The peace right now is off the fucking hook. The kind of peace you can’t buy, barter, or blackmail your way into. Black Rabbit flickers on the TV, Maisie’s locked in mortal combat with a squeaky ball that could wake the dead, and BCJ—ever the Zen master in fur—is upstairs sawing logs like he’s auditioning for a lumberjack convention.

The air hums with that low, satisfying buzz of a weekend well wrung out. Friday saw me careening north to Los Angeles, that vast fever dream of palm trees, plastic ambition, and broken charging stations. I love my EV like a loyal hound, but every trip to LA still brings the same creeping terror: range anxiety—that existential dread that your lithium-powered steed will sputter to death somewhere between existential despair and the San Clemente exit.

The first time I learned this lesson, I was a fool. Midnight, headlights carving through the dark, “Guess-O-Meter” whispering lies about my remaining miles. Math flying like shrapnel through my brain: battery percentage, mileage, the cruel arithmetic of survival. I hit 0% outside my neighborhood—zero, nothing, the abyss—and somehow crawled up the steep hill on pure faith and fumes. Pulled into the driveway like a man who’d just crossed the Sahara on a moped.

Now I’m older, wiser, and armed with charging apps. On Friday, I plugged in, juiced up to 80%, and rolled into LA like a smug prophet of modernity. A pre-gig feast of Indian food so divine it nearly triggered enlightenment, followed by a gig that only avoided disaster thanks to the company of friends. The headliner? Aural wallpaper. The social element? Transcendent.

The rest of the weekend unspooled like an EKG of modern American masculinity: Yoga. Writing. Dog walks. Football. Phone calls. More writing. Then—sweet, barbaric catharsis—the NHL preseason, featuring Tampa Bay and Florida in a brawl straight out of the Viking Age. Helmets flew, tempers detonated, and the Floridian announcers bleated like scandalized debutantes at a dockside brawl. Sixteen ejections and still not enough blood to satisfy the gods of retribution.

And now—silence. Sweet, blessed silence. My brain feels like a toasted marshmallow and the only responsible thing to do is shovel it into Black Rabbit episode six and drift off.

I promised myself a blog a day this month. That vow feels both noble and idiotic at the same time—like running a marathon in dress shoes. But hell, we ride the lightning we’ve got.

If you’ve made it this far, bless you. Tomorrow I’ll try to have something profound to say. Tonight, I’m out of gas—literally and metaphorically.

Cue the squeaky ball. Fade to static.