DF's Unite

I've been blogging in fits and starts recently. After posting to my blog nearly every day for years I've had a lot of skip days recently. I skipped 9 days in October, 4 in November, and so far in December— which is only half over— I've already skipped 5 days. When it rains, though, it pours. On days I have blogged I've often posted 2 or even 3 entries.

Seeing that my tempo of blogging has become irregular is a bit of a disappointment. Years ago I set a goal of posting every day. (That blog is from 2021. I know I set the goal a few years before that, 2017 or maybe earlier, though I can't find anywhere I wrote down the goal back then. But in searching for it I did find an interesting perspective from 10 year ago on Why I Write.) After going strong and meeting my goals for years I now feel I'm running out of steam. Or, more precisely, running out of fucks to give. 

My sporadic turn to blogging the past few months is attributable to obvious factors. For one, I've been traveling a lot less as Hawk is recovering from foot surgery. I've always focused my blog on the joys and frustrations of travel. With less to do there's less to write. And I haven't wanted to write too much else. ...Which leads into Two: I'm kind of depressed. With not a lot going on right now I've been feeling down. I care less about writing when I'm down.

But hey, maybe I will write about other stuff soon. Just in thinking how I'll frame this journal entry today I've already thought of several other topics I could write about soon. Plus, it's not like nothing's happening just because we're not traveling. I just have to find the motivation, and the focus, to write.

This evening is the start of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights. We lit the first candle on a menorah to mark it.



...And when I saw "we", I mean Hawk. Hawk lit the candle and said the brief blessing in Hebrew. She grew up in a Jewish family. I'm just supporting her because I'm married into a Jewish family.

For more insight on what Hanukkah is (hint: it is NOT "Jewish Christmas" 😅) check out this gentile's guide to Hanukkah I wrote a few years ago.

"Where's the beef?" actress Clara Peller famously barked in a series of Wendy's TV commercials back in the 1980s. The commercials were such a success that the line became part of the cultural lexicon for years after. Kids would repeat it to each other and laugh, sort of like kids today do with "6-7", except that "Where's the beef?" had an actual, clear source— one that adults could understand, too. Well, I've been repeating the phrase again this past week, though with a bittersweet chuckle this time. The Wendy's restaurants in Sunnyvale are now gone!

It was in the news a few weeks ago that Wendy's is closing approximately 300 underperforming restaurants across the US. This comes after closing about 150 restaurants in 2024. (Example news coverage: CBS News article, 17 Nov 2025)

The last remaining Wendy's in Sunnyvale seems to have been part of this wave. The restaurant shut down sometime in the past week or two, I think. It's a few miles away and in a part of town I rarely traverse.

For a long time we had a Wendy's restaurant closer to home, just 1 mile away, on a street I regularly drive. In fact it used to be just around the corner from a spot where I worked for a few years!

That shop closed up during Covid, presumably a casualty of reduced business. The property changed hands, and they bulldozed the restaurant and put a bright, new Taco Bell in its spot. I've eat there once since then, just to remind myself Yeah, Taco Bell is kind of gross. 🤣

So anyway, now when I'm in the mood for a Dave's Old-Fashioned, I've got to travel miles to get one. A quick check on Google Maps shows there are four Wendy's still standing in San Jose, a couple in Fremont, and one up in Redwood City.

I'm not going to go that far for a Dave's Old-Fashioned, though. The main reason is they're just not that good anymore.

Oh, I used to love me a ¼-pound single combo years ago. Back in college, for example, a new Wendy's opened on a busy corner near where I lived the last 3 semesters there. It was right on my walk to/from classes. I ate there easily a few times a week. And it was good. Other Wendy's since then just haven't been as good. Even when that other Wendy's in Sunnyvale was right around the corner from my office, I ate there maybe once a month at most. And the one that just closed? I ate there back in March and was disappointed. The food was expensive, employees blocked off the cash register with a self-ordering kiosk, then they made my food wrong, and they barely cared.

Sometimes there's a reason businesses fail. I mean, there's always a reason, but a lot of the time it's not the macro trends that business owners routinely cite— things like the economy, Covid-19, inflation, minimum wage being raised, the skyrocketing divorce rate, or my favorite stupid excuse, "Millennials Are Killing the XYZ Industry". Sometimes, probably much of the time, the call is coming from inside the house!

Oh, you might still be wondering about that Where's the Beef? meme I mentioned at the start. Here's the infamous Wendy's TV commercial from 1984:



Enjoy!

The past few months feel like they've been the winter of my discontent. For 8 weeks it was cold, dark, and rainy. Several times I've said to myself, "I'm just about ready for winter to be over." The problem is, winter doesn't even start for 2 more weeks! 😨

There's one thing I didn't particularly expect to happen after coming home from Thanksgiving travel 8 days ago: jet lag. I barely even got onto Eastern time while I was out there; there were only 2 days I got up before 9am. But starting last Monday after getting back home I was up at 5:30am. It then became a pattern as I woke up at 5:30am all last week.

Waking up at 5:30am isn't all bad. It actually helped a bit as I had early meetings, 7am, almost every day of the week. I did expect the jet lag to wear off by Wednesday, though it didn't. I had it all the way through Saturday.

The big downside of getting up early, of course, is tiring out early. All week I was feeling pooped by 8pm and was usually in bed by 9. 🥱

Sunday I finally slept in. I slept in 'til just after 7am. 🤣 Though that was at least partly because Saturday I stayed up "late"— past 11pm!

Today I woke up at 5:30am again. Though today I decided to stay in bed and see if I could fall back asleep. I did... and I swatted the snooze button on my 6:45am alarm a few times before getting up.

Maybe I'm back on a normal, local-timezone schedule now? I'll see what happens tonight and tomorrow.