Les Ketchup: February 2025 to today
I have an occasional series, From The Unarchive, where I publish old blog or LiveJournal entries, then comment upon them from the perspective of the present-day. A few days ago, it occurred to me that I should also revisit my earlier blog posts here to see if any of them merit a similar follow-up. Therefore, I'm now proud to say it's time for a new occasional series: Les Ketchup. My hope will be to look at my past writings every 4 months or so, then mark aside entries I want to re-examine from today's viewpoint. Because I'm catching up on 8 months' worth of posting, this first entry will be much longer than subsequent ones. Or so I hope.
Since I'll be linking to my own writings, I won't republish them, but I will assume you've read them before reading my current thoughts. This will also be a good writing exercise to escape from a listicle format, but that's more for my benefit. Anyway, onwards!
March 27, 2025: Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops. Reflecting on my last employer around the time I completed a year with my current one. The anniversary at my new job almost coincided with news of my last employer's merger, which to be honest was the reason I decided to look back. Since I wrote this piece, the merger at my former job has continued apace, with two pharma firms (my former employer Mallinckrodt, and Endo) combining, followed by a split into two new pieces: a generic drugs and sterile injectables firm called Par Health, and a branded pharmaceutical firm to be called Keenova Therapeutics. Neither of the new names have an online presence, but I suspect that will happen by year's end.
As for how Par or Keenova will organize their locations, it looks like they'll keep the same footprint. So far, there are no WARN notices either under the old or new company names in Missouri, New Jersey, or Pennsylvania. Par will have a large presence in the St. Louis region, but I predict it will become centered around the production plants and R&D testing; corporate offices will likely move east to either NJ or PA. I'll still keep my eye on how these companies handle their split, but more out of idle curiosity than anything else. I continue to lose contact with the former co-workers, which I guess is how things go. We've moved on with our lives and no longer have those common ties anymore.
April 14, 2025: Week Notes, 2025-04-13. Renting this Alfa Romeo was one of the highlights of 2025. Dealing with my Kia Forte will be a lowlight. I was apparently a bit cocky when I wrote that my car suffered "zero mechanical damage" during last October's accident, as a recent trip to a dealer found a couple of big issues: a loose front sway bar, and a leak in the timing cover gasket. One or both of these issues could have come about from the impact of the truck that hit me last October, but since I don't drive a lot anymore, the effects of these issues were likely mitigated. Were I to be commuting once or twice a week to my current job, either one of these issues could have popped up sooner than now.
The accident sheared off the front face of the car, as you can see below. Weirdly, it was drivable up to 45 MPH:
I was pretty sure the car was toast, and that the insurance company would write it off. To my utter surprise, I was shocked when the insurer said they'd cover the repairs, though they warned me that it would take a few weeks to get all the parts to reassemble the front end. Sure enough, the body shop needed 3 weeks to repair everything, but when I got it back, I could not tell there had been any damage. I gladly paid the $500 deductible, then also gladly paid $1800 later in December to repair other bits of wear and tear on this 10-year-old car (new drive belt, new spark plugs, new battery, flush fuel injectors). However, with the estimated repairs running $2500 for the sway bar and timing cover gasket, along with the $850 I paid this week for other issues (check engine diagnostics, four-wheel alignment, oil change), I'd be looking at a grand total of $5650 spent on my car in the span of 11-12 months. That amount of money would make for a decent down payment on a late-model used car. While I'll seek a second opinion on the timing cover gasket and sway bar, there's already a part of me that knows the path I must take, and I don't like that. I'm sure you'll be hearing more about this story in the future.
April 19, 2025: Glass tacks. I owe my audience a photo post in the future. For now, the janky front end of my Kia, circa October 2024, will have to do.
May 20, 2025 & May 22, 2025: Current developments (ugh) in shooting film & Further developments (UGH) in shooting film. In the place of a photo post, how about a gear update? The Canon Canonet QL17 GIII has been a joy to shoot with, particularly after the CLA in June. I now know that the light meter built into the camera overexposes the film by one stop, regardless of film stock. To get around this overexposed setting, I have tried using the Lightme app on my iPhone to compare its readings with my camera's, though more often than not they line up together. A better method has been to go down one stop after I get my light reading, either by reducing the shutter speed or closing down the aperture one click. In some cases, I am okay with the slightly overexposed look, but it all depends on the subject matter.
June 1, 2025: Week(s) Notes: 2025-05-25 & 2025-06-01. Unfortunately, this visit to Chicago was the only one where I saw my family. We have plans to visit them early next year, weather permitting and all that. My shoulder has felt fine since leaving rehab, and I'm back to exercising three times a week via 7-minute HIIT workouts. I'm also back with Discord, albeit as an experiment so I'm not really going to publicize it apart from mentioning it here.
June 8, 2025: Week Notes, 2025-06-08. We haven't killed either the basil or rosemary plants yet! They'll come inside once we get a frost warning, which may be as early as the first weekend in November.
June 29, 2025: Week Notes, 2025-06-29. Today, I started taking photos with the Adox HR-50 film. I hope to be done with it before I leave on my trip to New Mexico. As for the coffee shops, I am seeing the effects of both increased coffee prices and decreased consumer spending, because some of the shops I normally would hang out at in the afternoon have reduced their hours.
July 4, 2025: Who follows up? I'm grouping this post, along with From the Unarchive: Doctor In Distress (March 21, 2025) and Doctor Who...the hell cares? (June 10, 2025), due to the common subject matter. It's a bit hard to believe that "The Reality War" aired only five months ago, as a lot of the subsequent drama surrounding it on both sides of the camera makes it feel like the time gap was much longer. Since I wrote the June and July posts, my feelings towards the overall run of Doctor Who on Disney+ haven't changed too much. There were highlights, though fewer than I would have liked, but combining the lowlights with behind-the-scenes knowledge dragged down my enjoyment of the show. And of course, there was the utter mess known as "The Reality War," which now has to hold the memory of the show until Christmas 2026. The BBC announced recently that there will be a holiday special next year, produced solely by themselves and written by Russell T. Davies in what I hope will be his swan song as showrunner. The BBC also announced what had been suspected as soon as the credits for "The Reality War" rolled in late May, which is that Disney is ending its co-production deal for Doctor Who. There's no word on any potential production partners, or if RTD will really be stepping down as showrunner, or most crucially, who the next Doctor will be, but there will be a year to hopefully get things right and clean up the mess made in May.
September 7, 2025: Week Notes, 2025-09-07. I still plan to use the Greyrock setup for my social media during my New Mexico trip. I also plan to bring along my first-ever passport, issued when I was 7 months old, along with my birth certificate, just in case there are any questions about my birthplace being Taiwan.
September 11, 2025: 54. Thoughts? This post and Dishwashing inspiration (April 1, 2025) are grouped together as they deal with my mother's death. October 24 was the first anniversary of her official day of death, though I am still pretty sure that she died early in the morning on October 15. Around 7 PM on the 24th, I felt a sudden and crushing weight of sadness envelop me, and it only took me a couple minutes to understand why: the Mokena Police Department had called me at that time on October 24, 2024 to tell me that they had found my mother's body in her apartment. I have talked in both of these posts about the massive weight of cleaning out her apartment, only to have it defeat us with the sheer amount of hoarded materials along with the truly depressing evidence of her life falling apart. When I was writing about the state of my car, I couldn't help but think of my mother's bereft financial state where she couldn't make repairs on her truck. There's a small voice in my head saying, You're becoming her, and I have to shut that voice up.
I think what will set my spirit at rest, along with hers, will be to finally follow through with our initial plans to bury her remains with her mother, Valerie, who died three years before I was born. My mother was very close with Valerie, though not so much with her father, Melvin (or Buck). To his credit, he laid out space for two bodies when he bought the cemetery plot, so space won't be an issue when we inter my mother's ashes with Valerie. As it turned out, Melvin/Buck had no interest in being buried next to his wife, as he had been making moves on the neighbor's wife during Valerie's declining months. He's buried with his second wife in Mountain Home, AR, and I have zero desire to see his final resting place. Anyway, once L. And I return from our New Mexico trip, we plan to call the cemetery to find out costs, timeframes, and whom they recommend as a tombstone supplier.
September 21, 2025: Week Notes, 2025-09-21. I have returned to Bluesky, though my appearances there are brief enough where I don't feel like updating my social media links. I'm still mainly using Mastodon.
That's going to do it. I've caught up on just about everything I want to follow up on, though I reserve the right to bring back posts from this timespan in future Les Ketchup posts. Thanks for reading.