Feb 07 2026 2026-02-07 2026-02-07 by Ross

Pity Party for One…

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

I know this is a bit of catastrophizing, but for the first time in my life I’m really feeling my age. Fifty-nine. I’m sure my body complained when I was younger too, but I wasn’t aware of it in the same way. Back then I bounced back from injuries. A small cut healed in a day. I got out of bed and walked down stairs without a second thought.

Now? Not so much.

Everything hurts.

Some of this, I know, is temporary. I’ve had a cold for the last week. Nothing dramatic, but enough to knock me down. I took two days off work. I sat around. I didn’t exercise. And as always, not moving made everything worse. Weak, stiff, sluggish. The good news is I know how this part goes: next week I ease back into exercising, slowly rebuild, and claw my way back to baseline. It sucks, but it is what it is.

The broken arm is also mending. I’m just about a month out now. I still feel it, and I’m not eager to put weight on it, but I should be back in the pool next week just to keep the range of motion. That helps… except it also means that even though I feel weak, I can’t really do much strength training yet. So I wait. Another two or three weeks, then I start building strength again. Again, not permanent. Just annoying.

Then there are my wrists. Both of them. They’ve hurt like hell for a month. Some of it is clearly overuse — too many pull sets with paddles — but they don’t seem to be getting any better. It probably doesn’t help that I keep learning drums, playing bass, and generally refusing to ice anything or take NSAIDs like a responsible adult.

My knees have hurt for years. That’s not new. I walk down stairs one step at a time now — both feet on each step — which is a sentence I never imagined typing. The back of my right knee has been tinging for a while, and now the front of it has started popping. Because of course it has.

And to top it all off, I wake up in the morning and can’t fully straighten my arms.

That one is new.

It goes away after twenty minutes or so, but still. What the hell is that?

As if my body decided to pile on, my senses have joined the rebellion.

My hearing is going. I can’t really hear my wife unless she’s in the room and looking at me when she talks. If she says something from another room, it might as well be a different language. Half the time I respond based on context clues and hope for the best. This has not always gone well.

My eyes aren’t much better. I’ve had one cataract removed. That eye is still wonky, and the other one has a small cataract of its own, plus generally poor vision for good measure. My glasses help, of course, but most of the time I just wear cheaters — even when I’m not reading — so both eyes are equally fuzzy. I can’t see especially well, but it’s easier on my eyes. Low expectations, evenly distributed.

I know — none of this is catastrophic. I know a lot of it will pass. I know I’m still running, biking, swimming, working, living my life. This isn’t despair. It’s just… awareness. The slow, creeping realization that my body no longer quietly resets overnight. It negotiates. It complains. It needs warm-ups. And apparently, it now has opinions about sound and light.

Anyway. Pity party for one. No gifts, no RSVPs required. I’ll shut it down shortly and get back to doing what I always do: moving forward carefully, grumbling a bit, and pretending I’m still indestructible — just with more stretching, louder voices, and bigger fonts.

 


Feb 06 2026 2026-02-06 2026-02-06 by Ross

Less Is More…

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

As I get older, I’ve adopted less is more as a mantra. It applies to most things, especially where I see dysfunction.

I know I said I wouldn’t talk politics, so this may be a slight violation, but if the U.S. government spent less money, we’d get better service. More money means more agencies and less oversight. You simply can’t follow all that money, and billions get stolen or wasted.

And it’s not that people along the chain don’t care—it’s that they like it this way. They are stealing or wasting the money. They’re getting money, votes, power, or influence, and the system protects them. The people at the bottom of the line don’t have the political acumen or leverage to complain, and even if they did, the answer would be to spend more money to fix the problem.

Spend a heck of a lot less. Make states pick up anything beyond the bare minimum, and I’ll bet a ton of that fraud disappears. This isn’t new. Twenty years ago I represented clients who ripped off Medicaid. Same behavior, different scale.

The same principle applies to schools.

Trying to push through the curriculum and doing more work doesn’t improve learning. It kills student motivation and achievement. I hear so many colleagues talk about being “behind” in the curriculum. Behind what, exactly? According to whose calendar?

I’ll work on a topic until students actually master it, then move on. Less coverage is more learning. Learning is a lifetime thing.  There’s plenty of time to “get through the curriculum,” and getting through it is far less important than students learning the underlying skills—how to read carefully, think clearly, ask good questions, and figure things out on their own. If they leave knowing how to learn, they’ll keep learning long after they’ve forgotten whatever unit we rushed through in March.

Political anxiety is another version of the same problem.

I wish there were a social movement to boycott social media, blogs, and 24/7 news. So much of it is click- and rage-bait. The authors don’t care. They want eyeballs, which lead to ad sales. Same with nonstop news channels. They have to fill the time even when there isn’t any news, and outrage keeps people watching. They’re selling soap.

If people stopped engaging—Twitter, BlueSky, Reddit, blogs—we’d deny them the eyeballs. Go outside. Get sun. Exercise. Play music. Make art. Read. Volunteer. There are endless things to do that don’t involve ramping yourself up over the outrage of the moment.

I’d make a horrible therapist. A friend mentioned how many clients she sees who are deeply anxious and depressed about the U.S. Really—Trump. (I live in a very liberal town.) If I were the therapist, I’d say: turn off the TV, delete the social media apps, and find one volunteer commitment a week. Tutor kids. Work at a soup kitchen. Whatever. Done.

I keep a daily habit tracker specifically to avoid doomscrolling: read for 30 minutes, play an instrument for 30 minutes, practice ASL. I’d tell them to do the same. Make brownies for a neighbor while listening to music instead of the news. Anything but feeding the beast.

Life isn’t that bad. The standard of living in the U.S. is fantastic. Access to medical care, technology, information—it’s not perfect and never will be, but too many people have a financial or political interest in keeping people outraged.

Honestly, when a friend shows full-blown Trump Derangement Syndrome—or the right-wing version—I tend to think they’re being used and don’t realize it. Especially since most of them are educated, upper-middle-class, employed white people who aren’t personally suffering any of it.  That doesn’t mean they can’t work for change, but the mental melt-downs seem both excessive, performative, and attention-seeking.

Less really is more.


Jan 29 2026 2026-01-29 2026-01-29 by Ross

How Not to Train, Part Unknown…

Posted in How Not to Train

Every once in a while it’s worth resurrecting an old series, if only because I keep generating fresh material for it. In a previous blog life, I ran an occasional feature called “How Not to Train,” documenting the many creative ways I managed to sabotage Ironman and marathon prep—drinking the night before races, convincing myself a Cheetos salad (a large plate of Cheetos) counted as recovery nutrition, that sort of thing. It’s been a while since I’ve needed that category. Until now.

On January 11th, I posted my training update and casually mentioned that I had tripped and eaten it during a run. Nothing dramatic. Sidewalk, gravity, me. The scabs are healing nicely, thank you for asking. The elbow, however, has been a different story.

It didn’t hurt much right after the fall. In fact, I don’t remember thinking about it at all. But over the last two weeks, it’s been getting progressively worse. Probably didn’t help recovery that I kept swimming as if nothing happened, and then went skiing in Utah. In hindsight, that may not have been the recommended rehab plan.

This morning was the tipping point. I woke up and couldn’t straighten my arm for about an hour. That’s when I finally waved the white flag and made an urgent care appointment. Which—credit where due—I’m glad I did. Sometimes you just want to know what’s actually going on, if only to confirm that you’re not being dramatic.

Turns out, my arm is broken. Has been for about two weeks now.

So no, it wasn’t my imagination. Also, having never broken a bone in my life, I guess I didn’t really know what “broken” is supposed to feel like. Apparently, it feels like something you can ignore, swim on, ski on, and then eventually regret.

It’s a radial head fracture, non-displaced, which is doctor-speak for “yes, it’s broken, but no, you’re not winning any medals for it.” Not that bad. Clearly not that bad if I’ve been swimming and skiing on it. The doctor said 6–12 weeks to heal. I’m generously counting two of those weeks as already completed.  Training when sore?  I can do that.  Training with a broken arm?  Yeah, probably wasn’t a good idea.

They sent me home with a prescription for Aleve, which raises the eternal question: why don’t they just say “take more regular Aleve”? It’s like when my wife gave birth and they handed her 800 mg of ibuprofen. You didn’t invent a new drug here. You just stapled authority to a dosage.  Just tell her to take four pills.

Anyway, lesson learned. Or not. We’ll see. IMWI Base Phase officially starts on February 16th.  I’ll run and bike (but not put weight on that arm) until then, and then add back swimming.  The bone is healed when I say it’s healed.  I’m giving it until 2/16.*

 

*Yup, those will probably be words I regret when my arm is permanently bent because it heals badly.


Jan 19 2026 2026-01-19 2026-01-19 by Ross

Random Thoughts

Posted in Memories, Old Man Yelling at the Sky

When I was a child, my father had partial-season tickets to Chicago White Sox games. We’d go on some weekends. Great memories. Driving down I-94 and spotting Comiskey Park, and going early to get autographs. I can still name the lineups for those teams. So, I was saddened to wake up this morning and learn that Wilbur Wood died. He was one of the best pitchers on those teams. He was 84, so it isn’t a surprise, just still sad. Time passes.

On that, I mentioned before, my wife is turning our oldest son’s room into a guest room. I was talking to someone who put what I was feeling into better words than I did. When I walk into the room, I don’t see the furniture, paint scheme, or artwork. I see my son as a toddler, a young child, and a teenager. I see the younger son wrestling with him, both of them giggling like mad. I see myself reading him a bedtime story. That’s why I was so against it. I miss those days and THAT kid terribly. I love the man who has replaced the child, but I feel a loss of the child. OTOH, he probably sees something similar, but wants to look forward. He may not want to walk into a room where he feels like a child and not a grown man. I get it.

The other day I saw an ad for the Hatch 3. It’s an alarm clock with a built-in sound machine and a “sunrise alarm clock” that wakes you up with light. It looked cool until I saw that, if you want the full library of features, you need a subscription. I HATE subscription models for anything other than streaming services and magazines. If i buy you product, I want the product. I don’t want to rent it or pay more to use what I purchased. I detest Microsoft these days. In older (read: better) times, you bought Word or the suite. Now, you pay monthly. Just sell it to me. I don’t like paying for a monthly subscription, so my car dashboard works only partially (I don’t pay and thus don’t have “full” access). I get why businesses like it, but it’s an instant turn-off to me.

Last, my daughter is heading back to college today.  Back to the empty nest.  I’m okay with that.  The kids are all sorting themselves out and doing well.  Like my son’s childhood bedroom, time to start seeing them as adults.  Still, I hurt when I see pictures of them as kids.  I wish I could play with them just one more time.  Hug them.  Wrestle like we used to.  Color at the dinner table.  Anything.   Best I can do is keep building good memories with them now (and maybe hope for grandkids….I TOTALLY get grandparents now…reliving toddlers but without the big hassles 🙂  )


Jan 15 2026 2026-01-15 2026-01-15 by Ross

Grumpy Old Man Is Grumpy

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky, Work

I wasn’t a great high school student. I get it.

But it was different.

We’d come into a classroom loud, talking, laughing, finishing a story from the hallway. But when the teacher said, “Okay, let’s begin,” or even just cleared their throat, we quieted down. We faced forward. That was the signal. Class had started.

I don’t remember students deciding to rearrange furniture. You didn’t drag your desk over to face your buddy. You didn’t turn your chair away from the board to socialize. You sat where you were told to sit, facing the front, and you either paid attention—or pretended to.

And we did the work.

Maybe not well. Maybe not enthusiastically. Maybe an essay was half-assed or a worksheet was rushed. But we did it. We listened to lectures. We read along in textbooks. We read silently. We filled out worksheets. We dissected fetal pigs. Whatever the task was, we did something.

Today, many students treat work as optional.

They’ll spend an entire class period on their phone—watching a movie, playing a game, scrolling endlessly—while groups of friends just hang out and talk. I walk around nonstop policing it, redirecting, asking for phones to be put away. Five minutes later, the phone is back out. Again. And again. And again.

We aren’t allowed to take phones. I can ask a student to hand it over—one did today—but if they say no, there’s nothing I can do except call home. And about 90% of the time, the parent either doesn’t care or tells me the kid needs the phone.

This semester I rearranged the desks to all face forward.  Two students per desk.  Every class but one has been great.

Face forward. Work in chunks. Worksheets and projects completed in front of me and turned in the same class period. No computers. No phones. No cheating. Structure. Accountability.

And honestly? It’s been great—in most classes.

But every year, there’s that one class.

This year, it’s my 8th period. Last period of the day. Ten students. Two who care. Three who are mildly interested. And five who want to sit in a group and do absolutely nothing.

This is a financial literacy class. “Adulting” stuff. Budgeting. Rent. Cars. Insurance. Saving. Investing. Things they will actually need when they leave high school.

Today’s task was straightforward: research average rents across different Chicago neighborhoods. Consider how safety, commute, entertainment, and location shape rent. Pair that with a starting salary for their chosen career. Calculate net pay (simplified). Apply the 30% rule for housing.

Every other class did it.

They all reached the same conclusion: The rent is too damn high. Maybe roommates are necessary. Maybe living at home for a bit isn’t failure—it’s survival.

This group? Learned nothing.

And here’s the part I don’t like admitting: it frustrates me because I know I’m going to pay for it.

Teachers and administrators are trying to prepare these kids for college, the military, the trades, or the workforce. In my class, I’m trying to teach them how to function as adults—how to budget, save, invest, rent an apartment, buy a car, pay utilities, and understand insurance.

They won’t learn it.

They won’t develop executive functioning skills. They won’t build basic competencies. They won’t leave with the reading, writing, or math skills needed for an apprenticeship, let alone anything beyond menial labor.

And then—my tax dollars will support them.  I’ll pay the housing, food assistance, medical care, and all the welfare-type benefits.

That’s the part that burns.

They have the opportunity to improve their situation. They have access to education. They have a chance to rise above poverty. Whether the reasons are systemic, cultural, personal, or motivational—I’m not here to assign blame.

I’m just saying this situation exists.

Now that it’s off my chest, I’ll add this: the other four classes are good. My AP kids are fantastic. I stay in touch with former students who’ve gone on to do meaningful things and improve their circumstances.

Focusing on them keeps me motivated.

But banging my head against the wall every day with the others?

That part is soul-sucking.  I’m ready to retire.


Jan 15 2026 2026-01-15 2026-01-15 by Ross

End of an Era (or: 1-800-GOT-JUNK vs. My Feelings)…

Posted in Family, Memories

My oldest son is 25.

He hasn’t lived at home since he left for college at 18. Sure, he came back for summers. Sure, his laundry mysteriously reappeared clean and folded during those visits. But after graduation, he moved full-time to New York City for work, and after that, Boston for law school. He’s been launched for years now.

Which makes this whole thing irrational.

My wife has been antsy to turn his room into a guest room. To be fair, the furniture is still straight out of his elementary school years. The bed has seen things. The dresser has been opened by small hands sticky with Popsicle residue. I get upgrading.

But I love that room.

I love the paint color. I love the paintings on the wall. I love the framed historical documents he picked out himself—because of course he did. I love the giant cube bookshelf that somehow made the room feel both academic and slightly chaotic, which is exactly right.

While he was home over Christmas break, my wife talked to him about it. He was fine with everything being changed except two things: keep the color, and keep the framed documents. Deal struck. Reasonable. Adult.

Fast forward to today.

I came home from work to learn that 1-800-GOT-JUNK was scheduled to arrive in one hour to take everything else.

Everything.

I am taking this far harder than my son, who—if I’m being honest—did not take it hard at all. He was cool. Casual. “Yeah, whatever,” energy. Emotionally healthy. Annoying.

I understand the logic. I understand that my kids have moved out. I understand that they will almost certainly never move back home in any permanent way. But those are still their rooms. They always will be.

In my head, someday they visit with their own kids. They walk down the hallway and say, “This is where your dad used to sleep.” There’s a bed. There’s a wall. There’s a sense of continuity. Proof that this wasn’t all a dream.

Instead, there will be a tasteful guest room.

I know—this is how time works. Rooms change. Kids grow up. Houses evolve. Still, watching a crew haul away the physical evidence of a childhood feels… final. Like a chapter being boxed up and labeled miscellaneous.

Nothing is actually lost. My son is fine. Thriving, even. The memories are intact. But the room mattered. It held a version of him that only exists now in photos and stories and my increasingly unreliable brain.

End of an era.

Apparently, it ends with a phone call to 1-800-GOT-JUNK.

 

—  Coda (Yes, I See the Irony)

I should probably admit that I’m typing this while sitting in my younger son’s room.

Recently, I removed his bed to make room for a drum set.

So yes—I am 100% a hypocrite.

In my defense (which is weak, but still), he lives and works in town, so we see him all the time. He’s here regularly. He comes by to use the weight set in the basement. He has a presence. A rhythm. Evidence of life.

Also—and this feels important—the bed is going back. The drums are moving to the basement. This is temporary. Transitional. A borrowed moment.

All his decorations are still on the walls. Nothing has been stripped. Nothing hauled off. It’s still his room. I’m just… occupying it for a bit. Like a subletter with emotional baggage.

So maybe that’s the difference. One feels like a pause. The other feels like a conclusion.

Still, if you need me, I’ll be over here, judging myself quietly while trying to convince a drum kit to behave.


Jan 12 2026 2026-01-12 2026-01-12 by Ross

Things That Don’t Deserve Their Own Post

Posted in Misc

Getting old.
The other day, my wife was in a conversation at work and referred to someone as Gladys Kravitz. Blank stares all around. Nothing. No recognition. No spark.

This—among many other things—is why I could never handle a big age gap in a marriage. I make a reference like that, and she gives me a “who?” look. And then I have to decide whether to explain it (which kills it) or quietly mourn the slow disappearance of shared cultural memory.

Little surprise.
I was putting a record on at work, and a business card fell out of the album sleeve. Turns out it was a code to download the digital version for free. I’ve been playing this album for a month and somehow never noticed it.

A win on multiple levels. I like the album. And now I can load the best tracks onto my swimming headphones—old school, no Bluetooth, drag-and-drop like it’s 2009. Progress marches on, just not with me.

Third and fourth.
I found notes in my phone that I clearly thought were important at the time. Unfortunately, I did too good a job truncating the ideas. Just fragments. No context. No meaning.

I’m confident they were absolute gems. Insights that would have changed lives. Or at least made a decent blog post.

Now they’re gone. Lost to the world. Reduced to nonsense bullet points that only past-me understood—and even he didn’t bother to explain himself.

Sigh.

Carry on.


Jan 12 2026 2026-01-12 2026-01-12 by Ross

New to Me, but Apparently Common…

Posted in Good News

In the last month, I’ve started purposely listening to audiobooks on my commute.

I’ve done audiobooks before, but this time there’s intent behind it. Engagement. Focus.

Music is great, but it lets my mind wander. And when my mind wanders, it doesn’t drift toward poetry or enlightenment. It drifts toward imaginary arguments with people, re-litigating conversations that never happened, worrying about some kid issue despite all evidence that everyone is fine, or getting myself worked up over the news. None of this improves my life in any measurable way.

A good audiobook shuts all that down.

I have to pay attention. I can’t half-listen the way I can with music, or even with podcasts or sports talk radio. My brain doesn’t have spare bandwidth to spiral. I don’t ruminate. I don’t debate politics in my head. I just…listen to a story.

Right now I’m listening to a pretty good book where I can completely picture Pete Davidson playing the lead character. That visual alone keeps me locked in.

This small switch feels like part of a bigger pattern of changes I’ve been making for better mental health. Another one: I’m down to one cup of coffee a day. And the effects have been huge. No exaggeration—last week (and continuing into this one) are the first days in a long time where I’ve woken up in a good mood and gone to bed in the same good mood. No spikes, no crashes, no afternoon edge, no nighttime irritability.

That alone feels like a minor miracle.

Dry January actually started just before Christmas.  It’s not a big deal (only 20 days), but the bigger deal is I don’t want anything to drink.

There are a few other changes I’m making that I won’t get into yet, but taken together, it’s been a really good month. Nothing dramatic. No grand declarations. Just small, intentional adjustments that make the day feel calmer, steadier, and more enjoyable.

Sometimes the fix isn’t adding something new.

It’s choosing the thing that keeps your mind from turning on itself.


Jan 12 2026 2026-01-12 2026-01-12 by Ross

Oh C’mon! (Movie and TV edition)

Posted in Old Man Yelling at the Sky

Some of my pet peeves involve props in movies and TV shows. We all know about the leafy greens and the baguette that have to be sticking out of every paper grocery bag in every TV show/Movie. I think we all know how horribly inaccurate coffee cups are. Everyone is swinging the cup around like… gee, like it’s empty and not filled with hot liquid. No weight to it. No worry about spilling. I also can’t stand the partner always bringing coffee. A cop approaches a fellow cop already at the scene. “Here, I brought you a coffee.”  They’re constantly stopping to get coffee for themselves and another for their partner.

Another one I hate is the beer. Every time anyone comes to someone’s house in a show (mostly sitcoms), they get offered a beer. I don’t think I’ve ever offered a beer to someone just stopping by. They drink one or two sips and then leave. I tell ya, that’s a good reason NOT to offer my friend a beer. If he’s going to waste it like that, nope, at best I’ll ask if you need some water.

The latest one to annoy me occurred on the season two premiere of The Pitt, but it’s another long-standing peeve. Dr. Langdon was sitting in the waiting room, wearing a brand-new Penguins hat. Every time a show wants to show where it is or the die-hard city the character is in, they wear some sports team swag, but it’s always brand-new. Posers. How hard is it when you know the show is set in Pittsburgh to rough up the hat or sweatshirt a bit? Get some sun on it, stains, whatever. Nothing screams more that this character IS NOT an actual resident or fan of the city’s teams than a brand-new hat.  “Oh, man, I’m a lifelong Red Sox fan since I grew up in Southie,” yet they have a brand spanking new hat.  Uh, no.  Every die-hard’s hat is well-loved and well-worn.

Got any others?

 


Jan 11 2026 2026-01-11 2026-01-11 by Ross

Don’t laugh or you might fall on your next run (see post below)

Posted in Humor