Instructions are boring. Necessary, but boring. And, more often than not, they’re incredibly poorly written.

I planned to get involved in Movember this year. Just grow out the ‘stache for fun and then clear cut it all at the end of the month.

I just realized I never shared a picture of us in our family Halloween costumes! We decided to play off Nathan’s C2E2 costume and went as DC Comics villains.

Well crap. There goes my world again.

Oh Aldi, you win.

Aye yi yi.

At first, I just felt a little lazy and lapsed on posting a couple times last week. Then it became an issue where I couldn't post even though I wanted to because my blogging company was switching data centers and the prep and actual move caused all kinds of havoc with posting and access and... blech.

Katie and I took Nathan to see the infamous floating Max Mayfield in Plainfield, IL, tonight. Despite easily figuring out the trick to the illusion, it was still pretty sweet to see in person with several hundred other fans.

After way too many years out of the fold, I’m grabbing hold of my Chicago Bears fandom by the throat this season.

We do a fairly simple, yet fun, setup in front of our house for Halloween. Some pumpkins, a spinning light display, fake spider webbing that we added this year, a Frankenstein's monster painted decorative pumpkin on top of our tall arbor vitae, and a large inflated and internally lit Oogie Boogie from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

I took Nathan to his first garage sale this weekend. No real reason we hadn’t gone to one sooner, we just didn’t. So we went when we saw one that had “kids and teens” noted on the signs.

Hey, Katie! Can you believe that today is our 21st anniversary? You’ve been married to me (translation: put up with but have not yet mortally wounded) for a legal drinker’s worth of years!

Today was our second and final apple picking session of the fall. Not as many apples as we picked the first time out, but it was enough to provide us with excess so we could make our first batch into apple sauce.

Do any of you take part in online contests for free stuff ever? Or are you jaded and think that most of these contests are either rigged or just a means to mine personal data from entrants?

So I tried one of those Cactus Plant Flea Market “adult” Happy Meals from McDonald’s tonight. A bunch of people at work were talking about them and buying them, so I caved to peer pressure and got one.

We might have to go full-on Stranger Things this weekend with these very strange things we found at Walmart a few weeks back.

One of my favorite things to do in the fall is to go apple picking. This is something Katie and I started doing soon after Nathan was born and it has become an annual tradition for us sometimes going twice a year.

We turned a corner last night with the flu here in Kasa Kapgar. Both Katie and Nathan are on the mend. Bathroom frequency is way down and food tolerance is way up! I like that.

Today marks the third calendar day that we’ve been dealing with the flu here in our household.

Hail is fun.

Remember the talk about the desk redux? It’s done! Took some jiggling with wires and setups and mountings and placement, but we got it. And here it is…

Can a 47-year-old, overweight, bald, brutally-uncool, dad-joke-telling man get away with wearing this shirt in public even if he is a staunch supporter of the band?

My son looked at me earlier today and said, "Dad, you're not swearing as much lately as you used to."

I saw this bumper sticker not on the bumper of a car today...

I’ve been waiting for months to finally use the cool crane arm monitor mount Katie bought me. But I haven’t been able to because stupid Samsung didn’t have VESA mounting available on my old secondary monitor.

I'm just gonna say it, slam me if you will, but digital assistants bug me. I know I tried to get into it for the purpose of home automation a few years ago. But when that bombed out, I became nothing but skeptical of them and their "abilities."

Today, we got a piece of spam mailed to us from the Institute for Brain Potential in "Los Banos, CA." 

If there is any one thing in this world more needlessly complicated than a digital alarm clock, I defy you to name it.

Man, I really wasn’t sure this week was going to end. It was a weird, wild, prolonged, disjointed, unpredictable week. And it’s finally over.

I need a pool day tomorrow. 

It would appear that I’ve become the “man in the yellow hat.”

Did I mention that yesterday at C2E2, I met Michael Rooker, the actor from The Guardians of the Galaxy, The Walking Dead, The Belko Experiment, Cliffhanger, and Mallrats, among sooo much more.

Yup, we finished the costume. He looked great. And he and I had fun. Tons of it.

I have always feared conventions and festivals. I don’t like crowds. I hate them, in fact. So, other than the Pitchfork Music Festival, I avoid them.

Well, I guess I now know what caused the slow leak we had under our kitchen sink...

To cop a catchphrase from the Sex and the City spin-off… and just like that, Katie’s car was paid off.

Lately, Nathan and I have become frustrated with our local comic shop. It’s right up the street from us and is huge and has a lot of variety but that’s becoming not enough for us.