Category: Television

Catching Up After a Couple of Off Days

The last couple of days have been weird, health-wise. First it was the headache issue on Tuesday, then it was stomach issues on Wednesday. Now here we are on Thursday and I am feeling a little like a wrung out face cloth. Here’s hoping today will be a quiet day.

We’re having some HVAC folks come and tell us what they need to do to replace the mini-split in the bedroom. We’ve had it serviced a couple of times this winter, but it’s just not working and we’re more or less unable to heat the bedroom without using a space heater as a supplement. They won’t actually replace it for another week or two, but they are coming for a fact finding mission.

So, television. Yesterday was the premier or season three of The Mandalorian and I could not be at a higher hype level. The first episode was excellent but… I think today’s third episode of season three of Picard might have been better. I did not see that coming, kids. I was just glued to the screen as I was getting this morning’s jogging (yogging) in. The captain vs admiral conflict seemed a little forced and out of character, but everything else? Fan-freakin-tastic. The bad guys behind the bad guy? Fan-freakin-tastic! I can’t wait for episode four. I also can’t wait for episode two of The Mandalorian, but that’s a given. In the Star Wars vs Star Trek debate, I come down on the Star Wars side, generally, but only by a little bit. Regardless of which franchise you prefer, it’s a pretty good time to be a space opera fan, am I right?

For the first time in a year, I am suffering from guitar gear acquisition syndrome. There are two overdrive pedals that I really want to buy, and I also really want to buy an amplifier simulator that I can use as a plug in through GarageBand. Last year I finished the RPM Challenge with a plan to do their Record Every Month challenge throughout the rest of the year. I had a goal of two songs each month that I could pretend were a single. I failed completely. I didn’t write a single song over the 11 months between the 2022 RPM and the 2023 RPM (with the exception of a few failed attempts in November). I am going to try again, but I am probably not going to record guitars through my amplifier on a regular basis. I am thinking I can do direct input more often and I want a good amp sim that I can use consistently. The one I am looking at is only $40, but I just don’t want to spend any money. We have a mini-split to buy after all.

Speaking of gear acquisition syndrome, I also really want to buy a new lens for my new camera. I adore the 40mm lens we bought for Disney, but I’d like a little zoom option. Possibly because the cats are suffering from The Zoomies every night and it just sort of inspired me, you know? I also really really want to buy a 35mm film point and shoot and I don’t know why. I want to buy a 35mm film camera with autofocus functionality too, but that’s going to cost some dough, and I think I can get a point and shoot for pennies. I want to go Nikon, as usual, but decent Nikon point and shoots are stupidly expensive on ebay. I looked for Pentax options yesterday and saw some with the starting bid of $1.00… so yeah, that could be a better option. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll hit the thrift stores more often.

Okay, time to get breakfast and get my day started. I have a lot of meetings today and need to be ready for a long day at the home office. Wish me luck.

NHL Trade Deadline

I was 100% sure that today was the NHL trade deadline. I was going to write a post about today being christmas-esque with both the trade deadline and the premier of season three of The Mandalorian.

Nope, the trade deadline is Friday March 3, 2023.

How could I be so wrong? How could I have been so sure I was right and still be wrong?

I am a failure as a hockey fan.

A Hiccup in the Plans

Hello and welcome to March 1st, everyone. The RPM Challenge is over. Well… technically working on March 1st is allowed, but I don’t.

Last time I posted here I said I had two songs to mix and then I’d be done with everything that I wanted to have done. I managed to mix one of them and then, around 7:30 last night, it went bad. I had one of those episodes where my vision went blurry and I started getting a headache. I went to bed, turned off all of the lights, buried my head under the blankets, and called it a day. I had just finished dinner when it started, but I was still seven grams of protein away from my daily goal. I missed it for the day, but not by much. I’m not that worried about it.

I slept from 7:45 to 3:30. I woke up, put my watch on the charger (it was at 33%), filled up the tank on my CPAP machine, stepped on the scale for the Wednesday weigh in (more on that later), and went back to sleep until about 5:20. Then I got up, got dressed, filled up my water bottle, updated my food tracking spreadsheet and my weight tracking spreadsheet, jogged in place for 40 minutes or so (pronounced yogged, with a soft “j”), watched the new episodes of The Mandalorian and The Bad Batch, packed up my laptop, and started my day.

Wednesdays are in the office days now so I have to get a move on so I can get out onto the road about 50 minutes from now. I have to prep a lunch and a breakfast, refill the water bottle, shower, get dressed, clean off the car, bring in the trash barrel (assuming the city picked up the trash during the snow yesterday, not sure if they did or not), and get going.

My headache is still there, a little bit, but it’s better after hydrating myself some. My eye sight is normal again too. I just have to watch out for crap like that. It’s not fun at all.

Okay, let’s get a move on.

Vocals are Done

Last night before bed I added quick and dirty lyrics to two of the four outstanding songs. This morning, after exercising, I went out for some car music. I recorded the vocals for those two songs and then improvised a vocal part for a third song.

That’s it. I’m done with the vocals. I mentioned a few days ago that I was thinking of dropping songs before they are finished. That’s what I am doing with that last song. Song #3, if you must know. It’s just too crappy to continue. That’s going to leave me with 14 songs which, years ago, would have given me a complete FAWM. I don’t do FAWM anymore, but it’s still as good a goal as any, right?

The exercise this morning has a funny story to go along with it. Last month, thanks to walking for hours around Disney World, I doubled my 30 minute exercise goal nine times. This month, my Apple Watch activity app challenged me to do the same in February. On Friday I doubled it for the seventh time. That gave me four days to do it two more times. I had every intention of making yesterday the eighth but I failed miserably. This morning I decided to get it done right away and not leave anything up to chance. I ran for a full 60 minutes. I set a bunch of personal work out records on the various Watch apps. I need to do it one more time over the next two days. I mean… I feel pretty lame getting worked up about stuff this stupid but… there you have it.

Episode seven of The Last of Us airs tonight. Three more to go. The serious is stellar. Absolutely fantastic. The Mandalorian season three kicks off on Wednesday. I started watching Star Trek Deep Space 9 from the beginning the other day. As I am typing this I am eating breakfast and watching the first episode of The X-Files. I guess you could call it binge watching season now.

Back to music, but this time guitar gear, I have spent the last couple of years trying to find a suitable replacement for an overdrive pedal that I removed from my board because the designer/owner of the company that makes it is a racist piece of trash and I can’t in good conscience use his products anymore. I have two pedals that are damn close and I think I found another one that I want to try out. It’s a very small pedal builder somewhere in Canada called KO Amps. How much is 140 Canadian dollars in US dollars?

Okay. Let’s finish breakfast, let’s finish this episode of The X-Files, and then get some serious work down on the ol’ RPM Challenge. Three songs complete, between seven and 11 left to go.

179/365
179/365

Random Thoughts

How do you tell if your two cats are playing with each other, or actively tying to kill each other? One second they appear to be trying their hardest to tear each other’s throats out with their teeth, and the next second they are curled up together, grooming each other. I don’t get it. All I know for sure is that the kitten likes to stir up shit any chance she gets, and every now and then the bigger cat will turn the tables and ambush the kitten in ways that nearly make her shit herself. It’s scary and entertaining at the same time.

Harry’s coming home tonight. Just for one night. He’s having computer troubles and Jen is going to troubleshoot with him. That’s all. It’s going to be great to have him here though, even if it is a super short visit.

The weather sucks. It’s going to be super cold tomorrow, and we have another snow storm on the horizon. Hopefully I’ll be through with the car music by then. Hopefully the weather will start to improve once February ends, but we all know that Spring doesn’t come to New England anymore until mid-May at best. I want Summer. I want to move to San Diego where it’s summer all the time.

The Red Sox are playing their first Spring Training game right now. The annual beat-the-hell-out-of-a-college-team kick off to the grapefruit league season. They have a 5-3 lead over Northeastern University in the middle of the sixth inning. I am looking forward to the Red Sox season, even though it is clear we have another last place finish in our future. The fun part about Spring Training is the clean slate. Sure, our roster is a nightmare, but until you start losing games that matter, the possibilities are still very much endless. Speaking of San Diego, now that Xander Bogarts is a Padre, maybe it’s time to become a fan for real. I mean it is one of only three non-Boston stadiums I’ve ever been to. There’s personal history there. Maybe.

So television. I am currently trying to keep up with the following shows: The Last of Us, Star Wars The Bad Batch, Star Trek Picard, Poker Face, The Flash, Extraordinary, and You (season three, I am a full season behind). I may also get back into Star Trek Discovery but I’m a full season behind there too. The Mandalorian is coming back next week so we’ll add that to the mix as well. Yellowjackets season two is on the horizon too. On top of those shows, I have a weird compulsion to start binge re-watching The X-Files and Star Trek Deep Space Nine as well. Why am I torturing myself like this?

I haven’t shot any film since Disney World. I blame the weather. I still have a bunch of rolls saved up. I had way more than I needed for Disney so there’s still a nice supply available. I want to get some more black and white film to play with too, and once the weather starts clearing I am going to go WAY off the deep end, with both film and digital. I just need to find a way to convince people to go with me. Like a photography club or something, but just with people I actually know rather than random folks in some online club.

I want to go wander around Boston. I want to go wander around New York. I want to go wander around the mountains in New Hampshire and Vermont. I want to go wandering around the coast of Maine. I want to go wander around the coast of Massachusetts. I want to go back to Washington. I want to go back to San Diego and Los Angeles. I want to go to San Francisco for the first time. I want to go to Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington for the first time too. I just want to go places. Covid screwed us out of three years of exploring. I want to make up for lost time.

Okay. Back to work, Robert. Only 2.5 hours to go until the weekend when you’ll see Harry and do a mountain of work on music and spend quality time with the love of your life. Get on with it!

I Overslept

Today is Sunday and I did what many of us do on random Sundays… I overslept. My alarm was set for 5:30am. I got out of bed a couple of minutes before 7:00am. I also had a minor hangup that kept me from getting the day started for about 20 minutes and both of those things together mean it’s way too late for me to tackle car music today.

My exercise is done for the day. Yesterday I bumped my four mile morning jog (pronounced “yog” with a soft j) to five miles. Mostly because there were many days over the last month or so where I was not reaching my move/calorie goal without doing extra exercise, so for now I am just going to build that into the morning routine. I am eating breakfast right now and when I am done I will take a Covid test. I have been symptom free since my two exposures on Monday and Tuesday so I am confident in another negative test, but I am still going to test for another couple of days. Just to be sure. I have to go into the office on Wednesday and I don’t want to risk passing anything on to anyone.

What does the no-car-music-today change mean for the music project? I still have five songs that need lyrics, so I can take care of some of those. I think I might also try to add another song or two. Yeah, it’s overkill but I am seeing guitar leads on the horizon and my playing is so incredibly rusty that I could really use an excuse to just play/practice a little. That would be a good thing.

I did something silly yesterday. I started watching the directors cut of Star Trek the Motion Picture. Shatner’s Star Trek V is often considered the worst of all of the Star Trek movies, and while that may be generally valid, that first movie is pretty awful. I’m only halfway through the director’s cut but I haven’t seen anything obviously different. The endless exterior establishing shots are still endless. Endlessly endless. The acting is often less than stellar in Star Trek movies with the original series cast, but this one… this one is bad. Overall though, the movie isn’t quite as awful as I remembered. Maybe #5 really is the worst of the bunch.

Okay, let’s get the ball moving. I need to get myself something for breakfast that is more substantial than the protein bar I just finished. I’ll probably post a film pic too before I really get the day rolling. For now, talk to you all later. Good Day.

Another Day, Another Negative Test

That’s three days post-Covid exposure with a negative test. Let’s keep up the good work, shall we?

I ate a lot last night. I was kinda shocked at how I couldn’t stop myself. Today I had what is becoming a normal breakfast, a chicken patty and a supplemental protein bar, but I already had 50% of my liquid goal for the day before 8:00am. Is that bad? I don’t know. I hope to spread the second half of the goal out more as the day rolls on.

Music… there was no car music this morning. I have lyrics written for one song. I need at least three before driving to the movie theater parking lot is worth the effort. I hope to get to at least half of the 10 songs today so that I have a lot to do tomorrow. I want to have them all written and recorded by Tuesday. That will give me a week for leads and mixing.

As stated yesterday, the goal for today is to clean the hell out of the kitchen. Also, we put out some little catnip filled toys for the cats. I need to find them all and remove them from play. The two cats do not handle their drugs well. They get super aggressive toward each other when they are high on the ‘nip. That must be curtailed.

That’s the plan, kids. I believe today’s goals are achievable. Let’s see how it goes. Also, let’s try to watch Wakanda Forever, shall we? Yeah, happy Saturday.

Projects for the Weekend

Given that Jen and I have both had a couple of possible covid exposures over the last few days, I doubt we’re going to be going out on the town at all. What should I do to keep my locked down self occupied?

Music. The plan is to redo the four songs worth of guitar parts that were recorded with an amplifier simulator the other day. Yeah, I am a tube amp snob. I want to do that after dinner tonight. I want to use the same rig I used last night, but swap the Blooze Maker pedal with the Rat clone I got for the one heavy-ish song. Then I want to start writing lyrics so that I can have something do sing tomorrow morning when Car Music (2023 edition) kicks off. I probably won’t be able to finish 10 songs over two car music sessions this weekend, but I will do my best. That means I have to write a lot of lyrics in a short amount of time. I can do it. They are all going to suck, but I can get them done. Something is better than nothing, right?

Clean. The house is a mess after being neglected for a few weeks. I started cleaning a little yesterday. The big goal is the kitchen. It’s not good right now. I want to make it presentable again.

Television? I finished The Book of Boba Fett before work this morning so I can get back to Poker Face and Extraordinary (which I have been watching with Jen) and rewatching The Last of Us over and over again.

What else? I haven’t watched a hockey game in ages. The Bruins play on Saturday at 5:00pm. Does UMass Lowell play this weekend? I feel like I’ve been following along with both teams (not a lot with UMass Lowell, but some) but I haven’t been watching and I want to. The Bruins are having an absolutely legendary, epic season and I am missing it.

What else? You know what I need to not do this weekend? I need to not go on Facebook. Ever since my mother went back into the hospital I have been visiting Facebook a couple of times a day again. Mostly because I was sitting in the hospital just waiting for something to happen and I would go there to distract myself for a while. I’ve been spending a lot of time on Nikon Mirrorless groups, and a couple of bariatric surgery groups, and guitar gear groups… and I feel like a junky who fell off the wagon. I need to stop using Facebook again. Enough already.

What else? I don’t know. Spend time with the love of my life. Pet the two new kitties. Maybe watch Wakanda Forever as I haven’t seen it yet and as of today there are now two Marvel flicks I haven’t seen (Ant Man 3 is out today). That needs to stop. Maybe start rewatching Andor? I don’t know. Maybe just veg in front of youtube some more. I don’t know. Also, how about we cut down on the between meal snacking a little?

Okay. That’s a lot to think about. I am five hours and six minutes away from the start of the weekend. I’ll figure it all out as I go.

Rewatch Sleep

I watched season one episode five of The Book of Boba Fett tonight. You know which episode that is? Damn right, it’s The Mandalorian season 2.5 baby. Episode five catches up with Mando, episode six catches up with Grogu, and then episode seven brings them together to help Boba Fett wrap up his shit.

When I started watching tonight I was on episode four. I was getting to the credits when it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen the ridiculously bad scooter bike chase scene. Apparently I fell asleep watching the end of episode three last night. After I finished the Mando episode I went back and watched the end of episode three. Was it a waste of time? Yes. Do I care? No, not really.

Did I mention I swapped a pedal off the pedal board tonight? I used the Keeley Super Phat Mod after the Klon KTR on the first six songs, but it rubbed me the wrong way on song number six so I removed it. I put my Bluesbreaker clone on in its place. It’s the Chicago Stompworks Blooze Maker. There’s a lot of talk about the kind folks at Marshall reissuing the original Bluesbreaker pedal. Is it real? Is it a hoax? Do I care? No, not really. I’m happy with the clone I already have, thanks.

Okay, time for bed. Maybe tomorrow I’ll re-record the four songs I recorded through the amp sim and use the Deluxe Reverb like I did tonight. I should probably write lyrics instead.

Mando: Finished-ish

The Mandalorian two-season re-watch to prep for the March 1st start of season three is complete. Yeah, that finale cameo still works for me. Maybe not as much as it did on first viewing, but it still really works.

I say the re-watched is finished-ish because I just watched episode one of The Book of Boba Fett. Boba is seven episodes. The first four are Boba Fett’s story. The next two are The Mandalorian season 2.5. The finale is sort of both.

I will finish with ages to spare before season three and then get back to The Bad Batch and Poker Face and re-watch The Last of Us over and over and over again.

Television: The Golden Age, babie.