Some Goals for 2026

January 5, 2026January 6, 2026 ~ Jon Williams ~ Leave a comment

It was back to work to me today, back to routine. With that, 2026 begins in earnest, so it’s time to list out a few goals for this new year. Most of these are building upon either what I did or what I wanted to do in 2025.

Steps: 2,250,000 (6,165 per day)

Last year’s goal was an even 2 million, and I reached it—on New Year’s Eve. No room to spare. I definitely want to be more active, and walking/treadmill/elliptical is my preferred method. I’d love to be able to revise this number upward, but this is a realistic target for me.

Gym visits: 52

This one is a little tentative. Once a week seems easy enough, but last year it didn’t happen. My current membership is set to expire soon; I’m hoping to improve my track record at a different location with a set of equipment and amenities that’s more amenable to what I’m looking for.

Library visits: 70

I made 54 last year; I think I can do better.

Books read: 45

The number for 2025 was 40; like my steps goal, I got there on New Year’s Eve. To be frank, my reading habits have been fucked ever since COVID. I really thought I had come out the other side of it—I read 31 books through the first six months of last year. Then I cratered out. Still, 40 books was a win, and this year I’m determined to do even better. One key? Reach for a book instead of my phone whenever I have a spare few minutes.

Short stories read: 60

Last year I planned for 52, one per week, and beat it by six. So let’s go further. This is another number I’d really like to bump at at some point.

Blog posts: 20

Like reading, writing (outside of work) is a pleasurable habit I’m determined to get back to. Twenty should be easy, right? I mean, if I can just bring back my “Month in Review” posts, that’s 12 right there. I also have a goal of making sure WordPress and Microsoft Word are open on my desktop at pretty much all times so it’s easy to pop in at any point to jot down some notes or craft a sentence or two.

Albums heard: 365

This is a new one, and I’m not 100% sure exactly why I’m doing it. Probably because so much of my listening is done on shuffle, and I want to break out of that at least a little bit. 365 is a lot, but we’ll give it a shot.

2025 in Review

January 2, 2026 ~ Jon Williams ~ Leave a comment

A few interesting things in and around Columbus.

Brandi has been several times, but I finally made my first visit to Austin.

Our second time in DC included a trip to the top of the Washington Monument.

And of course…Luna, our best girl.

I made a post last January 1 that noted a handful of goals for the year. Mission accomplished on these:

Steps: 2,000,000
Short stories read: 52
Books read: 40

As for the rest…well, I fell short on the rest. What can I say? The world has been on fire, and reaching any goals is a pretty significant accomplishment. Here’s to a better year all around in 2026.

Bringing Our Girl Home

December 31, 2025December 31, 2025 ~ Jon Williams ~ Leave a comment

TW: pet loss

The vet’s office called this afternoon and said Luna was ready to be picked up. So Brandi and I went and got her and brought her home, one last time.

It was eight days ago that we lost her. Here’s what I wrote at the time:

Brandi was the one who wanted a cat.

Which isn’t to say I didn’t want a cat; it’s just that she was more active about it. That’s a fair summary of our relationship, actually.

Picture it: Troy, Ohio, February 2008. I’m back home after a short work trip, and Brandi asks if I want to visit the Miami County Animal Shelter on Saturday morning. You know…“just to look.”

Sure.

In the cat area, Brandi’s eyes went wide. So many cats. After a moment, she zeroed in on a little calico. It turned out to be an asshole. But while she went to say hello, I scanned the room to see how the cats were reacting to us.

And there she was. On the far wall, a little striped kitty, poking her front leg out of her cage and beckoning with her paw. I nudged Brandi. “I think that one wants you.” Brandi got her out of the cage; she never went back in. We adopted her (she cost $40), took her home, and named her Luna.

At first, it was a lot. She went into heat almost immediately. Then we discovered she had ringworm, so we had to quarantine her for a month. (Were we strict about observing said quarantine? We were not. We did at least change clothes anytime we went in to visit her, which we did often, hence one of her many nicknames: Kittypants.)

She went into heat one more time before we could get her spayed. Brandi was working a crazy schedule at the time; so she could sleep, I stayed in the living room while Luna yowled all night.

But we got through. I had recently started working remotely; Luna and I bonded hard. She would sit with me in my office chair while I worked during the day and sleep in my arm or on my legs at night. Brandi had to catch up as her schedule normalized, but she did. And for nearly 18 years, Luna was the best little friend, fuzz monster, bed hog, reading buddy, couch companion, office mate, and general supervisor we ever could have asked for.

Luna left us around 7:30 this morning. She was in bed, on her pillow and blanket, with mommy and daddy there to let her know she was safe and loved. So well loved.

I’m glad we got to spend so much time together. It was never going to be enough.

~September 15, 2007 (born)/February 9, 2008 (adopted) – December 22, 2025

It’s been a weird few days since then. We had Luna for nearly eighteen years, and for her to now be gone is kind of surreal. Over all that time, your mind makes space for patterns and rituals—some you aren’t even consciously aware of—that are suddenly over.

No one screaming you awake to demand breakfast before sunrise. No one knocking over cups because she’s thirsty (or just wants attention). No one chewing on every bag or scrap of plastic you put down and forgot about for one second. No one underfoot when you’re carrying groceries or laundry. No one to say goodbye to when you leave, or to greet you with a cheerful chirp and roll when you get home. No one crawling into your lap when you’re trying to read, or standing in front of your monitor when you’re trying to write, or snoring on the end of the couch when you’re trying to watch a movie. No one thundering up and down the stairs at night, or standing on your chest and pawing at your face (or sometimes placing her cold wet nose directly on your eyelid) because you’re not sleeping in a position that’s comfortable for her.

Coming when it did, it has certainly made the holidays…I don’t know, pick your adjective—difficult? Melancholy? Bittersweet? We’re still finding our joy where we can, and it’s impossible for Brandi and me to talk about Luna without a lot of laughter. We were just really hoping we’d get to enjoy one more Christmas with our girl.

In my life, I’ve known and been close to a fair number of animals, but Luna is really only the second that has been “mine.” The first was a Chow-Lab mix named Cupid that I got as a puppy when I was in high school. In a very odd coincidence, Cupid’s adoption date was February 10 (1992); Luna’s was February 9 (2008). We lost Cupid on December 20 (2005); Luna passed on December 22.

Of course, when I went to college in 1995, Cupid stayed with my parents. I was back home often after that, sometimes for extended periods, and she and I were always close. But by the time she passed, she hadn’t been a part of my everyday for ten years. Luna, on the other hand…we were together nearly 24/7 for her entire life. Getting back to a routine with a cat-shaped hole in it after the holidays is going to be one of the hardest things I’ve done.

I’ll have another post at some point with some fun stories and good memories of Luna. But for now, I wanted to make sure she got a little tribute on the day she came home for good.

Love you, Tunie.

March 2025 in Review

April 1, 2025April 2, 2025 ~ Jon Williams ~ Leave a comment

March is a cat-focused month. Brandi and I got Luna in February of 2008, so March is usually when we end up taking her in for her annual checkup. She’s 17, so there’s always some anxiety involved—for her and for us. But, other than a few teeth that were cracked and needed to be removed, all the news was good. Which wasn’t exactly a surprise, as she looks and acts as young as ever, but a relief nonetheless.

And a couple of fun shots taken during a night out with friends. I haven’t been doing a great job of taking photos lately—a function of so much time inside, in the same environs, during the winter—but I’m hoping to do better.

A Handful of 2025 Goals

January 1, 2025 ~ Jon Williams ~ Leave a comment

At the beginning of a new year, I usually do some resolutions, and occasionally even have some success with them, but to kick off this year I’m thinking more in terms of “goals.” Even though I’m a words guy, I find that I am interested in numbers and can be motivated by counting stats, so—almost entirely for my own reference, although I would be delighted if anyone else gained any sort of edification—here are a few things I’m interested in accomplishing by the next time the ball drops.

I’ll note that while all of these numbers represent improvement from 2024 (for those items I kept track of), I’m hoping they are conservative and relatively easily reachable. I’d love to revisit this post in three or six months and revise some of these numbers upwards.

Steps: 2,000,000
Gym visits: 52
Theater visits: 10
Live sporting events: 10
Library visits: 70
Books read: 40
Short stories read: 52
Blog posts: 20

August 2024 in Photos

September 1, 2024September 29, 2024 ~ Jon Williams ~ Leave a comment

A summer evening sky with a few wispy clouds

A night sky overlooking a parking lot and a distant water tower, taken from a hotel window

August means the start of the high school football season here in Ohio. My alma mater just had artificial turf put down for the first time—I personally preferred the natural grass field, but those are going by the wayside for now. In news that’s actually Commaphile related, the latest edition of the Chicago Manual of Style made its debut; my copy was delivered on release day and has already taken pride of place near my desk.

I got a new phone (Pixel 9 Pro XL) this month, which of course means I also got a new camera. The football photos and the cocktail photo above were taken with it, as was the cat photo below with the TV in the background. It’s pretty spectacular, just in the limited amount I’ve used it so far; I just need to remember to use it more often.

July 2024 in Photos

August 1, 2024August 9, 2024 ~ Jon Williams ~ Leave a comment

A large rounded cake, iced white, with four thin, curly, lit candles.

A dusk sky over downtown Columbus as seen from Huntington Park during a Columbus Clippers baseball game.

July kicked off with my 47th birthday on the 4th—my wife baked an incredible cake you can see above. It is called, bizarrely, pig-lickin’ cake; my mom used to make it when I was a kid. Instead of braving downtown Columbus for Red White and Boom or a school construction zone for our local fireworks, we went to a Clippers game on the 5th. The game was great—the Clippers won on a walkoff homer in the bottom of the ninth—but the postgame fireworks were incredibly disappointing. Lesson learned.

I’m a big fan of the National, a longstanding indie rock band with roots in Ohio. They’re known, among other things, for their melancholy, introspective lyrics, often inspired at least in part by classic or contemporary literature (one of their recent albums is titled First Two Pages of Frankenstein). From this came the “Sad Dads Book Club” on Instagram, a book club dedicated to books inspiring or inspired by the band. I was lucky enough to win a recent giveaway, a copy of the novel Sorrow by Tiffanie DeBartolo (inspired, fittingly enough, by the National song “Sorrow”), and when it arrived I was ecstatic to see that it was signed and personalized by the author. I’m very much looking forward to reading it.

Our neighborhood is always a haven for wildlife. In addition to the lawn-grazing family of deer seen above and typical suburban sights like rabbits and squirrels, there are also plenty of chipmunks, the occasional fox, and once or twice even a couple of turkey vultures, just off the top of my head. There are also a ton of backyard birds, and for a couple of days, we had a goldfinch that got obsessed with our bedroom window. It would flutter around right in front of it and would even perch on the screen so it could peer inside for long stretches at a time. This went on for probably the better part of two days; on the third day I still saw it a few times sitting in the pine tree just outside the window, and then it apparently decided it was time to get on with its life.

And of course, there were cat pics:

June 2024 in Photos

July 1, 2024 ~ Jon Williams ~ Leave a comment

Some fun outings this month! A Clippers baseball game featured an appearance by the ZOOperstars, which is a traveling troupe of inflatable animal/sports-themed mascots. It was kind of surreal, but as a baseball fan who came of age in the 1980s, when the most readily available way to watch the sport was via afternoon Cubs broadcasts on WGN, “Harry Canary” cracked me up. A personalized Funko Pop figurine immortalizing Luna and me was a hilarious Father’s Day gift from Brandi. We made our first visit to the Franklin Park Conservatory for a cocktail event—the drinks were mostly “meh,” but the venue was awesome. And finally, Brandi’s birthday gave us an occasion for a nice dinner and a fun night on the town.

2024 (So Far) in Photos

June 16, 2024June 16, 2024 ~ Jon Williams ~ Leave a comment

It’s certainly been a year. I haven’t been great about documenting it, but in an effort to start getting a handle on it, here are some of the highlights so far, from January through May.

There have, of course, been plenty of cat pics.

A Trip to Our Nation’s Capital

November 1, 2023November 2, 2023 ~ Jon Williams ~ Leave a comment

In the first part of October, Brandi and I took a long weekend trip to Washington, DC, with our friends Spencer and Chris. I feel like a lot of people end up there at some point early in their lives, but somehow neither Brandi nor I had ever been there. Chris, on the other hand, grew up in the area and still has family there, so it was nice having a built-in tour guide.

Our first outing was to the Library of Congress.

I’m a library nerd, so the one thing I knew I definitely wanted to try to do while we were in DC was visit the Library of Congress. And it turns out that they host a happy hour every Thursday evening! It also turns out that this happy hour is quite popular—the line for drinks was quite long. (Full disclosure: I used my phone’s “magic eraser” function to remove bystanders from a couple of the photos above.) A lot of people, in fact, were getting drinks and then immediately getting back in line for their next one. We just went through once, and then took the opportunity to wander around and see the place, which is stunning. Being in the main reading room was something I’ll never forget.

The next day, Friday, was a heavy walking day. We started at our hotel (Motto, in Chinatown), grabbed some Starbucks along the way, and hit the National Mall (and then some): the Washington Monument, the World War II Memorial, the Reflecting Pool, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, and the MLK Memorial. We also popped into the National Museum of American History to see the original Star-Spangled Banner and checked out a couple of exhibits at the National Museum of Natural History.

That evening we went to the U Street Corridor/Logan Circle for dinner. We started at Izakaya, a restaurant specializing in Japanese small plates that Spencer and Chris have visited several times, and it was amazing. From there we procured cocktails from Left Door (amazing), the Crown & Crow (meh), Aslin Beer Company (very cool vibe; befriended a dog), and the Alchemist (my personal favorite) before calling it a night.

Saturday was not a particularly touristy day; we spent most of it with Chris’s parents, and his sister and her boyfriend. But this included dinner at Mission, and so we got to see Nationals Park (sadly, the regular baseball season had just ended, so we couldn’t go inside) and visit a few places in the Navy Yard area. At the Dacha Beer Garden, as you’ll see below, our waiter asked if I wanted my beer “tall or short” without specifying what that meant, so I ordered “tall” and got an enormous glass boot full of beer.

We ended Saturday with a nightcap at our hotel’s rooftop bar, which is where I captured the image above.

Sunday was our last day, but we did sneak in a bit more sightseeing. First up was the White House! Just the outside, unfortunately—Chris contacted our representative to request a tour, but that was at a time when it seemed like the government was going to shut down, and he never got a response. But seeing it from outside was still very cool, and honestly, for our first trip to DC, it was enough. Our last stop was the National Portrait Gallery for the presidential portraits. Then we had a quick lunch at Cava before making the long drive back to Ohio.

Being in DC for the first time was kind of surreal, especially at first. Even though I had never seen these places before in person, they were all so familiar…it felt like stepping into a TV show. It was amazing to be surrounded by so much history and culture, and I know this is a place I will want to revisit again and again. I already have a short list of things I’d like to do (a White House tour; seeing Congress in session; a ballgame at Nats Park; so many museums), and I have a feeling that it would take several visits before that list would start to shrink instead of grow.

And it occurred to me after we got home that we didn’t take any pictures of the Metro. Brandi and I were totally enamored; it made getting around so easy. From the time we got into town on Thursday afternoon through when we left on Sunday, we walked and/or rode the Metro everywhere we went. Loved it. Time to step up your public transportation game, Columbus.