New Leaves

Both of the clippings from Bellana’s plant are growing new leaves! Check it out!

Bertie Botts Every Flavour Plant Clipping is about to have it’s first new leaf. It looks like it’s just about ready to start unfolding itself. Good job, Bertie Botts!

DSC_2355

Bertha, our original plant clipping and the plant from which Bertie Botts was clipped, is also just sprouting itself a new leaf. It’s the first new leaf since I re-potted into this new, bigger pot. See that little thing sprouting off of that other leaf? I should have gotten closer for this one, but I wanted to capture the spirit of the thing.

229/365
229/365

Now if I could just get the cats to stop eating leaves off of Bertha. I’ve been trying to keep them out of the room, but they are crafty little suckers and keep sneaking in. Stop eating my plants, cats!

Keep Out

Daily writing prompt
What place in the world do you never want to visit? Why?
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Is there a place in the world that I don’t want to visit? I guess so, but even those places I would give a try if the opportunity arose.

For example: I don’t like cold weather. Therefore my desire to visit the Arctic or the Antarctic is exceptionally low. Low enough to effectively be zero. However, if someone said to me, I need you to go to the North Pole and do something interesting… I’d go. Yeah, I would go. Same with the top of Mt Everest. I don’t want to go, but if the opportunity came up I would.

Where are some others… the rural American south? Yeah. No thanks. Big cities in the south.. yeah, let’s go. Outside of the big cities? Naw, I’ll pass.

Most of the mid-western US? I’ll pass. They don’t call ’em fly over states for nothing. I guess my attraction to big cities would bring me to agree to go to any big city on Earth. Name a big city on any continent and I’ll give it a try. Name a jungle with no civilization where there’s a good chance some big animal will eat me? Yeah, let’s give that one a miss.

So that sums it up, I guess. There are places I would choose to avoid, but if someone made an offer to bring me to one of those places? I’d probably go. I guess from a travelin’ perspective (how’s that for a future album title?) I am pretty easy to please. I’ll go pretty much anywhere.

Cake

I mentioned in this morning’s edition of The Daily Writing Prompt that Jen baked me a sugar free cake over the weekend and it is wonderful in both the figurative sense (how great is my wife for doing that for me and my weird, redesigned, stomach pouch thing) and the literal sense (de-freakin-licious chocolate cake!!!).

I had a second piece tonight. Just a sliver. I can’t take much more than that. The downside is that I will never be able to eat the whole thing at this rate. Some of it is going to go to waste. That is sad, but I will never not be grateful for the gesture, and I will eat a little bit each day until it goes stale and can’t be eaten any more.

Like I said, how amazing is my wife? Amazing! I think she might actually like me. Insert a gigantic happy grin here.

In other news, I also mentioned earlier that today is my father’s birthday. 82 years old and still going strong. My sister setup a birthday party for him this coming Sunday. I’ll go to that in the afternoon and then go to band practice. It’s going to be an epic Sunday. Maybe I can talk Jen into going to New York on Friday after work and then coming home on Saturday after dinner. Let’s make the epic Sunday a full on epic weekend! There’s zero chance of that, but a boy with cake in his rewired innards can dream, right?

Red Sox Fail

The Red Sox played the annual Patriots Day/Boston Marathon Monday 11:00am game today. Morning baseball, everyone!

I always enjoy listening to the Marathon Monday game on the radio while I’m at work. I don’t know why, it’s just something I particularly like to do. Today’s game was tough for a bunch of reasons. I had a whole pile of meetings on my calendar, but there were breaks during game time so it was okay. In the end the Red Sox lost to Cleveland. It was close through most of the game but once The Guardians started hitting it was painful. Lots of defensive screw ups for the Red Sox, including two players crashing into each other hard enough to draw blood. Ouch.

Those aren’t the worst parts of the game though. The worst part was the radio broadcast. As soon as I logged onto the MLB app and brought up the audio I wanted to yell at WEEI and shut it off. I didn’t, but I should have. The radio announcing team included Sean McDonough. I fucking hate Sean McDonough. He used to do Red Sox TV broadcasts years and years ago (before getting the job doing Monday Night Football? Was that really a thing?) and he sucked to high heaven. I hated every single syllable that came out of his asshole of a mouth. Ugh, I fucking hate that guy! I’d rather listen to a baby crying at 100 decibels for three hours than listen to that prick call a game.

I listened to the game though. I didn’t let that butt munch ruin my Patriots Day. Screw that guy. The team losing was just fitting though. Yeah, screw that guy.

Haiku for You #178

On Patriots Day in Massachusetts, the Boston Red Sox play a morning game, which starts at 11:00am. It’s timed so that the fans will exit Fenway Park just about the same time the Boston Marathon reaches Kenmore Square. It’s a great little mini-tradition, and I always enjoy listening to the Sox game on the radio while I work.

Today’s haiku for you is the story of how WEEI and the Red Sox ruined it for me today.

Turn on the Sox game
and hear Sean McDonough’s voice.
Fucking hate that guy.

Positive Stuff

Daily writing prompt
Describe a positive thing a family member has done for you.
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I have a ton of meetings today so writing time is going to be hard to come by. In that case, this one is going to be short and sweet and probably sillier than it should be.

Want to hear something positive that a family member has done for me recently? As in over the last two days?

I mention gastric bypass surgery on this blog all the time, and how one of the restrictions is never having sugar again. If I eat more than a little sugar I’ll get sick for hours and I would like to avoid that forever if I can. I am therefore a sugar free red head for life.

On Saturday, my beloved bride Jen did something nice for me straight out of the blue. Is it nice or positive? You can be the judge, but for me it was both. Super nice, and super positive. Positivity to the maximum.

She baked me a sugar free cake. A sugar free chocolate cake with sugar free white frosting, to be precise. How sweet is that (pun intended, even if it is artificial)? She baked it Saturday night, frosted it Sunday morning, and then I had a small piece on Sunday evening when I got home from band practice. It was delicious. It was the sweetest thing (again, pun artificially intended). Like I said, positivity to the utmost extent.

Thank you, sweetie. Thank you so much. I love you.

Here is another quick example of positivity. First, when Jen and I started dating in 2007 her two kids, six year old Bellana and four year old Harry, accepted me. That might be the best example of positivity that has ever happened. Furthermore, when Jen and I got married in 2009 they accepted me into their family officially. Again, can you think of anything more positive than that? I love them both so much, and I am eternally grateful for their kindness across all of the days I have been a part of their lives, but especially for those two moments of exceptional positivity. Thank you both. I love you.

One more. In honor of my father’s birthday, here’s one from my parents. They worked together to conceive me, birth me (yes, my mother did all of the work in that regard), and raise me to be someone who isn’t a total asshole… though I guess the jury is still out on that one. Thanks, mom and dad. I love you both.

Okay, that was a little longer than I thought it would be. Back to work, meetings boy!

Time to Go

Dinner is done. It was delicious. I am stuffed to the gills. It’s just about time to load up the car and head to the dawn of the new age of Lizardfish. Lizardfish 2.0. Lizardfish the Next Generation. Hopefully Lizardfish who will soon have a new name.

Robin the cat doesn’t care about any of this.