Having lunch in the Park.

It’s not really a park, it’s a restaurant called The Park with trees and Christmas lights in the dining room.  It’s actually raining like crazy so we are riding it out here.

If you GPS directions from our house to mid-town Manhattan it will tell you it’s around 3.5 to 4 hours.  That drive tonight was more like 1468 hours.  But hey, our room has a balcony.

I started thinking about doing 50/90 this year.  Then I thought, why bother.  It’s never going to come to anything.  I’m never going to use any of it.  I’m just wasting my time, same as everything I do.  I should just give up on all of that shit.  It all just gets in the way.

Crap.  The Pittsburgh Penguins just won the Stanley Cup.  Again.

Damn it.

My step kids had a piano recital tonight.  They were both awesome.  I mean, awesome.

All of the kids who played tonight were fantastic.  The advanced kids were staggeringly good.  The novice kids were pretty much all better than they were at the Christmas concert in December.  Mostly…

There’s one exception.  I hate to mention it publicly, but it’s always a topic of discussion post-receital.  One student.  I can’t gauge the student’s age.  I thought mid teens, my wife thinks early 20’s.  Whatever.  This one student always does two songs and they are always brutal to listen to.  Clearly this student never practices because there is never any sign of improvement.  It’s always a moderately challenging piece played at way too slow a tempo, and every time the student needs to change hand positions, there is a pause.  Like, the student stops, looks down, changes position, and then starts playing again.  The result?  The 90 second piece of music takes 10 minutes.  It is brutal.  I give the kid all the credit in the world for trying, and there is clearly a TON of passion for music there.  Ya just gotta practice or you’ll never get better and you’re just wasting your time.  Practice, kid.  Practice!

Anyway, the boredom level increased exponentially as the stopping and starting and crawling tempo plodded on.  My attention drifted away and I found myself pushing buttons on my Apple Watch.  We were in the Nevins Library in Methuen and that is just the most gloriously wonderful building ever.  I used my Apple Watch to remotely open up my iPhone’s camera app and snap a ceiling pic.

Thank you, Apple Watch, for curing my boredom for about 4 seconds.

One unrelated thing…

I just watched the new episode of Fear the Walking Dead.  Not the best episode, but okay.  No spoilers.  I am now sitting at my desk in the living room with most of the lights off.  My wife isn’t feeling well so she went to bed early.  She’s asleep and I am not going to bother her.  The kids both went to bed about half an hour ago.

My iPad is propped up on my desk with headphones plugged in.  I am watching The Talking Dead (the talk show that recaps the evening’s Walking Dead (both original and Fear flavored)).  The show breaks for commercials often, and for seemingly endless stretches of time.  It’s probably the same number and length of breaks as every other show on television, but it just seems endless.  I refuse to submit myself to the endless advertisements (I’ve used the word endless three… four times in this paragraph.  I’m shootin’ for a world record.  Call guiness!) so I pop the ear pods out during the breaks.  Why is that important?  Because there is a cricket just outside the front door that is SO AMAZINGLY LOUD.  That’s all.  I’m posting this now before it gets endless. (FIVE!!!!)

The bird feeders are full, there’s some Peter Green on the Bose Bluetooth Speaker, I’ve got a book, the kids were just out here with me.  The sun is shining and the air is warm.  The only thing missing is my beautiful bride.  She’s inside having a nap.

As random Summer Sundays go, this one ain’t so bad.

Addendum: One thing I forgot to mention.  Jen bought a wifi signal boosting device of some sort and put it in our bedroom.  Our bedroom is the closest spot in the house to the patio.  Prior to this we did not get any wifi signal outside.  Today?  I originally sent this post, streamed music, and read my book, on my iPad… my non-cell service, wifi only iPad.  Our patio is online, brothers and sisters.  We be connected!

It is wicked nice out here.

Grass.  Lots of it.

Slightly less grass.

The third picture should be a selfie demonstrating the massive amount of back pain I’m feeling at the moment.

I listened to the Comey hearing today.  Well, I was in a meeting until about 10:30 so I missed a chunk, and I was actually working so I wasn’t paying full attention, so I missed a lot more.  Still, here’s what I learned:

All the good stuff happened in the closed door meeting that followed.

How many times did he say something like, I can’t answer that question in this setting.  Man, to have been a fly on the wall of the closed door session.  I hope he destroyed the fascist during that talk.