One Year

We lost my mother one year ago today. After years and years of dementia she was finally free of all of her physical pain and mental confusion. Would she see it as release the way we hope she would? I have no idea.

I got to spend a little time with my father tonight. He was mostly okay, but he’s having an annoying, persistent health issue of his own that flared up quite a bit yesterday and sent him briefly to the ER. He’s fine, he just needs to do what the doctors tell him to do. When he does, he improves. He just doesn’t do it enough. Insert the frustrated sigh here.

Now that I am home I have spent the last 15-20 minutes asking Google Bard to generate images of Jedi Knights in goofy situations like being a contestant on The Bachelor, riding a tiger, or watching a baseball game. I feel like I’ve found my new favorite internet hobby.

No music progress today. It’s getting close to bed time and I haven’t accomplished anything. Well… I picked off a few things at work today, which was nice. Just no musical accomplishments, that’s all. There is also a zombie movie that I want to watch tonight so that I can listen to a podcast discussing it on the drive to work tomorrow.

So many things to do.

Kitties

Burlington, VT Yesterday

I told my wife that I will eventually photograph all of the city of Burlington, Vermont but it will take years as I am sort of doing it one little street at a time. Here are a few random views from yesterday’s visit to celebrate my step son’s 21st birthday.

2024 RPM Challenge Day 3 & 4/29

I haven’t checked in with the RPM Challenge in a couple of days. How have I been doing, you ask? Have I made any progress? Sure.

Here is what I wrote on my dumb tumblr page to sum up day three:

Not quite as much as I had hoped to get to on day three, but not bad.

I put rhythm guitars onto two songs (songs number three and five). I finished the MIDI bass and MIDI drums and worked out the song form for song number four, and added a new idea that now has the bass/drums/form finished. That new one is song number six.

I failed to write any melodies or lyrics so I still don’t have anything ready for vocals. I am going to be traveling quite a bit today so there’s a good chance day four might be a bust. Maybe I’ll sneak something in after dinner tonight. Let’s hope.
Musical Meanderings

Okay, so we’re up to six songs in three days. Not a bad haul to start the month. No lyrics yet, that’s a little concerning, but half of the songs have their full rhythm section down.

Now here is my dumb tumblr summary of day four, yesterday:

I expected to get shut out on day four. It was my step son’s 21st birthday and we drove to Vermont and back to celebrate with him a little. I would have been okay with not making any progress at all, but I did manage to sneak one little thing in.

Just before I fell asleep I noodled a couple of bass guitar ideas and called them song idea number seven. It’s probably terrible, but it’s in the pipeline now so it will become a song one way or another.
Musical Meanderings

Something is better than nothing, even if it’s barely something and not terribly interesting… at least I don’t think it was terribly interesting. I was falling asleep as I worked on it, and I haven’t listened back to it today.

Tomorrow is another potential day of being shut out. It’s my work from the office day this week so my morning won’t see any work. Maybe I will sneak some in before I go to bed again. We will have to see. Wednesday could be a big day. It’s Jen’s birthday and we both took the day off. I might be able to squeeze in some serious productivity in the morning at least. We have a couple of contractors coming over to give house painting estimates and I do want to do something nice for Jen’s birthday, so there might not be that much time for music. I’ll see what I can do. Thinking about Wednesday is getting way ahead of myself though. Let’s get some shit down tonight before we worry about anything else, m’kay?

One Year

My Ideal Day

Daily writing prompt

Describe your most ideal day from beginning to end.

View all responses

I can’t really answer this one because I really don’t know the answer. I’ll take a crack at it off the top of my head.

Wake up next to my love. Get my exercise in for the day, have some breakfast, shit-shower-shave, and start the day.
This is a fantasy, right? That means it is sure as hell not a work day so maybe I play the guitar for a little while, or go outside and photograph some stuff.
This is a fantasy, right? That means both of my step kids are home for a visit. The four of us, me and my wife and the two kids, spend the morning together doing… something… anything. Then we go to lunch together.
After lunch the four of us do something together… anything. I don’t even care if it’s actually a whole lot of nothing, as long as we do it together. Then we go to dinner together.
After dinner the four of us do something together. Watch a movie, play some games. Anything so long as it’s together.
End the day by falling asleep next to my love.

I am a simple man and I enjoy the simple things. I think my hypothetical ideal day demonstrates that. I’m also gettin’ old so there’s no sky diving or hang gliding type shit for me. Just family and happy. That’s ideal for me.

At this point I need to change the subject a little. I am going to start a new thing on these daily writing prompt posts. Google has given it’s stupid AI thingie the ability to generate images. I am going to use it to generate an image related to each day’s post. I’ll try this for a few days and see how goofy I can get.

Oh yeah, the image will be something with a Jedi Knight. For today, I asked Google Bard this question: