Yesterday I posted a long, meandering, boring post that you can read here.

In that post I mentioned the Manson family story and how some of the details from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood jibed with my memory.  After work last night I started listening to an audiobook copy of Helter Skelter.  It’s setting me straight.

So far I have learned that my memory of Mr and Mrs Polanski buying Dennis Wilson’s house is completely false.  In fact, not only was it not Dennis Wilson’s house, but the Polanskis didn’t own it.  In the movie, Manson mentions that he was looking for Wilson and some one named Terry whose last name escapes me right now.  It was Terry’s house.  He was renting it.  When Roman Polanski and Sharron Tate moved in, they took over Terry whatshisname’s lease.  They didn’t buy the house, they rented it.

So what I’m getting at here is my memory sucks.

 

Addendum to the Addendum:  Terry whatshisname is Terry Melcher.  Doris Day’s son.  The guy who produced the first two Byrds records.

So Rob, how’s all that sleep stuff going?  You haven’t mentioned it in a while.

Well I’m glad you asked.

While in Florida I was sleeping about 6-8 hours a night, with one insane sub four hour night thrown in for luck.  Since coming home I’ve been mostly back to the 5-6 hour range with one amazing 10 hour sleep last weekend.

Twice this week though the app that tracks the CPAP machine, as opposed to the one that works off of my Apple Watch, reported something weird.  I am starting to have issues with my mask seal.  I’m leaking air somewhere, somehow.  I haven’t noticed anything, outside of the obvious moments when I lose the seal completely and I have to take the mask off and put it back on.  Apparently on Friday the 26th I had major leak issues, and then last night I had them again only much less severe.  I didn’t notice anything.  Two nights ago I could feel the mask moving around on my face and it kept me up and drove me a little nuts.  Last night though, when the app registered problems, I didn’t feel the mask moving around, and I didn’t wake up with it partially unsealed, or anything like that.  I woke up once a little after 3:00 am, and then again a little before 6:00 am and everything seemed fine both times.

The app has a little blurb on side effects of mask leakage and one of them is dry mouth.  When I woke up at 3:00 this morning I definitely had dry mouth.  I actually went and got a glass of water because of it.  Is that a sign that something happened?  I thought maybe it meant that my machine’s water tank was empty.  It was dark so I couldn’t see and I forgot to check it this morning.  I will check it when I get home.  I have a link to a video that talks about leakage and I need to watch that tonight as well.

All of the other stats from Friday and from last night were good.  Last night in particular had a low number of apnea events.  I didn’t wake my wife so I know I wasn’t making noise.  In fact, she was snoring last night, not me (hi sweetie!).

I’m curious to find out what happened.  In the couple of months I’ve been doing this, I’ve only had two instances of mask leakage.  I figured I’d be able to tell when it happened, but nope.  At least I’ve been able to sleep longer before the mask wakes me up.  I’m still taking it off, briefly, most nights, but not nearly as often as I did when I first started using the machine.

Now if we could just get the quality of sleep up to a level where I don’t feel tired all the time.  That would be sweet.

There just aren’t enough hours in the day, you know? (Said the guy who made an art form of procrastination yesterday)

I have this huge music project to do that I haven’t touched in two weeks (at least).  I have all the toys and gear I wanted to have before I started recording (actually, there should be a pack of 12-string strings coming in the mail today which is the last thing I wanted) but I haven’t done any actual recording.  I’ve got something like 20 ideas in the pipeline, but I haven’t done any work on any of them.  I don’t want to get shut out this year.  I need to make some time.

Time?  What’s that?

One thing that is definitely happening is Iron Maiden on Thursday.  Larry and Mike and I have an email thread going where we are figuring out the logistics of getting down to Mansfield for the show.  I don’t think I’ve gone to a show since Rush stopped touring and that was four years ago.  I’m ready for some arena rock excess, and Maiden is just the ticket.  Apparently this show included flame throwers.  Let me just say that one more time:

Flame Throwers.

My wife and I saw Once Upon a Time in Hollywood last night.  I’ve seen some reviews calling it a masterpiece.  It’s not a masterpiece.  It’s good.  Really good.  Funny as hell and creepy like crazy when it needs to be.  Not a lot of violence, but just enough to satisfy.  All of the performances are great.  There’s really nothing not to love.  Masterpiece though?  I don’t think so.  It’s not as Earth shatteringly amazing as Reservoir Dogs or Pulp Fiction.  It’s probably better than Jackie Brown or Kill Bill.  Maybe.  I haven’t seen Hateful Eight or Django Unchained yet, though I have them on iTunes and just need to find the time to sit and watch them.  It feels a little like Inglorious Bastards.  Excellent, but not something that will stay with you the way his first two movies did.  Go see it.  You’ll love it, and then you’ll go home and watch Pulp Fiction again.

Either that or you will read Helter Skelter.  I spent a good chunk of the movie trying to figure out if the Manson family depictions were accurate or not.  I think they were.  They were definitely disturbing at least.  The facts of the case all seemed to jibe with my memory.  I’m pretty sure Polanski bought Dennis Wilson’s house, and Manson did have some sort of music relationship with the Beach Boys.  I can’t remember if the owner of the ranch the family lived on was still around through the whole thing or not.  He’s there in the movie, but was he in real life?  I can’t recall.  That’s why I just picked up a copy of the audio book version of Helter Skelter.  I need to know the facts.  Just the facts, in fact.

Anyway, go see the movie.  You won’t regret it.  Quentin Tarantino absolutely still has it.  The guy is the best.  Buy the damn ticket and see it in the damn theater.

I think I started this post off by talking about music.  I want to get back to writing and recording for 50/90.  I don’t see it happening tonight.  Maybe tomorrow.  Not Thursday though.  Iron Maiden.  Right.  Bring it on.

The theme of today has been procrastination. This has lead to seeing the new Tarantino movie, a nice dinner, and gelato, all with the love of my life. It has also lead to this blog post.

Viva la procrastination!

We went to Salisbury Beach last night, just to wander around.  Talk about your beautiful evening.  It was gorgeous out.

Trailers for things I want to see….

 

Picard:

 

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot:

It’s a miracle! A true blue spectacle, a miracle come true!

I just weighed in at weight watchers for the first time in a month (two days shy of a month to be exact), and some how I did not gain weight!

I went on a 10 day vacation to Disney World and somehow I did not gain weight!

Today’s weigh in has me down 0.2 pounds. Miraculously I managed to hold serve over vacation.

I’m shocked. Shocked, I say!

I know I’m late to the party (pun slightly intended) but I’m watching Chernobyl.

Take the scariest, most intense horror movie ever and amplify it by a few hundred billion and you are almost in the ball park.

Holy shit balls this is terrifying.

It’s here. Now I have to get through the rest of the work day and then make dinner for everyone, and then I can play with it.

The serial number is 000025. I feel like such a total nerd.

Sleep was being kind of a jerk last night.  I was dozing off then waking up an hour to an hour and a half later.  Nothing I can’t handle, but hardly a good night’s sleep.  I’m working from home today so I figured I could stay in bed a little longer than usual.

Nope.

4:45am.  I’m asleep.  My beloved wife is asleep.  My brilliant step kids are asleep…

…the new smoke/fire/carbon monoxide detection/alarm system we had installed last fall was not asleep.  It was awake.  Wide awake.  It decided that the rest of us should be awake too.  Queue the beeping and the blaring and the robot voice yelling, “Smoke! Evacuate!”  We didn’t see any smoke, or smell any smoke, or see any fire or feel anything hot or out of the ordinary.  It was saying smoke, not CO so it probably wasn’t some jerk of an invisible gas.  Then while we were scrambling the alarms magically stopped.

I should point out that we have alarms in every room, as required by law, and they are all synced together so if one goes off they all go off.  Cacophony is an understatement.

Jen called 911, we all went outside.  A Methuen Police Officer pulls up.  He waits with us.  A minute later a Methuen Fire Engine pulls up.  We tell them what’s up.  They go in an inspect the place, including monitoring for carbon monoxide.  They test the alarm, it seems to be working, then come out with an all clear.  The alarm in our bedroom was registering smoke, but there was no sign of anything wrong.  Maybe get an electrician in to take a look.  Could it be the outflow from the CPAP machine?  Maybe, but probably not.

We thank the emergency personnel for their help and they leave.  We go back inside and…

…can you guess???

…can you see it coming???

The alarm goes off again.  Then it stops.  Then a few minutes later it goes off again.  Wash, rinse, repeat.  I pull the batteries out of the alarm in the bedroom, but it’s just a backup.  It goes off again.  I take it off the ceiling and try to unplug it, but the bastard won’t disconnect.

Call 911 again and ask what to do.  They come back again and tell us to unplug it until we can get it checked out.

Let me rephrase that.  They did NOT in anyway tell us to unplug it.  They simply stated that if you yank on the wires they will pop out, and they only mentioned that when I told them I had tried it.  These guys know their shit and are professional and in no way would they ever have done anything to imply that we should be without a fire alarm in our bedroom.  Let me state that in no uncertain terms.  These guys were freakin’ awesome to us and safety first.  Got it?

So inside we go, with a second all clear.  I yanked the wires, quite a bit harder than the first try, and they do indeed pop out.  It’s been about four hours now and no new alarms.  Jen went off to work, the kids went back to sleep, I sat in the office paranoid as all bloody hell and watched the last two episodes of Stranger Things and a couple of Archers.  Eventually I felt sure that the alarm wasn’t going to go off again, and the house wasn’t going to spontaneously combust so I went to CVS for some caffeine.  I’m gonna need it today.

Oh, and for the record… Stranger Things Season 3… go watch it.  Like, right now.