Author: robertjames1971

I'm wicked tall.

Something to Play Along With

Just saving this for later, as this blog sometimes serves as a browser/machine independent collection of bookmarks for me…

That’s a playlist of my band rehearsing each of the songs currently on our new-singer-audition-to-do-list. I haven’t listened to any of it yet so I don’t even know if the takes are complete or not, and I don’t know if they sound good enough to actually make anything out, and I don’t know if we made any colossal screw ups or anything.

In other words, this playlist might be a waste of time, but I did it during my lunch break so it is morally on the up and up.

I have a wordpress.com blog for the old band too. Maybe I’ll post it there for funzies.

Which Guitar?

I have two musical goals for tonight after work.

First: Put together a playlist of the songs on our potential-singer-audition-songs list so that I can start practicing the holy hell out of them.

Second: Decide which guitar I want to use for the band’s come back work. As of right now I am leaning toward the birthday Les Paul that my wife bought me for my 50th birthday almost three years ago. I’ve been playing the two 70’s Gibsons that I had all of the repair work done on since November or so, but I think I want to start the return-to-the-band process with my newest guitar.

Whatever guitar I decide to use for the band’s comeback (which is scheduled to start this coming Sunday) is going to need new strings. I have a couple of boxes here, but I might need to order some more from the Amazonians today. We’ll see.

It’s time to start focusing on getting the band running again. I’m mentally ready for it, but not quite ready from a guitar playing ability standpoint. I have a lot of rust to shake off.

These are pictures I took for today’s photo a day challenge, but they are not the guitar I am talking about. Oh well.

215/365
215/365
CIMG7537
CIMG7539
CIMG7540

Weather or Not

I made a pun in the title of this post. Did you like it? It takes the phrase “whether or not” and replaces whether with it’s homonym, weather because the post is going to be about the weather. Get it? I feel so friggin’ clever I could spontaneously combust*!

We’re supposed to get a nor’easter this week. The forecast yesterday said 3-6 inches of snow on Wednesday into Thursday. I just checked the accuweather website and it’s still calling for some snow on Wednesday but no real accumulation. Then Thursday into Friday we’re still looking at 3-6 inches.

I am taking my father to a doctors appointment on Wednesday and I am working in the office on Thursday. Wednesday is looking good but Thursday might be in trouble. We’ll have to see.

The long range forecast includes something I am looking forward to. When the temperature outside hits 60 degrees I like to open the windows. If the forecast is correct, next week I’ll be opening the windows. It stands as more evidence that I am now officially a really old fart, but stuff like that pleases me immensely. Come on, weather. Let’s let me open the windows. Just stop snowing first, m’kay?

*That’s sarcasm. I am not clever at all. Not even a little bit.

Adapting to Covid

Daily writing prompt
How have you adapted to the changes brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic?
View all responses

When the lockdown started we got on board quick. We locked everything down and we locked it down hard. My wife and I were both overweight and pushing 50 years old (well, I was pushing 50 more than she was as she still hasn’t hit that “happy” milestone yet) and that was enough to justify our response, but more importantly to me, my step son has Crohn’s disease and type one Diabetes and there was no way in hell that kid was catching Covid-19 on my watch. We were all high risk but in my book his high risk out weighed everything else by far.

We still haven’t let up completely. Well… I don’t know, maybe we have. Maybe the mindset behind our day to day has changed so much that we can’t really perceive that we’re basically back to pre-pandemic normal.

We aren’t masking up every time we leave the house, but we are quick to put one on in some circumstances. If I have a sniffle I’ll wear a mask. We still hesitate to go out socially. Restaurants are few and far between. Doordash, Amazon, curbside pickups, they are all our friends. We’ve let ourselves go on a couple of trips. The last one was seven months ago and wouldn’t you know it, Jen and I both caught Covid. Shit. At the time I said to Jen that we needed to go on a trip right away after we recovered. We needed to get right back on the horse because if we didn’t we might never be able to bring ourselves to travel again. That was seven months ago. No one has returned to any horses yet. Shit.

So even though everything is steadily recovering and getting back to normal, we have adapted such that normal no longer feels completely normal, and we may never fully un-lockdown. I hope we can bring ourselves to relax, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to pull off that little magic trick.

The good news here though… my step son did not get sick on my watch. Mission accomplished.

Mother Nature’s Revenge

If you live in New England like I do, you may want to not look at the weather forecast.

Wendesday… snow.

Thursday… snow.

We’re going to get a Nor’easter… in April.

Damn it, Mother Nature. Why must you be such an insufferable asshole? Really. What a jerk!

It’s still a couple of days away at least, so maybe the forecast will change or turn out to be completely wrong. Maybe we won’t get snow after all. I’m not betting on it. If winter is going to give spring one last kick in the nards, it’ll be like this.

Good thing I didn’t already plant my peanuts!*

*I haven’t written a post about it for months, but I am still planning on trying to grow some peanuts this year. I am an idiot and this is the proof.

Haiku for You #170

Today’s haiku for you is work related, but also unrelated to anything anyone I work with directly has done or needs to do. It’s just an observation that feels somewhat universal to we programming types. No specifics, no spoilers…

Tough to troubleshoot,
Without any tools to use.
Now what do we do?

Routine

Daily writing prompt
What are your morning rituals? What does the first hour of your day look like?
View all responses

Since having gastric bypass surgery I have been very reliant on routine. I feel completely out of sorts if I don’t follow a specific routine on a day to day basis. I was never like that before the surgery, but since I have become a creature of routine. I’m weird like that now.

I get up, put some clothes on, grab my laptop, and head to the cellar. I pick something to watch, a TV show or a movie or a queue of youtube videos. Today is was the season (series?) finale of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. I then jog (pronounced yog) in place for 45 minutes. That closes my Apple Watch Activity app’s exercise ring for the day and it also sort of wakes me up. It kicks my ass too, but it gives me a little sense of accomplishment to start the day. After that it depends on whether it’s a work in the office day or not. If it is not then I eat breakfast and that closes out the first hour of my day. If it is, I prefer to have my breakfast in the car on the way to work so I just head upstairs and take a shower or pack up my computer and my lunch/breakfast and all of that.

I do this seven days a week. Any day that I don’t do it is a mess, mentally speaking. Like I said, I am weird like that now. It’s a whole new world, I guess.

Haiku for You #169

Today’s haiku for you is brought to you by gastric bypass recovery side effects. You’d think that after a year and almost 11 months I’d have this down, but apparently not today. It was not related to easter in any way, shape, or form though. I promise.

Regurgitation
Is a five syllable word.
It means you’re puking