit works. But Blue Jays baseball any more meaningful than baseball in general is when you’re a fan and you like to relax to it? Forget it. And yet, here we are.
I’ll admit I was worried when I heard that Vlad showed up at the dome in Leafs gear. I do my best not to be the superstitious type, but Leafs in game seven hasn’t exactly given off the I’m a winner vibe in like 20 years. But again, here we are. I’m still not sure if John Schneider has his head all the way around how to properly manage a pitching staff, but yup, you guessed it, here we are. If you’re looking for a prediction, I don’t have one. My head says the Dodgers are going to kill us, but of course my heart disagrees. It might even be starting to convince my head, because why not? What else about this Jays season has made any damn sense? I mean, here we are! Let’s fuckin goooooo!
- Jansen Visconti does not sound like a person’s name. Jansen Visconti sounds like a cheap wine that someone who doesn’t drink wine finds in the back of a cupboard and serves at Christmas dinner.
- On the subject of names, does anyone in Canadian politics at the moment have a more fun one to say out loud than Gary Anandasangaree? He sounds like he should be the main character in an Irish Rovers song. Seriously, picture it over anything that sounds vaguely like this and tell me I’m wrong.
🎵Gary Anandasangaree comes rollin’ through the bay. And when we see asangaree we stop and shout hurray! ‘Cause everyone here is out of beer and backed up on their pay, but Gary Anandasangaree has come to save the day!🎵
And now that I’ve hopefully put a song in all your heads, I’ll leave things there.
That went ok, I think. Maybe I’ll try it again. Who knows? The world is nutty sometimes, you guys. Just do the best you can out there.