So… what day is it today? It’s the second full day of our little self induced quarantiney thing-a-doo. Does that mean it’s day two or does Friday count as a day even though it was only a partial day? How do these things work? I’m going to call it day three. I don’t know how long it’s going to go. I don’t have the ‘rona so I am never going to get my pabst blue ribbon test results (you gotta read back a few posts to get that joke. I think I pulled it from two previous posts… sorry about that) so when am I clear to re-enter society? We’re thinking about another rapid test on Wednesday or so? If that comes back clean maybe we’re okay? Maybe another pabst blue ribbon to go along with it? I don’t know. Maybe I just stay in Harry’s room for the rest of eternity? Fun, huh?
I didn’t forget to liberate the CPAP machine last night. On Friday night I slept for four hours and 45 minutes and the restful sleep percentage was something stunningly low, like 46% or something. Last night I got seven hours of sleep and the restful sleep percentage was 71%. That’s more like it. I did wake up around 5:00am and didn’t get back to sleep until almost 6:30 so that’s a pretty colossal fail. Other than that, the sleep was pretty good. I feel almost awake now.
When I came home from my pabst blue ribbon test on Friday (that joke getting old yet?) I told my beautiful wife that I was going to need junk food to get through this. It was all like, engines full, stress eating ahead! Then last night I finished dinner before 7:00pm and didn’t have a single bite to eat afterward so I guess the stress eating commences today. I guess. I started my intermittent fast two hours early, which means I can start eating again two hours early, which means 11:00am which is 14 minutes from now so… there is likely to be a significant amount of M&M’s devoured during much of today’s weekend work day and shit.
I’ve been tied to my desk pretty much all day. I did do a shit load of laundry and I cleaned up lake asshole. It’s currently small puddle asshole but the floor in the main cellar still has water under the tiles that bubbles up when you step on the right spots. The water is still coming in from somewhere. I’m guessing the water heater is leaking somewhere but I need a plumber to take a look. With yesterday’s Covid scare we won’t be inviting anyone into the house for a week or so, so the clean up will continue unabated. At least I won’t be out of the house for 24 hour stretches so I will be able to keep on top of things… in theory, at least.
Tomorrow will likely be the same deal. Lots of shit going on that I have to keep up with. Opportunities to stray from my desk are likely to be few and far between. I need to get a good nights sleep. I need to do the exact opposite of what I did last night. With the Covid semi-quarantiney we’re doing around these parts it means I am couch bound. Last night I forgot my CPAP machine. That plus the uncomfortable sectional left me with not a lot of sleep, and the sleep I had was pretty awful. I’ll have the CPAP tonight so what sleep I get should be better. I’m hoping being exhausted yet again might mean that I’ll sleep no matter how uncomfy the couch is.
What other unimportant thing can I write about? Last night I posted a blurb saying that when I start working from Harry’s desk we can expect more time lapse candle videos. Well I worked from Harry’s desk today and my iPad is taking a time lapse as I type this. The thing is, I can’t remember when I started it. I want to say it was 11:00am, which is 11 hours ago. It might have been more like 12noon. Either way… that’s a long ass time to shoot a time lapse. I want to let it run until just before I go to bed, so that will probably be around 11:00pm, maybe 45 minutes from now. I’m sure you’re over come with anticipation.
Okay. I’m watching the last episode of season two of Titans right now. I’m going to wrap this up so I can watch that. Then I am going to upload that time lapse to youtube. I know, I know, you can’t wait. I promise you’ll have that adrenaline rush before I sleep tonight.
I sat at the desk in my step son’s room all night tonight. My wife was down the hall. A few times we masked up and had distanced visits in our own home. Yeah, this sucks.
Once I am at work on Tuesday you can expect lots of shit like this:
I am going to be working this weekend too, on top of all of the other stuff, so maybe you’ll get something before Tuesday. I don’t know.
I wrote a song for 50/90 tonight too, so that’s positive, right? Right? I strongly believe that if you sit alone in your car in some random parking lot and don’t interact with other living creatures then you are still within your quarantine. So maybe car music tomorrow. Or maybe the next day. Or maybe the day after that. I don’t know.
I miss Jen. She’s right down the friggin’ hall, yet I miss her. Boo.
Well there was a Covid-19 scare today. A little one that guaranteed won’t amount to anything. Still, we’ve chosen to isolate me for a few days just to be safe.
Overreaction? Yes, yes it is. It’s okay though. Better safe than sorry, and it’s only for a few days.
Granted, I’d rather get run over by a gas truck, but better safe than sorry.
I have a quarantiney work desk set up in Harry’s room. I can do whatever needs to be done for work from here. At some point there will be a 50/90 music work space in the cellar (away from the flood zone).
I wonder if the speakers built into Harry’s monitor work. Let’s watch a Titans and find out.
Today has not been my favorite day. Not by a long way. Not by a really long way.
(Yeah, that’s the inside of an urgent care)
(They said they’d call me if the test is positive, thank you, but if it’s negative they won’t call me. I did a double take on that. If you don’t call, how will I know?)
On September 1, 2020 the state of Massachusetts had 355 new cases of Covid-19. The United States as a whole had 41,976 new cases.
On September 2, 2021 (after having multiple vaccines available for over seven months) the state of Massachusetts had 2,037 new cases of Covid-19. The United States as a whole had 187,489 new cases.
🚨 BREAKING: Americans who got a Pfizer or Moderna vaccine will be offered a booster shot 8 months after their second dose starting the week of Sept. 20, Biden health officials say. https://t.co/R1nVixSAD3
I love my family. They are the best. You will never meet finer people.
Knowing that I am going to be at my parents’ for two whole days and that I won’t see them at all during that time, they asked me if I wanted to play a game of Ticket to Ride Online with them. We all have it on our iPads and figured it would be a nice thing to do together even when we aren’t together. Look me in the eye and tell me that isn’t the nicest thing anyone has ever done. I mean, seriously. How wonderful are Jen and Harry? I know Bellana’s not a big fan of that game, but maybe we can find something we can all play, assuming we can sneak it in around her work schedule as she is working up a storm in the final weeks before school starts.
I’m not sure who setup the network at my parents house, but I am pretty sure they have a firewall of some kind that is blocking online games. I’ve mentioned my troubles with World of Warcraft in the past, and tonight I had to switch from the wifi to my iPhone’s hotspot in order to connect to the game. I know my sister’s kids were doing some of their remote school here last year. I wonder if they put something in to keep them honest.
Speaking of online games, Jen and I have been playing World of Warcraft for the last month or so. WoW is owned and operated by a company called Blizzard. Blizzard has been getting demolished with charges of various kinds of sexual misconduct in the work place. I believe their CEO resigned over it recently. Karmically speaking (I do not believe in Karma, but the principal still applies) we are both starting to feel uncomfortable supporting the company so we’re looking for something else to play. Jen was looking into Star Wars: The Old Republic today. She won’t have to twist my arm to play that one. A game where I can be a Jedi? Sure! A game where I can get in touch with my dark side and be a Sith? Sure! I’ll have to download that one when I finally get home from this nana/papa sitting shift, sometimes in 2043 or so.
Last time I was here I mentioned that the only place I feel comfortable doing my “exercise” is in the cellar, and I don’t like going down there and leaving my parents alone without having a legitimate reason to go down stairs. There is laundry to do tonight, so I have my reason. I didn’t have a chance to start it until a little after 9:00, and only had five out of 30 minutes done, but I think I can close the ring. I have been down stairs once and I got my time up to 15 minutes. I think I will have two legitimate reasons to go into the cellar before midnight and I think I can get in the 15 remaining minutes. We’ll see. It’s really hot here and the humidity is unreal. We’ll see.
I left work for the day at 3:30 today so that I could spend some time with Harry before I came to my parents house. We watched the first episode of What If…? It was really good. I can’t wait for more! While we were busy with the Marvel fun, an email was sent to the whole company saying that our return to the office policy was changing again. Our requirement to come in approximate once a week has been temporarily put on hold due to the increasing Covid-19 numbers (which reminds me, I haven’t updated my spreadsheets yet). My boss called me a little while ago to make sure we were all on the same page. It’s looking like going into the office is off the table until (probably) mid-October. Obviously that could change at any time, but I feel much safer. It was pretty uncomfortable being there the last couple of times. I didn’t feel unsafe per se, I just didn’t feel comfortable. Tonight’s announcement was like a sigh of relief.
Okay, I need to update my MA and US Covid-19 numbers spreadsheets, and then I need to mix a song. All of that sandwiched around laundry and “exercising” and actually going to sleep and stuff. Here’s hoping the quiet night stays quiet. Fingers crossed.
Happy August 1st, everyone! August doesn’t have a national holiday so this year I am going to try and make it feel better by acting like every day is an extra big deal. No I’m not. I’m just so happy that July and its constant rain is over. Granted, August might get constant rain too, likely will thanks to climate change, but for this one, sweet, shining morning, August is dry and I am happy about it.
I wore a mask at my mother’s house yesterday. Not all the time, just when I knew she was near me. We are both vaccinated, but she ain’t catching jack shit from me. The MA department of public health is recommending vaccinated people wear masks when they are indoors with other people around because we can’t tell who the morons who aren’t vaccinated are and if they aren’t going to do anything to protect their own health, then we the vaccinated have to do it for them. Because they are stupid. Because they are morons.
Thanks to the never ending pandemic of the unvaccinated we are still using instacart for groceries and they screwed up big time today. We had to go back for a second round. All in all I am happy for the service, they are right a crazy high percentage of the time, but every once in a while… We asked for hamburger patties and got pumpernickel bread. Riiiiight.
What else is going on on this fine Sunday morning in August that hasn’t seen any rain yet? I broke the music mold a smidgen today. We slept kinda late. Not super late, I was up at about 8:15, but for me that’s pretty late. I wanted to do some car music but the aforementioned instacart delivery was on its way, and I had some things I wanted to do before I left so I didn’t get into the car until almost 10:00. I do my car music in a movie theater parking lot, and due to the idiotic decision to re-open the state despite the never ending pandemic mentioned in the previous paragraph, the movie theater was going to be open at 10:00. I rolled the dice. I park in the back parking lot so hopefully anyone going in early to catch the delta variant and a movie would probably park in the front. My risk paid off.
I did park in a different area of the lot though. I recorded four songs. There were two technical problems but neither stopped me. First, I use Trello to track my progress. The songs I needed to work on are on a list called Complete Lyrics/Melody on a board called 2021 50/90. My normal workflow is to bring up the Trello app on my iPhone and use that to let me know which songs to work on. The last couple of times I’ve done this though, the iOS app wouldn’t refresh. It’s showing me the board from about two weeks ago. Nothing is up to date. I had to turn my iPhone hot spot on and bring it up on the Mac. That is annoying as all hell.
The second technical problem wasn’t a problem but I would have had I kept going. The temperature outside was in the mid-70’s but the sun was out and shining bright and damn if it didn’t get roasting hot in that car. I’d open the windows but then people would be able to hear me “singing” and ain’t no way that’s happening. About halfway through my little “session” the Mac’s fan kicked on and it never shut off. I don’t know how much longer I would have been able to go before it started to overheat but “fortunately” my voice ran out of gas after about an hour and I had to stop.
I did manage to finish four songs. That’s one more than I had planned. I had three songs with the guitars finished and I wanted to pick those off. I also had six songs with lyrics and melodies already written that don’t have guitars yet. A couple of those have MIDI guitar tracks acting as place holders. I did one of those.
So the plans for the rest of today include, but are not limited to, cutting some grass, recording some guitar parts, having a cookout for dinner (weather permitting, of course, though July is over so the weather will be glorious), and hanging out with my step son who only has a few weeks left before he moves to college.
Of course, as I type out that to do list I am sitting at my computer reading twitter, making fun of creationists, and thinking that it would be really nice to just sit and watch movies with Harry and Jen all day. That might be the better to do list.
Welcome to August, may it stay sunny and dry. Good luck, folks!
Inside the Red Head's Head 