March 13th 2025

So I haven't been able to mess with the Steam Deck much. It came Monday evening instead of the Wednesday it was supposed to be delivered. So I've downloaded a few games and put in maybe 30 minutes total playing Halo and Euro Truck Simulator. It feels lighter than I imagined and so far, so good. I think it'll be a nice thing to have to pick up and play occasionally.

Today, I my mouth feels mostly okay. Still weird and some pain, but ibuprofen is enough to handle it now. They took out all four wisdom teeth and the molar in front of the left bottom wisdom tooth due to a cyst that was eating away at its roots and my jaw. I had to have a bone graft for that area. I'll see them again in a couple of weeks to ensure it's all healing properly. The last several days have not been fun, pain wise.

My wife's heal seems to be getting worse, and financially we're operating in a deficit. I'm not sure how to handle things very well currently. But we'll just keep on keepin' on best we can. The tax return didn't help as much as we thought it would, to be honest. I just look at the numbers and scratch my head. The big cost is hiring help to assist my wife with the girls most days... But with her health, we can't really not do that. If it weren't for that, we'd at least break even. Such is life.

My youngest daughter is teething pretty hard right now. She's wanting held constantly and sometimes decides she doesn't, just to cry about being down... it's just a season, though. A very hard season in many aspects... but a season, nevertheless. There will be a day the flowers bloom. What a day that will be.

March 3rd 2025

Well, not really. Another diagnosis for the wife: confusional migraines. It's like a more severe migraine that can cause other issues, which do line up with her symptoms. That, POTS, and arthritis in her spine just like to keep her down. Our helper is leaving next week for an opportunity in her field of study, which is great for her, but means my wife is interviewing more people to help her during the days. So that's added stress for both of us, which causes even more issues. ♪♫ Life is but a dream ♫♪
We'll make it through everything, though. Our girls are doing well, at least. No more sickness. Our youngest is finally crawling more (she was only butt-scooting for months) and she's standing up a lot. She'll be walking soon.

I won a bid on eBay for a Steam Deck - it's an LCD model with the drive already upgraded to 1TB. It hasn't arrived yet, but I'm really hoping it will before Friday (it's shipping out today, a Monday). Hopefully it'll be in good working order. If so, I'll be able to finally play more of my Steam library - and tinker with it to get my GoG games and other sourced games working. Likely I'll install Baldur's Gate III, Halo MCC, and Beyond Two Souls first. And then slowly get through my backlog. I like the idea of it suspending my place so I can pick it up a few days later and jump back in. If it doesn't work correctly, I suppose I'll have to go through the eBay support, as it is covered under buyer's guarantee and listed as working... But surely it won't come to that.

Friday will not be a fun day for me, however. There's a cyst growing by my left bottom wisdom tooth that wasn't there a year or so ago, so it's got to go. And since they're already there, I'm having them go ahead and remove all 4 of my wisdom teeth. I've taken off the following Monday and Tuesday, just in case. My parents will be watching the girls all weekend to ensure proper care and rest for the first few days, which is nice. Very blessed to have my parents. My wife's dad actually just brought us 6 boxes of diapers unexpectantly as well, which is also a huge blessing. But yeah, that's why I'm hoping to have the Steam Deck by Friday. To have free time in recovery to mess with it. If I even feel up for it - unsure how the extractions are going to leave me.

February 20th 2025

There's definitely sickness in the house. My daughters are both running fevers and my wife got prescribed something for her issues. I have yet to see a doctor, but I'm on the up and up anyway. My girls will see their pediatrician later today.

My wife has been falling fairly often with her issues, which they just diagnosed as POTS. Hopefully they'll find something to help her. I got her an Apple Watch a couple weeks ago, and it shows how her heart rate jumps nearly 40 bpm just standing up. We've had bad weather this week, which means the helper we usually have over for the girls was not able to come. I had to miss a day of work, which I'll need to make up this weekend. My mother is going to get off work early today to help my wife with our kids, as she's fallen a couple times today and is struggling. I don't know how to help her. I can't really... Which is very frustrating. So again, hopefully with this new diagnosis, they'll find a way to help mitigate the symptoms. It's gotten worse lately.

And now time for something completely different... I've been eyeballing the e-ink phone market. There's only a few that offer full-fledged Android without limitations, and they don't work very well with US bands. There's one just releasing from a small company that might fit the bill, but I'm not sure. I won't need a new phone for hopefully years (currently rocking a Galaxy Z Fold 3 and don't use the inside screen much) so maybe there will be a few viable options by then. I just feel like having an e-ink phone display would be cool and a good way to limit usage. I'd just need to be able to still use the important apps, as I don't use my laptop often. 

I've also been checking out the Steam Deck or similar. You can find them used for ~$300 and I feel like I'd use it more than the laptop. It would certainly be able to play more of my games! And be easier to just stop if a girl woke up. Once we see the tax return numbers, maybe it'll be in for consideration. We're on a very tight budget currently.

February 13th 2025

So I think sickness is in my house - I've not felt the best for a few days and neither has my wife. Thankfully, the kids still seem fully themselves. Hopefully they don't get sick... That makes the lack of sleep even harder for me - I'm functional and managing, but it isn't fun. Such is life. Apparently, my primary care physician moved to another clinic, so I'll probably switch to the one my wife uses - she thinks he's good, so why not. I should probably establish that soon and get blood work done, as it's been like seven years since I've had blood work. 

Eventually, I'd like to get a laser engraver. Couldn't be an expensive one, but there are a few ~$150 ones that look like decent places to start. I figure I could use it to make some merch for my wife's business, such as coasters, custom tumblers, etc. I'd need to clean up a space in the workshop for one and make sure it gets proper ventilation, but that's easy stuff. 

I've still got to organize some things in order to bring a wardrobe into the bedroom and move my closet into it. I feel like after that's done, things will progress easier... But getting to that point is difficult with exhaustion and time.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. We're just going to stay home and do a little something there - I'm not sure what yet, but the girls are likely going to my parents' house for the night. I've got a box from The Adventure Challenge that has a pottery wheel and is for a date night, so maybe we'll bust that out if we feel up to it. Again, with the sickness in the house, unsure just what we'll feel up to. May just end up as a movie night. We'll see.

February 7th 2025

I got tired of having the broken navigation and had made an account with Silex.me a while back anyway. It is a little more complicated than Mobirise, but everything works. I'll make tweaks to things here and there, but this ugly thing you're looking at today is likely how it'll stay for a long time. The good news is, it's online based, so I don't have to do it on my personal laptop.

In other news, I discovered the "assistive reader" on the Kindle app, which is making reading so much easier. Now when I'd dead tired in the middle of the night giving our youngest a bottle to appease her, I can hit play and follow along with the words and absorb the text easier. When I'm able to, I still prefer sitting down and just reading on my own. That's not as frequent as it used to be, so this is a much better option than taking months to finish a book. It still might, but just... not as long as it would take otherwise. I'm already 30% through Queen of Shadows, which I didn't start too long ago, after all. 
Speaking of books, after this series, I'm thinking of reading either The Dark Tower series by Stephen King or tackling some of the Halo books. There are so many Halo books out there, but I have a list of them I'd probably get through and be done. Again, if you have any suggestions for books, feel free to email me.

My wife's putting her products in another local shop that doesn't charge a monthly fee for small amounts of stock, which is nice. So now she's in two local areas to send people to. Her health issues are getting worse, though. She's falling occasionally and they haven't been able to diagnose it. Hopefully they will soon so they can start treating the symptoms. If you're a praying person, please keep my family in your prayers.

February 5th 2025

Stress is immense in this time of my life. Managing it is rather difficult at times with the two kids. They just turned 1 and 2 years old, which is awesome to think about, but crazy at the same time. They've both been going through sleep regressions at the same time, which means I'm not sleeping. So sleep deprivation is nearly every day. On top of financial stress. And clutter. We have a lot of things to sort through, get rid of, and organise.

But we're figuring it out. Slowly, but surely. After all, that's what life is all about. Figuring it out. But you'll never truly figure everything out, so what you're really trying to figure out is how to manage knowing you're never truly have it figured out.

Anyhow, that's sort of why this blog exists. To be an outlet. Send my thoughts and updates out to the abyss, where anyone can read. It is somewhat comforting, thought I'm not sure why.

As life goes on, ideally this website will expand. Evolve. Maybe I'll learn enough to get off the free website builder Mobirise. By the way, I know the hamburger menu on mobile does not work. I don't know enough to troubleshoot it properly, yet. Maybe if I tried making it from scratch, instead of imported from Mobirise. I might try that sometime when I have the time...

If anyone ends up reading this, I hope you're having a good day. And if you're not, hang in there. You're not alone. Life is chaos at times, but that doesn't mean it will always be. That goes for me, too.

Until next time,
Zach

January 22nd 2025

For some reason, I decided to make a Patreon. If someone out there is looking at this website, do you want to supply me a coffee or two a month? My only tier is $5. If someone is silly enough to do that, message me. I'll figure out something for you.

In other news, I have a Dell Rugged 5414 I got from eBay for $150. Integrated graphics, so it can't do much... But it runs Need for Speed Carbon and Halo: Combat Evolved really well! If you have recommendations for low end games, let me know. I'll probably play them on my lunch break at work once, maybe twice a week.

I'm currently reading the Throne of Glass series due to a friend recommending it. It's not something I'd normally read, but it's pretty good. I'm just now branching out of reading Stephen King's books pretty much exclusively. Due to lack of time, it takes a long time for me to actually finish a book. But hey, at least I'm reading.


Seriously, if any of you subscribe to my Patreon, I'll figure out something after a bit of confusion.  

January 9th 2025

After updating the website a few times, all the links were broken briefly. This was due to renaming the pages' filenames and for some reason Mobirise (the offline sitebuilder I use) was not updating the filenames in the coding (ie: page1.html to Blog.html).

I'll have to keep an eye on this and may have to update the coding before uploading from Mobirise each time until it hopefully clicks with the new names. A minor inconvenience as there are only 3 pages to update this on.

Still unsure about the format of this blog or the contents I'll put in it, but for now, this is what you get.

Oh, in other news, my wife has signed a contract with a local antique mall to have a booth inside it to sell her wares. This is exciting as every time we've had a pop-up shop or were at a farmer's market, people asked if she was anywhere local, so now we will be able to say yes! 

January 4th 2025

In the past week, I've ventured from Arkansas to Pennsylvania to visit my wife's grandma, who just turned 100.

It actually went better than expected, given it was 16+ hours on the road with two under two. Part of the reason it went so well was we brought a friend, who sat in the back where the kids could see her the entire trip pretty much.

My wife just signed up for space inside an antique market to sell her skincare things in person all the time, instead of only online or at event we're manning... So that's exciting. We set up in 2 weeks. Maybe this year I'll get a laser engraver and be able to assist with some branded merchandise as well as just have fun with it.

In the future, I might expand on things, but for now, this is a test blog. Can't believe it's already 2025 and my kids are turning 1 and 2 in February... So much to do, so little time.