Ozzie, the neighborhood cat
A goodbye to the black outdoor cat who was a fixture in my neighborhood for as long as I lived here. Nobody quite knew whose he was, but everybody knew Ozzie, and everybody looked after him.
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life
52 entries
Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and an island called Island
My first Animal Crossing, started the day after it launched, the day the pandemic got real. An island that is mostly water, a friend who kept visiting, and a year of my life I can reconstruct almost entirely from the pictures I took.
Read entry →What 2020 was really like
A first-hand account of living through the COVID-19 pandemic: the months before it, the spring everything shut down, the political mess that made it worse, what my days actually looked like, and getting the virus myself a couple of years later.
Read entry →Meeting Mary
How I met my best friend on the internet in January 2020, right before the world shut down. A zombie in a Halloween house, a show recommendation, a pandemic we got through together, and a friendship that has not skipped a day since.
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For Toni
A small tribute to a coworker from my years at the grocery company's corporate office. We were never friends outside of work, but she is someone I still think about, and she deserves a place in the history I keep here.
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KOTEHOK
The story of my cat, the one the universe handed me in the spring of 2012. A twice-returned shelter cat named Jade who became the most important little creature in my life: her green eyes, her rituals, her pile of nicknames, and fourteen years together and counting.
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Buying my first home
At the end of 2011 I had a job, two cars, two pinball machines, and just enough saved for a down payment. This is how I bought my first house in March 2012, the jammed front-door lock that nearly sank the deal, and what fourteen years in one place actually looks like.
Read entry →Darboux the tank, and walking away from Warcraft
My third and last main, a paladin tank named Darboux, the one job I had left to try. And then, after six years and a dead Lich King, why I put World of Warcraft down and did not pick it back up.
Read entry →March 11, 2011, and the voice that stayed at the microphone
The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, a 24-year-old named Miki Endo who kept broadcasting evacuation warnings until the wave reached her, the hard truth about why you cannot just automate a human voice, and how all of it pulled me toward Japan's earthquake-warning world and a piece of software called jQuake.
Read entry →A new fruit
The grocery store taught me about a pomelo. From the old hertzelle.com blog.
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The last thing I went back for was a rusted dragon
Before I quit World of Warcraft for good, I drove back to a raid we had half-finished in 2009 and beat the two bosses that had beaten us, for a mount I had wanted for two years.
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I beat Burning Crusade's hardest boss and don't remember it
My account says I cleared Sunwell Plateau and killed Kil'jaeden, the final villain of the whole first expansion. I believe it. I just can't remember doing it, because by the time I did, the game had made it easy.
Read entry →A new car, a new site, a working weekend
A productive, happy weekend: I shipped a website for a friend's business. From the old hertzelle.com blog.
Read entry →A day at UMSL, and family
Getting set up for college, becoming a Triton, and an evening at Grandma's. From the old hertzelle.com blog.
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Trihedron, the priest I loved
The dwarf priest I gave my whole heart to. Becoming a healer, topping the meters, leading a guild, killing the Lich King, and the friends from Wisconsin I still have, one of whom became a real-life friend named Craig.
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Craig, also known as TartarSauce
A tribute to one of my best friends, who I met healing raids in World of Warcraft. Two solo guys who texted every day, a decade of co-op games, the time a TSA agent waved me to the front of the line for my class, and a friendship I have never stopped valuing.
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For the Alliance: the night I killed the Horde's leaders
I was Alliance down to the bone. So when Wrath of the Lich King launched and the game let me fight into the enemy's cities and put their leaders on the floor, including Sylvanas herself, I went.
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How I became a Jenkins
The one World of Warcraft title I earned by recreating gaming's most famous disaster on purpose: fifty dragon whelps, fifteen seconds, and a man named Leeroy.
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Knight, and a reputation ground into the negatives
The grindy little badges from vanilla World of Warcraft that prove I was there in the vanilla days: the old honor-rank ladder up to Knight, and deliberately tanking a faction's standing all the way down to Hated.
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The morning I graduated
June 3, 2006. The end of high school, and the strange feeling of already knowing roughly where I was headed.
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Maurizio the warlock, and the forty-man nights
Why I rolled a warlock (free mounts), the vanilla raids we cleared and the one we never did, being the Warlock Class Lead, and the friend at the bakery I talked WoW with for hours and then lost.
Read entry →How I started World of Warcraft: by drowning
My friend Diana told me to buy the game and promised to show me the ropes, then never logged on. So I made a warlock named Maurizio, walked into Stormwind, fell in a pond, and could not figure out how to swim.
Read entry →Twelfth grade, and the dumbest robot that ever won
Senior year: a brand-new tech-school teacher who actually pushed us, a Lego robot competition my friend Zach and I won with pure laziness and ingenuity, the FBLA web contest that handed me a career, A+ tutoring with Diana, and the honest truth that I look back on high school and feel proud.
Read entry →The bakery, where they called me Muscles
After bagging groceries I got moved to the bakery counter: a chainsmoking boss who only ever called me Muscles, a walk-in oven I had to scrape by hand, the 3 a.m. morning it filled with black smoke, and the night a sink turned into a geyser and soaked me in front of a customer.
Read entry →Eleventh grade, the year everything sped up
Junior year is when it all accelerated: half days at a tech school learning to be a software developer, my first job, a permit then a license then a beat-up Corsica, Steam and Half-Life 2, World of Warcraft launching, and a soundtrack that made no sense. With DragonSiblings still running the whole time.
Read entry →My first job, and the worst thing I ever said over the intercom
How I got hired as a grocery bagger at sixteen (my dad's good name did most of the work), why I started at a store across town, and the day I tried to page the frozen-foods department and broadcast a swear word to the entire building instead.
Read entry →A note on forgiving people you grew up with
I found a raw post I wrote at fifteen, trying to decide whether I could forgive a friend. I won't relitigate it. But it's worth being honest about what that age felt like, and what forgiveness looks like from here.
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How I became the Crimson Dragon
Before DragonSiblings was a forum with 29,000 posts, it was four friends. April and Diana started it, McKenzie made three, and then they recruited me to build a website and kept me. Our origin story, partly in my own words from back then.
Read entry →Tenth grade, the year my life moved onto a message board
Sophomore year ran on the same rails as freshman year, until DragonSiblings was born that October and became the center of everything. The shared school computer that named my company, Stanley going from band-buddy to best friend, a math teacher who would not give me a single point, and a forum where I built, moderated, argued, and wrote.
Read entry →Ninth grade, a bigger world and a clean slate
Starting high school at Holt: the self-guided tour, the seminar teacher I would keep for four years, block scheduling and the locker I never opened, falling hard for keyboarding class, an English teacher who set me up for life, standing up to a teacher who only saw my brother, and putting my head down for the A+ program.
Read entry →Where I was on September 11
Eighth grade started with the morning the world changed. The class that went by knowing nothing, the whispers in the hallway, the heavy CRT television a teacher asked me to hook up, and a cousin who worked near the towers.
Read entry →Eighth grade, and the math teacher who scared me straight
The year a teacher pulled me into the hallway, knelt down, and refused to sugarcoat how badly I was wrecking my own future. Sixth-grade math for the third time, the A+ program, and the moment I decided to turn the whole thing around.
Read entry →Seventh grade, and the soda machine I outsmarted
The year music went digital and middle school stopped feeling new. Retaking sixth-grade math, parting ways with band, a Coca-Cola machine exploit that paid me back in twelve-packs, and finally noticing nobody had taught me how to study.
Read entry →Sixth grade, and the xylophone I never got to play
My first year of middle school, the year everyone lost their minds about Y2K. Band instead of gym, a clarinet I picked by default, a friend named Stanley, and a computer lab full of wasted potential.
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Me and My Life, the whole book I wrote at ten
In fifth grade, Mrs. Rudy's class had us write and illustrate a book about ourselves. Mine is five chapters of family history, a cat named Jupiter, a computer poem, and a closing wish that turned out to be my actual life.
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For Grandma Idyll
A memorial for my dad's mother, Idyll Lucille Sannes (1923 to 1998), the first grandparent I was old enough to truly know and to lose. The North Dakota wind, a swallowed quarter, and the worn little rabbit she gave me that I still hold onto.
Read entry →Mrs. Rudy, Miss Ruby, and the iMac I couldn't touch
Fifth grade at Wentzville West, a quieter year. Two teachers with nearly the same name, Apple II computers in a room with no business having them, and a brand-new iMac I was forbidden to go near.
Read entry →Fourth grade, and the lie that made me learn computers
My biggest, most loaded school year. A new town, a forbidden half of the building, a best friend named Mike, and the day I raised my hand, claimed I knew computers, and accidentally erased a game in front of everyone.
Read entry →The summer we moved away
In 1997 we left St. John for a brand-new house in Lake St. Louis. A new school, a room of my own, and a goodbye to the only home and friends I had ever known.
Read entry →Sara, and the games she taught me
A third-grade field-day sack race with my friend Sara, who introduced me to Brain Bash and Bop It, and, in a hazy basement memory, maybe to computers.
Read entry →My year in the third grade
A fill-in-the-blank memory book I made at Marvin Elementary in 1997, my last year before we moved. Eight-year-old me had opinions.
Read entry →Mrs. Davis, and the year I should have learned my times tables
Third grade at Marvin Elementary, 1996 to 1997, my last year there. An upstairs classroom that felt like the big leagues, the multiplication tapes I never quite beat, a cello I had to share, and a teacher who poured everything into us.
Read entry →Todd's autobiography, second grade
An extremely short autobiography I wrote in second grade, complete with a self-grading sheet on which I gave myself rave reviews.
Read entry →Second grade, and the gingerbread hall pass
My second grade year at Marvin Elementary, 1995 to 1996, with Mrs. Schnelker. A teacher I had to win over, a hall pass I tried to eat, my mom showing up at the zoo, and the first computer that ever snuck into my life.
Read entry →My first-grade portfolio, 1994 to 1995
The earliest school photos I have: a black panther, the first day in a yellow shirt, and a year of learning my ABCs. With a note from my mom at the end.
Read entry →The teacher I said I'd never forget
My one and only yearbook is from first grade at Marvin Elementary, 1994 to 1995. Mrs. Hogbin and her hug at the door, a math trick called touch points, and a six-year-old's slightly unhinged habit of crossing out everyone he didn't know.
Read entry →Mrs. Patton, and seeing with your heart
My kindergarten teacher at Marvin Elementary, 1993 to 1994. One of my earliest memories of anyone outside my family: her warmth, the toothbrush lesson, the morning stretches, and a line from her I never forgot.
Read entry →He says he would like to work with computers
A kindergarten inventory my mom filled out in 1993, before I started school. At the bottom, in her handwriting, is a sentence that quietly predicted my whole life.
Read entry →A paper silhouette, December 1992
The oldest thing I still have of my own: a preschool profile silhouette, made when I was four. Old boxes turn up the strangest little time capsules.
Read entry →Preschool, and a teacher like my grandma
Before kindergarten there was Our Redeemer Lutheran School in Overland, Missouri. A teacher whose kindness I still remember, a blind pastor who taught me something early, and a pair of enormous bear slippers.
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For Grandpa Czar
A page I am starting for my dad's father, Czar Harley Hertzelle (1919 to 1990). He died when I was a baby, so I am building this one out of a photo, a 1940 draft card, and the stories my dad still carries.
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Baby arrived today
The oldest record of me there is: the baby book my mom kept. Born March 30, 1988, plus chicken pox, a lost tooth, and how many pounds I was at fifteen months. The very beginning of the whole timeline.
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