Ever since our honeymoon in 2009 I have told anyone who would listen (whether they want to or not) that if I ever was forced to leave greater Boston my first choice for a new home would be San Diego, CA.
I have been to San Diego three times. On our honeymoon in 2009, once in 2011, and then again in 2012. I have not been back since. I keep trying to find an excuse to return but it just hasn’t happened.
Until this coming fall.
We’re not going for vacation. It’s going to be a working trip. I am not going to say what we’ll be working on yet but come September I am going to be in my second favorite city. We haven’t booked flights yet but that’s okay.
Day four was a busy day for real life stuff but I managed to sneak in two music breaks. First, before work, I put rhythm guitars onto two songs. One of which was the nightmare song that’s in 5/8 time. What the hell was I thinking? Later, shortly before bed, I started song idea number six on my MacBook. The song form is done and the MID Bass and Drums are done. That’s all. Weirdly, it is in 4/4 time. GarageBand for iOS only gives 4/4, 3/4, and 6/8 as options where the Mac version lets you use pretty much any time signature. Often when I work on the Mac I’ll try to use something that doesn’t work on the iPhone or iPad simply because I can. Not this time. This time it was plain old boring 4/4.
That’s all for day four. Right now there are six songs in progress. Three have rhythm guitars. One of those has a melody. Everything else just has bass and drums. That is the state of the challenge as of falling asleep last night.
I feel like I owe the universe a detailed post discussing all of the things I did today. Things like picking my step daughter up at the train station after she traveled home from Baltimore.
Instead, I will share a clue as to something that took up a little less than 1/24th of my calendar day:
When I was working on music yesterday, during the brief window of time when I was free to do so, I thought I ended up with a much more impressive amount of progress. Looking back on it now… meh. It was okay, given how busy I was otherwise, and it was WAY better than day two, but over all? Meh.
I took the two bass riffs that made up my entire haul from day two and added a few new bits and worked out the full song form. I then added two new songs. Both had a full song form and MIDI bass and drums along with a MIDI guitar to act as a guide for when I record the real guitars. Song four also has a melody track played on a MIDI electric piano. I didn’t have a chance to add any lyrics. Also, just to note, song number five is in 7/8 time (which is proggy and cool) but song number four is in 5/8 time which is just nuts. I originally had an idea that was in 7/8 but I fucked it up on my first pass at recording the bass line and my screw up worked in 5/8 and I just ran with it. It’s going to be an absolute nightmare to record the guitars and vocals… but watch me turn 5/8 into a theme this year.
Three days in and I am up to five songs in the production pipeline.
Day two was basically a bust. Home owner plumbing emergencies will do that to a guy. I started one idea, song number three, but it was just a couple of short bass riffs on my iPhone. That’s all.
Spoiler alert, day three will be a little bit better. Not much, but a little bit.
I am typing this post on a MacBook Pro using a Windows keyboard which means the keyboard shortcut for copy and paste is different than I am used to, which means that I am going to screw things up left and right. Enjoy.
The Frugal Film Project Lives. My second attempt at shooting a roll of (relatively) inexpensive film through a camera I spent less than $50 on each month for a year. I tried it last year and failed after four months. This year I am trying it again. I started in May. This post covers June. July’s edition is 50% shot but nothing has been developed yet. It’s only July 6th, give me a break, okay?
As stated in the May edition of the blog posts, I am trying to do this twice this year. One attempt is shooting Kodak Gold 200 through my Lomo Lubitell 166 Universal. The other is the same camera shooting Kentmere 100.
First, we’ll look at the Kodak Gold images. There should be 12 but because I suck at life there are 11. The camera needs to be manually wound. There is a little red window on the back that lets you see the back of the film as you wind it. You’re supposed to wind it until you see the number 1 in the little window and then stop. That spot will be your first photo. Makes sense, right? Numbnutz over here wound too far and had to start on number 2. Idiot.
So here come the 11 shots. First we have a sunrise at Hampton Beach in Hampton Beach, NH. I took these on June 14, 2026.
Seagulls
Here Comes the Sun
Fishin’
I suck at photography, part 1
After a short drive to the North…
I want to say I like the lens flare but… maybe not
Okay, we’re done with Hampton Beach. Now we move on to the Newburyport Harborwalk Rail Trail in Newburyport, MA.
I had a feeling the sun was going to be too much for this really slow camera and sure enough…
That’s a little better
I feel like I am learning a lesson here
Boats Boats Boats
The bad photography continues
With that, our color experience comes to an end. There should be 12 photos but I am an idiot and there are only 11. Project 2A is complete. Now we move on to project 2B and everything is in black and white. These pics are also from the Harborwalk Rail Trail and they also have problems with too much sun… because I suck.
Water, right?
I mean, at least I wasn’t looking directly at the sun, right?
I suck at photography, part 2
Do I actually like this one? If so, why?
How do you spell buoy?
A bridge too far, or something
I suck at photography, part 3
Yup, I suck at photography, part 4
That’s a little better
Chairs. I feel like I could have composed this better
What was I thinking?
Fun with Flags
There we have it. Frugal Film Project 2B has been shared. Next time I will avoid shooting into the sun when it’s high and overpowering like this. Oh well.
I said the July edition of the project is half done. I shot the roll of Kodak Gold yesterday (July 5th) in Boston. I was planning on shooting the Kentmere roll too but I got pulled away. I will have to go out and shoot one more time this month in order to stay on track. I mean, I can’t have a project go bust faster than last year, right?
Also, in closing… I feel like a putz for missing a shot on the first roll. I’ll share one more pic. This was taken one week later, July 21st, on Harman Phoenix II, which I have officially moved to the “never buy this film again” list. I just don’t like it. Unfortunately, I still have a bunch of it in my film stash. Crap. This one is the Concord River in Lowell, MA. It sucks, but at least it brings this masterpiece of a blog post up to 24 photos.
Bonus
PS: As I was posting these pics I was blowing them up pretty huge on my big gigantic monitor. These are medium format photos and even though they really suck ass, after viewing them… I get it. The medium format thing. I get it. The resolution is just… I don’t know. It’s something though. I get it.
I tried to make today a photography fun day. Early in the morning at least. I went to Boston thinking I could shoot a couple of rolls of film on Beacon Hill and along the Charles River by the Esplanade where they had the 4th of July spectacular yesterday.
I got through one roll of 120 and one roll of 35mm and was starting to think of what to load up next when I got called home. I guess that means I have to go back soon, right?
When I got home it was time to start cleaning out the closet where the plumber needs to work tomorrow. We also went to IKEA and another furniture store. Tomorrow, after the plumber leaves (assuming he fixes the problem) I will be putting together a Swedish dresser.
We also picked up an order of a couple of rolls of bread from a bakery that Jen’s high school friend is running out of his house with his husband. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’ve had some of their baked goods before oh my goodness…
I think I am going to have a piece of bread now and then I am going to go to sleep because I am freakin’ exhausted.
You know it is summer when that red haired doofus in Massachusetts starts talking about writing 50 songs in 90 days. Day one was yesterday, July 4th. How did I do?
I started work on two songs. The first one started ridiculously early in the morning and it started with guitar, while most songs (including song number two) start with MIDI bass and drums. So two songs with the complete song form and bass and drums and one of the two has the rhythm guitars. That’s it.
My beloved bride had a cool idea today. We have a Sonos audio system in our living room. It’s how we get surround sound and movie theater audio goodness. She wanted to upgrade the system. Good idea, right? She ordered a new beam and we went to Best Buy to pick it up.
After, while we were still in the parking lot, she had another great idea. Wanna go for a mini road trip somewhere? Sure! How about the ocean? Sure! Off we went.
When we got home a couple hours later, Jen heard a noise. Oh wait! You don’t know the back story. Hold on a second while I fill you in.
Back story: Our house used to have a garage. Years ago we had it remodeled into a primary bedroom suite with an attached bathroom. The outflow pipe from the bathroom was far away from the outflow for the rest of the house and we had to have a pump installed. The pump is under the floor with a little trap door to get to it. That trap door had not been opened in the 500 years since we finished the remodel. It is located in a closet and we had put a big closet organizer into the closet and part of it was sitting on the trap door.
Okay, back to the main story. When we got home from the ocean a couple of hours later, Jen heard a noise. She was standing next to the bathroom and I was on the other side of the room. I thought the noise was a bird being loud and obnoxious outside. She said no, it wasn’t a bird. I then thought it was the mini-split system’s door being squeaky. She said no, it was not the mini-split. I stood next to her so that I could hear what she was hearing and I heard it too.
There were two sounds. One as an alarm beeping like crazy. The other was the pump running more or less continuously. I went into the closet with the trap door and sure enough, the beeping was coming from there. Well, shit.
We both had a job to do from that point. Mine was to clear almost everything out of the closet (there was a lot of stuff in there) and open the trap door. Jen’s was to find a plumber. Oh yeah, it’s Independence Day. A national holiday. Almost everyone in the country had the day off (except for the poor staff at Best Buy).
I was able to get to the pump. I had to move almost an entire wardrobe and partially disassemble the organizer but I did it. Jen was able to eventually get a plumber on the phone who could not come help tonight but did offer to help talk us through shutting down the pump until they could come… on Monday. While she was giving the plummer the details I found that the alarm beep was tied to a flashing red light with a label that said to open the unit to see what was causing the alarm. Well, I wasn’t doing that. There was also a button that said push to silence alarm. I pushed it. Oh what a relief.
So the alarm was still going off but it was silent now and at the plumber’s suggestion we killed the power to the pump from the circuit box. The situation has been remedied for now. On Monday the plumber will come and tell us that we need to replace the unit which should cost $10000000000000. Would that be preferable to finding out there is a clog in the sewage pipe? I don’t know. Would it be preferable to finding out there is a leak in the sewage pipe? Probably. I mean, our house doesn’t smell like donald trump so I don’t think our en suite bathroom is shitting itself. We’ll find out on Monday though.
Eventually we were able to relax and that lead to us putting up the new Sonos system. It got a little annoying trying to link everything together in their app, but eventually it all worked and now we are watching Project Hail Mary (again) and enjoying the kick ass audio.
Tomorrow I think I am going to go into Boston really early in the morning and wander around Beacon Hill and the riverwalk along the Charles with my cameras. I’m also officially into the 50 Songs in 90 Days Challenge, so there will be music to make too.
One thing is for sure… we are not going to use the primary bedroom suite’s bathroom for a couple of days.
Oh the glorious day off. Friday without work? Perfection.
I slept late, I ran some errands with the love of my life, I cooked dinner on the grill, and I am thinking about going to bed early.
Who could ask for anything more?
It is July 3rd and the sun went down 30 minutes ago and we just heard our first fireworks in the neighborhood. All fireworks are illegal in Massachusetts, but not in New Hampshire and New Hampshire is maybe 100–200 yards away from my house.
Now the question is, do I go to the ocean at sunrise tomorrow and take some 4th of July sunrise pics?
Inside the Red Head's Head 