Todd Grooms

Clown fish at the Tennessee Aquarium

Why Horace Vandergelder. That is the nicest thing you have ever said to me. Ha ha.

A few months ago, we were trying to settle on a movie to watch on a Saturday night. After perusing Disney+ for a few minutes, we settled on Hello, Dolly!. Ashley had seen the movie, but I had not. I was aware of the cultural significance of the musical and its reference in Wall•e, which has been a family favorite for years.

I immediately fell in love with Hello, Dolly!. I found Walter Matthau to be hilarious and the music to be infectious. Matthau’s character has quite a few great lines, but there was one in particular that has stuck with me ever since: “Dolly Levi, you are a damned exasperating woman.” As soon as I heard it, I knew that it summed up my feelings towards my daughter, Adelaide.

Adelaide is fiercely independent, frustratingly so. She rarely heeds my warnings of potential danger in situations, like when she decided to practice twirling at the top of our stairs. I pleaded with her to practice twirling elsewhere, but she felt the top of the stairs was the perfect place for this. I eventually had to pick her up against her objections. I try to explain my feelings or my concerns. She usually smiles and continues doing what she wants. I raise my voice. There is no change. It’s a constant battle. I want her to be a strong person. I just want her to be a bit more receptive when personal safety is on the line.

I love her dearly. She is already three years old and it’s happening way too fast. I plead with time to slow down, but time is about as obstinate as Adelaide. I recently sat with her and just watched her twirl. Her twirls are beautiful, even if a little clumsy. I really needed her to finish getting her pajamas on for bed, but I just watched. I asked her a few times to finish getting her pajamas on, but she smiled and kept twirling. I considered raising my voice, but doing so wouldn’t help and would only make me feel bad later. I sat and watched. She finally walked over, gave me a kiss, and finished changing into her pajamas. Progress.

🎙️ Song Exploder - Episode 28: The Long Winters - The Commander Thinks Aloud

I’ve listened to The Commander Thinks Aloud dozens of times, but never knew what the song was about. Wow. I vaguely remember the Columbia disaster, but this episode hit me hard.

🔗 Nashville Mayor John Cooper announces he won’t seek second term

I am not sure how I feel about this. He has had such an awful hand dealt to him during his tenure, a hand that cost him $350,000 of his own money. His mayoral term feels like a Pyrrhic victory. I am sure this was not the term he envisioned. As a reminder: we do not choose the moment; rather, the moment chooses us.

I have used toddgrooms.com as my personal blog since I obtained the domain in college. My blog has gone through a few iterations. I have maintained this iteration since 2013. I am proud of my current iteration, but regret the loss of some of the pre-2013 content. Recently, I have been considering a new domain for my personal blog. I think having my name as a landing page makes a lot of sense. I like the idea of my blog living its own life under its own independent name. I also slightly dislike the “.com” TLD for my domain. I’ve also considered picking up a different TLD variant of my current domain. I have also considered migrating my blog (self hosted Jekyll blog) over here so that my blog and micro blog all live together. I’m currently in a weird limbo where I need to use git to create posts for my blog. It creates so much friction that I’m unable to quickly hammer out a full blog post for my regular site.

I am certain this will be something I ponder for awhile.

Finished reading: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel 📚

Wow! I added this book to my list after seeing it mentioned in someone else’s feed. I’m so glad I picked it up! I enjoyed it and was caught off guard by the ending.

Currently reading: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel 📚

Finished reading: Artemis by Andy Weir 📚

Thoroughly enjoyed this read. Enjoyed The Martian so much, but procrastinated on reading Artemis. Glad I came around.

Currently reading: Artemis by Andy Weir 📚

Paw prints in the snow

After hearing Casey discuss his usage of Day One for journaling on ATP, I decided to download it and give it a try. I am now at a four day streak and have been enjoying it. Unsure if I will keep it up, but I like have a personal repository for what I am feeling and experiencing.

I have had a wonderful Christmas Day with my family. I received a few thoughtful gifts. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the children open their gifts. I am thankful that we have been able to stay warm during this brutal cold front.

Finished reading: Small Fry by Lisa Brennan-Jobs 📚

Day eight of AoC2022 is in the books. This one took me a while, but I got to a decent solution. I am starting to feel a bit more comfortable with Ruby.

Just wrapped up day seven of AoC2022. This one took me awhile, but was also quite fun. Building up the equivalent of a file system was certainly a unique challenge. Probably over-engineered it, but I’m actually proud of my solution.

Day six of AoC2022 was definitely a bit easier than day five. I felt like my solution was a bit lazy when it comes to optimizing for speed/memory usage though. Nothing this M1 Pro can’t handle. 🦾

Day five of AoC2022 took me a bit longer than expected. The most difficult part was coming up with a way to parse the input. I probably could have brute forced some of the input myself, but I’d rather come up with a solution to parse it.

Completed day four’s puzzle on AoC2022. Started experimenting with writing actually classes in Ruby with this solution, which is something that I haven’t done before in my light scripting experience with Ruby.

Completed day three’s puzzle on AoC2022. I’m usually working on the puzzle towards the end of the day. No way to earn any points, but still pretty fun. Ruby has been an excellent language for this with its robust foundation feature set.

Started Advent of Code last night. I usually complete the first few days worth of puzzles before getting busy and forgetting to followup. I hope to get farther this year. I chose an unfamiliar language, Ruby, this year.

🔗 Beautiful animation of the lifecycle of the SARS-CoV-2 Virus.

I found this relaxing, mesmerizing, and a bit frightening.

via kottke.org

While cutting a piece of pumpkin pie for my two year old daughter’s breakfast: “No! Don’t cut it!” Kid, I’m not giving you the entire pie for breakfast. 😂

It has been a long, but lovely Thanksgiving. We had friends over for a “Friendsgiving”, complete with good wine and three different kinds of pie. It is easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day minutia, but I have a lot for which to be thankful. Trying to practice gratitude. 🙏🏻

Twitter seems to be in trouble. I have to ask myself, “Why do you care?” I haven’t been an active user on the platform in over six years. When I made the deliberate choice to check out of Twitter, I made my account private, uninstalled the application from my phone, and abstained from posting to the site. I have considered deactivating my account over the years, but have resisted the urge. What if I want to resume using it? This is doubtful, especially in its current state.

A few podcasts have urged people to download their Twitter history. I had been resistant to this, but after the initial Twitter layoff I decided to request an archive of my history. The process was smooth and I was able to download my archive a few days after my request. I didn’t know what to expect from the archive. Why would I want a bunch of random data? I was taken aback by the formatting of the archive. The archive is presented as a local web page, where you can navigate through your history of posts much the same way you could do so on the website.

Once I launched the local webpage in the archive, I was not ready for what awaited me: my full blown anxiety of the upcoming 2016 US Presidential election. My last few months of posts on Twitter were filled with concern and anxiety. My posts reeked of desperation. I was bargaining to avoid what eventually became inevitable on election night. I had forgotten what the final days before my sabbatical were actually filled with.

It seemed fitting that a few days after being confronted with this trauma our former President would announce his 2024 campaign. I didn’t want to see this, but I knew this was coming. My unease has returned. I’m not looking forward to the next two years.

🔗 The Right-Wing Mothers Fueling the School-Board Wars

Difficult to read at times. It’s absurd, to me, that this is where we are at. Yet, here we are.