Epcot Golf Ball
Sick Day
I tried. I tried to finish the work day but my stomach just kept getting worse. Not as bad as three weeks ago, but bad enough that I couldn’t sit up straight or concentrate on work. I laid down around 2:30 after trying and failing to have a bite to eat for lunch.
Now it’s four hours later and I do feel a little better, but we are back to the old question: is there something wrong with my stomach or am I hungry?
I think I’ll try to drink a little water. Duck and cover, boys and girls.
NHL Playoff Predictions: Round Three
This sucks, man. My team lost and New York’s team won? Talk about a crap fest.
My predictions in the first round were not very good. I picked four series correctly out of eight. The coin flips I used for a control group (or something) picked three out of eight.
How did I do in the second round? Not very good.
Panthers vs Bruins. The coin and I both picked the Bruins. This sucks. I am now 4/9 and the coin is 3/9. Screw you, Panthers.
Rangers vs Whalers. I picked the Rangers, even though it hurts my soul to pick any team from New York, and the coin picked the Whale. The Rangers won. I am now 5/10 and the coin is 3/10.
On to the West…
Stars vs Avalanche. The coin and I both picked the Avalanche and they lost. The Stars moved on and the Avs made me look bad. I am now 5/11 and the coin is a dismal 3/11.
Canucks vs Oilers. The Bruins are out. The Avalanche is out. There’s only one team left that I would actually want to root for. It’s the Oilers. I picked them to win and the coin picked Vancouver. Who won? The Oilers won. Oh thank goodness. I am back up to 50% at 6/12 and the coin is completely shut out in this round and is now at 3/12.
Now let’s move on to the Conference Final round. Round three.
Rangers vs Panthers. Oh good, the team that beat my team for the second year in a row against a team that I absolutely hate. Yippee. I want them both to lose. I am going to pick the Rangers but not because I plan to root for them. In this series I am rooting for the Zambonis. For the coin flip, heads goes to the higher seed and tails goes to the lower. It is tails. The coin picks the friggin’ Panthers.
Stars vs Oilers. At this point I think the Rangers are going to win the cup, but the Oilers are the only team left that I actually like so I am picking them. That’s me going with my heart instead of my head. The coin picks the Oilers too, which guarantees they will lose?
So I am predicting a Rangers vs Oilers matchup in the Stanley Cup Final. You heard it here first.
Blah.
Haiku for You #192
Today’s haiku for you is brought to you buy the bird house with the clear back wall that I had stuck to the window near my work-from-home desk.
Bird house disaster.
The window house has fallen.
Failure all around.
To clarify, the bird house was completely ignored for weeks. Today, while I was on a conference call, a bird finally noticed it and tried to land on the perch…
…and it immediately fell off the window.
Could Be a Bad Day
I mentioned a little stomach trouble last night after dinner. I ate too much too fast and it made me nauseous. I was pretty sick for about five minutes and then I was okay. Problem solved.
Or so I thought.
I woke up with a mild stomach ache this morning. That lead me to the usual question, is there something wrong or am I just hungry? I can’t tell the difference. I had a bottle of water while I was jogging (pronounced yogging) in place this morning. I felt a little better for a little while but the mild stomach ache came back. I ate breakfast and felt a little better for a little while but the mild stomach ache came back. I… ummm… spent some quality time in the bathroom (TMI!!) and felt a little better but the mild stomach ache came back.
So I think we’ve answered the question, is there something wrong or am I just hungry. The last time I had a persistent, mild stomach ache in the morning it turned into a super stomach ache and all night nausea shortly after lunch.
Uh oh.
Well, if I am going to have another round of chaos like the last time, it’s better that it happens now than during the drive to Florida over the weekend, or during our week in Disney World, or during our drive home. Still better would be for whatever this is to go away. Yeah, that’s what I am rooting for today. Go away, you stupid stomach ache.
For now though, here’s a picture of the freshly filled bird feeders in the back yard. Miss Robin Sparkles the cat is already sitting on the window sill stalking any birds that come over for a snack.
A Legacy of Rock
100 years from now some archeologist who probably looks a little like Indiana Jones is going to stumble across my alonetone account, listen to all of the music I have posted there and decide that it is some of the greatest music created in the 21st century. My songs will be studied in universities, splashed across all social media (because there will still be social media 100 years from now), and deftly woven into the fabric of 22nd century society. You can bank on it, folks.
What legacy will I leave behind? A Legacy of Rock.*
Okay, now that you’ve stopped laughing…
I don’t know what my legacy should be. Hopefully it’s our kids, Harry and Bellana. Hopefully they continue to be good people who always chose to do the right thing. Hopefully having me around for most of their lives has had some small influence on them that helped lead them in that direction. Hopefully they will someday have kids of their own (no pressure though) and they are able to pass on whatever tiny influence I might have had on to the next generation.
That would be enough for me. I would be proud to leave a little legacy like that. Proud and honored.
*If I don’t use that as the title of my next album, Spinal Tap should.
Invisible
A video giving tips on how to stay invisible while you’re out on the street taking photos of people and stuff.
Do you know how hard it is to go unnoticed when you’re six foot four inches tall? It’s really tough to do.
What Am I Doing?
What am I doing? I don’t know. I feel like the universe is in a weird place right now (yes, I know that mathematically that sentence does not make sense). I don’t know.
I had the opportunity to play my guitar tonight and I sat on my ass on the couch watching TV. I watched an episode of Torchwood. I’m trying to get back into that. While I was on the AppleTV app formerly known as HBO Max I figured I’d maybe start watching The Leftovers again. I watched the first episode. I’ll go to my grave saying that the second season of that show is television perfection. The first and third seasons are great too. The first season is just so soul crushingly depressing though. It is tough to get through and I suspect that watching one episode is part of the reason why I feel like I am in a screwy state of mind right now.
The point of all of this though is that I could have played guitar tonight and I did not. Ugh.
I had two slices of a small pizza for dinner tonight. The second one came back for another view. Oh yeah, TMI Alert here. Yeah. It went down, but it didn’t stay down. Shit. I ate too much too fast and paid the price.
I’m on the youtubes right now watching a photography channel. It’s a pro photographer telling me I should use Aperture Priority instead of Manual Mode. But what if I want to use Manual Mode? I use Aperture Priority a lot with one of my film cameras. The term Aperture Priority wasn’t invented yet when the camera was built, it’s called Auto on the camera, but it’s the same thing.. I use it because the light meter inside the view finder is often hard to read. I like using Manual though. It makes me feel like I know what I am doing even though I don’t really know what I’m doing. The video also says to keep the aperture away from the extremes. Don’t use f2.0 or f16, use f5.6 or f8. You don’t get the blurry background as much as you do with f2, but you get some which is more than f16 gives. The video says the images will be clearer in the middle ground apertures. I think I had figured that one out on my own and was starting to come around to this way of thinking. Then again… I really dig all that blurry background.
Miss Robin Sparkles says hello.
It’s Monday night, just about bed time. Almost 10:00pm. At this time four days from now we’ll be about seven hours into our road trip to Florida. That’s the main reason why I am in such a weird headspace tonight. I just want to go. I want to leave now. I don’t want to worry about work or anything outside of travel. I just want to go. I have a shit load of stuff to do before we go, but I just want to go.
Ugh… I should just go to bed.
Looking ahead to tomorrow. There is likely going to be an NHL predictions post for the third round. I am hoping the Edmonton Oilers will win their game seven tonight against Vancouver. If that happens there will be exactly one team that I kinda like in the Conference Finals. If they lose, there will be three teams I hate one one team I don’t care about. My heart is officially no longer in the NHL playoffs at all.
Also, expect lots of posts where I talk about how I just want to jump in the car with Jen, my wife, and head out on our trip. I have vacation-itis right now. Big time.
Imminent Road Trip
Strike a Pose
Miss Robin really came through for me.
It was just a few minutes after I got out of bed this morning. I went to the kitchen to fill up a bottle of water. Miss Robin Sparkles the Cat saw me coming and ran to the window and looked outside. It was almost as if she were posing for me. She knew I wanted to get today’s photo-a-day pic out of the way early because I had to go into the office and she wanted to be the subject.
Pout babie, pout!
Inside the Red Head's Head 