There are a lot of interesting things in the world. And time is a limiting resource, like money. Everybody has ways they want to spend their time time, and ways they don't. Here I'll outline how I like to spend my time, which are many of the things I'll be writing about in the future.
I enjoy reading, in particular history but also plenty of fiction. Over the past few years this has included 1776 (Mccullough), His Excellency (Ellis), Hamilton (Chernow), Thomas Jefferson (Bernstein) and I'm currently in Undaunted Courage (Ambrose), rounding out some time in the Revolutionary Era. I also read through all of the Song of Ice and Fire and re-read the Fellowship of the Ring and A Tale of Two Cities. A giant Napoleon bio is going to be next and I can hardly wait. I actually think this is a shamefully short list for a few year period, and yet I continue to buy books I won't get to for a while. Regardless, I like to have books. Eventually I'll read them, loan them out, or just have them for my kids. It's all a drive, to know more and understand more, that sometimes makes me feel like I'm trying to be completionist at life. And this extends across interests.
I enjoy sports, first and foremost baseball. I loved the Twins as a kid and listened to the radio broadcast in bed every night. With their horrible years in the 90s I drifted away but came back in 01/02. Now we watch nearly every game. When we moved to Maryland my only demand was to get Extra Innings. Since college I've played fantasy baseball and pretty obsessively follow the whole league. I love chatting with fans of other teams and knowing what I'm talking about. Yes, I like football, and have a love-hate relationship with the Vikings. This is the first year we're off DirecTV so I can't watch all the games, but it's a good thing. For quite a few years I quit fantasy football because I didn't do well and it made me enjoy the game less. Of course I'm playing again, and in three leagues, but am I enjoying it? (Shrugs) As alumni, we also follow the Gophers hockey, football, and basketball teams. Hockey for a while was my favorable secondary sport to follow but they've struggled the last few years and I can't watch most of the games. Fleck has the football team playing great this year and all of a sudden they're a blast to watch. Sports have always consumed a great deal of my time and lately I sometimes wonder why I put myself through it. But I'm not sure what might change. I actually golf and play softball too, and wish I could get myself into basketball again.
I enjoy whisk(e)y and craft beer. Here's where I may be a typical millennial male, but so be it. There will almost certainly be more alcohol posts than sports ones. I don't know if there will be much sports on here, actually. Any-hoo, a friend of mine tried several times to get me into Scotch after he gained an appreciation for it in college. It didn't take. A different friend gave me a bottle of Macallan 12 at our wedding. Still didn't like it, and with the bottle half gone I stashed it. 6 months later I pulled it out and for whatever reason had an a-ha moment. Over the next few months I explored all sorts of liquor stores trying to find which places had good selection and prices. It still astounds me how much prices vary from place to place. Now I keep prices in my head and know what is high, low, or acceptable on quite a few bottles. Since moving to Maryland, we've traveled to Ireland and Scotland and I've gotten my wife into whisky as well. She prefers the peaty stuff from Islay, a beautiful place we've visited twice and dearly want to see again. I like bourbon (probably drink it most), and Irish, but there's something special about Scotch, especially stuff matured in Sherry. Also yes, I like craft beer. When we travel, we go to breweries. When we go out in town, we usually go to a brewery. I always have something in the fridge. It's just part of our way of life. IPAs are usually my favorite, but like sours and dark beers and other stuff too.
I enjoy pop culture, especially film, TV, and video games. Admittedly, the film side isn't always super high brow stuff, because I love the MCU and lot of other comic book movies and can talk about them at length. But I'm at (as of today) 156 of the top 250 on IMDB and added nearly 1200 movies to my watchlist, which is how I keep track what I've seen. If I have to pick a favorite it would be Once Upon a Time in the West. I'm also a sucker for prestige TV. There's too much of it out there right now. Stranger Things, the Crown, and Daredevil have been must see for me. I really have loved Fargo and hope there's more of it. Old HBO is so good with The Wire, Deadwood, and Rome. Then there's Breaking Bad, Penny Dreadful, Justified. Ok, that's it for now, but I love to talk about any of those shows. Lastly, I've always been a nerd and like games. I know I need to limit how many and which games I play though because when I'm hooked I'm hooked. That means no unlimited exploration games, like Elder Scrolls. No MMORPGs. While I do branch out a little, two consistent series are Halo and Zelda. I just finished Breath of the Wild, and ho boy, was that a lot of fun. I did get into Destiny 2 last year and am debating starting that up again.
I enjoy doing puzzles and organizing things. Puzzles are self explanatory, right? We have a few 2000 piecers framed in our house from years past. Zelda games are full of puzzles, which is part of the reason they are so great. As for organization, it borders on OCD at times, for sure, but it's also the reason QA was (is?) such a good fit for me. I joke that I had built a career out of organizing things, because that's the simplest way to describe how I operated. When we travel, I pack and re-pack what has to be an annoying number of times. As part of getting the cabinets re-faced in our kitchen a couple weeks ago, we had to remove and replace everything. I saw that as an opportunity to not only get rid of some stuff but re-do how the kitchen was organized. It took a few days but it's definitely improved. There's always more to do in this vein, so I have to pick and choose. Because when I do something, it needs to be right.
I enjoy making things, though this is certainly the most recent and developing interest. So far it's basically just food related. Last summer we had a bunch of cucumbers in our little garden and I made fridge pickles, which turned out to be hugely popular with our friends, so I expanded this summer. I've also started making kombucha, a drink I was turned onto this year. Luckily for me, my sister-in-law already has a brew setup and was able to send a couple SCOBYs to get me off the ground. I'm on batch four and starting to experiment with flavors and bubbles, which is the fun part. Very recently I've also made a delicious Limoncello lemon cake and a pretty good bacon and spinach quiche, if I can say so myself. It turns out I'm more capable in the kitchen than I ever thought I could be.
Oh, right. And for the last 8 years I've spent an absurd amount of time on Twitter. I certainly can't have Tweetdeck open all day or look at my phone like I used to, since I need to entertain and care for our son. But that's still my primary daily source of news and other info. I should take a break again around Christmas.
So it's a lot. I can usually only focus on one or two of the actual time consuming activities. For example, I'll binge a TV show if I have free time during the day and then watch baseball at night. Reading and video games often don't happen much during the summer. Then I'll try to play catchup on games I want to play and movies I want to see during the rest of the year. Meanwhile, I've bought some more books. Always playing catchup. I know I'll have to winnow these things (or at least much of the time committed to them) as we raise kids. For now, hopefully, I can preserve some tidbits here.
Time to call this one. I'm still not entirely sure what the blog is going to be, but we'll find out.
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