Author: robertjames1971

I'm wicked tall.

Let’s Talk

Daily writing prompt
Who would you like to talk to soon?
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Ever since the Covid lock downs hit I’ve been pretty isolated from the world. I keep in touch with folks, but outside of family it’s been tough. Because of that, I don’t talk to very many people as much as I should. So the broad answer to today’s question is pretty much everyone.

More specifically, I would like to talk to the kids. Any time, any place, any reason. Both of my step kids live three hours away now. I miss shooting the shit with them. I’m always looking forward to the next talk.

I need to talk to my dad more often. I am such a terrible son. There are so many times where I’ve thought about just giving him a call and I haven’t. There’s no excuse. I’m just awful. I am going to call him this morning before we leave for the vacation. I promise.

I’d like to talk to my mom. We lost her two years ago. She was dealing with dementia for a lot longer than that. I just miss her.

I’m in the cellar right now, eating breakfast and typing this literary masterpiece*. My wife is upstairs. I will be going upstairs within the next 5-10 minutes or so. I am really looking forward to talking to her. It’s been over 40 minutes since we’ve spoken. Eternity.

*Sarcasm, of course. I mean… duh, right?

New Mix

I mixed a song a couple of nights ago but didn’t get around to posting it to my alonetone or hearthis.at accounts so it just sat there on my laptop. Now it is out there for the whole wide world to ignore.

I think it kinda sounds like crap, but the song itself is okay, I think. You can probably hear the edits in the chorus because I wrote a melody without leaving any space for that pesky little breathing thing. Oops.

The lead guitar was through a nearly cranked amp. That was fun. Noisy as hell, but fun.

WiFi Blues

One of the cats has started to… somehow… inexplicably… turn off our router and kill our wifi signal. We have a MESH network thing setup in the house and she’s been doing something to shut it off. I think she’s just stepping on the plug and jarring it loose for an instant. She doesn’t unplug it completely, but she somehow makes it shut off for a split second and then it takes a few minutes to recover.

Damn it cat, now we have to find a new home for the router. Someplace you can’t screw it up.

Vacation-itis

We are less than 24 hours away from The Great 2024 Florida Road Trip. Actually, less than 22 hours, if all goes off according to the schedule. I have two hours left in today’s work day, and then four hours of work tomorrow…

…and mentally it is really difficult not to just check out now.

All of our clothes are packed. I still need to hit the grocery store to get some bottled water for the drive, and I need to pack up my weight loss surgery friendly food options, and all of our electronics and chargers and various stuff. Then I just have to load it all into the car and go go go, babie.

The only downside of this epic trip is that these two super heroes won’t be coming with us:

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If there had been a way for them to come along, we would have made it happen. They both have tons of things going on this weekend up in Vermont. We will miss them. We’ll probably bomb them with text messages the whole time so that they don’t feel like they are missing out on anything (hehe, kidding… or am I?).

I’ll just have to fill in the gaps with lots of faux artsy photographs. You know, like ya do.

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Materialism

Daily writing prompt
What personal belongings do you hold most dear?
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Not the same question as yesterday, but sort of in the neighborhood.

Do I hold any possessions dear? I don’t know. I guess the real question is how do you define holding something dear?

Our house? Our cars? Life would be pretty tough without those. My glasses? That’s a possession that’s pretty super important too. Do I hold them dear? My computer, my iPhone, my guitars, my cameras, my TV, my turntable? The fly swatter I used to finally nail that little buggie bastard that has been buzzing me for the last 20 minutes or so? All of those things are important. Many of them are special. Do I hold them dear? I don’t think so.

I hold relationships dear. I hold people dear. I don’t know if I hold any possessions dear.

Maybe I just don’t understand the question, you know?

Things We Need to Do

We’re leaving for Florida a day and a half from now. What do we need to do before we leave?

Tonight we’re packing. I did all of the laundry in the house over the last couple of days. We need to sort, fold, and put away what isn’t going with us, and pack what is.

We need to pack toiletries. Everything that is coming along that isn’t going to be needed tonight or tomorrow needs to be packed.

On Friday morning before work I need to go to the grocery store and pick up some stuff. Bottles of water, maybe some Gatorade, and ice for the cooler… assuming we’re taking the cooler. Maybe we shouldn’t. It’s going to eat up a lot of room. I might be changing my mind on that one. I also need to pack up a ton of protein bars and sugar free snacks. I also, also need to figure out how to keep that stuff from melting in the car. Maybe the cooler is coming after all. I have an insulated lunch bag that I can throw an ice pack into that should work on a day to day basis, but we’re talking about a multiple day drive. I will also need to bring a stash of stomach safe foods to the parks each day, and I will need to have some for the drive home. That’s a lot of protein bars. I don’t know. I need to think about this.

What else? Chargers for our iPhones, Apple Watches, Air Pods, and laptops. All that needs to be packed. I also need to figure out exactly what my camera needs will be. One digital (my Nikon Z5) and one film (my Nikon FG-20, I think). Do I bring two lenses for the Z5? How much film should I bring for the FG-20? I also need a back pack to hold all of this stuff while I journey through the parks each day. I think I know what to do about all of this. I just have to pack it up.

Should we get an audio book for the long drive there and back? We’ve done that before. What book though? Do you think Jen will be down to listen to Isaac Azimov’s Foundation? Am I down to listen to that? Probably not. There’s a new Stephen King short story collection coming. Is that out yet? Maybe just go with the old standard and listen to a Harry Potter novel? I would be fine with any of them, but 3, 4, and 7 are my favs.

This seems like a lot of things to take care of before we go, but it’s really not. We’ll have everything set long before we load up the car and head out on Friday. The only real question I have is, will this place be open when we drive by?

Traffic

Traffic heading into the office this morning was pretty bad. Fortunately for my schedule, I left the house super early and made it to work with plenty of time to spare.

265/365
265/365

This weekend is Memorial Day weekend here in the United States. The expectation is that everyone and their uncle will be out on the highways at some point. We’re likely going to see them all. We’re driving from Massachusetts to Florida. The traffic is going to be epic. Or at least the potential for it is there.

I’m just prepping myself for the worst while hoping for the best. We’re giving ourselves a ton of extra time for the drive, so even a slew of awful traffic won’t put us off our schedule. We’re ready and we can hack it. I just hope we don’t have to.

Traffic sucks, man.

The Collector

Daily writing prompt
Do you have any collections?
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Collections? You mean like, do I collect bad decisions? Failures? Things like that?

I was a baseball card collector when I was a kid. I was pretty obsessed. I still have them all. They are in a box somewhere in the cellar. I haven’t added to the collection in ages though. I can’t really say I still collect them. I collected music on vinyl/cassette tapes/CDs. Most of them are gone. I had ripped them all so now all of that music lives simultaneously in a hard drive and in my iTunes Match account. Is that even still a thing? Streaming services are pretty evil (from the musical artist’s point of view) but they are so effin’ convenient from the listener’s perspective that I can’t really stay away. I want to, but I can’t. Thanks, Apple Music. I used to have a pretty significant collection of books. Mostly paperbacks in the horror genre. Thank you, Stephen King and Clive Barker. Almost all of them are gone now. I used to have a significant VHS/DVD/Blue Ray collection too. Almost all of those are gone too.

If I had to fess up to having a collection of anything these days it would probably be electric guitars. I have four. They are all Gibsons. A 1978 Les Paul Custom, a 1979 ES-335 Pro, a 2017 SG Standard, and a 2020 Les Paul Standard ’50’s. I would very much like for this collection to grow, but it’s so expensive. I could extend this to guitar gear in general as I have a few amplifiers and a slew of effects pedals. It feels cooler to say that I collect guitars though.

I could also say that I collect office desks. I have four, technically. One for personal computer stuff in the cellar. Right next to it is a work from home desk that I don’t use very much anymore. Another is upstairs in my step son’s currently unoccupied bed room. That’s where I work from home for the most part. Then there’s one in the actual office. I’m sitting at that one right now.

We have two cats… does that count as a collection? Probably not.

Yeah, let’s go with guitars. That’s my answer for today’s question. Thank you and good night.