Author: robertjames1971

I'm wicked tall.

Good Morning

My step son is going to be leaving us pretty soon. I’m sad. The potential for a bummer mix of a day is pretty high. I’ll try to make the most of it. We’ll see.

We had plans for today but I think we’re going to scrap them, or completely alter them, or flat our replace them. I don’t know. Maybe I should just go back to sleep. That would be fun, eh? It’s almost 8:00am. Time for a nap! WOOHOO!

Nothing to Say

I’m down to the final minutes of my lunch break on this fine Friday afternoon. I am pretty exhausted from a lack of sleep over the past… month(s) but I’m hanging in there. I had some Purdue Popcorn chicken and some peanuts and some sugar free Hershey bites for lunch. I really want a drink of water but I still have to wait the better part of an hour before I am clear to drink anything. That’s a gastric bypass patient thing. If you know, you know.

Fed Ex delivered a package today. I am not home to get it, but it contains a new guitar pedal. If I read the amazon shipping notes correctly, it’s a compressor pedal. The first I’ve ever purchased. I have this weird idea of using cleaner guitar sounds for this year’s RPM Challenge in February and a compressor will be a part of that. I bought an MXR Dyna Comp because it’s super simple and it will let me squash my clean signal down to a delightfully mushy… mush. There are two more pedals coming over the weekend. One is a Flanger, the other is an Amp Sim. I don’t have room on my pedal board for any of these kiddos and I don’t have open slots on my power brick… so I am going to need to get creative, I think. It should be fun. I don’t think I bought a single guitar pedal during all of 2024. I know I bought a couple of microphones for band practices that haven’t actually happened yet, but no pedals.

There are a lot of tentative plans for the weekend. We may be messing with our living room and we may be going to some stores for research purposes. I hope to spend some time wandering around town taking pictures with my new/possibly antique (though probably not) camera. I got a gift card for the sugar free bakery in Salem, NH for xmas. I haven’t bought anything from them in about a month, but now I am definitely going back and getting some cookies. Good stuff.

What else… I thought there was something else… One of our cars is going to get a break job. That wasn’t the thing that I am forgetting though… am I going to go shopping for a new iPhone? That’s definitely on the to-do list before we go to Florida at the end of the month, but is it this weekend? I don’t know.

I have to start practicing the guitar. The band is hoping to reconvene (hopefully for real this time) at some point after this weekend. I need to get ready for that. Which guitar should I bring to the first practice? Probably the Les Paul Standard that my wife got me for my 50th birthday in 2021. I really dig that guitar.

I know I had something else I wanted to write about but it has slipped my brain entirely. Don’t get old, kids. This is what happens to you when you get old. Stay young for as long as you can. Unless you’re already old like me in which case… sorry, folks. We had a good run, I’m sure.

Up Early

I was awake at about 4:30am today. I thought to myself, I can’t sleep anymore so I’ll just get up even though my alarm won’t be going off for another 30 minutes.

Then I blinked once.

Then my alarm went off. Huh. I guess I wasn’t having that much trouble sleeping after all.

I got up a few minutes later and got a slightly earlier than usual start to an in-the-office day. I was able to do my regular morning exercise. I usually lower my goal a bit for in the office days, but today I left it at the usual amount and hit it with enough time to spare to take a couple of pictures for today’s photo a day thing. Really I just wanted to switch from my 28mm to my 85mm lens and used photo a day as an excuse to make sure I didn’t somehow break something when I switched.

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Ain’t those pics purdy? Pointless, but purdy? No. Whatever.

I’m hoping to take the new Lomo camera out for it’s first official test drive this weekend. The forecast is calling for some sun, but it’s also calling for some cold. We’ll see. I need to go revisit some YouTube how-to videos first because I think I’ve forgotten how to use the camera already. Again, we’ll see.

Missed Opportunity

Today is our last full day with my step son Harry in the house. He’s heading back to Vermont in the morning so he can go to work in the afternoon.

I’m sad that he’s leaving. I’m even sadder that today is an in the office day and I’m going to be away from home until dinner time.

Crud.

Up Next

Let’s see here… we did Halloween, then we did Thanksgiving twice, then we decorated the house for xmas, then we did xmas, then we did New Years… what’s next?

I’ll tell you what’s next… Florida. Jen has a milestone birthday in early February. Jen’s mother has a milestone birthday too. Yeah, screw it, let’s go to Disney World. Bellana is going to come with us this time. Harry’s in the middle of his last semester in college so he can’t come, but back in February of 2020 we went to Disney World while Harry was on school vacation and Bellana wasn’t, so this trip will even the score.

We’re not going until late in the month so there is plenty of time for me to post old photos from previous Disney trips to psyche everyone up for it. There is also plenty of time for me and Jen to binge every Disney YouTube channel that exists to prep for everything that is to come.

Up next for us on the huge event schedule… Disney World 2025-A*!

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*Why is it 2025-A you ask? Because there will be a Disney World 2025-B trip over the summer, that’s why. We are out of control. Out Of Control.