Author: robertjames1971

I'm wicked tall.

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?
View all responses

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.

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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?
View all responses

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.

Sick Day

I tried. I tried to finish the work day but my stomach just kept getting worse. Not as bad as three weeks ago, but bad enough that I couldn’t sit up straight or concentrate on work. I laid down around 2:30 after trying and failing to have a bite to eat for lunch.

Now it’s four hours later and I do feel a little better, but we are back to the old question: is there something wrong with my stomach or am I hungry?

I think I’ll try to drink a little water. Duck and cover, boys and girls.

NHL Playoff Predictions: Round Three

This sucks, man. My team lost and New York’s team won? Talk about a crap fest.

My predictions in the first round were not very good. I picked four series correctly out of eight. The coin flips I used for a control group (or something) picked three out of eight.

How did I do in the second round? Not very good.

Panthers vs Bruins.  The coin and I both picked the Bruins. This sucks. I am now 4/9 and the coin is 3/9. Screw you, Panthers.

Rangers vs Whalers. I picked the Rangers, even though it hurts my soul to pick any team from New York, and the coin picked the Whale. The Rangers won. I am now 5/10 and the coin is 3/10.

On to the West…

Stars vs Avalanche. The coin and I both picked the Avalanche and they lost. The Stars moved on and the Avs made me look bad. I am now 5/11 and the coin is a dismal 3/11.

Canucks vs Oilers. The Bruins are out. The Avalanche is out. There’s only one team left that I would actually want to root for. It’s the Oilers. I picked them to win and the coin picked Vancouver. Who won? The Oilers won. Oh thank goodness. I am back up to 50% at 6/12 and the coin is completely shut out in this round and is now at 3/12.

Now let’s move on to the Conference Final round. Round three.

Rangers vs Panthers. Oh good, the team that beat my team for the second year in a row against a team that I absolutely hate. Yippee. I want them both to lose. I am going to pick the Rangers but not because I plan to root for them. In this series I am rooting for the Zambonis. For the coin flip, heads goes to the higher seed and tails goes to the lower. It is tails. The coin picks the friggin’ Panthers.

Stars vs Oilers. At this point I think the Rangers are going to win the cup, but the Oilers are the only team left that I actually like so I am picking them. That’s me going with my heart instead of my head. The coin picks the Oilers too, which guarantees they will lose?

So I am predicting a Rangers vs Oilers matchup in the Stanley Cup Final. You heard it here first.

Blah.