Today is going to be a fun day. It is my nephew’s third birthday party. My three nephews and one niece should all be there. I haven’t seen them since Father’s Day and I expect that they have all doubled in size since then.

I can’t wait to see everyone.

Sometimes my wife and I get into this goofy state where we spam each other’s facebook pages with goofiness. Last night, while eating a nice dinner at the 99 in Salem, we did exactly that.

She took a picture of me that nearly blinded me with the sun-strength iPhone 4 LED flash:

The caption she gave to the image? Dorky McDorkerson.

I then followed with this:

I captioned it, Mrs McDorkerson.

She then followed with this, which made me laugh out loud:

The reason for my LOL was her caption, Sad Dorky McDorkerson.

We then went on to spam the picture of her with comments relating to the Family Guy episode where Stewie kidnaps the cast of Star Trek the Next Generation.

As I was writing this I came up with another reason why I love my wife.

She said to me, “I wish the kitty would stop being a kitty.”

I asked, “What would you like the kitty to be?”

She answered, “A Hippogriff.”

She then told the kitty that it’s name is no longer Patches, it’s now Buckbeak.

I do so love my Harry Potter quoting wife.

Jenny, I love you like crazy. I LOVE YOU!!!!

So I still have two recording projects out there that are weighing on me. My RPM Challenge for 2010 and 2011 are still sitting in the cellar unfinished. Every time I get a free few hours I try and psyche myself up to work on one of them but I almost always find something else to do… like watch TV.

Today I did a little work. I thought that finishing the tracking of both projects was within the realm of possibility, but I underestimated how much was left to do, and then did only a tiny fraction of it. An important fraction, but not enough to say I’m almost done tracking.

2010 has 10 songs and one unrelated song that I started writing for a song fight at some forgotten moment in the long ago past. When I woke up this morning I still needed lyrics, melodies, and vocals for three of the 10 songs, and the song fight needed to have its vocals re-recorded. Also, 9 of the 10 songs needed lead guitar parts. I thought those were finished. I really did. Discovering that oversight took a great deal of the wind out of my sails today. I did, however, manage to finish all the vocals. Now, officially, all that’s left to record for the 2010 project is lead guitar.

The 2011 project still needs lead and rhythm guitars on three songs. All of the vocals are already finished and six of the nine songs are as complete as they are going to get as far as other instruments go.

So I am still not close to being done with the tracking, but at least now everything that requires an empty house (I hate having other people listen to me sing without the massive noise of a full band playing along. Even worse, I am the worlds worst lyricist and I hate letting people hear the crap that I write without having it buried in a mix. Really. The lyrics are worse than garbage. I usually just sit down with a rhyming dictionary and use the first crap that comes to my head, regardless of whether or not it makes sense or even actually says anything coherent. I am so bad that I don’t even really try, I just see the words as place holders that take up melody space until some far off magical day when someone with talent can write the real lyrics) is done. So, in order for me to work on vocals I need the house to be empty. Otherwise I’m not doing anything.

Tracking guitar parts is different. That only requires everyone else in the house to be busy so I can hide in the cellar without missing any quality family time. I record this stuff through a headphone amp so I can do it late at night or early in the morning. I think I might try getting up at 5:00am again and sneaking in a part or two a day. I would like to have these two terrible, horrible, ridiculously bad projects finished by the time we leave for California next month.

Not going to happen… but still a sort of mini goal.

Anyway, next stop is guitar parts. I can do that.

Can you make out the temperature on our mini van’s dashboard display?

In case you can’t, it says 101 degrees.

Summer. Win.

Wild kingdom.

You there, in the case. You and I are going to end this lack of motivation and spend sone quality time together today. Ya dig?

My wife and step daughter have suddenly discovered musicals. First Funny Girl, now Singing in the Rain.

My step son and I are in trouble, me thinks.

So the Space Shuttle landed safely. That’s good. There will never be another Space Shuttle launch. That’s sad.

All of the reasons for scraping the shuttles are good and valid. All of the reasons for scrapping the Orion project are also good and valid.

It doesn’t change the fact that I feel like we have royally screwed the pooch when it comes to manned space flight.

The whole situation is sad and pathetic. It’s valid and smart too, but still pathetic.

It’s bad enough that when I woke up this morning I was not yet on vacation in California, but it got worse almost immediately.

The damn cat took another swipe at my step son and gave him a nice little scratch. He did not provoke Patches in any way. He sat on my bed with the cat and pet her a couple of times. Then I told him to get off the bed and get his breakfast. He did. He stood up and started walking away and the cat reached out and got him.

Why? Why does the cat only target him? I’m the fat guy who rolls over while she’s trying to sleep on the bed with us. I’m the guy who nearly squashes her in the dead of night. On the cat’s first night with us she bit my step daughter twice, but hasn’t done anything to her since. Jen and I have both been swatted at, but not in ages. Why does he get all the clawed attention? I’ve seen him get in the cat’s face before, and I’ve seen the cat react badly to it, but the last two times he’s received a swipe he didn’t do anything to deserve it.

I’m really pissed off at the cat. I know she’s just being a cat and that’s what cats do, but like I said she leaves the rest of us alone and only goes after the boy. Hell, she even ignores the fish! I have half a mind to try feeding her to the deer.