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Fellas, at my pad last night…

2026-05-27T03:15:22Z

Corny Sad Logan

Her: Well, I found your blog before I met you, so I was interested to see how much of your online persona matched you in real life.
Me: No kidding? What’d you think?
Her: You are exactly as you are in the blog. Even the corny things you say.
Me: Corny?!
Her: Like, you say, “fellas,” in the blog. And I was like, “Well, there’s no way he uses that in real life.” Nope, he does.
Me: CORNY?!

I wonder sometimes how I come across in this blog.

When I first started writing it, I remember that my buddy Nadi felt like I came across as a sad sack – but that was mainly because I thought my failures with women was far more entertaining than my successes.

Still, a number of people, including Sara, have said that this blog pretty accurately reflects the way I am in real life.

Sara does say that I’m happier in real life versus how I sound in the blog, but I think that this blog allows me to sit with my thoughts and sadness does occupy my mind a lot.

It’s not always like that.

But yeah, I glad that at least some people think that I’m not trying to pretend to be something that I’m not.

Her: And who says “pad,” for their apartment? The 1990s called. They want their word back
Me: Well, that’s more of a 70s thing…
Her: (interrupting) They still want their word back, Logan.

Sara in high school – better pic than any of me in high school, trust me on this.

Speaking of the 70s, Sara and I had a fun time the other night reminiscing about things we loved from our past that are gone now.

For her, she loved Squeezits as a kid.

For me, I loved something called the Reggie Bar, which was named after famed baseball player Reggie Jackson.

I told her that the thing I loved the most as a little kid was cheese in a can, which was something that I could literally eat with a sleeve of saltine crackers for brekkie, lunch, and dinner.

No wonder that I such a fat kid.

I could go on and list a million more things, but I’ll relate a final story for this entry.

Told you in the last entry that Sara’s sister and BIL came over for dinner the other day and we got to talking about drinks.

Him: I definitely had a Zima before, I just don’t remember it.
Me: It looked like a bottle of vodka but tasted like…well, kinda like beer. (later) What about a Bartles and Jaymes?
Him: The coolers?
Me: Yeah, that was pretty huge when I was a kid and then it just…stopped.
Someone (I don’t remember who): That stopped being a thing by the time we were in college.

I wonder what memories of stuff happening right now the kid will bring with him into his future.

Man, I hope it’s a whole lotta good things.

I wish that more than you can imagine.

Location: Chinatown with everyone, having hand-pulled carbs
Mood: nostalgic
Music: Give me a paper and a pen so I can write about my life of sin (Spotify)
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Rained out

2026-05-25T02:00:36Z

Plus a lotta baking

We had alla these Memorial Day plans that ended up getting washed out with the rain we had all weekend.

Mainly, I we were supposed to head out to see my college friends at their pool, which is what we’ve done for several years now.

But, with the weather unexpectedly cool these past few days, it was a good opportunity to do things that we needed to do around the pad that involved the oven, which we were dreading as it’s been pretty hot around here.

For me, I had to re-season my carbon steel pan because I, stupidly, forgot not to put an acid into it and I was making a quick sauce beurre citron and put in a full lemon, stripping out a lot of my pan’s seasoning.

The above is the post mistake fix.

And Sara used the time to bake a ton of stuff; she had recently started making sourdough breads with hard deli meats braided into it.

Amazeballs with cream cheese if you’ve never had.

It ended up being a fun weekend anywho because we got to have a game night and play Settlers of Catan with the kids and Sara’s sister and family came by for hot pot.

All-in-all, it ended up being a good – albeit wet – weekend.

No pictures from either the game night or the hot pot because I was too busy enjoying the actual event.

Hopefully, your weekend was just as good, if not better, than ours.

Location: my apartment, stuffed from hot pot
Mood: beyond full
Music: sugar don’t taste that bitter (Spotify)
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Everything you have now you once wished for

2026-05-22T03:42:33Z

More than anything

Him: (playing guitar and suddenly noticing me) Hey, what are you doing?
Me: (standing at his doorway) Sorry, was just in the kitchen and heard you play. Didn’t mean to scare you.
Him: Oh. Do you want to hear what I’ve been working on? I can play you what I got so far.
Me: (wiping hands and sitting down) Sweeet! I’d love that.

My last entry stuck in my head because of a line I wrote which was that there was once a time I dreamt of having all that I have.

- I have a great kid that is smart, talented, kind, and healthy. That alone is worth the world to me.
- Speaking of kids, as a kid, I had this thing called Compuserve for like two weeks because I got some sort of free trial of it somehow. It was pre-pre-prehistoric Internet. And I thought it was the most amazing thing ever. My mind could never have imagined internet and alla you people reading me.
  - This is to say nothing about the communication device/GPS/music player/video camera/photo camera/translation device/television/video game system that we all keep in my back pocket 24/7.
- I regularly look at Sara and think, “How on earth did I convince someone as drop dead gorgeous and sweet as Sara to marry me?”
  - Granted, I may have incriminating dirt on her, but still…

- I wrote a book, or two, that I’m proud of and this blog has been 20 years of me just putting my thoughts out into the aether, hoping someone responds – and, most times, someone does.
- I was a respected member of the bar, and my office regularly tells me that they’d love for me to come back and do more work; I remember being in law school anxious that I’d never find a job.
  - Heck, I remember being sick with anxiety about even making it to law school, or college, or my high school, or my middle school.
- When I was a fat kid, I dreamt, more than anything, to be slim and have friends. I’ve now been slim for at least 12 times longer than I’ve been fat.

- I’ve always had massive imposter syndrome when it came to my ability to fight but I just destroyed a guy that was my level, twenty years younger than me, and 40 pounds heavier than me. Just…destroyed him. And this happens more often than I would have expected.
- My mortgage is paid off some six years early and I live in the heart of Manhattan, something I dreamt of all the time when I was in Cornell.

I could go on, but I don’t wanna sound like I’m bragging.

I’m not.

I’m just reminding myself that everything I have now I once desperately wished – more than anything – for.

And I couple this idea with another one that I heard someone say once: You’re in the middle of the last big great thing you wished for.

Alison and I dreamt so much – you cannot imagine how much, which is why her death guts me – about being parents and now I am one.

Yes, it’s not at all the way I thought it would be and it’s far more difficult than I ever would have imagined.

But still, I have to remind myself that I’m in the middle of the thing that Alison and I (mainly Alison) worked so hard to have.

May is tough on the kid and me for reasons you know, and this year has been no different.

But I’m better enough now to recognize that I need to be grateful for all that I do have and not dwell on everything that I don’t.

I’m also not in a hurry for the next big thing because this thing I’m in now, is pretty good.

Mostly.

Me: Hey can I…gah! What’s on your face!?
Her: (face mask on face and with a southern accent) Look Logan, you’re used to “Tryna Get Me a Man, Sara.”
Me: Wha?
Her: This here is “Done Got Me A Man, Sara.”
Me: I don’t think this is what I signed up for.
Her: (shakes head) Too late. No backsies.

Location: where I belong
Mood: grateful
Music: There’s so much more. Be grateful (Spotify)
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The key to happiness

2026-05-21T11:46:57Z

VR DINKS

Me: Facebook just asked me if I wanted to join their VR High School. (long pause) That sounds just awful.
Her: (laughing) Agreed.
Me: Like, who on earth would do such a thing? Who thinks that’s a good idea? Why not just have “VR Let’s Stick Two Burning Red-Hot Spoons into Our Eyes?” It’d be about the same.
Her: I would want VR DINKS – Dual Income No Kids.
Me: Yeah, young adults with freedom and just a bit of scratch.
Her: Exactly. But VR High School sounds awful.
Me: What on earth was Zuck thinking? VR High School: Relive having no freedom, no money, and constant anxiety?

Went to the kid’s school the other day for a presentation he had.

Essentially, it was a business project, with every kid playing a role in sourcing materials, crafting, marketing, and selling bracelets.

Went in and bought the middle tier bracelet ($3.75) because all the other parents already cleared out the first-tier bracelets ($5).

Him: Thanks for coming!
Me: Dude, have I ever missed anything you’ve done?

Don’t envy the kid having to go to school.

Granted, I liked being a kid and I liked parts of school – it was the only place where I didn’t feel that oppressive loneliness – although I’m not sure the alternative was much better.

Having said that, I remember wanting so much to be older. I try to tell myself that, there was once a time I dreamt of having all that I have.

I think being grateful for the things we once wished for and now have is the key to happiness.

While VR DINKS sounds like something that might be fun for a bit, I can’t really imagine life without the kid at all.

He’s just such a good little guy and I’m so proud of the fact that he’s so resilient.

Which is good, because he’ll have to be with the dense people that seem to surround him alla time.

Me: How was your field trip?!
Him: Below average.
Me: Oh man, do you wanna talk about it?
Him: Not really. (pause) Well, we were on the bus for three hours each way with NO AIR CONDITIONING. Everyone was super hot.
Me: Oh, that’s not good. I’m sorry, kiddo.
Him: And…the person there asked a bunch of questions. One of them was “Whoever lives with your mom and dad, step forward.” And (long pause and a cracking voice) I was the only who didn’t step forward.
Me: (sighing) I’m sorry, kid. Adults are really stupid sometimes.
Him: Yeah. I didn’t…it didn’t feel very good.
Me: (sighing again) Yeah.

I still sigh a lot around here.

Location: the gym, worried that I crippled someone. I did not. But he’ll need ice for a while.
Mood: forlorn
Music: she never dies. Wipe that tear away now from your eye (Spotify)
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Staring into the sun

2026-05-18T02:23:27Z

All about the kid

ABFF: Do you still want to keep tradition of dinner on Alison’s birthday? There’s no pressure on that – as [the kid] gets older, I totally get that he may not want to do it, or you may do something else, or…
Me: Yes, please. We’ll be there.

As we’ve been doing for the past several years, we went to ABFF’s place on Alison’s actual birthday.

ABFF asked me if I wanted to do it again this year, which I found surprising because I’m always grateful whenever someone wants to celebrate or remember Alison.

So, Sara, both kids, and I went.

We picked up a bottle of wine and had some pizza and Italian food, because that’s what the kid wanted.

And this day is really all about the kid and Alison.

And finished off the night with a Carvel ice cream cake, which also reminded me of my uncle.

ABFF: Do you remember the whale?
Me: Yeah, what was the name of it?
Her: I don’t remember. (later) Wait, Fudgie!
Me: Yes! Fudgie the Whale!

This time around, we didn’t do anything like the balloons or anything like that, because the kid always takes it so hard.

This time around, Alison was in the background, which I think is good, because thinking too much about her – for the kid and me – is a bit like staring into the sun.

It’s too much to take for too long so we turn away.

I also wanted to say that I think it says volumes about Sara that she always comes to support us and is always just a great presence there.

Can’t tell you how grateful I am that she’s in our lives.

Dunno how I managed to do it, but I’ve really met some amazing and wonderful people in my life.

Heard this quote once that went something like, “There’s no such thing as a long road with good company.

Not sure about that, as I’ve been on some long and awful roads.

But good company makes it more bearable.

Her: Are you OK?
Me: No. But I will be. I just have to make it past this week.
Her: OK.
Me: Thanks for being here.
Her: Where else would I go?

Location: earlier today, a roundtable, being told I’m no Daredevil
Mood: better
Music: And I’m tired of getting used to the day (Spotify)
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2026-05-15T02:41:34Z

No post today, people. Just in my head for a bit.

I’ll be back on Monday, ok?

Alison would have been 47

2026-05-16T04:29:20Z

Growing older is a privilege

It was just Alison’s birthday.

My sister said something to me once, in reference to Alison, when she turned a major milestone birthday:

Growing older is a privilege, not everyone gets the chance.

I’m getting older with every entry.

Hard to believe I started this blog almost 20 years ago – some people that started reading me 20 years ago are still here, which I’m eternally grateful for.

And some of you met Alison when I met her, suffered with her as I did, and said goodbye to her when I did as well.

I’m definitely eternally grateful for that also. Thank you.

And, selfishly, if nothing else, I made alla you think of her for a second or two today.

That always gives me some comfort because she always wondered if people would forget her.

There’s little chance of that.

Can I tell you a story about Alison?

When I met her early on, we traded dating stories, as I always did with people I started dating.

She told me once that she went with her sister to a blind/speed date thingy and it was packed with very average guys and almost no women.

When the few women that were there saw the pickings, they all left, leaving just Alison and her sister there with dozens of dudes.

But they both stayed because they didn’t want to absolutely crush all the remaining people there.

Me: Well, you coulda just left.
Alison: I couldn’t do that, Logan. You should have seen how sad everyone looked.
Me: So, you stayed there for hours just because you didn’t want to hurt a bunch of strangers’ feelings?
Her: (puzzled) Yeah, Logan.

That was her in a nutshell – always thinking of others. Always.

I didn’t fall for her because I thought she was beautiful – which she was – but because she was so unfailingly kind.

She was such a good person.

The kinda girl you’d wanna start a family with.

Because she was built to love and take care of people.

That’s why it guts me that she’s gone.

The world is so much worse off that someone as good as her is not here and someone as misanthropic as I am, remain.

She was always better at being human than me.

Here’s hoping I can still make the kid as good a human as she was.

Him: (softly) Mommy’s not here so…can I just give this to you? (quieter) I got a flower too.
Me: I love it, thanks!
Him: I’ll still give you something for Father’s Day, papa.
Me: Sweet! You’re the best. I love you like a fat kid loves cake.

I noticed that he didn’t write “Happy Mother’s Day,” in the valentine heart on the card above.

Instead he wrote, “Happy, Happy, Happy” because…well, you know…

So, I took the card on behalf of Alison, gave him a hug and kiss, put him to bed, and waited until I could shower to cry for a little bit.

Like I do every year.

Goodnight and Happy Birthday, Alison.

We miss you terribly.

Location: uptown, with the ABFF, Sara, and the kid, looking at a picture of Alison that showed up on the ABFF’s digital picture frame and thinking she looked happy
Mood: melancholy
Music: the stars, look how they shine for you (Spotify)
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A Taiwanese Mother’s Day

2026-05-11T01:45:07Z

Hard things to accept

Me: For Mother’s Day brunch, what’re you in the mood for? We may or may not need a reservation. Middle Eastern, Asian, Western, what?
Sara: I want a 蛋餅 (danbing).
Me: OK! That makes things MUCH easier. I’m on it. That’s it then. You just chill. I’ll handle the rest.

While we were in Taiwan, Sara and the kids go really into Taiwanese brekkies, their favourite of which was a savory egg crepe.

But, because (a) it’s Taiwanese and (b) it’s a breakfast dish, we haven’t had any places or opportunities with which to have it.

But for Mother’s Day, Sara really wanted some Taiwanese food for brunch, and I wanted to see my mom anywho, so this was perfect.

To this end, I took Sara out to the very first Taiwanese restaurant I’d ever taken her to out in Queens

There, we ordered practically the whole menu, and she had to have her stinky tofu.

Her son: The whole restaurant is gonna hate us. We’re gonna scare people off like we did in Taiwan.
Me: Nah, look around. You two are one of only three non-Taiwanese here. We’re all used to it.

Afterward, we went to go to a bookstore to kill some time (not sure what the kid is doing here)…

…before seeing my mom for a bit.

But we didn’t stay long as we took our kids and my nephews for a quick trip to the local park for them to enjoy the sunshine out in the burbs before dinner.

Sara was happy to just hear the birds, enjoy the sunshine, and smell the grass.

Afterwards, we came back to eat with my mom and my sister’s family.

Ended up getting BBQ of all things.

But my mom enjoyed it.

Mom: This is great! I really should stop cooking and just order in more. Cooking is tiring.
Me: OMG, mom, that’s what we’ve all been saying!

Talking with my mom bums me out these days.

Not that particular exchange above, just in general.

Because she’s always had a memory like a steel trap – dude, that lady’s mind was razor sharp my whole life – but lately, she’s been forgetting things more than she’s ever done in the past.

I suppose it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise for me seeing as I’m already in my 50s and she’s in her 80s but it’s still hard to accept.

Everything is harder to accept these days.

But more on that in the next entry.

Location: earlier tonight in LIC, wondering if the homeless guy was gonna throw a large rock at us
Mood: full, so full
Music: If you could see it then you’d understand (Spotify)
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The daily horrors

2026-05-08T02:31:17Z

The Horror We Share

Sara: [My friend’s] moving back to Milwaukee.
Me: Even after her dad died?
Her: Yeah. She still has her mom. Plus, being back home made her miss it.
Me: I get that. I’ve only ever known or been in New York.

Sara and I were taking a stroll in the neighborhood recently when she suddenly jumped back.

Me: What?!
Her: (pointing) Look!
Me: What, I don’t…gah!

And that’s when I saw it – a full-sized replica of the monster from the horror film, The Nun just chilling in the passenger seat of someone’s car.

It’s just not something you see every day on the streets of the Upper West Side.

Then again, there are so many daily horrors that assault us that we barely register them anymore.

Sara has at least two friends that are either stricken with cancer themselves or someone they love dearly.

And I was just talking to a good friend of mine and he told me that another buddy of mine just left his job and moved back home to Florida to take care of his parents, BOTH of whom have cancer.

It truly is the emperor of all maladies.

It’s May again.

I think of Alison and my dad every single day but it’s always worse in May, although it’s not been as bad as it has in the past.

But even if I’m not reminded of them or their plights directly, I’m at an age where someone I know – either directly or indirectly – ends up getting cancer almost every single week and I think to myself:

Man, I know exactly what they’re going through. I hope they make it.

Really do.

Because it’s both jaw dropping and horrifying.

And yet, people just seem to go about their days as if everything is fine.

Then again, perhaps I truly am the weird one, because I’m so terrified of getting it and leaving the boy alone in the world.

Me: D’you know how many people get cancer in America?
Him: I gotta figure like…50%?
Me: Yup, you got that right. One outta two. That means, statistically speaking, you or I will get it. How people aren’t radically changing everything they’re doing in light of this information is beyond me.

My own mom is dealing with her own health issues – not cancer, thankfully, just age-related stuff.

But it reminds me that she’s mortal and not the young, vibrant woman that I picture in my head whenever I think of her.

It’s a bit like staring into the sun, I can only think about it so long before I have to turn my thoughts to something else because it’s too much to bear.

Can’t bear the thought of losing any more of my family. I’ve lost enough of them as it is.

I suppose that’s why people don’t radically change everything about their lives – because I think we’d all be paralyzed with fear if we truly thought about all the horror surrounding us on the daily.

Her: (staring at the nun mannequin) That’s so creepy. Who does that?
Me: Someone who wants to be in the HOV lane and doesn’t have anyone, I guess.

Location: home, trying to push all that doubt to the side of my mouth
Mood: horrified
Music: For when you go come in misery (Spotify)
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The last analog decade

2026-05-07T03:50:43Z

The 90s were seminal for me

Her: Listen, you old geezer.
Me: Did you just insult me with a lame name?
Her: …yes.
Me: I don’t know what I found more offensive, the insult itself or the lameness of it.
Her: I apologize for the lameness. (pause) But not the sentiment.
Me: Fine.

Heard a fact the other day that blew my mind:

Back to the Future, which I saw in theatres, came out in 1985 and was about a distant time in the past, 1955 – which was 30 years prior.

Welp, it’s 2026 now and 30 years prior was…1996.

That was three years AFTER I graduated college.

This was Sara in college – waaaay after the 90s. But I did wanna say that she was probably outta my league back then (and maybe now too – don’t tell her).

Sara essentially grew up in the 90s but I went to college and became a young adult in the 90s.

The 90s were when I stopped being my parent’s kid (mostly) and started being my own person.

In any case, I read something the other day that echoed this about the last analog generation, which was GenX, my generation.

Me with Taiji master Erle Montaigue – he was a pretty polarizing figure, but he was always really nice and cool with me. Died years ago. I’d been doing martial arts since I was a kid.

If GenX was the last analog generation, then the 90s was the last analog decade.

I say this because I worked – deeply – in tech during this time and I saw firsthand that:

- Analog media was still the default – newspapers, magazines, etc.
- Online social media wasn’t really a thing yet – Friendster came out in 2002 and was the first real social platform that anyone used.
- We shared stuff physically – tapes, minidiscs, CDs, etc.
- We communicated both digitally and analog but digital was optional.

By 2010, this wasn’t true at all.

And now, literally nuthin is analog anymore.

That’s my buddy Kar who now has FOUR kids – one of whom looks pretty much exactly like her.

Everything is digital, which – let’s be honest here – is often better than what we grew up with.

But there was something about a life that was less superficially connected back then versus now, where we all seem to feel pressure to keep up with…everything and everyone.

Like, in the 90s, to have a social interaction, you actually had to walk out your door and strike up a conversation with someone or pick up the phone and give someone a call.

I met alla my good friends at that time either at college, or through people I met in college or law school.

And we all had more shared cultural experiences because we just had fewer choices available.

I can’t think of the 90s without thinking of this show.

The other thing is that I – and a lotta people my age – grew up as a latchkey kid, which really came about in the 80s.

For those of you that don’t know what that term means, a latchkey kid was a kid that came home to an empty home after school and let him/herself in and took care of him/herself.

But that meant that we were free from supervision and were pretty self-reliant.

Compare that with how attached people are to their phones and their social circles – even if a kid did come home to an empty apartment, he would hardly be “alone.”

Nowadays, there are cameras and speakerphones for a parent to check in on their kids, and a kid has any number of friends online with which to chat with.

Being alone is barely possible these days.

Rain and me, probably at Cafe Orlin or Yaffa Cafe downtown. A lotta the late 90s early 2000s was in cafes.

I honestly don’t know how much of the 90s remains with me nor do I know how those things manifest from me.

And that means I truly don’t know how much of my old analog life comes out in my current digital one.

But I know that it’s gotta because the 90s were such a seminal part of my adult life.

Looking back at all these pictures, it didn’t feel like it was 25-30 years ago, but the numbers/dates don’t lie.

While the 90s are long gone they definitely shaped how I see, connect, and move through this modern digital world.

And even though the digital world is better in a thousand ways, it doesn’t replace the feeling of growing up in a world where you had to show up in person to matter.

Maybe that’s why the idea that the 90s were the last analog decade hits so hard for me; it was the last time most things were analog and digital was a choice and not a requirement.

And the echoes of that last decade are something only I, and those of us that lived through it, can hear.

Location: in my head, the corner of West 45th Street and 6th Avenue at 3AM sometime in the mid 90s, stumbling home drunk from a club with numbers scribbled on my palm and wondering when life would be grand, not realizing that it already was.
Mood: nostalgic
Music: I can do whatever I want, I can see whomever I choose (Spotify)
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