Change pisses her off and she’s really pissed off now.

Still lots of stuff to do, but it’s lunch time so Disney+.

The second annual living room re-design project is underway and boy did we make a mess!

The couch is in front of the window, the TV is opposite the window, the blackout curtains are drawn.  Nothing is hooked up yet and a bunch of things need to find a new home.  First though, Jen and Harry are on a floor lamp* acquisition quest while I give my aching back a bit of a breather.

Yikes!

 

*I typo’d this as “lap” instead of “lamp” and proof read it twice without catching it.  I didn’t notice until after I hit publish.  My elementary school teachers would be so disappointed in me.

In case you were wondering, The Rise of Skywalker holds up after a second viewing.  I still love every spec of celluloid (or the digital equivalent).

Thank you,
Good night.

6:52 PM

It’s a 7:15 PM show.

I’m the only one here.

I think I’m early.

May the Force Be With Me and my empty theater.

Okay, the nerd factor is running very high on this one.  You’ve been warned.

I did that 2019 in Flickr yesterday.  One picture from each month last year.  I got to thinking… could I do that with one a year for the decade?  No, I thought.  My memory isn’t good enough to pull off a scheme like that.  I would just end up picking the first thing I saw and there would be even less meaning to it than there was yesterday.

But…

Flickr Pro users get stats.  I could go to the list of most viewed images and find the most viewed one from each year.  That would be cool, though maybe not as cool as using Flickr’s mysterious “interestingness” algorithm.

So I figured I’d give it a shot, I mean it’s no lamer than anything else I do here.  I had to dig through just under 100 pictures to get the most viewed image per year for each year from 2010-2019.  Here they are…

2019 (7,577 views):

2018 (12,588 views):

2017 (8,510 views):

2016 (5,019 views):

2015 (7,959 views):

2014 (11,789 views):

2013 (3,255 views):

2012 (3,067 views):

2011 (4,274 views):

2010 (2,708 views):

Wow, wasn’t that fun? I sure thought so. Wasn’t it interesting? Well… according to Flickr, no. It wasn’t interesting. Flickr has an algorithm that tries to determine which photographs are good or not. They call it “interestingness.” The Explore page that I gush about on the rare instances something I post is added to it is based on interestingness.

You can see your most interesting photos by clicking on your About page. I didn’t think there was a way to sort all of my images by interestingness but lo and behold there is a way! There was a little link off to the side of the full list sorted by views. I clicked it and BAM, a list of everything I’ve uploaded sorted by interestingness. Well that’s a fine howdoyado, eh? Here we go then, the most interesting pictures of the past decade, one from each year!

Exciting, isn’t it???  I’m just tingling with anticipation!

2019:

2018:

2017:

2016:

2015:

2014:

2013:

2012:

2011:

2010:

Talk about thrilling, huh? Wow!

 

Some quick things to note.  Four years have the same photo in each category (2011-2013, and 2015).  In a perfect world I would expect every year to be the same, but sometimes what the viewers like is different than what the system likes.  Also, did anyone notice that the most interesting pics from 2016 and 2017 were taken in the same exact spot?  Flickr likes what Flickr likes, I guess.

And that, dear readers, is what a red head does on his lunch break.

Happy New Decade!

The holidays are officially over and its time to move on.  This weekend I hope to accomplish some, if not all, of these tasks to help achieve that goal:

• Take down the Christmas tree
• Put away all the Christmas decorations (with the possible exception of the lights on the outside of the house.  I might be willing to be talked into leaving those there for next year, but it’s going to take a really good argument).
• Reorganize the living room.  Jen has a floor plan that looks interesting.  It puts the picture window opposite the TV, but with the blackout curtains that won’t be a problem.  We’ll try it and see how it feels.  I also still want to buy a new comfy chair for the living room, but not right now.
• Replace the dearly departed snow shovel.  Should there still be snow on the driveway after a couple of days with temps in the mid-40’s, use the new shovel to clear it off.
• Replace the fluorescent light bulb in the kitchen.  Possibly also look into replacing some of the dead fluorescent bulbs in the cellar too.

Ancillary to all of this, I still haven’t heard back from the plumber.  I’m assuming I won’t be able to get anyone over to look at the kitchen sink until next week, but I’ll keep trying.

Tonight the kids are going out to play Magic with their dad.  Jen is going to an after-work function that should take all night.  I am on my own.  What should I do?  I’ll tell you.  I am going to go to a cinema, buy a huge-ass bucket of popcorn, and see Star Wars again.  The popcorn is noteworthy because first thing tomorrow morning, before all of the to-do list fun starts… I’m going back to Weight Watchers.  I’m doing it even if it kills me.  I also need to fix whatever is up with my legs.  I need to exercise them.  I need to walk.  I need to go to the gym and use the treadmill to build up a little strength and stamina.  I need to.

Tonight: Star Wars and popcorn, and maybe even a large regular Coca~Cola, just out of spite.

Tomorrow: Weight Watchers and Planet Fitness.

Tomorrow and Sunday: All of the stuff on the list above.

May the Force Be With Me and my fat ass.

Hello and welcome to the annual (?) Year in Flickr post!  One pic from each month in 2019!

January: 2019, the year the whole family embraced vinyl!

February: We went to see The Beatles (or something similar)

March: We explored some of the mills in Lowell.

April: (this one is just for guitar gear folks) I embraced the hype.

May: The month we went to Boston to just hang out, a bunch of times.

June: Enter the CPAP machine. (more on June later)

July: Disney. Tons of Disney.

August: I finally got back to the ocean in time for a sunrise. I need to do that again soon. Maybe this weekend? (more on August later)

September: I’d been trying to make it happen since the mid-80’s, but I finally saw Steve Hackett in concert.

October: The Border Cafe in Cambridge, before the fire. I hope it’s not gone for good. Fingers crossed.

November: Lizardfish played their only gig in the calendar year. We were okay.. I wasn’t.

December: Lots of wonderful family time. I love my family.

July Bonus Pic: Someone graduated first in her class!

August Bonus Pic: The view from someone’s college campus. We have a college student in the family!

And there you have it. One pic from each month and a couple of extra for luck. We’ll do this again next year, probably.

Dig this lame faux artsy garbage pic from this morning.

Two thoughts: Did thinking about the photo-a-day thing distract me enough to lead to the chocolate pudding fiasco (see the previous post) this morning?

Also: All of these photo-a-day pics are labeled x/365 where x is the day in question and 365 is the number of days in the challenge… except that 2020 is a friggin’ leap year so the 124 pics I’ve labeled so far should actually say x/366.

Doofus.

Why do I do this to myself?

It’s the new year.  It’s January.  It’s 2020.  It’s resolutions and new year new me and all that crap.  It’s time.  Specifically it’s time to start losing weight again.

Last night I had a kinda crappy night sleep and that night followed a couple of other crappy nights sleep.  I went to bed real early, like 9:30, before anyone else.  I woke up for a little while when Jen came to bed.  I woke up again a little after midnight.  My CPAP machine was kinda noisy and it was bugging me.  I was hearing some gurgling sounds coming from where the hose attaches to the mask.  I took the whole thing apart and cleaned everything in the hopes that that would fix it.  It did for a little while.  Around 3:00 AM Jen woke me up to tell me that the noise the mask was making was keeping her awake.  Well, that does it.

The recommendation for my machine is to replace the mask every three months.  The hose should be replaced every 3-6 months.  I had new parts shipped to me in October, I think, but I made the decision to hold off on replacements for as long as the parts would let me.  Last night was the night.  At 3:00 AM I was digging through my closet trying to find the box that the new parts shipped in.  Jen had fallen back to sleep so I was trying to open all the packaging without waking her up.  Eventually I had it all put together and it ran as quiet as it gets and I went back to sleep.

None of that is why I kinda hate myself today.  That comes next.

Today is my telecommute day so I didn’t have to get ready right away so I went out early to salt up the driveway so no one slips (world record for use of the word “so” in a sentece?).  Jen and Harry were scheduled to leave at about the same time.  Bellana is off today but she needed to get up early and move her car out of the way so the other two could get out.  Once Jen and Harry were gone Bellana went back to sleep and I was up for the day.  I was already feeling wiped out so I decided to sneak off to the grocery store to pick up a couple of six packs of soda.  Diet soda, because I never fell off that wagon in 2019 even though I fell off every other weight loss wagon.

So it’s 7:00 AM and Market Basket has just opened and I’m one of the handful of customers.  I grabbed some Diet Pepsi and I was trying to remember if I needed eggs or not.  Weight loss, hard boiled eggs for breakfast.  That’s a thing that works for me.  I got to the eggs and figured I didn’t need any.  I still had a few from last week’s batch and I was pretty sure we had another dozen that I could make up this weekend.  Nice.  Right next to the eggs was a small display of pudding.  Yeah, grab me a big tub of chocolate pudding.  I get home, popped on a Bojack Horseman and dig into that pudding and then I remembered what day it was.

Sonofabitch….

You know, dumb ass.  Chocolate pudding for friggin’ breakfast isn’t very conducive to losing weight.  Dumb ass.  Moron.  What an asshole.

Sometimes I kinda hate myself.  Happy effin’ New Year.