Category: Television

Car Music

I did some singing in the car today. Nice. I put vocals on four songs. Two of those songs still need some guitar parts but that’s all that’s left for 50/90 challenge tracking. I still have seven total songs that remain unmixed and I have until Tuesday to get to them all. Crazy, right?

Since coming home from car music at about 9:00am (three hours ago, approximately), Jen and I have been sacked out on the couch watching episodes of Parks and Rec and New Girl because it’s Sunday and we’re flipping a big eff-you to responsibility today.

Jen’s going to have lunch now and we’re going to watch one more episode of New Girl and then she’s going to do some work because we can’t be flipping the big eff-you to responsibility all day… I guess. I’ll finish the guitar tracking then. I should have lunch but I had a snack at around 11:00 and I am stuffed. I way over did it. My tiny little re-wired stomach pouch thing is a little cheesed off with me right now, but it will be okay. We’ll get through this, stomach pouch. We’ll get through it together.

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Random Lunchtime Thoughts

Just some random things going through my tiny little brain right now.

I don’t get hungry anymore. In this post-gastric bypass universe I go from feeling comfortably satisfied, skip right past normal hungry feelings, and catapult straight to oh my god I am so hungry it hurts why does my stomach hurt so much?

Normally that isn’t a big deal. I have something to eat and I feel better. Some days though, like the last couple of days, it gets a bit annoying. Some days I just can’t get out in front of the problem. I eat something, then an hour or so later I feel the hunger pains coming back. Normally I can go about three hours without any issues. Sometimes, like when I was visiting my father in the hospital and had other things on my mind, I could go twice that without my stomach perking up at all.

Today I finished breakfast at around 8:00am. I started feeling it at a little before 11:00am. I was drinking water at the time and had to pause for 15 minutes before I could eat again so I didn’t get any food into my empty stomach until 11:20. I had a quick snack. I was done at 11:26. The hunger pains were back in full force by 12:11pm. What the hell, bro? I went on lunch at 1:00pm so I made myself wait to eat anything more. I didn’t want to fill my new little stomach pouch before lunch and then throw off my schedule even more. I was able to sneak in a little water which helped a little but come on, stomach… you have to do better than 45 minutes, right?

Change of subject. Television shows that are currently being worked through.

  • Mindhunter on Netflix. I’m about 3/4 of the way through the first of two seasons. It’s creeping me out. Good stuff.
  • Only Murders in the Building on Hulu. I think I am an episode behind. The new season is good. I was nervous when I heard it was moving to Los Angeles, but so far it’s firmly grounded in New York where it belongs. It is also nice to have Paul Rudd back again.
  • Agatha All Along on Disney+. Episode three is out today, I think. I’ll watch it tonight. I’m enjoying it so far.
  • Rings of Power on Amazon Prime. The last couple of episodes feel like a small step back in terms of quality. Word on the street is the next two (the last two episodes of season two) are going to be spectacular. I’m all in.
  • Dark on Netflix. I liked the first season. I’m halfway through the second season and it is struggling to hold my attention.
  • The Orville on Hulu. Season three is a bit of a slog. The episodes are WAY too long and not good enough to justify the time commitment. It’s not bad, it’s just not that good.
  • Futurama on Hulu. Gold. Absolute gold.
  • Exploding Kittens on Netflix. It’s not bad, but I’m having a hard time staying invested in it.
  • Coming Soon: Penguin on Max. The first couple of episodes are out but I haven’t watched them yet. I’ll get to them soon.
  • Coming Soon: Daryl Dixon season two on AMC. The new season kicks off this coming Sunday. I’ll be there.

Dude… that’s a shit load of TV. I’m pretty sure I’ve forgotten a couple of shows too.

I have some linens that I took from my father’s apartment. The plan is to donate them somewhere. My sister suggested the MSPCA at Nevins Farm in Methuen. It’s right around the corner from my house. I wasn’t sure if that was something they’d take so I Googled it today. Sure enough, they take bedding. They don’t take pillows or knitted blankets though. If I have any of those I’ll have to bring them somewhere else.

I also took a combination turn table, AM/FM radio, CD player, cassette player from his apartment. I haven’t found a home for it yet. I am thinking that tomorrow I’ll plug it in next to my desk and listen to old Rush records on vinyl while I work. That sounds like a good plan to me.

Okay then. Here’s hoping the hunger pains are taken care of for a few hours at least. I’m crossing my fingers… and symbolically crossing my bypassed digestive system too… whatever that means.

Two Random Things

Here we have a post sharing two random things on this quiet Sunday evening that have nothing to do with anything anyone other than I would ever care about.

First, I watched an episode of The Trogly’s Guitar Show on YouTube today and accidentally learned something about my first Gibson guitar. It was a Les Paul Deluxe but I never learned what year it was made. Deluxes date from the late 60’s to the mid 80’s (I think). I bought mine in 1987 and always assumed it was from the late 70’s, but I had not learned how to get the manufacture date for a Gibson guitar until after my Deluxe was stolen in 1990.

Thanks to Trogly’s I can narrow the date down a little. The guitar had a Gibson chainsaw case. From a description on the episode I watched it was a version two chainsaw case. Trogly told us that Gibson introduced the version two chainsaw case in 1978. Therefore my guitar (assuming the case I had was the original case) could not have been built prior to 1978. That knocks about 10 years off of the possible dates. Thanks, Trogly!

The second item of note: The anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is coming this week. That means Jen and I are in now entering our annual 9/11 remembrance period where we binge a shit load of documentaries. We’re watching the first of the season right now. Things have already been super heavy around here due to my father’s passing. Now it’s going to get heavier still.

I just felt the need to share all of that with the wider universe. You’re welcome.

Movies vs Books

Why am I in such a Tolkien phase right now? It’s probably due to the second season of Rings of Power, but I read The Silmarillion and I am rereading Lord of the Rings and I am watching Rings of Power and I am (finally) watching the Peter Jackson Hobbit movies. I’m about 15 minutes away from finishing the second movie. It is requiring more suspending of disbelief than I am really willing to give. I’m in a weirdly completist mode now and have to get through all three movies (even though it is laughable that Jackson took a 400 page book and adapted it into a nine hour movie).

What’s the point of this post though? The point of this post is a spoiler free comment on Rings of Power season two episode four. I saw the first two Lord of the Rings movies before I read the books. When I was done with everything I was able to look back and consider if the books were better or worse than the movies. I think they are pretty even. There are a couple of things about the movies that I prefer to the books though. First, there is a whole lot less singing in the movies. In Fellowship, especially, people are singing all over the place and it just gets tedious.

The other thing that I like better about the movies eventually became my absolute favorite thing about the movies. Literally the thing I like best. Simply, they left Tom Bombadil out. I mean… The Hobbit was a kids book. Lord of the Rings was not. Somehow it seems that Tolkien must have tried to make Fellowship a little more kid-friendly by throwing this insufferably boring, painful character named Tom Bombadil into the story. In my current re-read of the books I am in the middle of the Tom Bombadil arc right now and I cannot get out of it fast enough. It’s just awful. Jackson left him out of the movies and it makes me love the movies that much more.

I just finished this week’s new episode of Rings of Power. Season two, episode four. Without giving out any spoilers, mostly because the news has been out since we saw a trailer months ago, Tom Bombadil is in the episode.

Why? Why, Amazon Prime Video? Why are you torturing me like this? I will say that he’s nowhere near as awful in the episode as he was in the books, but all the same… why would you do this to me?

Friday Ramblings

Is ramblings the right word? Should I have called this masterpiece of literary genius “Friday Mumblings” instead? We may never know.

Has anyone else found that they have become chemically depended on GPS apps while driving anywhere? We have a meeting scheduled for 4:00 today at the funeral home to start going over the arrangements. I know where this place is. I grew up less than a mile from it (Google maps tells me it is 0.8 miles from the house I grew up in) and I could probably find it with my eyes closed in the middle of a blizzard. Why then did I just email the address to myself so that I can plug it into a GPS app on my phone when I head over there in about 80 minutes? Why can’t I just… ya know… go? Why do I need a bunch of satellites in orbit of the Earth to tell me when the next turn is coming up? What did I do to my brain?

A year and a half ago, when my mother passed away, we had a similar meeting with the funeral director booked and we all went into it without the faintest clue of what we were in store for. Now? Today? We know exactly what’s coming and somehow that makes this whole experience more depressing. It’s a little less stressful and a lot less intimidating, but it is so much more depressing. Of all the things to be pro’s at… yeah, this shouldn’t be one of them.

Complete and total change of subject… When the forth and final season of The Umbrella Academy came out a couple of weeks ago I jumped right into it. It was only six episodes (the previous three seasons were all 10 each) and as I was watching the fifth episode I declared to myself (and no one else because why would anyone else care) that when I finished the finale I was going to immediately go back and watch the whole series from start to finish.

I did exactly that, and I finished it yesterday. Just in time for new seasons of Rings of Power and Only Murders in the Building to launch. I watched the first episode of each show (there are two more Rings of Power episodes available and I’ll get to them shortly). While I was waiting for Rings of Power to come back I started reading The Silmarillion and woah babie, is that puppy a slog. I’m on chapter 19 and so far the entire book has been 100% exposition. It’s like a textbook only less interesting. I know at some point it’s going to tie into the Lord of the Rings at least a little bit, but good heavens is it tough to get through. Maybe had Tolkien lived to finish it himself it might have been more readable… then again, maybe not. Yikes.

I’ll tell you what though, Rings of Power is making me want to grab the third Lord of the Rings book and read the appendixes. I’m sure I’ve made it through them at least once before, but maybe I should pay closer attention. It’s tough to read through a couple of hundred (or however long the appendix is) pages of a book that come after the book ended, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

What else should I write about before my lunch break ends and I get back to work for an hour before leaving early to go to the funeral home? I don’t know. Retail therapy… that might be a thing. All of the sadness and stress of the last few weeks. It’s possible that some new camera gear, or a new guitar, or a trip to Manhattan or the mountains might be the only things that can straighten me out. Just a thought, you know? The punchline to this joke is that I am not joking. I’m being serious. Oh well… it will be okay. We’ll get through this together. My father would not have wanted any of us to be all sad. He’d want us to focus on the good rather than stress over the bad. Although having said that, he was an Olympic level, world class worrier himself so… yeah. I love you, dad.

Random Thoughts

The last few days have put me into a prolonged, slow burning state of freak out. Fun.

My friend’s father passed away on Monday. My father went into the hospital on Tuesday. No details on either situation will be forthcoming. We just got clobbered by a thunderstorm which, it turns out, was rough enough to knock out the power in the hospital. The backup generators kicked in a second later, but woah.

I am planning to go to the hospital after work tonight. I need to make dinner first but then I’ll go for a quick visit before visiting hours end. Tomorrow morning is the funeral. I’ll go to the hospital afterwards. How’s that for a tough day? The last few days have been bad, but tomorrow… woah.

On less important (re: not important at all) topics, I have one more episode of The Umbrella Academy’s final season to watch. I strongly suspect that once I finish that final episode I will immediately start a rewatch of the entire series from season one episode one. I think that is going to happen.

Earlier today I was looking at Threads (the twitter alternative social network made by the same assholes who make instagram and bookfayce which begs the question why the fuck am I giving this new social network site the time of day) and I posted that musically speaking, today is a Porcupine Tree kinda day (from a mental health standpoint, of course… meaning heavy and complicated and confusing if you’re not paying close attention). TWELVE MINUTES LATER I got a notification that the Porcupine Tree instagram account had been ported to Threads. They haven’t posted anything yet but I guess I should say you’re welcome?

I don’t know what the dad situation is going to be like this weekend but I do know that Bellana, my step daughter, is coming over for a visit. All the bad, scary stuff going on feels a little more bearable when the kids come by. I am really looking forward to seeing how she did at her conference this week. I want all the sciency details.

Speaking of science, from a nutritional standpoint I screwed up yesterday. I spent the whole day at the hospital with Dad and when I left the house I forgot to take my pill case with me. I took my breakfast vitamin pills before I left, and took my lunch vitamin pills when I got home for dinner. I was going to take my dinner vitamin pills before I went to sleep, but I fell asleep earlier than expected and missed that dose. Dummy. Note to self: bring the friggin’ pill case tomorrow. Dumb ass.

What else? Word from the hospital this afternoon is that Dad is starting to show early signs of coming out of whatever was wrong. My fingers and toes and eyes are all firmly crossed. Again, I am not sharing details beyond a small hint of optimism. Enjoy it while you can.

Okay, Robert. Stop stressing and get back to work. You have stuff to do. Do it.

HotD – No Spoilers

I just finished watching the season two finale of House of the Dragon. No spoilers here, but it was nothing like what I expected it to be.

I will say this though… as cliffhangers go… it sure was one. Cliffhangers on top of cliffhangers on top of cliffhangers. The worst part is we’re probably going to have to wait another two years before we get any resolution. Here’s hoping the break between seasons two and three is shorter by far than the break between seasons one and two.

Sleepy Sunday

I didn’t sleep very well last night and then I got up pretty early (though not as early as I had planned) this morning. I did a bunch of stuff, including lots of chores around the house. There was a little time earlier this afternoon where I actually conked out on the couch. It was only a few minutes, but it happened.

That leads to the sleepiness question… am I going to be able to stay up long enough to watch the season two finale of House of the Dragon on HBO? It comes out at 9:00 on the Max app. I have clean sheets on the bed (one of today’s chores) and sitting up in bed while watching HotD is going to be a challenge.

I thought I might take an actual nap after dinner tonight but Jen and I discovered that the first chunk of the new season of Cobra Kai is out on Netflix so we can’t do anything until we watch that, right?

Right?

TV… we live in the golden age, my friends.

Futurama was Wrong

I was just playing a game of Space Invaders on an Atari 2600 emulator I found online. I had a pretty good game.

Then I thought of that one episode of Futurama where the aliens from planet Omicron Persei 8 invade and Fry defends the Earth armed with his bottle of Shasta and his all Rush mix tape.

So I put on the Moving Pictures album to see if listening to Rush would improve my game. While it did improve my mood and my general sense of mental well being (that album RULES), it did not improve my game. Not even a little bit.

I guess the bottle of Shasta is the missing link. Either that or Futurama was wrong, and we all now Futurama is never wrong.

Good(?) Morning

I woke up in a mood today. I don’t know what is bothering me. I feel a sense of doom and gloom. Am I suddenly psychic (Robert pauses the narrative to let anyone reading along finish laughing hysterically) and something is on the horizon?

Nope. Just in another bitchy mood. I didn’t get enough sleep last night and it shows. I have a small project at work that is hanging over me like a dark cloud. It’s not a big deal, I just don’t have the energy to deal with it. Crud, right?

The traffic was crappy this morning, but it was the normal level of crappy, not some extra thick level of crappy or anything. I don’t know.

Hey, did you watch the season finale of The Acolyte last night? It was good. I liked it. I liked the whole season though I will quickly admit that the action heavy episodes were by far the best of the bunch. No spoilers, but that scene last night where you actually see the light saber do that thing that light sabers are supposed to be able to do? You know, the thing that we never saw Anakin or Dooku or Maul or Palpatine actually do even though we all saw the end result? Hint Hint Sithy Hint? Awesome.

That should be putting me in a good mood, right? Star Wars is like my own personal dopamine fix. Nope. I was all smiles watching it last night, but today? Grumpy gus. Or should I call myself Darth Grumpy Gus? Does that work better?

No guitar playing today. Maybe before work tomorrow. I did use a guitar for today’s photo a day picture. I think the next time I play I am going to use a different guitar. I haven’t played my Gibson SG in ages and it’s kind of calling to me. My wife thinks that guitar looks cool so that alone should be incentive to play it more often, don’t you think?

Okay. Cheer up, everyone. It’s hump day or some shit. For my personal work week, once I get through the day in the office today, I am working from home for the rest of the week. That should cheer me up, right? Ugh.

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