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hookem2010

Certifiably Surly
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Everything posted by hookem2010

  1. Oh, I got a picture! It's just through my bins with a phone and a fidgety baby hanging from my chest. Wanna see it!!! Got some crisp audio at least. 2023-05-19 07_56.wav
  2. I made the trek down the Hill of Life to (successfully!) chase the Swainson's warbler turned up a few days ago by Austin's teenage birding wunderkind. Not the flashiest of birds, but only Travis County's 3rd recors. It was singing its little heart out and I could hear it 5 minutes before I got to him. The hike back up with 20 lbs of baby strapped to my chest was fun. Nice little bow to wrap up spring migration.
  3. Yea, it's not to the point where drinking is affecting my relationships or ability to perform my responsibilities. Doesn't mean it's not a problem, so I'm going to try and stop altogether for an unspecified amount of time and see how that goes. In the past, I've tried to set limits, which hasn't been particularly effective for me.
  4. The compulsion to continue drinking after the first one or two hits home for me. I can go out and have a drink or two with friends, but that alone is rarely satisfying to me, so I typically get something on the way home so as not to allow those first couple drinks to "go to waste" or feel pointless to me.
  5. As a shy person who struggles to understand my own feelings, I definitely use it to be more open emotionally and interactive socially. And while I don't experience the depression I once did, I think I've settled into a bit of dysthymia, and alcohol provides that brief bit of euphoria I rarely feel otherwise.
  6. I appreciate the response. I couldn't go back to sleep last night so I read the first 15 pages of the thread. I've known that I've had a problem limiting my alcohol for years, but repeatedly telling myself that I will cut back has not resulted in any significant or long-lasting changes, so clearly I need to do something differently. Going to check out the Big Book
  7. I've avoided this thread for a long time, mostly because I felt like I might belong in it. I've only looked at this page, but it seems shit hits home around 35 for a lot of people, and I just hit that age. Currently laying in the guest bedroom after a silly drunkish fight with the wife and experiencing my standard 3 am wakeup feeling sick to my stomach, depressed and regretful. I don't drink every day, but I usually do maybe twice a week, and even though I'm not getting completely lit, it always seems like I need "one more" than I intend to have. I think part of the problem is I'm now aware enough to not take it way too far, like I occasionally would in the past, so I'm not blacking out or puking or anything like that. Obviously, one does not need to get to that point to still be drinking too much, too often. I'm not sure if I could put a finger on when my alcohol issues began, because I feel like my drinking didn't slow down much after college, it just kind of morphed from going out with friends to drink to drinking more by myself. And while I've moderated it some since that time, I've wanted to decrease my drinking for probably a decade with only slight improvement. Recently, the struggle I feel like stems from having a new kid. I've been staying at home with our 1 year-old, and when I'm alone with him, I don't really have any desire to drink. But when my wife is off work, I think we both get a little stir-crazy doing baby stuff constantly, so the easy thing to do to pass time as the day is winding down is to go grab a beer and bring some home for when the kid goes to sleep. I don't know if complete abstinence is the answer for me or not, but I'm tired of having 1 or 2 nights every week where I sleep like shit and wake up feeling exhausted and ashamed. I'm not a religious person and I'm not ready to commit to anything else quite yet, but I know from past depression that talking to people who don't know me personally was one of the most helpful things I did. Hopefully putting this out there makes me more ready to come to grips with the fact that I have a problem, rather than telling myself for the 1000th time that this time it's different and I won't be here again next weekend.
  8. There's a brown pelican hanging out at Town Lake where Waller Creek dumps into it. I haven't seen it yet, but they hardly ever range inland and there are only a couple of records from the county, so a very cool find.
  9. This was not a serious post. I think something desperately needs to be done to respond to our country's obsession with guns, but have zero expectations that anything will change.
  10. Cost of freedom. If you don't like it, you can get out!!!
  11. Not much more than a week of legit spring migration remaining here in TX. It's been pretty slow for me this year, although my 11 month-old not allowing me to stand still for more than 5 seconds may be contributing to my troubles. I did hit 100 species at the local park since moving 3 months ago, just not the density of migrants compared to the hotspots in Austin that I'm used to. Hoping for another flurry of activity before things start to wind down.
  12. Cureenrly reading The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by Davids Graeber and Wengrow This book is a bit more philosophical than most of the more strictly fact-based non-fiction I read, but interesting nonetheless.
  13. Spring migration is approaching its zenith here in central TX, and the neighborhood park near my new place has turned out to be a decent migrant trap. I had my first painted bunting today, which will hopefully breed around the park. I've also had both male blackburnian and cerulean warblers, some of the more stunning songbirds, the latter of which is declining and quite rare this far west. Unfortunately, my hummingbird feeder remains unvisited. Hopefully they start showing up when the Turks cap blooms.
  14. As I sit here getting kind of drunk as the storm rolls through, I think how crazy it is that we could be decades ahead on sustainable energy, with essentially all the comforts we currently enjoy, while maintaining some semblance of a natural planet, had a few hundred politicians and rich assholes taken this shit seriously 30 years ago.
  15. Took this rec and I am dying
  16. I just cannot get over how strange the obsession with gun ownership is. Are y'all really that scared, or are you perpetual children who never got over the thrill of bottle rocket wars and blowing shit up with black cats and M60s?
  17. Hahaha, this is absolutely true. He WANTS to fall face-first into everything. He also has expectations for playthings that apparently do not come to fruition, because he will suddenly very upset with his toys. My current favorite game though is tug-of-war with a spoonful of food.
  18. Probably wouldn't be so much of a problem if dipshits wouldn't feed wild animals.
  19. Clearly if these kids were armed, the good guys with guns could have shot the bad guy with a gun before he beat them to the draw. More guns!!1!!
  20. I fucking dread summer
  21. We're working on #2 now. Should know in a couple days if we made it happen the first month of trying. The first kid was very much a happy accident.
  22. Just had about 75 turkey vultures, a couple dozen hawks (swainson's, broad-winged and probably some Cooper's/sharp-shinned), a falcon and a half-dozen Franklin's gulls stream over my house heading north. Raptor migration in full swing!
  23. 10 month-old boy seems to have hit a developmental spurt after being just a bit behind. 2 months ago, he was barely sitting and definitely not babbling. Now, he's pulling himself up to standing in his playpen and crib, and since he started babbling yesterday, it's his new favorite thing. I'm not sure how I had a hand in creating this handsome devil.
  24. Nice little broad-winged hawk! The next month or so is the best birding all year in Texas. Tens of millions of birds will be passing through between now and mid-late May.
  25. Still waiting for my first to arrive in the yard this spring. I've got my feeder up and my Turk's cap will hopefully bloom any day now. At Reimer's we'd get a couple dozen at a time, and occasionally have to help them escape from the booth.
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