It is 5:03 AM on December 30th, 2023. This is typically one of my favorite times of the year due to the long break from work for Christmas and New Years. I never take off the few days between those two holidays as it is very slow. Only a few customers will send e-mails and sometimes a few teammates will send a message. I somewhat jokingly say that anyone who sends me work messages during that time are off the Christmas card list. Some customers wait until the last minute to take care of a few items until the last minute which can be irksome.
This holiday break has been a bit hectic due to our new puppy which we adore. We picked her up on December 22nd and since then have been very busy taking care of her. It has been stressful since we’ve been concerned about her health with the dog virus Parvo going around and her very negative reaction to a sulfa drug used to treat Coccidia. She didn’t take well to that at all, throwing up, becoming lethargic and sleeping most of the day. This caused a panic and our new vet was closed when it was happening. Their answering service was also terrible and we still haven’t gotten a call back. The first full day of her lethargy I found a better veterinarian as we were becoming very concerned and ended up spending $1,000 for tests, medicine and food.
She has been steadily improving eating more and finally going poop after not eating then eating better the following day. She still isn’t as active as before the sulfa drug but I’m hoping today will show even more improvement as we discovered she really likes chicken. It really is like having a baby – she is one! – with the new routines and almost constant care.
Christmas flew by again and I found it hard to get into the magic. We all look forward to this holiday for so long, it occurs, then is over. I still fault the lack of snow and cold weather as part of the reason for not feeling the Christmas spirit. Our weather has been rainy and the ocean unforgiving with enormous waves. Thankfully nobody was killed this year but one surfer did require coast guard help to get back to the beach. A lot of people up and down the California coast did put themselves in danger by getting too close but only ended up getting wet. I am too nervous to even go metal detecting because it only takes one sneaker wave to pull someone out and the waves are much too dangerous right now.
In other news, my boy’s school experienced their first lockdown the day before picking up our puppy. That was a very scary morning but was over by noon. My wife texted me a link that she had just received from her friends but it didn’t contain much information. Then I noticed both my boys were receiving calls and texts on their devices. Those kids had been turned around from dropping them off by the police. Unfortunately, there was a huge tragedy a few blocks away with a terrible domestic violence incident a few blocks away and the police thought that assailant might still be in the area. An ex-husband stabbed the new boyfriend as well as ex-wife killing the boyfriend and seriously injuring the wife.
Very little information was coming out but thanks to my son’s friend who was in the lockdown and had his phone I was able to confirm they were locked in and OK. That was very reassuring. Then the police lifted the lockdown just before noon as the killer was ‘no longer in the area.’ He ended up getting pulled over while way up north and then killed himself. A very sad situation for sure and I was relieved to hear he would no longer be a threat as sad as that is. After it ended we picked up our kids, I had them skip school the next day and life went on. What a crazy world we live in.
During this holiday I took the time to send out a few thoughtful e-mails to friends and learned that the art of letter writing has been lost to most. Very short messages have replaced the longer e-mails that were common twenty years ago. Another reason is that old friendships start to fray and I think sending them a thoughtful message out of the blue might seem ‘strange.’ A third reason is perhaps everyone is too busy and the internet to demanding with all the notifications that people just don’t want to write long e-mails anymore. That is too bad. Society has become distracted and somewhat crazy on the internet. The World Wide Web was supposed to open up better cross communication, improve learning through readily available resources and just make life better.
Unfortunately, people now find themselves overwhelmed by ceaseless notifications, constant noise, social media echo chambers and their attention span has decreased leading to the rise of messages, videos and so on being very brief. Where once we had meaningful conversations in AOL chatrooms and enjoying content we previously had no access to we find that main trends are ridiculous. People post picture after picture of themselves, record themselves dancing and wearing less clothing all for internet ‘likes.’ The internet seems to have made people dumber and more narcissistic.
It is due to this that I’ve withdrawn from Facebook and most social media. These days I concentrate mostly on this blog, crypto, finance and learning. I make the internet work for me instead of letting the internet pull me into whatever nonsense has gone mainstream.
Anyway, the time is now 5:38 AM and I think I’ll try to get a bit more sleep before the day starts. Today I’ll get a workout in and am somewhat tempted to go metal detecting as the coastal flood warning should be over by noon.
