Summertime is upon us, and yours portly is all but done with the academic year. That means it’s time for video games.
Civilization VII dropped its huge update, which brings some major changes to the game; I’m hoping to sink some hours into that again soon. I’m also hoping to get back into Old World, which devoured so much of my time back in April with its deep gameplay.
Of course, I still have my lovable Zelda Game & Watch by Nintendo (that link is an Amazon Affiliate link, which means I receive a portion of any purchases made through that link, at no additional cost to you). I haven’t played it in awhile, but it still keeps time like a tiny Hyrulean champ.
It’s another day tending the home fires, with our local handyman doing a number of repairs around the house that I’m either too lazy or incompetent to do myself. While he’s doing that, I’m knocking out some cleaning around the house (and writing this blog post). I’ve also been calling various vendors to setup appointments.
I just got off the phone with the pest control company. We haven’t had any major issues with pests, but I wanted to get us signed up for quarterly sprayings because, well, this is South Carolina and the roaches are big as mice, and we don’t want those hanging around in our walls. The receptionist was very friendly and, when she realized I am a teacher, she started to ask some questions.
You see, for the last fifteen-ish years I’ve taught both history and music. I don’t have any degrees in the latter, just a great deal of experience writing, composing, arranging, transcribing, playing, performing, and teaching it. When I returned to teaching in 2011, I had a golden opportunity: to teach history (in which I have two degrees, although I learned far more in high school and undergrad—and after graduate school—than I did working on my Master’s, and this was before wokeness took over the academy) and to create a music program from scratch. Someone with my credentials should not, the world tells us, get that opportunity, but that’s the beauty of the world of private education.
I relayed an abbreviated version of this to the receptionist—we Southerners are very chatty when completing even perfunctory administrative tasks—and she almost immediately asked if I teach lessons. What started as booking our pest control spraying turned into a friendly sales pitch for music lessons.
After a month of on again, off again composing—with a good chunk of “off-again” in there—I have finally finished composing “Japanese Trapdoor Snails.” I started the work on 15 April 2026 and wrapped it up late on the evening of Wednesday, 13 May 2026.
It’s an unusual piece, as snails are unusual creatures. I wanted to capture something mystical and contemplative—and, in a hackneyed kind of way, something vaguely Japanese—in the opening bars, with are a slow, flowing 5/4 time. I thought 5/4 fit the slow movements of snails, as if they need an extra beat to get where they’re going.
The “B” section, of sorts, shifts to 3/4 (after some shifting from 5/4 to 4/4) in the same tempo, with the flute moving in dotted quarter notes and the oboe moving in quarter notes. My goal here was to blur tonality and, again, to depict the kind of shuffling crawl of snails along the edges of a pond.
After a recapitulation that shortens one 4/4 phrase to 7/8, I launch into a lively 3/8 portion that has a sort of gypsy and/or Slavic feel to it. In retrospect, I think of this section as capturing the trudging lives of a Japanese Trapdoor Snails going about their never-ending business of pond cleaning. Note that I wasn’t quite sure how this portion fit thematically with the rest of the piece until after listening to it, which happens sometime—an idea pops into my head, I develop it, and then try to figure out if it should stay with that piece.
To be clear, I’m still not convinced it does fit, but I like the contrast and I think it gives some life to this otherwise contemplative and reflective piece.
It is Exam Week for yours portly’s students, and my school has revived the practice of only requiring teachers to be on campus to administer actual exams or to cover duties. I have neither today, and only have to go in Tuesday to administer my World History exams.
Exam Week always reminds me of college. I would do a bit of studying for whatever exams I had coming up, which usually consisted of reading through my extensive notes (I was and remain a voracious notetaker), then play Morrowind for hours on end. It was pretty glorious.
Instead of playing Morrowind, though, I’ve been working today on those various, quotidian tasks that need doing around the house. It seems like it has been awhile since I have had a true day at home to get things done.
One major item off the list: getting an electrician to come look at a junction box that arced on another contractor last month. We wanted to replace the garish lighting fixture in the master bedroom with a simple ceiling fan—an easy enough job—but the handyman capped the wires, saying that he thought the wiring was broken. Naturally, we were concerned, and I had one of those name-brand electrical companies come out to look everything over.
The Junction Box of Doom
The chatty electrician who came tried to sell us on a whole-home rewire. We have some of the old cloth-insulated wiring (but, fortunately, not the infamous knob-and-tube wiring, which is a fire hazard). The name-brand electrician wanted to charge us $50,000 to run new wire and conduit all over the house, with a team of seven electricians working around the clock for a week.
He had told us that some people tell him to get out of their homes when he gives them quotes. I can see why. We did not do that, but make vague noises about “talking it over.” Our conversation was, essentially, “Hell no.”
One of the downsides of living in a smaller town in an already-rural area is that it can be difficult to locate skilled workers. They do exist, but you have to “know a guy who knows a guy” or find out from a local. I resorted to asking CoPilot, telling it that the two prior electricians it had recommended either a.) refused to come to our town (only a half-hour away) or b.) never returned my calls. It recommended another electrician who actually grew up in our town.
I called him and he was at the house in thirty minutes. He inspected the wiring and told me everything was fine, and that the cloth-insulated wiring is good for “at least another thirty years.” That was worth fifty bucks for piece of mind. Of course, he tried to install the fan, but said it was missing a black mounting bracket, so there is still a gaping hole in our ceiling.
Fortunately, I also contacted the handyman who came the first time and explained to him that the wiring is safe. He’s going to mount the fan, and noted, “he couldn’t find the bracket because I already attached it to the fan.” My handyman skills are already pretty bad, but now I’m questioning the electrician, who apparently failed to see the huge bracket attached the fan. I failed to notice it, too, although I did almost tell the electrician, “is it that big thing attached to the rotor?” But I assumed he knew what he was talking about. Oops!
Another home maintenance task that has flummoxed me: reassembling our king bedframe. It should be easy: the headboard attaches to the frame via four thiccccc screws. However, the screw holes (that sounds like a slur—“knock it off, you screw holes!”) aren’t aligning, and not by a little bit, but by enough that I can’t brute force them together. So my obliging handyman is going to assist me with that dilemma as well. He’s also going to replace a side door to our garage, and take another stab at fixing our front door, which closes and locks more easily than it did before, but which still requires some effort to get closed properly. I can do it, but Dr. Wife struggles with it, just because it takes a bit pudge to push it closed.
I did have one home improvement success: installing a new door handle with a mortise lock. The main handle for exiting to the back deck had a screw that would not connect properly with the outer lock. The effect was that, every time we’d pull the handle, the screw would come out, bringing the handle with it. The “solution” was to pull to the right (the direction to open the door, anyway), but the force required was putting strain on the screw.
I purchased another door handle and installed it myself. The tricky part was getting the mortise lock to “catch” properly. Basically, a mortise lock works by pushing the lock up into the mortise pocket, a trapezoidal shaped bit of metal or plastic. The lock itself is a little L-shaped piece of metal inside the door handle mechanism. It took some trial and error to get the pocket and lock aligned correctly, but I did it!
Some readers are likely shaking their heads. “How far modern man has fallen—unable to install a ceiling fan! Can’t assemble a bedframe!” Yes, I’m one of those “weak men” that makes “hard times.” What can I say? When I used to work maintenance at the school over the summers, our late Building and Grounds Director (God Rest his soul) once told me, “Portly, you’re not very handy.” But I learned enough to do some very basic stuff, and I’m a pretty good painter!
Tomorrow night I will give the sermon for my school’s baccalaureate service. This church service is for the graduating seniors, the Class of 2026. After hearing a sermon based on Romans 12:9-21 this past Sunday, I thought the passage could prove fruitful as a “blueprint,” of sorts, for graduating seniors (and all others in attendance). Here is the text of the sermon I’ll deliver tomorrow:
Good evening families, faculty, staff, and graduates of the Class of 2026. You are sitting here this evening at a threshold, a moment in your lives when you will soon pass from the world you know into a different one. As you cross this threshold of graduation, a great deal is going to change: your surroundings, your friends, your goals. It is an exciting and even scary process, as you are experiencing both a world in flux and flux in yourself.
The temptation will be great, therefore, to cast aside those things that are most essential, the “first things” that are always steadfast, in favor of the siren song of fleeting experiences and pleasures. The world will tell you, “do this thing and it will make you happy and bring you fulfillment”—and then it will sell some other “thing” next month, and the month after that. That road leads to emptiness and wasted potential.
So what should we do? How do we take this moment, lingering at the threshold, to prepare our hearts and minds for the changes ahead? The answer is love, love reflected through Christ’s Love for us.
Romans 12:9-21 (NKJV) offers some insights:
9 Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good. 10 Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another; 11 not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; 12 rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer; 13 distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality.
14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. 16 Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things [or, “Do not be proud,” GNB], but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion.
17 Repay no one evil for evil. Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. 18 If it is possible, as much as depends on you, live peaceably with all men. 19 Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord. 20 Therefore
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him; If he is thirsty, give him a drink; For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.”
21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
The Word of the Lord—Thanks Be to God. Let us pray.
Yours portly is pro-breakfast. Yes, yes, it’s not the most controversial take; if you grew up in the 1990s, commercials and classrooms bombarded you with the mantra “breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” Our teachers always told us to eat a good breakfast before standardized tests (advice I repeated to my own students).
Breakfast offers so much. It can be sweet (like the breakfast featured in today’s video). It can be savory. It can be a glorious mish-mash of both.
For quick breakfasts, I prepare one of two simple meals:
An English muffin with a layer of crunchy peanut butter, a layer of plain Greek yogurt, and a layer of sliced bananas (very filling)
An English muffin with spinach, a little lunch meat, and a boiled egg chopped on top (also filling, but much lower-calorie than #1)
Sometimes Dr. Wife will make a glorious breakfast of scrambled eggs, sourdough bread, and turkey bacon on Saturday mornings. She puts spinach and sometimes onions in the eggs, too, so they’re really tasty.
Growing up, breakfast was the classic bowl (or, in my case, multiple bowls) of cereal. Cereal is a problem food for me, as I will keep pouring more because “I need to use up the milk in the bottom of the bowl.” Next thing I know, I’ll have eaten half a box of Golden Grahams. I’m The Portly Politico for a reason.
Also, in the days of penny-pinching and fear of staleness (and, by extension, food waste), my mom would pay us a quarter if we finished a box of cereal (and we were soft-locked from opening a new box until the current one was consumed). Being both food- and money-motivated, that incentive presented a dangerous scenario for a budding chubster. Keep in mind, too, that these were the days when the government assured us that eating a ton of grains and very little red meat was supposed to be the key to good health. Of course, I’m sure Kellogg’s and General Mills loved that (and probably paid for the “research” that resulted in the food pyramid). It was not a good time to be a little fat kid (or it was the golden age of childhood obesity, depending on your perspective).
Regardless, today I’ve got a very short Short showing my breakfast unfold in two seconds:
What happens when a blog dies, especially a long-established one? Further, what happens when the blog’s author also goes missing, leaving no digital footprint behind?
The latter question seems almost impossible in our hyperconnected world, but it’s the case with Trinidadian blogger Renard, the proprietor of the now-gone Renard’s World. Renard and his little avatar, which looked like a character from The Boondocks, was so ubiquitous, he seemed like the unofficial mascot of WordPress. Here was a writer who churned out quality content every day, and like “Tom” on MySpace, he seemed to follow and be followed by everyone on the platform.
Then he disappeared.
The mystery has, as I wrote last year, “endured.” In attempting recent searches for “Renard’s World,” the same speculative blog posts show up as did last year. I even hopped onto Substack to see if our boy had made an appearance on that platform, but no dice.
Could Renard be blogging under a completely different identity? Or did he hang up the work for good?
There are, of course, the darker speculations, that Renard met with some unfortunate fate beneath the Caribbean sun. But the coordinated shuttering of all of his social media and online presence seems like something difficult to do if you’re dead and your relatives are fumbling to get into your accounts.
I pray that Renard is okay. I didn’t know him that well, of course, but I wish no ill upon anyone.
That said, if any readers have any updates on Renard’s whereabouts, leave a comment or contact me. I’m intrigued to know, although I suspect none of us will know for sure on this side of Eternity.
The koi pond is really coming alive as we head deeper into spring. Other than the ramshorns I added a few weeks back, there have been no new additions to the pond. The koi themselves, though, are way more active, and Dr. Wife and I both the think the water is clearing up slightly thanks to the Japanese Trapdoor Snails and some recent top-ups with fresh water. At any rate, we can see maybe an inch deeper than we could before, and it helps that the koi are coming closer to the surface more frequently.
As the weather warmed up earlier this year, the koi would splash up only when I tossed food into the water. The most intrepid of them, Sunny, would occasionally pop up when he heard my approach, my feet treading on the gravel as I shook the bag of koi food.
Sunny, the King of the Pond
Now, I’ll frequently catch multiple koi skimming the surface even outside of feeding times. When I do get home in the evenings and bring out the feed, they are excited. They’ll start swimming over each other to get at the good stuff, and some will even swim to the edge of the pond and start flapping their big fish lips at me.
It’s really satisfying to see the pond coming to life. With the water getting a bit clearer, we’ve been able to make out more details on the fish. We’re also able to spot them swimming more easily.
You see, dear readers, the pond hobby creates an insatiable appetite for more aquatic critters. My next planned addition to the pond is a trio of weather (or “dojo”) loaches. These are cold-hardy bottom-dwellers that look like an eel and a catfish had a baby, but the baby is somehow cute and not a hideous monster.
Naturally, I had to write a trio depicting these odd but adorable (oddorable?) creatures, three of which I hope to add to the koi pond soon.
