I'm three days away from leaving my family for four months. It's going to be hard but we're a lot better off than we were last time; my wife isn't in medical school and I don't have an apartment to take care of and we still have money left over from last year because living in Seattle is hella cheaper than living in LA. Last time 'round I came back every third weekend. Maybe this time every second. Still. It's going to be hard.

Things on the birth center did not get completed in a timely fashion, of course. I'll be dealing with shit via remote. Today I have to order $700 worth of houseplants that will hopefully have somewhere to go when they're through production in 5 weeks. Tomorrow I meet with a company that wants to sell us $1500 worth of phones for $4k but how badly do I want to learn Avaya in the next five weeks? $2500 worth? Mmmmmmaybe.

They're pure White People Problems, though. If we need to buy $4k worth of phones, we call up our loan officer and say "we need $4k worth of phones." We'll have to pay him back, sure, but we're already busy and the place doesn't have drywall yet.

It's 14.9 miles from where I'm staying to where I'm working. I debated buying another motorcycle down there. I debated driving down. Then I decided fukkit and bought $1400 worth of hybrid bike, panniers, lights and safety equipment. I used to commute 14 miles a day via bicycle on another show; this one will be 30 miles a day. It'll be a better bike but it'll still be momentous. By the end of the summer I will have ridden that bike something like 2,000 miles.

That's luxury right there: "I choose to commute via bicycle." I'm actually really looking forward to it.

Had lunch with a friend yesterday. He's got three kidneys 'cuz the first two got shriveled down to grapes thanks to 30 years of poorly-managed Type 1 diabetes. The third one drastically increased his life expectancy... but now it's measured in single-digits years rather than single-digits months. We were talking about therapy and the like and he revealed that his undiagnosed ADHD was likely due to febrile seizures as a baby due to ingesting paint chips. Smartest kid in the school district, smartest school district in the nation and he's wearing a shirt with his name on the breast pocket. Shitty thing is now that he knows he's earned some adderal his renal system can't handle it.

So here I am, melancholy that I'm leaving my family to go ride 20 centuries on a bicycle, while this poor dude only has a few years left and whose big "good" news is he can now point to the place where the bad man touched his future.

Perspective.

My neighbor died a few days ago. We called him "crazy Bob" because he'd be out in the back yard making weird noises and cussing at the dandelions. Nice guy. Aneurism. 67 years old. We were about to go halfsies on a stump grinder rental. Me? I finally have some decent fucking running shoes.

I still don't wanna pay $4k for a phone system.