Playing
Author: robertjames1971
I'm wicked tall.
Packed Up and Ready
I have an amp and a pedal board at Mike the Bass Player’s house already. Pretty sure there are a bunch of mic stands too. I packed the bare minimum. A mic and a cable. Two guitar cables and an over drive pedal. One electric guitar. One pack of emergency strings.
Assuming my amp works… I’m ready to play.
Now I just have to finish the work day and drive to Mike’s house. I’m ready, kids!
Tennant
Finally! While I was cooking my lunch on the grill today I got a picture of one of the birds living rent-free in one of the bird houses!
Now I need to see if there are baby birds in there too.
Fire
Scenes from lunch time.
Fun with Depth of Field
I filled the bird feeders and did a photography exercise.
The same view, with different depth of field.
Example #1, aperture set to f2, shutter speed set to 1/5000 seconds, ISO set to 800 (because that is the speed of the film in Dad’s camera right now).
Example #2, aperture set to f8, shutter speed set to 1/500 seconds, ISO still at 800.
Final example, aperture set to f16, shutter speed set to 1/100 seconds, ISO again at 800.
So the lower the aperture number (lower numbers mean wider aperture, so f2 is as wide as my lens gets and f16 is as narrow as it gets) the shallower the depth of field and the less of the image that is in focus. Get it?
A New Game
Lily and I have a new game. I try to make the bed and she tries to get under the blankets while I make the bed. I won today by keeping her out. She won yesterday. It’s a thing we do now.
1,258 days
Last night I sent a message to the band’s Facebook messenger chat. I asked if we were still on for a practice tonight. Everyone said yes.
It’s been almost exactly a year since Mike, Kevin, and I got together without Greg. It has been a whopping 1,258 days since the last time all four of us were together.
I’m really looking forward to this. I should put new strings on my Les Paul, right?
Bed Time
I have been hyper aware of this for the last few years. Ever since I started sleep apnea therapy I have gone a little nuts keeping track of my sleep.
Ideally I would go to bed at around 10:00pm and wake up around 6:00am. There literally aren’t enough hours in the day though so that rarely happens.
Realistically, I got to bed at 11:00pm, or even a little after. Jen has an alarm set on our Amazon Echo for 6:00, but I have one set on my Apple Watch for 5:00am. Most mornings I hit snooze for nearly an hour, but I would prefer not to. Six hours of sleep isn’t really enough, but it gets the job done for me most nights.
Checking my sleep stats from last night, I went to sleep at 11:05pm and woke up at 5:45am. I was also awake from 4:40 to 4:50am as I needed to pee. I was asleep for 6.5 hours, 74% of which was in restful sleep. My sleeping heart rate dip was 19% and my average sleeping heart rate was 52 beats per minute. My sleep distruption was 2.5%, or 10 minutes.
Like I said… I’ve been sort of hyper focused on this for about four years now.
2023 50/90 Challenge Day 9/90
Last night after I posted the daily music update I added idea number 13.
Today’s progress is just ideas 14 and 15. No song form yet, just bass and drums phrases.
More tomorrow? I hope.
Work Anniversary
I almost forgot about this one. Fortunately I am a nerd and added it as a recurring date on my Google calendar many years ago. Today is a noteworthy day, but this date next year will be a much more important occasion.
On this date, July 12, in the year 2004 I started a new job. 19 years later, I’m still here. 19 years, one promotion, countless reorganizations, one wedding, one house purchase, two high school graduations, one college graduation (and counting), one ridiculously invasive stomach surgery, and one continuing global pandemic later, and I am still here.
My 19th workaversary is a big deal, but my 20th next year… that will be a big deal. We’ll see what happens in the meantime. For now at least, go have a piece of cake or something to celebrate for me. You know, have the kind of sugary thing that I can’t eat anymore in honor of me not getting sacked at all over the last 19 years.
