I said before that I had migrated all of my social media content to posts on SideshoViD.com, but that wasn't entirely true. I had not posted any of my Instagram stories. To be honest, that's mostly because I didn't know I could. I thought that once they disappeared they were gone. But the other day I noticed my "Archives" on Instagram had every story I'd ever posted.

They made it basically impossible to access that content from my laptop, but on mobile, there was a button to click to download the photo or video. I was astounded at how quickly videos were downloaded to my phone and then uploaded to my website. They must be compressed or optimized somehow. It was literally as fast as I could click that they were done. As a result, it only took a few evenings sitting on the couch crunching through them to complete 2018-2024.

The cool thing about that is that there was a period of time, a couple of years even, where stories were the sole format I used. I liked that they were more ephemeral, less pressure, and felt more spontaneous or narrative. So now a huge chunk of time from around 2022-2024 that was previously unrepresented has some history here.

I also like that it took the topic tag for "squirrels" from obscurity to #6 most popular topic. Those were the primary years we spent getting to know Muffin and trying to get her to eat out of our hands. So that is all documented now for posterity. She's here right now in fact having a little breakfast before heading out to work. Look for her to pop up a lot more in the This Day In History section! 🐿

Yesterday I have my first ever colonoscopy. Normally they say you should wait until you're 45 years old. But I think that's not so much because it's a good idea to wait and more of that insurance won't cover it until then. I was talking with a doctor recently and mentioned that my father had had colon cancer and he said, "Oh then you shouldn't wait until you're 45 yous should start when you're 40." Mmmk, well I'm 44 and a half years old, so great.

Regardless, I got it on the calendar and scheduled it for this year. My gall bladder surgery had not only met my deductible, but pushed me over my out of pocket maximum for the year, so it would be covered at 100%. Although I have to admit I didn't ever verify that it would be covered, so there very well could be a massive bill coming. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Colonoscopies, insurance, deductibles. Could I BE any more adult?

Everyone told me the colonoscopy was no big deal. They just give you some of Michael Jackson's milk and you doze off into blissful slumber. NOT really the whole story folks. Before you do that you have to spend an entire day eating nothing and taking absurd doses of laxatives and Miralax. I don't think they do the prescription jug of juice anymore, since you can accomplish the same thing by abusing over the counter drugs. It was so terrible. I couldn't sleep the entire night because I had to run to the bathroom every 15 minutes, nauseously hungry, and trying not to get dehydrated.

Sure the actual procedure was pretty nice. I really did prefer the propofol over the general anesthesia for a full blown surgery. Waking up was gentle and peaceful, not jarringly confusing with missing bits of memory. They did find 2 polyps and those are being biopsied so all in all I guess it was a good idea that I got this done, but please jebus don't make me do it more often than every 5 years. I am not looking forward to the next one.

A few years ago we attended a wedding in Austin where Daniel bumped into an old friend he hadn't seen in years. This friend told him he was now living in Milan ever since he had claimed his birthright citizenship in Italy. If you are descended from an Italian citizen and can prove it, you can claim your jure sanguinis right to your own citizenship. Italian citizenship, of course, comes with full rights and privileges of a European Union citizenship allowing you to live or work anywhere in the EU.

It wasn't for a while after we got home that we really got curious and started looking into whether this was a viable option for Daniel or not. We knew for certain he was Italian by blood, but just weren't sure exactly what the rules were, if we could sufficiently prove it, etc. We finally decided to take action and looked up the consultancy that his friend had used and set up an appointment. The guy did some genealogical research on the fly with us watching. He did it so incredibly fast using a multitude of tools. And what I appreciated the most was fast and accurately he could type. He was just zooming around the internet, pulling down documents, loading them into a folder.

He told us we could proceed and gave a list of documents to procure. And it was a lot. Basically every birth, marriage, and death certificate for EVERY member of his lineage all the way back to his great-grandfather, Segundo. It was time consuming and bureaucratic, but not terribly difficult. For some of the old documents from Italy we had to hire somebody to physically go look them up. The rest we could pretty much order online for a nominal fee. Some of those were quick and easy, some required telephoning some lady in an office in upstate New York and asking what the dillyo. But after a couple of years we had compiled the full list.

That then had to be notarized and approved as legit by the US government before they could be translated and sent to the Italian government. Then we waited. Last December he was informed that he had won his elective court case in Turino, Italy and was now a citizen! There was still more waiting for this decision and the resulting paperwork to be officially filed and on record in Asti. But we got notified last week that his Italian birth certificate and our Italian marriage certificate are both on file and official!

For next steps, he has registered online as an "Italian Living Abroad" and we'll probably have to wait a few months for that to go through and get approved. Then he will have access to services from the Italian consulate in Houston including getting his passport.

All we have to figure out then is when and where we're moving to in the EU.... Stay tuned!

I make some of my best decisions after a few drinks. You wouldn't have to look any further than my set of Ronco knives to know that. But I have another example now. A 37" flatscreen LCD! I had a little money to spend from xristmas and I was debating between a dining room table with all the necessary accoutrements or a TV and a Wii. At a post-new-years finish-the-keg party, RyanS■■■ and Daniel collectively convinced me that a TV was the way to go. So at 3 in the morning, we jetted off to Wal-Mart to get one. The first store didn't have the one we wanted so we went to another and stopped at Whataburger on the way. I haven't done that in forever. Their taquitos are as good as ever, so that made me glad. And we got the TV, bungee corded the trunk closed and brought it home and set it up at 4 in the morning. It's a Vizio and it has a really good picture, we just don't have any HD signals to feed to it. But Planet Earth look pretty spectacular.

Then we set off to find a Wii. Turns out, that's impossible. Well, impossible for someone with a life. I could spend my days calling stores, figuring out delivery schedules, and standing there waiting for a Wii to come in. Unfortunately, I am employed. So I call a few stores each weekend and they laugh at me. Just as well though, I accidentally overdrafted my account the other day. Not entirely because I'm broke but also because of an accounting error on my part. Nonetheless, it opened my eyes to the fact that I've been spending rampantly for months and have to stop. So I decided no Wii until I'm debt frii. Realistically with Febrehabruariv right around the corner, I can't imagine that won't be March. And we likely won't find one then either. But if anyone has a Wii they're willing to see at face value, let me know. I might take it off your hands in a little bit.

And finally, Febrehabruariv, the first leap year, I am looking so forward to it. Giving up food this year for the middle two weeks. The surrounding weeks, I'll be weaning off and then slowly acclimating back to food. C■■■■ said he was shipping me the book on how to properly do the Master Cleanse, so I'm looking forward to reading that. I'm going to follow it to the letter, no matter what. If I'm in the hospital for malnourishment, I'll be pushing the IVs away. I'll definitely keep everyone posted on that, because it could either be torture, or another inadvertent success. Either way I can't wait. Peace.

I cured that whole problem with sobriety last night. Leslie and I went to dinner at the Outback. My steak was so rare and delicious. I'm getting misty thinking about it again. Anyway, we had a bottle of wine with dinner and it was so good that Leslie decided we needed to drink wine. Since 'moderation' is a word that exists in none of our vocabularies, we went ahead and bought 18 bottles of wine, and then set about trying to finish them off. We got on the horn and invited a few people over. According to eye witness testimony, I passed out around 2am. I know that somewhere around 5, I randomly awoke, popped up off the floor, drank some more with the people who were still around, and then went to bed around 7.

For my alcoholic apptitude, I was awarded with a massive wine hangover. Tommy, Leslie, and I went to lunch at Olive Garden and it was all I could do to keep from hurling as my lasagna sat on a plate in front of me. To make it even worse, Leslie was drinking wine. We only polished off 12 bottles the night before, so when we got home, her and Tommy set to drinking again. I couldn't. I had to fall asleep in the recliner for a while. Then we watched Uptown Girls. You have got to see this movie, it was so excellent. I fucking loved it. I'm gonna watch it again tomorrow. Well then people came over and brought with them ... you guessed it ... 10 bottles of wine. Omega. I could not bring myself to drink, and stayed sober the entire night. All I had was 2 glasses of water.

In other news, if you have tried to call me in the past couple of days you might have noticed that my phone is dead. It ran out of battery like two days ago, and I left my charger over at Aaron's apartment when we were getting ready one night, and now he left town until Thursday. I was able to break into his apartment and get a shirt I left over there, but I forgot to grab my phone charger. Long story short, I hate my phone so much anyway, and I'm not gonna miss any important calls, so I'm not worried about the charger. I'll get it when I get it. Hope it hasn't been too much of a hassle for anyone. If it is, you should have been IMing me anyway. It is way past time for bed now. Peace out home fries.