Egg Bites

2021...A Mild Hell in Review

 It's the New Year, everyone! It may be raining or snowing or sunny where you are today, but no matter where you are, we're past the fireworks moment. That moment was not really about it being 2022 so much as kicking 2021 to the curb permanently...for many of us!

If any of you had a positive and blessed 2021, that is wonderful, and I wish you the same happiness this year.

For many others, however, it was not a positive and blessed year. Many had personal or health (or both!) problems. COVID pretty much ruled the year with vaccination side effects or not knowing what to do about getting the vaccination or its booster, and the damn masks!

And then there was the political turmoil. The events of January 6, 2021, are still fresh in the minds of many, and like the vaccination controversy there are varied opinions on what actually happened. This is the first year in my life that an ex President remained in the public eye and attention after he left...because he wanted it that way.

As for me and my family, we hung in there as always. Vickie had a hysterectomy and I was lucky (har har)enough to get 2 kidney stones blasted. Vickie got us a deal online for 2 bikes, and in the late Spring and most of the summer I rode all over the northernmmost neighborhoods where some orchards and many horses resided...almost a rural Pennsylvania feeling, except the high humidity was missing.

Working summer school provided funds for some short getaways in late June and all of July, the highlight being Cedar City, Utah for me.

Thankfully we teachers were able to start and STAY in our classrooms with our kids, little to no virtual quarantine emergencies.

Celebrities we lost (ones I am familiar with anyway): Peter Scolari, Willie Garson, Norm MacDonald, Charlie Watts, Jackie Mason, Charlie Robinson, William Smith (I didn't know this one till today!), director Richard Donner, soap performers Ray MacDonnell and Stuart Damon, Clarence Williams III, Arlene Golonka, Gavin MacLeod, B.J. Thomas, Robert Hogan, Charles Grodin, Tawny Kitaen, Olympia Dukakis, Frank McRae, Johnny Crawford, Jessica Walter, George Segal, Rush Limbaugh, Larry Flynt, Christopher Plummer, Dustin Diamond, Cicely Tyson, Cloris Leachman, Hal Holbrook, Larry King, Hank Aaron, Phil Spector, Joanne Rogers, John Reilly, Marion Ramsey, Tanya Roberts, Gregory Sierra, and, just yesterday, Betty White....proving 2021 had one more groin kick for us all.

Celebrity deaths aside, many of us suffered the loss of a friend or family member, which makes the loss much more heartfelt. My mom lost her friend Rose, whom she had met at the National University library in San Diego almost 29 years ago. She was a very sweet woman, I remember her fondly. She passed at age 73. We also lost our elderly former downstairs neighbor Norma in June. Even after we moved into the house, we continued to come help her with her cable remote or pick things up (like smokes) from the store. A very kind woman who had known Natalie since she was 2. Norma passed at 89.

This may sound trite, but let us take the tragedies and bad news of 2021 and do what we can to make 2022 the best we can make it. My advice...make reasonable goals you can attain and maintain, not crazy half-hearted "resolutions"...New Year's resolutions at heart are a meaningless tradition passed on from other generations who usually failed at resolutions as well...and as we are a nation often fails to learn from past failures, let's break this bad habit once and for all!

A happy blessed and successful 2022 to all!

The Christmas Letter

 Dear Everyone,

   Well,  here we are again after a year. Wow, where has the time gone? Lots has happened in this short time, and I don't quite know where to start, not to mention how to fit it into a concise letter that most of you will probably stop reading after the first paragraph or so. However, since I have this neurotic need to boast about my family's successes in the hopes of one-upping at least one of you other shit-braggarts at least once, let's let it rip!

   Our oldest finally came off of alcohol...again...this past autumn. Of course, he didn't have much of a choice after landing in jail for D and D (NOT  Dungeons and Dragons) for the eighth time this year. It should be noted that he was very polite to the officer when he showed him his...pride. In our son's defense, officers of the law should be more clear when asking for an ID from someone under the influence. In his state, our son thought ID meant immense..."definition". Having landed in the clink a few times myself for inebriation in the past, I can relate to him. Having been arrested so often got him in a slightly higher class of imprisonment, so he is moving up in the world. Even better, he is now the official "Queen" of C block, so now he finally has a title at 26 years old.

   Then there is our younger child. Now, I have heard all of you chortling behind her back about dressing like a hoe and being the most likely to get knocked up before turning 20. Well the joke's on you all! She's only 17 and has 3 months to go before the due date! The dad is a fine gentleman. His official title is "social director" and has an office, so to speak, close to all the local motels. He even gets a commission from all the nearby businesses for bringing them business himself! Hopefully our grandchild will carry on his family name!

   Of course, there is my wife! God bless her, she really has an interest in building our credit rating and local exposure. We went from having very little debt to well over $10,000 in credit cards alone. I was worried about her for a bit with our son's and daughter's successes and feeling somewhat left out. No sir! She has amassed an impressive new wardrobe, made local business connections at various hostels and bars, not to mention making contributions to our local police and court systems. She even unofficially modeled for a local lingerie outfit and has created a demand for more. For some reason, the cash flow has gone away rather than toward us, but I am sure she knows what she's doing.

    And then there's boring old me with the same old sales job traveling all over the place, eating and drinking alone often. Thankfully I am not always forced to sleep alone! I've often woken up as the guest of some kind stranger or another...who for some reason are often rushing me out, but hey, everyone has to get to their own job, right? After one of those trips, I did have a persistent itch and oddly colored mark that hasn't gone away. After all those pleas to get a COVID shot, I am wondering if that'll clear it up?

   Well, that's been our wonderful year! I cannot imagine being in a more loving, successful, and growing family. Hope you all have a great New Year. Try not to be jealous of us, we just do things our way!

Love, 

Phil

That does not compute!

    As I sit here typing what drivel has to come out of my head from time to time, I cannot help but marvel at the splendid progression of technology...and how I am always about 10 steps behind that progression! Seriously, even though my wife has supplied me at various times with color-changing speakers and color-enhanced keyboards, my machine is state of the art...for 1999 almost!

    Well ok, that is quite an exaggeration. The thing is, 1999 seems so yesterday to me, like I was still 27! That's how time flies. One day I'm a swinging ( as in by a thread) bachelor and the next day I'm a husband of 15 years and father of 12 years. Somewhere in this time warp I was using this damn computer to run a virtual classroom for a bit over 2 months of physical classroom exile. Still, I am fairly attached to my computer...for I built it. I have actually build a few incarnations of a personal computer over the past 13 years.

    Oh hell no, Moore! You didn't....you wouldn't! Oh shit you did....you tricked us via text hypnosis into following you down another f'n memory lane traffic jam! (sigh). Fine, let's get this over with!

    The first computer we had actually belonged to me. On Christmas of 1985, my father had apparently seen "A Christmas Story" for the first time and decided to enhance the Darren McGavin's "Hey, what's that over there?" ruse.  After putting me on a seemingly endless wild goose chase via "Look over here" notes, I was finally awarded a complete Commodore 64 hardware suite consisting of the keyboard/CPU unit, floppy disk drive, monitor, and dot matrix printer. All of those components except 1 were pretty good...except for the printer. Apparently Commodore had a jump start on the jamming tradition that has caused so much office and school alcohol consumption spikes. I believe we ended up getting a compatible yet non Commodore printer later as I did use my computer for school work as well when needed.

    My dad's office had a whole library of Commodore games and I got loaded up pretty fast on disk copies. Of course, this was long before the age of point and click ease of use with a mouse. One had to type such pesky commands as 

LOAD "NERDGAMES",8,1

and hope that the disk was of decent quality. Most of the time it was. My old Atari joystick could be lugged into the machine to play arcade-style games, so that was a lot of fun for a while. About a year later, I got a 300 "baud" modem. I believe baud was a Euro-originated word for slow as Granny's molasses, for when I called into online BBS's (bulletin board services) that had game downloads, the download speed was abysmal! I later got a higher speed one, but after a couple of years I had gotten past those as a fun pastime.

    One other thing the computer got me good at was typing. I actually taught myself to type as I created stories, many early ones influenced by my favorite show at the time, "The Edge of Night".

    I actually held on to the Commodore for several years, finally retiring it in late 1992. I don't remember if it just died or what, but my dad had already brought an older PC from work. It was monochrome to be sure, but I did some papers for school on it as well as writing more stories. I held on to that one for a long time, I believe it was retired in the early 21st century. Most of the time in the late 90s, though, I tended to use my friend/roommate Scott's iMac more than my own.

    My dad gave me another used office model when I moved to Las Vegas. It was ok, but those pesky work numbers always wanted a special password. I had enough of that so I went to CompUSA and a computer of my own...CPU, monitor, printer, and the works. Combined with my Earthlink dialup credentials, I was Internet bound on my own at last, doing lesson plans and looking for women! I was successful in the former, hit and miss on the latter.

    One thing I was not ready for with a Windows PC was the number of shady websites that had viruses and eventually the computer didn't even turn on despite the various virus scanners and "protections" I had put on. A new hard drive seemed to resolve this, and I learned to be more cautious in the sites I was navigating.

    Then came the Lesley masters program that I began in early 2008. Of the many tech related subjects I studied, the anatomy of a computer course that I took was my favorite. As a final project, I opted to build my own computer from a "barebones" kit I bought from TigerDirect for about $200. For that price I got a case, hard drive, and associated wires. All I needed was an optical (CD-rom) drive on my own. From then on I was occasionally buying a new hard drive or operating system. A few years ago, I upgraded almost entirely with a new case. That said, I think the novelty of building my own has worn off. Its just too tough to keep up with what works anymore. Granted a new computer can be expensive, so this old thing will have to do for now, provided we aren't tossed back home again..

    All right, flashbacks are now over, you may resume crash position!

The Divorcé Part 5

    The door opened. Dr. Friedman waved me in with a smile. "Sam, right on time as always." He closed the door behind me and waved at the proverbial shrink couch. "Take your favorite seat."

   I sat in the big soft lumpy sofa and relaxed. I'd been seeing Friedman since a bit before the divorce, when I knew things were coming at me. 

   Friedman checked his notes as he sat in his swivel chair, then looked up. "Last time we spoke, you were getting back into the dating world."

   "I've been wading in, testing the waters so to speak."

  "And how does the water feel?"

  "Good at times...other times cold."

  "Might depend on which end of the pool you're in."

  "Brad, I'm not even going tot try to analyze that."

   Friedman laughed. "Well, the shallow end tends to warm faster as its the safer end...on the other hand, the deep end has more variety but can take longer to navigate." He stopped. "Forget it...I'm no good at ad lib analogies." He checked his notes again. "There's a topic you and I didn't grab tightly on , and this is 2 sessions ago. You were so excited about your dating that we didn't touch on it again at all."

  "Which is?"

  "The woman at work. Natasha was her name, right?"

  "Oh yeah, we're going way back!"

  "You brought me there, I never left." Friedman sat forward. "You indicated that you'd fallen for her."

   I sat back and looked up at the ceiling, the memory coming back. "Yeah, this is 6 years ago."

  "Tell me about her."

  "I didn't tell you last time?"

  "You told me her name and that you were in love with her, but that's as far as we got. No, wait, you told me she was also married, right?"

  "Right. You know I'm thinking on that time and realizing something right off the bat...I was more in love with the idea of her than actually being in love with her."

  "All right. What idea of her was so appealing?"

  "Now that's a question I've asked myself time and time again...but I don't have a solid clue. SHe was pretty enough. Had the most kissable lips I'd ever seen, that's for sure."

  "Did you ever kiss them?"

  "Oh no, not even a cheek peck. Despite my feelings, I still respected her marriage."

   Friedman sat back and folded his arms. "All right, let's go back to then. What was it about her that got those feelings going?"

  "Hoo boy! Well, when I first started at the office, it took a bit to fit in. You know, new guy and all coming into an established colleague web. Well, at a staff lunch function, I was sitting by myself...this was about 3 months in...and she asks me to come sit with her and some of her friends. I wasn't precisely involved in their conversation, ladies and all, but I wasn't alone. That was the start."

  "Sounds friendly but it doesn't exactly spell out love to me."

  "Not to me, either. Just as time went, we talked more and got to know each other. Before I knew it I was thinking a lot about her. At first I thought it was pure lust. There was some of that, but not overwhelming. No, this was a heart matter. My day was definitely improved when I'd had some contact with her, either in person or even text. Luckily for me, she never really knew my feelings, at least I don't think she did. Then something happened...some crisis in her husband's family and she took a little time off so they could travel."

   Friedman nodded. "Did she come back?"

  "Yeah, but she was a lot more reserved...very inward...after. I tried to offer an ear of support, but she kept it inside, so I backed away. After about a year, no it was two years, she transferred to another office in another town. It was quiet, no going away party or anything, in fact quite sudden."

  "I see. So you developed some friendly, I'll go with FOND, feelings for another woman. Sounds perfectly normal and nothing to feel ashamed of...if you feel ashamed."

  "I don't now, I did a little then, probably because I mentioned Natasha more than a healthy mention at home."

  "And your wife didn't care for that."

  "We had a few fights about it."

  "And when Natasha left, did it get back to normal?"

   I looked at Brad with a frown. "Normal? I did get a divorce not all that long after."

  "Right. So here's a question: do you think your feelings for Natasha were a factor in your divorce?"

   I looked back at the ceiling. "That is hard to say. My marriage was never normal, whatever that word means. Three years passed between Natasha leaving and my wife leaving, so somehow I doubt it was a main factor."

  "But it might have been one."

  "Could be. I doubt it."

   Friedman closed his notebook. "Sam, we've been dancing around this for a while. We never really hit at it, though."

  "Right, the why of it all."

  "Your feelings for Natasha, innocent as they seem to me, are the first clues as to cause. Apart from that, nothing on your end seems to justify any of it. Although, when she left, you didn't seem too anguished over it apart from the change in life."

  "So ok, I developed feelings for another woman, my wife languished over it for 3 years, then decided I wasn't worth fighting to save our marriage, so she split. Simple, right?"

   Friedman laughed. "Nah, this will take some more cracking. Collecting a $20 copay from you weekly was in fact my life's ambition, so we will look more into this next week. Same time?"

  "Same Bat channel!"

Rest In Peace, Mr. Bond

    This weekend my family and I went to see the latest...and quite honestly last, movie of the James Bond Franchise. It was a really touching end and Daniel Craig pulled it off well. 

   Now, when I mean franchise, I mean a single production company's produced series of films. In this case, I mean the James Bond film franchise that has been in existence since the release of Dr. No in 1962. Yes, the James Bond film franchise has been in existence for nearly 60 years.

   When the series began, it starred Sean Connery as Britain's favorite secret agent with the number 007, the license to kill, created by Ian Fleming. The first movie story began simply, with Bond traveling to Jamaica to find out what happened to Professor Strangways. In that movie we meet many of the regulars that were to be included in the series: Bond's superior M, a gruff old naval admiral whom Bond respected and annoyed quite frequently; Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary who carried an innocent flirtation with Bond over the course of many films; Q, the British Secret Service armorer who supplied Bond with many weapons and oddly futuristic gadgets and who was frequently annoyed by Bond's lack of respect for said equipment, particularly cars; and Felix Leiter, Bond's CIA counterpart, who appeared infrequently over the course of the series...seen just once in the Roger Moore era and never in the Pierce Brosnan era.

   From the success of Dr. No, fans of Britain's new superhero were treated to a movie a year from 1962 to 1965, then every other year as a pattern most of the time for a while. After Thunderball, there was a 2-year wait until the release of You Only Live Twice, which set a new precedent for creating an almost entirely new story from the existing book source. The previous 4 movies had probably 80% source material intact if not more. I've written about that movie and book before, and to briefly repeat, I enjoy both about equally, which is a lot.

   After Connery took the reins for 5 films, he was getting tired of playing Bond and quit after You Only Live Twice. The producers found a new face in Aussie George Lazenby for On Her Majesty's Secret Service. This movie is fantastic by my standards even though Lazenby was not Connery, a fact many took a huge disliking to. Yet, if one puts aside the man's lack of acting experience, the movie is great and returns to the book faithfulness. On Her Majesty's Secret Service saw James Bond falling in love with a troubled woman whom he rescues a few times and she later rescues him. She tragically dies from an attempt on Bond's wife from Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the SPECTRE chief who, in my opinion, is probably Bond's greatest foe of all time.

   Sean Connery was coaxed to return for Diamonds Are Forever, a film that really delved into silly antics in its second half. It was once a favorite of mine, but is now viewed just for its Las Vegas scenes.  The next movie, Live and Let Die, introduced the Roger Moore era of Bond...an era that with maybe one or two exceptions, represented the low end of the franchise for 7 films. The Moore era consisted of a lot of silly 1 liners, extravagant gadgets, and some pretty silly stories.

   Then in 1987, we were introduced to the short Timothy Dalton era...I say era because he got 2 films under his belt unlike Lazenby's single entry. Dalton was a breath of fresh air to Bond fans, particularly fans of the books, since he used the source material to model his portrayal, a return to the brutal agent we met in 1962. Bond in the Dalton era had a penchant for avenging the deaths of friends and colleagues, giving Bond a new dark edge. 

   After those 2 entries, the series fell to the wayside due to legal problems for 6 years. When te problems were over, fans were introduced to Bond #5, Pierce Brosnan,,,yes, Remington Steele himself.  In fact, his first entry Goldeneye was quite enjoyable. Brosnan didn't have the hard edge of early Connery or both Dalton entries, but he held his own. However, the new coolness couldn't help the lackluster stories that ensued, and by the time we got Die Another Day, the Brosnan era was long stale.

   And then came Daniel Craig, who brought a new hard edge that surpassed Dalton's big time, and Bond was alive again in 2006 with Casino Royale, the best on-screen vision of that story since a 1954 teleplay featuring an American as Bond....and the 1967 Bond spoof with that title starring David Niven deserves no mention. After that came Quantum of Solace, which seemed like one huge chase scene to me and not much story, so I didn't watch all of it. Skyfall was much better...and then came SPECTRE, which tied the previous 3 films together, a first for the franchise. 

   I'd like to mention the latest film No Time to Die a bit more, but it's too new, and it is too early to tell if it is truly the end or not. ONe thing I do want to note, though, is the return of Bond feeling love again, only losing it but in an entirely, and heroically self-sacrificing, way. This is shown thematically and musically connected to On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

   One thing I need to mention with the franchise is the retconning of a few key characters. The old gruff M was replaced at the start of the Brosnan era with Dame Judi Dench, who was referred as the old man's replacement. After her death in Skyfall, Joint Intelligence Committee chairman Gareth Mallory (played by Ralph Fiennes) became the new M.

   Then there is the villain Blofeld, who in the 60s and early 70s was played by different actors each time, and was last seen being rammed in his bathosub into a control building on an oil rig in Diamonds Are Forever, his fate unknown. In 2015's SPECTRE, his story was rewritten as having a childhood connection to Bond. Felix Leiter was also reintroduced as an African American in Casino Royale.  

   Miss Moneypenny was also rewritten as an agent who retires from active duty to become M's secretary. Q went from a crusty old coot to R (John Cleese) in the final Brosnan films to a much younger man played by Ben Whishaw in the Craig films...I liked this later version, actually.

    Of course, many of the early stories, right up to 2006's Casino Royale had at least some if not more source material to use. The source material was quite British and often very dry. I read most of them and while more than half were pretty easy to get through, a few I couldn't finish, 1955's Moonraker in particular. The early novels had the Soviet group SMERSH as the antagonists, but by 1961 SPECTRE had emerged. The last novels also showed a change of style to longer in depth of description or emotional narrative in the form of long-ass paragraphs. Still, they were enjoyable. I reread a few often and picture Daniel Craig in the role now...and his portrayal fits just about all of them. Another author named John Gardner picked up the Bond book writing in 1981. I liked them for a while, but my current tastes have left those behind.

   With all that said, is there a future for Bond? I'd like to say no, we have many films to enjoy with several different interpretations...yes, even Roger Moore fans have a place (preferably at the bottom of a canyon). However, we all know that the film world is having trouble in the area of originality, and we might see another form of Bond again in my lifetime, probably made by a different production company and likely non-book source material.

   To conclude, Rest in Peace, Mr. Bond.

Six (or Whatever) Degrees of Me

    A question: how many of you do you have?

   Now before you lock me up for spouting off bad riddles, think about those words...and no, I am not implying schizophrenia by any means...unless it applies to you and then absolutely I am!

   These are the thoughts going through my brain once again and BOY am I FUCKING HAPPY!

    For those who don't quite read me at this moment, well, you fall into 2 categories. One, you stumbled upon this post looking for Alura Jenson porn clips and got completely lost, or you totally understand that I recently got on caffeine again after many months of fearing caffeine was causing my kidney stones. For a long period due to that lack, my ideas were not flowing...now the flow seems to be back on...I just hope not to the point of needing a neurological maxi pad to catch it all!

   All right, I've stalled long enough. How many of you do you have? 

   Personally, I think I have more than 10. And no, I am not implying that a brilliant yet criminal plastic surgeon in Switzerland made duplicates of me like the multitude of wallet sized ugly family shots you are burdened with every Christmas because nobody wants them. 

   No, I mean how many of you have you lived with in your entire life? The you that is in your body, your soul.  

   I think we all know that we as humans evolve over time (to the Christian Fundamentalists who might have stumbled in here looking for Ms Jenson, no I ACCIDENTALLY spewed out the E word, my profound apolo- oh fuck it, MOVE ON!). We all EVOLVE as ourselves over time, and I think in adulthood, at least for me, I have experienced several different versions of myself. In the pre-18 years, I probably experienced a few as well.

   Here's an example. If you have a teenaged or preteen kid who suddenly goes from happy go lucky kid to morosely hiding in their room for several months, only to emerge as a neorevolutionary philosopher telling you your old music and old movies have no place in this brave new world of Tik Tok knowledge, you see exactly what I mean...the caterpillar has made the transformation. 

    The changes don't end there, though. The question for me then is this...are the changes merely biological, psychological, a combo of both, or do I need to go back to iced fucking green tea? I think it is probably a combo, for me psychological most of the time, and purely an EVOLUTION of what I recently experienced.

     Let's go into the many degrees/versions of Bryan over almost 49 years....have something over 50 proof handy just in case! Since there are so many versions, I decided to put it into Apple ios update terminology.

1. Little Kid Bryan: (1.0-1.82818) This guy was pretty nerdy, though generally happy go lucky in nature. Often taken for granted or advantage of BECAUSE of that nature. Liked girls pretty early on, which probably creeped a lot of girls out! This version was updated in mid teen years (not quite sure when) to

2. Teen Angst Bryan (2.0- 2.71940):This was definitely a BUG-INFESTED version! This guy had a really bad habit of taking a liking to a girl and going absolutely overboard without testing the waters first. The resulting emotional fall was quite devastating. There was also a glitch that involved assholish and destructive behavior that turned off people closest to him. Unfortunately, the inner programmer, under heavy budget constraints, took a LONG TIME  to create a "fix". After a while, we finally got treated to...

3. Lost At Sea Bryan (2.2- 2.51953): This version was created under heavy emotional duress and essentially created a fairly empty Bryan for a luckily brief time. This was a period when I lived in San Diego and had no prospects or future of any sort, essentially playing video games and watching TV. Thankfully, this version was temporary as the inner coding department finally got more staff and a contract for paid coffee breaks. It wasn't too long before we hit...

4. College Ready Bryan (3.0-3.32979): This update was long-awaited and well-received. This Bryan was more happy and less emotionally shut down, making some new, if short-lived, friendships in San Diego. This Bryan also came with a mullet-growing app that had mixed reviews. 

5. Early Sonoma State Bryan (3.4-3.53878): A mild update taking me away from the toxic environment of my parents' dying marriage and finally making some more permanent connections in life. This version kept the mullet app and was probably one of the better versions of myself.

6. Mid to Late Sonoma State Bryan (3.5- 3.61669): Sometimes the coding department gets ahead of itself and makes seemingly unneeded modifications, such as parents divorcing. While the new happiness wasn't completely gone, this version carried a bad morosity bug that also had an asshole bug and an unexpected and never-before-seen cruelty bug. Yeah, that divorce really fucked me up inside for a while.

7. Post College Limbo Bryan (4.0-4.41146): This one had a lot of updates and fixes, especially when its premiere had me graduated, unemployed, and sitting around the apartment in Santa Rosa not doing much besides eating crap and watching TV. Luckily a fix was put in that had me working some temp jobs later that fall and an even better fix had me entering the substitute teaching business. That was the money-making aspect. On the personal front, it was quiet for a bit before I did some dating here and there. An even bigger update got me back into school to study to be an actual teacher. That gave me some focus, but these overall 5 years of version 4 point whatever was a particularly devil-may-care era that often came back to bite me for my lack of maturity and caution.

8. New to Vegas/Getting Laid Bryan (5.0- 5.8675309: This long-awaited version was a definite improvement, yet not without its flaws. Bryan was finally on his own for the first time in life. The devil-may-care attitude was eased off and there was a focus on learning how to be a good teacher without stressing out. This had varying degrees of success and failure over time. On the personal side, I was determined to get the ball(s) rolling with the ladies, though my definite lack of successful experience and "polish", so to speak, led to several disasters, although in the sex department I was catching up on wasted time from my 20s. As a result of the rollercoaster personal and professional life, there was a "system crash" a couple years in, a crash that did not recover too quickly.

9. Ready for Love Bryan (6.0-6.321 Contact): This version fixed a lot of previous problems, especially in the area of commitment. I finally found a woman I loved and decided to commit to and marry. Of course, not all was perfect. Having had a lack of positive role models in the marriage department, there were some bumps along the road in terms of learning to be a good husband and get rid of the personality trait known as "bachelor teacher guy", as Vickie called it. On the teacher side, things had improved quite a bit...not perfect, but a smoother sailing for a while.

10. Dad Crash Bryan (6.4-6.45789): An update with a few big flaws. While I embraced the new fatherhood phase of my life, I let my teacher aspect lapse and some fallout came from that, leaving one school and not doing well at the next one either. Another "system crash" resulted here...worse than the first, majorly affecting marriage, fatherhood, and teaching!

11. Darnell Bryan Phase 1 (6.5-6.94533): A new start at a new school was awkward at first, coinciding with a move to a better apartment. This was definitely a recovery phase while a new version was awaiting. Marriage, fatherhood, and teaching were all on the mend. This version lasted just under a year.

12. Darnell Bryan Phase 2 (7.0-7.10446): A LOT of bugs ironed out here as I began a 6-year run as a 2nd grade teacher, my longest stretch in any grade level. I was on a very supportive team and I was getting better integrated in my new digs, making friends with new people, and feeling much better about myself in all aspects of life. 

13. Homeowner Bryan  (7.2- 7.81072): This is the new homeowner phase. A lot of fixes in this one through new challenges and responsibilities...and added marriage stress through it. Two grade level changes added to that along with a kidney stone.

14. Getting in Shape/COVID Bryan (8.0-8.whatever...current phase): Version 8 couldn't have come at a better time. I weighed more than I ever had before and how our team was doing 5th grade was not working well. Two things happened to turn it all around. 1) A Biggest Loser Challenge was taking place at school after New Year and I was determined to make a big change. 2) The new COVID quarantine 2 months later essentially put a halt to a fairly disastrous school year. I was losing weight and feeling much better about myself in terms of appearance and general energy. I was also getting better about being a 5th grade teacher again even though I was practicing in an online fashion. 

   With all those versions, and others to come for sure, I can certainly conclude that my overall self has changed in some ways, yet stayed the same on other planes. 

   The question to ask then is this: can anybody take the time to think back to how many "versions" and "fixes" there have been in their lives? If you can, then you have WAY too much time on your hands!