Category: Family

I Foresee a Bad Day Ahead

I don’t know what’s going on with me today, but I have a bad feeling about this. About everything.

I am working from home for the first time this week and it feels glorious. I have a deadline today that I should be able to meet easily. Why then do I feel this sense of impending doom? I went through all of the email from my half day out of the office yesterday and I just sense that I am going to be pecked to death by the universe today.

We are going to Vermont tomorrow to see the kids. Maybe that’s the reason I feel off today. Maybe my heart is already driving North and as a result the rest of me is just pissed off that we still have a full day to go. I don’t know. We’re going to meet up with the kids for an NCAA hockey game. UMass Lowell (both my and my wife’s alma mater) at University of Vermont (my step daughter’s alma mater and employer, and my step son’s current school). It’s going to be fun, assuming Lowell cleans Vermont’s clock. Both teams are doing well in the early going. I am hoping for a fun game. Unlike the Bruins game last night where they lost in Dallas 7-2. I am just going to make pretend that game didn’t happen, m’kay?

I don’t know about this sense of impending doom. Hopefully I work myself out of it. Wish me luck.

Random Sunday Night Thoughts

This week’s episode of The Penguin doesn’t launch for another 40 minutes so I am going to write a blog post to kill some of that time.

You ready?

Iron Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith posted a picture on instagram today (at least I think it was today) that was taken backstage at a Maiden show in Toronto. In the photograph is one Mr Alex Lifeson who apparently is an Iron Maiden fan? Larry and Mike and I are going to see Maiden in less than two weeks. Do you think there’s a chance that Alex Lifeson will be at that show too? I hope so! I think it would be the best thing ever to watch Big Al air guitar to The Trooper. That would freakin’ rule.

Tomorrow is Monday. Back to work for everyone. Sad, painful, depressing. All that stuff. I have a small mountain of paperwork to do this week. I need to find a way to not be distracted by other work responsibilities so that I can get it all done as soon as humanly possible. I have the day off on Thursday because I wanted to be home and off the clock in time to run our house’s Trick or Treating.

I have one very important non-work responsibility that I have to take care of tomorrow. Well, two actually. I need to pick something up at the drug store for Jen tomorrow before work. That’s not what I am writing about, though it is important. The thing that I am writing about will also hopefully happen before work. I need to buy five tickets to an NCAA hockey game. UMass Lowell (my and my wife’s old school) at University of Vermont (my step daughter’s old and my step son’s current school). Harry and I went to a game last year. This year Jen and Bellana and Harry’s girlfriend are going to go too. I need to get the tickets in advance because I am crazy and don’t want to wait.

Hockey… as a family… how cool is that?

While on our day trip to Burlington, Vermont today, I took a camera with me. A film camera. Dad’s Pentax K1000 with a roll of Kentmere 400 (black and white) film. I shot about two thirds of the roll. I know for sure that I completely and utterly mangled a few of the photos, but one or two might come out okay. If the weather is okay on Thursday (Halloween) I might use the morning portion of my day off as a photo morning. I keep talking about Boston…. maybe I could go to Boston for a little while?

Okay, we’re now 25 minutes away form a new episode of The Penguin. I think I am going to post this literary masterpiece now and listen to some music until the show is released on the MAX app.

Happy Sunday, everyone. Have a good night.

Home

I drove for over six hours in total. From home to Burlington , VT where we took the kids to American Flatbread for lunch. The pizza was good, the company was better. After lunch Harry had to go home to do some studying. Jen and Bellana and I went to a bookstore, which was a treat. When was the last time anyone went to a bookstore? Then Bellana had to get home so Jen and I made the 3+ hour drive back.

Next on the agenda is seeing if frozen hamburger patties work in the air fryer. I assume they will, everything else does.

Happy Sunday, folks!

Vermont Bound

We are Vermont bound today. The plan is to have an early lunch, brunch if you will, with the kids. Beyond that? Who knows.

We’re going to leave about an hour from now. Three hours in the car and then some quality time with all three of my favorite people.

Sounds like an A+ Sunday to me!

Gross

Is carving up a pumpkin and making a jack-o-lantern the single grossest thing that we as a society do? No? Is it in the top 10? Yeah, probably.

Why do we do it? Specifically, why do I do it when our kids are old enough to have moved out of the house and we don’t have them here at all during the Halloween season?

I don’t know, but I still do it. Specifically, I just did it. Meet our 2024 jack-o-lantern. I am still thinking of a name for him. Smiley? Jackass? Putz? They all seem appropriate.

My beloved wife and I watched It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown last night. I completely forgot about the scene where Lucy and the girls used Charlie Brown’s big bald head as a template for a jack-o-lantern. Freakin’ hysterical.

Toy Cameras

I really want to try medium format film, but I don’t have a medium format camera and I really don’t want to spend any noteworthy amount of money on one.

Should I get a Holga (a cheap plastic toy camera that just happens to shoot medium format film) just to dip my toes into the water, so to speak? Will that turn me off of the whole thing, or will it send me spiraling down a rabbit hole that my bank account and I will never recover from?

Why can’t I just make a decision?

On an unrelated note, our drive to Vermont to see the kids tomorrow has been postponed for one day. That should not make me sad (we’ll see them Sunday instead of Saturday) but it really makes me sad. I think I might be overtired. Everything is getting to me right now. Go take a nap, Robert.

Scary Demon Monster

I saw something scary in the cellar this morning. A demon from hell that is the scariest monster in the known universe.

I saw…

I can’t even type it, it’s so terrible…

I saw a house centipede.

Pause to give everyone some time to scream in abject terror for their very existence.

It was on the floor next to my pedal board in my music nook. I am pretty sure it was dead. It didn’t move as I approached it and if you know anything about house centipedes you know that they are the fastest muthas in the west. They don’t just let you walk up to them. When they see you coming, they bolt. This guy just sat there and even let my foot hover above him for a couple of seconds. Yeah, it was already dead.

If it wasn’t dead at that point though, it was certainly dead after I stepped on it. Squish, babie. One less demonic asshole in the world. Normally I would feel bad about squishing a little living thing, but these guys are so evil looking (and they scare the shit out of my wife) that I have sentenced all who enter my domain to death. Sorry, nature. I know they are actually good to have around because they eat all of the other bugs, but sometimes you cannot let evil like this exist, ya know?

Change of subject.

I am a dope. I also can’t tell time and I have a memory like a sieve. My wife is going to the office today. She told me she was leaving at 7:45. I made a note. I would make sure I got through my whole morning routine before then so that I could properly say goodbye to her.

I got up early and dashed down cellar to do my morning exercise. Success. I came upstairs and did a couple of things and then at the appropriate time I walked up to her office, where she was sitting at her desk, and was about to say that I was ready to wish her a good day whenever she was ready to go… and that was when I realized she said 7:45, not 6:45, and the current time was actually 6:45.

I am an idiot.

Well, at least I am ready to say goodbye when she is ready to go. I’ve got that going for me, right?

I Said I Wouldn’t but I Did

I was in this zone where I was buying my wife flowers regularly. No reason, I just saw them and bought them and that was it. I was spending too much money on it and Jen asked me to stop. She made it clear that she loved the sentiment, but howsabout we calm it down.

That was probably about a year ago. Today? I bought her flowers again. Sorry about that. I just had to do it.

50/365