While I haven’t been blogging much lately (more on that later), I wanted to take a few minutes to look back on 2025. I always enjoy looking through all the pictures, blog posts, and Facebook entries I made over the past year to remind me of all the things I did.
In 2025, Susan and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary a few months early by taking an absolutely epic vacation. Our trip began with visits to London, Paris, and Spain (Barcelona) before boarding a cruise ship that took us to two more ports in Spain before moving on to Portugal and Bermuda before finally docking in Miami. In just a couple of weeks I toured the Tower of London and Westminster Abbey, had dinner inside the Eiffel Tower, visited the Basílica de la Sagrada Família, stood in between the Lagoa Azul and Lagoa Verde in Portugal, touched the northern point of the Bermuda Triangle, and saw and did so many more things. It was an unforgettable adventure and one of the highlights of my year.
For my birthday this year, Susan and I rented a self-driving Tesla and drove it to the Meow Wolf installation in Grapevine, Texas before heading to Hugo, Oklahoma to stay the night at an elephant reservation. The morning of my birthday, we stepped out onto our cabin’s porch and had breakfast delivered to us by an elephant. Amazing! This was the same weekend as our actual anniversary and we had so much fun together on this trip.
A third trip we took this year was to West Virginia to attend Boatfest, a gathering of retrocomputing enthusiasts. We put a total of 2,000 miles on my camper van driving to and from the event. While there a friend let me stay in his tiny house which is located right next to a river. Once the event started I got to reconnect with dozens of old friends, play with tons of old computers, and even try some honest-to-goodness West Virginia moonshine. While there in the middle of the summer, the A/C on my van died and a couple of local attendees spent hours in the parking lot changing my van’s compressor the day before we hit the road on our way home. This was my fourth Boatfest to attend and I’m already making plans to go next year.
While looking through all the pictures I took last year, there were so many random things Susan and I did together. We continued running our local toy booth and even attended multiple local toy shows, selling lots of vintage and retro toys and making lots of new friends along the way. We spent a weekend at Grand Lake, thanks to friends who let us stay at their lake house. We drove over an hour to eat at Ken’s Pizza, and were sad to see the closing of our local Mazzio’s Pizza — my first official job. Our local Big Lots also officially closed. On one of the hottest days of the summer, Susan and I (along with 700,000 of our closest friends) spent hours outside at a parade to celebrate the Oklahoma City Thunder being named NBA champs!
In August, Susan, the kids, and I got to see Weird Al perform live with opener Puddle’s Pity Party. This was my fourth time to see Weird Al perform live, Mason’s third, and Susan and Morgan’s second. Weird Al is as funny and entertaining as he was when I first discovered him more than 40 years ago, and he is one of the new musical performers that our entire family enjoys equally.
Last year I saw four movies in the theater: Jurassic World: Rebirth, Nuremberg, Tron: Ares, and Anaconda. Along with those films, some of the other new filmes I watched this year were Sinners, Unknown Caller, Karate Kid: Legends, and Happy Gilmore 2. New documentaries I watched included Jim Henson: Idea Man, Pee-wee as Himself, Beyond Hoarding, This is the Tom Green Documentary, and aka Charlie Sheen. I watched several classic movies for the first time including From Dust Till Dawn, Poseidon Adventure, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Ed Wood, and Captains Courageous. Most of what I watched last year were movies I’d already seen. After the passing of David Lynch I rewatched Mulholland Drive, Lost Highway, Blue Velvet, Eraserhead, and Twin Peaks. Some others I revisited included Street Trash, Cabin Boy, Overboard, Rumble in the Bronx, Something Wild, Valley Girl, and many, many others. The last thing I watched in 2025 was the final season of Stranger Things, watching the final episode on New Year’s Eve. I didn’t do a great job of capturing all the movies and television shows I watched in 2025, but plan to try again in 2026.
My health had ups and downs this year. After my annual checkup, my A1C was the lowest its ever been (4.7!). Every blood pressure reading I’ve had this year has been around 120/80. I also ended 2025 almost exactly 50 pounds lighter than I began it. That was the good news. Unfortunately, my vision continues to decrease due to Stargardt disease. So far I have been able to adapt by buying bigger screens and reading glasses. I also hurt my back yet again by ignoring my doctor’s advice to not lift heavy things and doing just that. I ended up having another MRI and adjusting my back medication, but the real solution is for me to stop doing dumb things, which is kind of my thing.
2025 was a rough year for celebrity deaths. Over the past 12 months we lost Robert Redford, Diana Keaton, Gene Hackman, Val Kilmer, Richard Chamberlain, George Wendt, Ruth Buzzi, Brian Wilson, Roberta Flack, and Ace Frehley. The two losses that hit me the hardest were David Lynch and Ozzy Osbourne.
In 2025 I continued all of my normal (?) hobbies. I recorded many podcasts, created lots of YouTube videos for Big Rob’s Van YouTube (a hobby not even I fully understand), and wrote lots of random articles for lots of random websites. Between all those things and updating social media, this blog got the short end of the stick and I hope to not neglect it so much in the future. I have some pretty big writing projects planned for next year that I’m looking forward to starting and finishing. I also got a welder and a table saw, two thingsI haven’t had an opportunity to set up and play with yet but that I’m looking forward to using next year.
One of the craziest things that happened to us in 2025 was a water pipe connected to our hot water heater burst, flooding half our house and causing more than $30,000 worth of damage. Fans and heaters were set up inside our home to pull moisture from our walls and insulation. Half of the baseboards in our home had to be replaced along with several sections of drywall and the carpet in my office, our primary bedroom, and our closet. With no notice I had to completely empty my office (which included emptying half a dozen floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with toys and collectibles) and move everything to our front room and, when that filled up, my workshop. We spent the first week bouncing between our house and a local hotel, and spent the rest of the time inside our house as workers ran air compressors, large fans, nailed and cut baseboards, and painted walls. Other than our 30-year-old bedroom furniture, none of our actual “things” were ruined, but boy, was that a nightmare. Ironically, the pipe burst just days after I was sent home from work on furlough, and the final baseboards were nailed into place the day I returned back to work. I was worried about what I was going to do while on furlough and that little adventure solved that problem by taking up nearly every minute.
We had our families over for our annual Christmas Eve gathering and hours before everyone arrived, our inflatable Christmas dinosaur developed a hole and our four-year-old washer/dryer combo died an unceremonious death while dumping gallons of stinky water onto the floor a few hours before guests were scheduled to arrive. It was that kind of year.
2025 was a bit crazy but that’s how we like it around here. As I looked back at all of last year’s pictures and stories, most of what I saw are Susan and I having fun together. Can’t say I’d change a thing. (Except maybe that flood…)