Coffee, Cul-de-Sacs & Common Ground

I walked outside this morning, headed to my office, and it felt a little cooler. It's actually 67 degrees this morning, September 17, 2026. It's like 7.03 right now, so I'm just taking a leisurely stroll up and down my driveway

away as the rest of the world is waking up. Hell, the rest of the world's probably been awake. I've been up since five, but which is standard. But no, there's something about being able to, I don't know, it's that in-between zone almost of everything is

pretty much dormant. And then everything is pretty much rush, rush, rush. And we're in that kind of in-between. I mean, granted, some folks already had to be at work at 7, probably some at 6. Some We'll be leaving the house here shortly to get to work by 7.30, 8 o'clock, just depending.

But listening to, which you can probably hear, listening to nature.

Some very vocal birds this morning. Not as vocal as they've been in the past. This is still a nice neighborhood.

We moved here in 2006. First part of 2006. I think we moved in February 1st. My wife and I actually have different recollections of that. I know that we signed the papers in January of 2006, so maybe that's what I keep latching on to.

I don't know. But still a nice neighborhood. Is that a bus?

Okay, something I did not know, we actually have kids out in this neighborhood that get on the bus? See, when we first moved here, there were a couple of kids in the neighborhood.

And my kids, you know, being homeschooled and all, they tried to make friends with them. And I think there was one little girl that my daughter, and she became friends.

But, I mean, quite honestly, that lasted, what, maybe a year or two. Interesting.

Did not realize there was kids out here still. But yeah, for the first couple of years, I mean, they tried to make friends with the kids in the neighborhood. But quite honestly, and I'm going to be a little biased here, my kids were smarter.

They just really were. So, and I attribute that to a combination of genes and the fact that we pulled them out of public school and homeschooled them.

No ridiculous damn Christian curriculum or any bullshit like that. I left that all to my wife and she did this process called unschooling. And I thought it was a bit unorthodox, but it wound up actually working really, really well.

And all my kids are, I say brilliant, but then again, you know, I'm biased as a father, so there's that. But I got two boys and one girl, you know, both of the boys wound up leaving the nest and living on the West Coast.

One of them is still there, has been since 2015. The other one's been there since 2022, but is coming back for another job opportunity. And my daughter, she's just the creative type, just, and you know how those are, the artsy-farty creative types.

It's unfortunate, but those are the ones that are either typically poor or they wind up just getting really damn lucky and striking it rich. I'm hoping she's going to be in the latter, but we'll see how that goes.

Enjoying this coffee. Yeah, I'm not a coffee snob. I actually prefer instant coffee, which I know there are folks out there that would recoil at that notion, but I don't know.

Having the whole coffee brewing setup, it's just easier to run a kettle, run some hot water, plus the kettle is dual duty. My wife and my daughter drink tea. I drink coffee.

So there's that. I did recently get an air fryer, second attempt at trying an air fryer. The first time I tried an air fryer several, several years ago, I was woefully underwhelmed and disappointed.

And maybe I didn't give it a fair shake, but the amount of money that I had spent on it and the results that I was getting, especially after seeing everybody going, oh yeah, it's the best damn thing since sliced bread and all this other shit.

My experience is lackluster. And I had a friend or two tell me, yeah, I don't know what you did wrong, man. We absolutely love our air fryer. So I took a chance and got another one, even though it was an interesting shipping ordeal, because, of course, I ordered it from Amazon, and it was supposed to have arrived on a Sunday, Sunday before last, actually.

And I actually got the notification that it was out on the delivery vehicle at like 11.37 that morning, and that we should have it by that afternoon. Well, the afternoon came and went. The delivery time zone got updated to something like, you should get it between five and eight or some nonsense like that.

And of course, five came and went, eight came and went. And by the next morning, it literally said, you know, we're so sorry it's delayed. You should have it by Tuesday. And if you don't have it by Tuesday, then come back and you can get a refund.

Well, Tuesday came and went. And so Wednesday morning, I said, nope, give me a damn refund. And I turned right around, reordered the same exact air fryer. Of course, now it costs me $10 more.

And that was on a Wednesday. And I think it was delivered on a Friday. I believe it was delivered on a Friday.

And I talked to the Amazon delivery guy because we're now, back in January of this year, January 2026, they put a, I guess you'd call it a depot or whatever.

But anyway, they went from everything coming via USPS. I mean, we still get certain things via UPS, of course, but most everything was coming USPS. And my mail person actually told me back in 2025, in the fall of 2025, because he was out here almost every day dropping something off, you know, for me for a client or something my wife had ordered, that kind of thing.

And he had told me, he's like, yeah, we're going to start in 2026. He said there, Amazon's got a delivery depot down in Valdosta. So they're going to start doing all the deliveries. And yeah, we started seeing that.

Now, the funny thing is the vans, although they don't have anything on them, they're white vans with no windows other than, you know, the driver and the passenger and the windshield, but nothing else. I don't even think the back doors have windows in them.

And they don't have any logos on them other than some of them would just say deliveries. That's it. Doesn't have an Amazon logo or anything like that. And granted, I get it. They're not Amazon employees because I talked to the driver that delivered, finally delivered my air fryer.

And I was like, yeah, here's the whole ordeal. And he told me something that didn't, didn't really make sense for this case, but he might not be too far off for other reasons. You know, to me, this was a delivery driver failure or some kind of coordination failure at the depot itself.

he blamed it on the warehouse and the fact that, as he told me, he said, the Amazon warehouse, all the workers there are part-time. I don't know if that's true or not. He said, and so, of course, them being part-time, they kind of get to pick and choose when they want to work and when they don't want to work, which, okay, that's interesting because I've never heard of any company that allows you to do that. If anything, part-timers are more,

they're more abused, let's say, because you're part-time, which means, you know, you probably want full-time. So the more hours they can give you or fuck with your schedule, they'll do it. But anyway, he said that's the problem.

And so then when there's multiple people decide that they don't want to work on a certain day, then deliveries don't get from the warehouse to the depot. And I'm thinking, all right, dude, I don't know what you're smoking. I didn't tell him this. I don't know what you're smoking, but that makes no sense by the mere fact that it told me it was on the damn delivery truck.

So that means that the package actually got to the depot, went through the process, whatever that process is, and got put on the truck. Did the truck go missing? Did the package get dropped off on the side of the road, dumped in a dumpster?

I mean, what happened to it? you know so i i don't i don't buy his bullshit story i told him i thought it sounded like he needed more they needed more drivers because he told me he said we've got to get out of here before 12 o'clock every more every day which i i'm thinking geez that's actually that's actually starting late right shouldn't you be getting out by seven or eight o'clock

but no he said they have to they're supposed to be leaving the depot before 12 o'clock every single day and he said there are some days he gave an example they didn't get out of there till like 1 30 he said and they're supposed to not do any more deliveries after 9 p.m which i think 9 p.m is kind of stretching it especially as you get into the fall and the winter months right

i mean by the time it's christmas it's uh christmas in january and basically it's dark by five so nine o'clock is might as well be midnight but uh he said yeah he said we have to stop doing deliveries at nine o'clock he said so you know what happens with all the packages we haven't delivered i said what he goes they go home with us he said we try to deliver on the next day

I'm like, well, it sounds like you need more delivery drivers and trucks. Because it's not that. It's the warehouse. I'm like, well, I'm thinking, dude, you're not making any fucking sense. But okay. I'm not going to stand here in this 90 plus degree heat that day arguing with you.

It's good to talk to you. Hope you have a nice day. Take care of yourself. Oh, yeah.

It's getting brighter and brighter. Almost finished with this cup of coffee. So I can make my round two of my morning constitutional. You know what I'm talking about.

But I got a grocery order put in because we go and pick up our groceries every Friday morning at the Walmart Supercenter. right here in good old Tifton, Georgia.

Like I said, nice neighborhood. But here's the interesting part. Maybe interesting, I don't know. And it may just be us.

We are kind of an odd family, especially where we live in South Central Georgia. You know, South Georgia is a red state when it comes to political affiliations for the most part. Georgia overall is kind of purple because when you start getting further up in the North Georgia area, you start getting more Democratic affiliations in the political spectrum.

My entire family leans left. So, and I bring that up because all my friends, well, with the exception of one, pretty much all my friends either aren't political, which to me that's a joke because pretty much everybody is political.

If you're not paying attention to politics, let me rephrase it. Philip DeFranco has a saying that they actually have on one of their shirts that he sells at beautifulbastard.com. You may not fuck with politics, but politics will fuck with you. So you can't be a fence-sitter on these types of issues.

But for us, we vote Democratic. The majority of everybody that I interact with have two things that we aren't. One, they vote Republican, and two, they're religious.

I'm an atheist, my wife is a proclaimed witch, and the rest of my kids are basically like, eh, whatever. Because during their homeschooling, one of the things that we did is my wife gave them the opportunity to read up and study all religions.

Because it was never our intention to go, you're going to believe this way. It's like, hey, here's all the information that's available. You decide. You know, if it doesn't pass the sniff test, then it probably stinks. And it's not something you should give a second thought.

So, yeah, none of my family members are religious. Definitely not Christians. But we have no problem with people that are Christians. What I call true Christians.

Not these fuckers you see on television or everybody that's like, oh, this was a Christian nation and this was given to us by God and all this bullshit about Trump being a caretaker, God chose him. I mean, give me a fucking break. You lost your goddamn mind.

That's rhetorical because I know you have. If you believe that. So, ow, son of a bitch. That was a mosquito that decided that my thumb that's holding on the hand that's holding my coffee was a good source of blood.

Wow. I figured it was just a tad bit too nippy for damn mosquitoes this morning. That's the first one I've had bite me in a while. You need to go the fuck on, Junior.

I know it's a female juniorette, but anyway. But I guess what I was getting to is I got sidetracked on the whole religious thing.

We don't really have any friends out here. I mean, one of the houses right across the road from us on the north side is a guy who actually worked for me back whenever I was running CityNet.

And we never talked. We waved at each other. I think we ran into him and his wife at a Mexican restaurant years ago. And, you know, the customary, so you got hours kind of joke.

And the thing is, is I always thought it would be, you know, it would be nice to live in one of those neighborhoods where everybody knew everybody. You would have backyard barbecues and grills, whatever, like everybody land at somebody's house on a Saturday evening, you know, maybe y'all rotated around. Maybe there was just this one house that everything was set up and everybody's like,

that's where we go. And everybody had something in common. And so y'all got along, y'all were friendly, you helped each other out. You know, you needed help repairing something, building in something, maybe something in the yard, you know, you'd have more than one person come over

and help you and you do the same. None of that out here. I'm, I have one, I have, we're, we're acquaintances with a couple of people and we, you know, we, we do the customary when they go by

Cause I live at the end of a cul-de-sac. And so, um, there's two families that, that live across, uh, across a dam, um, on the east side, going east, I should say.

and um you know we wave um one of them i i talk to probably two or three times a year in passing if i happen to be outside doing something and they're headed in town or whatever we have a brief brief conversation uh one day they were putting up a the guy was putting up a new mailbox and so i went over there and just started shooting the shit with him and and you

You know, that's when I discovered that, you know, he's an older gentleman. He's in his 70s and retired for like the second or third time and is a Trump supporter. I don't think he's the kind that believes that Trump is the second coming of Christ, but he's Republican and therefore he voted for Trump and he felt like the things that

Trump was doing was appropriate, was accurate, was the right thing country needed. And I started explaining to him the fallacies of the things that he was talking about, providing him with real world information and not the Fox News bullshit or Newsmax. And I mean, he didn't fight back on that. He just basically was like, huh, I didn't know that. So it does kind of give me hope

sometimes that if you can sit down and have conversations with people, then maybe you can find some common ground, right? But that's getting harder and harder and harder to do because we are so goddamn divided in this country now. And, you know, those of us on the left, we're just as guilty as those on the right. You know, I'm the first to tell you that I'm right and they're wrong.

And I guess it's because I can't understand how anybody with any intelligence would buy the bullshit that comes out of Trump's mouth or any of his sycophants that surround him. It makes no sense to me. I'm all about truth.

Tell me the truth. Give me the facts. Don't give me your feelings. Facts don't give a fuck about your feelings. So I don't know. I don't know. I'll be 57 in January and this fucking thing's not getting any easier.

You know, who the fuck knows how everything's going to go down with the midterms? You know, are we headed for a crisis in this country? Are we already there? I don't know. So, yeah, there's like somewhere around 18 to 22. I haven't done a count before.

The last time I counted the number of houses in this neighborhood is whenever I was still running CityNet and we were building the fiber infrastructure out to this area. We were actually going down to a remote fire station and just so happened that the route to get down there, I justified running it down there by passing by what we called Holmes Pass that would give us the ability to pick these people up.

as customers, because we only had one provider out here, and that was Mediacom. So yeah, maybe there's 20, 22, I don't know. And I know the names of four families out here, out of everybody.

Oh, here come the geese. I wonder if we're about to see them land. I don't know how they're circling around. See, there's a pond like half a football field away from me that I can see.

Are y'all going to circle? A lot of times they have to come around, they circle, and then, I mean, it's almost majestic just watching them land. The road actually has triple lake in the name.

I refuse to call these lakes because to me, a lake is much, much bigger. But at the same time, the definition is kind of ambiguous because it has to do with whether you can see or not see or there's fish. I mean, it's all kind of nonsense.

Well, they didn't land. They did not land. They had it on. But yeah, especially during the spring and summer months, it's nothing to, I can stand at my office door, I get out the binoculars, and at one point, there was like 25 of them just milling around, you know, looking foraging for food and that kind of thing.

So, anyway, I guess I'm about to wrap this up because nature's calling, but I guess my final word is the fact that we, out here in the, I never lived in a suburban neighborhood until we moved here.

I'd always been a country, country person, country boy. You know, it literally, I lived in Ben Hill County. It took where we lived to get to town was about a 10, 15 minute drive. So it wasn't that far away, but we were far enough out that, you know, we didn't get cable television. Uh, internet was dial up until about 2003 and we got lucky and got, you know, DSL. It wasn't super fast. It was

like 768k down, 128k up. Then within a year, they upgraded it to 1.5 megabit down and 384k up, which made it a lot more fun to play games like World of Warcraft, considering there was at least two of us in the house playing it at the same time. And we were on IP phones with our friends over here in Tifton. But I grew up basically isolated. I did have some neighbor friends that

they eventually moved away. And so whenever, see my wife had lived in a suburban neighborhoods growing up and at various stages of her life, because her dad worked for the railroad and he would, they would have to move. So she was, she was more familiar with what to expect.

And so I was kind of apprehensive, but I was also looking forward to it too, because we were, we were moving to a bigger city. And yeah, I wound up just being as isolated here as I was living in the country. I mean, the FedEx guy the other day, when he was dropping off one of my checks from one of my clients, because one of my clients actually FedExed me the check,

the guy even pointed out, he goes, they must have really wanted to get this to you. And I'm like, what do you mean? He goes, well, this is FedEx overnight before 11. He said, this probably cost a hundred dollars just to send. And I'm thinking, Jesus, I hope they didn't spend a hundred dollars to send me this. But, uh, when he found out what I did for a living, he goes, oh, it must, it's, it's probably nice just being able to work from home. And I'm like, yeah, actually it is, but

you know, there's pros and cons. I enjoy it. I don't want to give it up. Running your own business and being dependent on these clients. I mean, as I pointed out, I lost a longtime client back in February.

Final payment from them was in April. And that cut my income by $30,000. I had them for almost 10 years. And anyway, I've probably hashed that out in a previous episode.

So if this even makes it into the feed. All right. I got to wrap it up. Be good to yourself. Talk to you soon.