The holidays are officially over and its time to move on.  This weekend I hope to accomplish some, if not all, of these tasks to help achieve that goal:

• Take down the Christmas tree
• Put away all the Christmas decorations (with the possible exception of the lights on the outside of the house.  I might be willing to be talked into leaving those there for next year, but it’s going to take a really good argument).
• Reorganize the living room.  Jen has a floor plan that looks interesting.  It puts the picture window opposite the TV, but with the blackout curtains that won’t be a problem.  We’ll try it and see how it feels.  I also still want to buy a new comfy chair for the living room, but not right now.
• Replace the dearly departed snow shovel.  Should there still be snow on the driveway after a couple of days with temps in the mid-40’s, use the new shovel to clear it off.
• Replace the fluorescent light bulb in the kitchen.  Possibly also look into replacing some of the dead fluorescent bulbs in the cellar too.

Ancillary to all of this, I still haven’t heard back from the plumber.  I’m assuming I won’t be able to get anyone over to look at the kitchen sink until next week, but I’ll keep trying.

Tonight the kids are going out to play Magic with their dad.  Jen is going to an after-work function that should take all night.  I am on my own.  What should I do?  I’ll tell you.  I am going to go to a cinema, buy a huge-ass bucket of popcorn, and see Star Wars again.  The popcorn is noteworthy because first thing tomorrow morning, before all of the to-do list fun starts… I’m going back to Weight Watchers.  I’m doing it even if it kills me.  I also need to fix whatever is up with my legs.  I need to exercise them.  I need to walk.  I need to go to the gym and use the treadmill to build up a little strength and stamina.  I need to.

Tonight: Star Wars and popcorn, and maybe even a large regular Coca~Cola, just out of spite.

Tomorrow: Weight Watchers and Planet Fitness.

Tomorrow and Sunday: All of the stuff on the list above.

May the Force Be With Me and my fat ass.

Hello and welcome to the annual (?) Year in Flickr post!  One pic from each month in 2019!

January: 2019, the year the whole family embraced vinyl!

February: We went to see The Beatles (or something similar)

March: We explored some of the mills in Lowell.

April: (this one is just for guitar gear folks) I embraced the hype.

May: The month we went to Boston to just hang out, a bunch of times.

June: Enter the CPAP machine. (more on June later)

July: Disney. Tons of Disney.

August: I finally got back to the ocean in time for a sunrise. I need to do that again soon. Maybe this weekend? (more on August later)

September: I’d been trying to make it happen since the mid-80’s, but I finally saw Steve Hackett in concert.

October: The Border Cafe in Cambridge, before the fire. I hope it’s not gone for good. Fingers crossed.

November: Lizardfish played their only gig in the calendar year. We were okay.. I wasn’t.

December: Lots of wonderful family time. I love my family.

July Bonus Pic: Someone graduated first in her class!

August Bonus Pic: The view from someone’s college campus. We have a college student in the family!

And there you have it. One pic from each month and a couple of extra for luck. We’ll do this again next year, probably.

Dig this lame faux artsy garbage pic from this morning.

Two thoughts: Did thinking about the photo-a-day thing distract me enough to lead to the chocolate pudding fiasco (see the previous post) this morning?

Also: All of these photo-a-day pics are labeled x/365 where x is the day in question and 365 is the number of days in the challenge… except that 2020 is a friggin’ leap year so the 124 pics I’ve labeled so far should actually say x/366.

Doofus.

Why do I do this to myself?

It’s the new year.  It’s January.  It’s 2020.  It’s resolutions and new year new me and all that crap.  It’s time.  Specifically it’s time to start losing weight again.

Last night I had a kinda crappy night sleep and that night followed a couple of other crappy nights sleep.  I went to bed real early, like 9:30, before anyone else.  I woke up for a little while when Jen came to bed.  I woke up again a little after midnight.  My CPAP machine was kinda noisy and it was bugging me.  I was hearing some gurgling sounds coming from where the hose attaches to the mask.  I took the whole thing apart and cleaned everything in the hopes that that would fix it.  It did for a little while.  Around 3:00 AM Jen woke me up to tell me that the noise the mask was making was keeping her awake.  Well, that does it.

The recommendation for my machine is to replace the mask every three months.  The hose should be replaced every 3-6 months.  I had new parts shipped to me in October, I think, but I made the decision to hold off on replacements for as long as the parts would let me.  Last night was the night.  At 3:00 AM I was digging through my closet trying to find the box that the new parts shipped in.  Jen had fallen back to sleep so I was trying to open all the packaging without waking her up.  Eventually I had it all put together and it ran as quiet as it gets and I went back to sleep.

None of that is why I kinda hate myself today.  That comes next.

Today is my telecommute day so I didn’t have to get ready right away so I went out early to salt up the driveway so no one slips (world record for use of the word “so” in a sentece?).  Jen and Harry were scheduled to leave at about the same time.  Bellana is off today but she needed to get up early and move her car out of the way so the other two could get out.  Once Jen and Harry were gone Bellana went back to sleep and I was up for the day.  I was already feeling wiped out so I decided to sneak off to the grocery store to pick up a couple of six packs of soda.  Diet soda, because I never fell off that wagon in 2019 even though I fell off every other weight loss wagon.

So it’s 7:00 AM and Market Basket has just opened and I’m one of the handful of customers.  I grabbed some Diet Pepsi and I was trying to remember if I needed eggs or not.  Weight loss, hard boiled eggs for breakfast.  That’s a thing that works for me.  I got to the eggs and figured I didn’t need any.  I still had a few from last week’s batch and I was pretty sure we had another dozen that I could make up this weekend.  Nice.  Right next to the eggs was a small display of pudding.  Yeah, grab me a big tub of chocolate pudding.  I get home, popped on a Bojack Horseman and dig into that pudding and then I remembered what day it was.

Sonofabitch….

You know, dumb ass.  Chocolate pudding for friggin’ breakfast isn’t very conducive to losing weight.  Dumb ass.  Moron.  What an asshole.

Sometimes I kinda hate myself.  Happy effin’ New Year.

A few randoms from First Night Boston yesterday…

Rush is playing a gig on my outlet.

It’s New Years Day and I’m exhausted. We went to Larry and Nawal’s today for a basically game-free game night/day. A good time was had by all. Now Jen and Bellana and Harry are playing Super Mario Bro’s. U on our new Nintendo Switch. They are laughing so much they are incoherent.

I am 80% asleep and given the choice between going to work tomorrow and drinking Drain-o…. I’m thinking… I’m thinking…

Happy New Year.

It’s not even called the Hancock building anymore, is it?  Didn’t they change it to something generic?  I don’t know.

Anyway, I am going to repost a picture I took last night in order to explain why I took it.  Picture it: May 2006.  I was in Boston for… something.  I think I was doing what the Flickr folks call “photowalking” which is just wandering around taking pictures.  I was on Clarendon Street in the Back Bay and I took what is arguably the best picture I’ve ever taken:

Flickr doesn’t think it’s my best, but it got a couple of thousand views when I originally posted it in the pre-iOS app days.  That’s pretty cool.  I think it might be my best because it’s still the only picture I’ve taken that does not include the kids that people have suggested I print and hang on the wall.  I think two people suggested that.  Maybe one.  I don’t know how many, but I know it happened.

Last night I drove into the city straight from work.  Jen and the kids took an Uber to a Commuter Rail station and rode the rails in from there.  We were all in the Back Bay but we hadn’t met up yet.  I was there, the building was there, I had my new iPhone 11 Pro Max (which is still a LOT to type) and I took this picture simply as a goofy remembrance of that day in 2006 when me and my little Kodak point-and-shoot took a winner.

Suffice to say, it doesn’t work nearly as well at night.

There you go.  Now you know what I was thinking and why I posted this picture last night.  Now we can all move on with our 2020.

Happy New Year.

 

Addendum: It’s not called the Hancock Tower anymore, it’s just called 200 Clarendon Street.

So this is 2020, eh?

Where the hell is my flying car?