Category: Television

Tomorrow

What do I want to do tomorrow? Besides the 0.75% of a band practice. I don’t know.

Visit my mother? I could use a little of that. I saw dad today but it’s been a week since I’ve seen mom.

Work on the 50 songs in 90 days thing? Maybe. Probably not.

Get up at sunrise and mess around with cameras again? That would be fun, but where would I go? I’ve hit my favorite spots in town. Maybe downtown Lowell? Maybe the river walk in Lowell? Maybe the Shawsheen river in Tewksbury? I know a couple of good spots, but if the Shawsheen there is as dry as the Spicket here it might not be worth it. Boston? Too far away.

Stay in bed constantly refreshing eBay all day? I’m still the highest bidder but there are 22.5 hours remaining.

Pet the kitty all day?

Finish Umbrella Academy and start Stranger Things or Orville or Westworld or….

I don’t know. In the immortal words of Traffic, from their second record, Who Knows What Tomorrow May Bring?

Cellar Window

The plant in the cellar window is definitely growing a new leaf. I watered all of the plants down here this morning and water leaked out of the bottom of every pot. Insert frustrated grumbles here.

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I think there might be new leaves on the other two cellar plants too, but there is also a lot more signs of distress. This pic shows one leaf turning brown at the tip. The other two are showing a lot of that, and it’s all much worse. I am hoping I won’t need to redesign the window arrangement to fit the other two plants.

I don’t want to move my desk swag. I just brought the Devil Dawg here from my parents house where it sat forgotten on a shelf…

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Also, Mabel Pines may be the greatest character in television history. I can’t displace her.

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What to do, what to do.

Strange New Worlds

I just watched the season finale of Star Trek Strange New Worlds. I can’t overstate how good this show has been. It blows Discovery and Picard and Enterprise and Voyager and chunks of Deep Space Nine and portions of Next Generation out of the water. Even the best of the spin off shows (Next Generation and Deep Space Nine) were really slow in their first seasons. They took into seasons three and four to really find themselves. Strange New Worlds is already there after only 10 episodes.

The season isn’t perfect. There are a couple of episodes that don’t really hold up against the others, but over all? It’s the best Star Trek we have had in decades. I can’t recommend it enough. And the finale? It was spectacular. It was perfect.

I read somewhere that filming for season two just wrapped. I’m really looking forward to it. I can’t wait.

Star Wars Thought

We are watching the entire Obi-Wan Kenobi series in one shot today. Think of it as a 4.5 hour movie titled Star Wars Episode 3.5.

It begs the question, what is the best light saber fight?

My usual answer is Darth Mail/Qui Gon/Obi-Wan fight in episode one. The Anakin/Obi-Wan fight in episode three is my other answer. I’ve always felt it was one of those two.

The Kylo/Rey/Snope’s guards fight in episode eight is in the ballpark too. I’ve also always had a soft spot for Luke/Vader in episode six. Those are great, but for my money it’s generally been the big two.

Now that we have the Kenobi series…. No spoilers, but it’s safe to say the big two is now the big three.

Go watch the series. It’s friggin’ amazing.

Sort of Back to Normal

It’s amazing how going into the office used to be the norm, and now going in one day just murderlizes my entire routine.

Wednesday night I packed up everything I needed for the day in the office (except my headphones, damn it) and put out my clothes for the next day and all that fun stuff. On Thursday I got up super early and did my 30 minutes of exercise, made my lunch, did the rest of my morning stuff and left (without my headphones).

That doesn’t seem like a lot, but it really is. It’s like throwing a giant monkey wrench into the whole day.

Fortunately I am back in my home office today. I’d like to say I feel like everything is back to normal, for the most part it is, but I slept really late today. Not late enough that I didn’t have time for my morning exercise and all of that, but I did start work before I made breakfast (scrambled eggs, yum). I generally prefer not to do that.

Today is going to be a little weird here at the home* too. I went in to work yesterday, and Jen is going in today. Actually… not to the office? Not sure of the details, but she’s going to see people today. After work we’re planning on doing some grocery shopping. This is going to sound selfish of me, but I really enjoy that Jen and I have been doing that together. It’s silly, but I like it.

Best of all, on the Friday front, Harry will be coming over after work and he’ll be here for the whole next week. Excellent. We are still a few weeks away from Bellana coming home from Europe, but it’s one step closer to having the whole family together.

On unrelated notes, I am listening to the new Porcupine Tree album, which was finally released today, and I’m giving it five stars and two thumbs up and all of the accolades. It’s a great record. CLOSURE/CONTINUATION (yes, the album title is in all caps), check it out. I am planning to visit my mother a couple of times over the weekend. I’m not sure if I will get over to see my father too, but we’ll see. We talked about watching the Obi-Wan Kenobi series in its entirety in one sitting this weekend. I think maybe after Harry comes home from work on Sunday? I came up with a goofy project for the film camera. I’m thinking of trying to take the same picture with Dad’s camera and my camera and comparing the results. I’d like to use exactly the same settings, but my camera can be a little bit of a bitch to setup manually, and Dad’s seems to have a different labeling system for the aperture settings? I’ll have to consult the manual on that.

Okay, ladies and germs. Time to get to work. Those customers aren’t going to support themselves!

*Here at the Home is the title of the first album by one of the great Boston bands from the late 80’s/early 90’s, Tribe. When I went to my parents house the other day it was to pick up all of my old records that I hadn’t brought to the house already. There were a whole bunch of Tribe records in the pile.

Trying Not to Scream

Today has been a day like a kick in the balls is a warm summer breeze. I’m trying not to scream over here.

Work was nuts. I’m having issues with an insurance company. My mother has had an eventful day at her current place. Jen had a whatwhatwhat moment that I won’t discuss. Even Harry had something at work that was groan-worthy.

It’s been one of those days all around.

It’s been one of those days and I am okay with it. I’m fine and dandy.

Why?

Because episode six, the series finale(?), of Obi-Wan Kenobi is out and Harry has come over to watch it with us. Once my work day is over, in about 11 minutes or so, we’re going to take it for a spin.

Insert the ominous sound of Darth Vader breathing here.

Monday Monday

It’s Monday and I’m back on trackish.

I slept a little late this morning and got a slow start. I got a little juice into my system along with my morning vitamins. I went through the morning routine and did a little laundry. I had everything wrapped up by 8:15 so I started my walking in place thing. I got all 30 minutes in and was feeling pretty good. I tried to help Jen find a charger for her MacBook Pro, and then I punched into work. I went through a good chunk of the weekend email and then grabbed half of a protein shake. I have a meeting at 10:00. I don’t know if I am going to be able to get any food in before then, but at least I’ll have some protein and some more liquid. I wonder if today might see a protein shake in place of breakfast. We’ll see.

Things I want to do today include going grocery shopping after work, maybe spending the first few minutes of my lunch break on the exercise bike. I have been wanting to up the exercise, and the bike is the way to do it. Is today the day I make it happen? Could be.

I wanted to play guitar this weekend and I failed. I spent a lot of time with my parents, and the rest of the time I spent hanging out with my wife. Time well spent. We finished The Offer, which surprised us both which how much we enjoyed it. Then we binged all 10 episodes of How I Met Your Father. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t great. I think I had exactly one laugh out loud moment through the whole 10 episodes, but I did like it. When season two happens I’ll watch it if Jen wants to watch it. I also finally started season three of The Boys. There are five episodes out right now and I am half way through episode three. Butcher as a Sup? Nooooo.

Okay. Time to get some working in. Have a good Monday. In the immortal words of U2, don’t let the bastards get you down! Huzzah!

Good Morning

Friday morning, almost time for work.

I need to go to the weight loss clinic at lunch to get them to send a document to my insurance company. I am wondering if I will have a spare few seconds to step on one of their scales. We will have to see.

I am hoping that after work I will be able to see my mother. I haven’t been to the new location yet. I feel absolutely terrible about that. On Wednesday she wasn’t in her room. On Thursday I was praying to the porcelain god. Today is the day, damn it.

I closed my exercise ring for today with a 30 minute marching in place while watching yesterday’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode. I am feeling really good about getting the full 30 minutes finished in one shot. I feel like I am starting to push myself more. My average heart rate is getting higher with each new day, and my legs are feeling more like jelly after I finish. I want to start spending some time on the exercise bike too, but I kinda want to keep my close-the-ring-in-one-shot streak going. We’ll see how it goes.

As for Star Trek, this episode had a very small retcon of one of the movies… the worst movie… I didn’t check to see if Shatner directed this one or not, but let’s see where they take it. It was pretty good today.