Longest Week Ever

Man… I sure do bitch about work a lot, don’t I?

This has been the longest work week ever and it’s only 1:00pm on Wednesday. Why is that? Why am I so stressed? There’s nothing going on that requires my stress level to elevate out of control. It’s just been a reasonably normal week. Sure, my dining room did flood yesterday…

Did I mention that? We have an office water cooler in our dining room. It is exactly the thing you picture in your head when you hear people talking about being at work and talking around the water cooler. A great big five gallon jug of water sitting upside down and draining into a tall cooler. Yup, exactly what you think. Yesterday it seemed to spring a leak and we had a small lake forming on our dining room floor.

I unplugged the unit and pulled the full bottle off of the top. I had put a new bottle on that morning. There had never been any leaks before. Was it the cooler or was it the new bottle? I betcha you can guess. Once the bottle was out of the equation the leaking stopped. Yup, there was something wrong with the bottle. I put a new bottle on to see what happened and it’s been leak free for about 24 hours now. Problem solved, I think.

Anyway, outside of that and the ugly fact that it snowed twice this week, it’s been a normal few days. Why am I stressin’? Why am I bitchin’? Who knows.

I do know that we’re planning to go to a No Kings rally this weekend, so maybe it’s not so much work stress but it is actually excitement over the coming event. Maybe.

Until then… 2.5 days left in this already long, long, long work week. Crud.

More Spring Snow

Adding insult to injury, am I right?

I wrote yesterday about how we got a little snow on the third day of Spring. Wouldn’t you know it, today, the fourth day of Spring, we got more. I had brush snow and scrape ice off of the car when I left for work this morning. It was more than yesterday, but still basically just a dusting. That’s not the issue though. The issue is that snow in Springtime sucks the mighty ass.

I’m going to seriously be afraid to look out the window when I get out of bed tomorrow morning. We’re probably going to get a blizzard overnight tonight.

Spring Snow

I was up before dawn today. I went down cellar to do my morning exercise and have breakfast and just generally get the ball rolling after having a crappy nights sleep last night.

As I was wrapping things up and getting ready to go back upstairs to start the work day, I happened to catch a glimpse through the little cellar window that is near my desk. The view looked weird… odd, even. Why? Everything was white. Wait a second, I thought… is it… snowing?

Yes. Yes it was snowing. Snow. It is March 23rd, three days into the Spring and it was snowing in the Merrimack Valley of Eastern Massachusetts.

Bite me, mother nature. Kiss my fat ass.

There wasn’t a lot of snow. There was enough to cover the ground, but it wasn’t deep enough to bury the grass… if that makes sense. It was just a dusting, but it was a sticky dusting. By the time we got to my lunch break it had all melted away, even though the temperature is only in the mid-30’s. It’s cold but still above the freezing point.

That’s not the point though. The point is that it is Spring and we can still get snow. Just because the calendar says winter is over, it does not mean that winter is actually over. I expect we’ll get another storm or two before it all ends for real, and I expect one of those mythical storms to be fairly significant. I am basing this prediction on nothing beyond experience from previous winter/spring transitions, but I betcha I’m right. I hope I am wrong, but I am pretty sure I won’t be.

Winter sucks. Here is a photograph of a cat, Robin, making a rude gesture to artistically depict where my thinking lies on this the 23rd day of March in the year 2026. Bite me.

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Messing With This Site

I am going to be messing around with this site a bit. There are going to be a bunch of password protected posts that are no one’s business but my own. I am also (hopefully) going to stop sending emails with new posts… for a while… I think… I hope. Just until I finish messing around with stuff.

This is just me being the last American Blogging Nerd. You’ve been warned.

Musical Epic Urges

I have this weird musical urge right now and I don’t think I will be able to stop myself from trying to make it happen.

I have this urge to write a song that runs for at least 20 minutes.

  • Introduction is slow and quiet. Maybe just a cleanish electric guitar soloing over an electric piano. The intro needs to be long… very long.
  • Next we have basically a 4-5 minute uptempo, noisy rock song. Preferably in an odd time signature with shouty vocals in the chorus.
  • Another instrumental break. Change key and time signature and tempo and jam for a while. Maybe have a guitar and a sax trade off.
  • Another stand alone kind of song section. Slower, quieter, less shouty.
  • Come up with a riff. Something long and drawn out. Maybe a full eight bars without repeating anything. Start quiet and slowly but steadily get louder, just repeating the same phrase. Get louder and heavier and more intense. I’m thinking something like Whaling Song by Procol Harem. Something that just builds on itself over a long stretch of time.
  • Return to the second section. Different key maybe. Not a full repeat, but bring back the same changes and phrases in a new arrangement. Sort of like a coda section.
  • Return to the introduction but not nearly as long.

What do we think, universe? Do I suddenly have a new musical project to sink my untalented musical teeth into?

Will it run for 20 minutes?

We’ll see.