Hand Basket

My current audiobook is making me feel like an immature child and it is giving me the giggles.

I am listening to Recursion by Blake Crouch. I’m about 2/3 of the way through and I am really digging it. I keep thinking I know where it’s going and then it curves off to someplace totally unexpected. That’s not what this post is about though.

This post is about how I am a nine year old goofball. One of the characters is named Helena. Every time one of the two readers says the character’s name I insert the words hand basket immediately after it.

Helena (hand basket) said hello.

Helena (hand basket) did something.

Every time I do it I feel like I am going to giggle. What a goof. Sometimes I think that I am going to stop it and I do… briefly. I stop inserting hand basket but instead I insert the word bucket.

Helena (bucket) walked down the hall.

Helena (bucket) opened the door.

Yeah, I am a child. A goofy, lame, immature child.

Kids Weekend

Jen and the kids are texting back and forth about this weekend. They are coming home for a quick visit! I love it. I don’t have any details yet so I don’t know when or where or how or what, I just know it’s in the works.

It’s like flashing back to 2007 when we were splitting custody with the kids’ father and we had them half of the time and he had them half of the time. Literally. We alternated days. I think… and I am straining my tiny little brain to bring up these memories… we had the kids on Sundays and half of the day on Saturday… or did we have them on Fridays and then the first half of Saturday… I’m pretty sure we had them for half of every Saturday. The other six days of the week alternated between houses.

That was the schedule when I first came into the picture. The kids were age six and four at that time. I was still in my 30’s (which seems laughable for some reason… youngin’). Eventually we changed the schedule to one where they were at one house for two days, then the other for two days, and then the remaining three days would alternate. That way on any given week they would have five straight days in the same house, and each week those five days would be in a different house. It worked.

Sometimes when I think back over the years I feel sad about the time I missed. Six whole years… why couldn’t I have met Jen earlier and been around to know the kids when they were babies? Then I stop feeling like that and just feel overwhelmingly thankful for the time I have had. What a gift that time has been. What a perfect, magical, brilliant gift that Jen and Bellana and Harry have given me. They’ve let me be a small piece of their lives. I am eternally grateful for that gift. I will never be able to express how thankful I am, how honored I am, how touched I am. Really… being in their lives has been better than anything I could have ever hoped that anything could ever be. Put simply, I am just a dumb ass red head. What did I do to deserve a blessing like this? What did I do to deserve the love of three such exceptional people? I don’t know. If I did I would bottle it and sell it and be a gazillionaire. Seriously.

I guess what I am trying to say here is that I am going to see the kids this weekend and I am really happy about it.

Commute

In the office today. In the office tomorrow. After three straight business days working at home, this is suddenly painful again. Weird.

Traffic was bad today, but the normal level of bad. One exception was my own street. 3-4 houses down from us there was a school bus partially pulled into a driveway, facing perpendicular to the street, completely blocking the road. Why? How? I don’t know. I had to sit and wait for them to maneuver out of the way. I don’t get it.

Robin Sparkles the Cat doesn’t get it either.

214/365

Baffle

I saw how the squirrels are getting around the anti-squirrel baffle I have on my bird feeder rig. I looked out the window just in time to see one of those little rodent pricks simply jump over it. I had been trying to imagine some complicated method they were using to thwart my defenses and it was just an athletic little sucker jumping really high. Asshole.

I went outside and raised it up quite a bit. Hopefully that will be enough. We’ll see.

Browser Blues

A few years ago I went on a journey. A journey to find a new favorite web browser that wasn’t called chrome. I found one. It was… basically… ya know… chrome without actually being chrome. I settled on Vivaldi. I like it. I put it on my MacBook Pro, and my personal Windows desktop box, and my work laptop (just for personal stuff like my personal email and… ya know… this blog) and as soon as it was available I also put it on my iPhone and my iPad.

Yesterday the company I work for updated its list of approved applications and Vivaldi was not on it. Boo. In order to comply with the rules, I had to give it up on that machine. Firefox is on the list though, so I have brought that back for my personal use (while we all use Chrome for work use).

It is fine. No complaints about Firefox here it’s just… not the browser I want to use.

You know, it’s all fine and good and everything is okay and the universe isn’t spiraling down the drain and heading for the sewer. Yeah, that has nothing to do with web browsers it’s just… you know… blah. Boo.

Here’s a couple of pictures of a cat because even though the universe is collapsing into crap, cats are still fuzzy and cute and adorable.

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213/365 - April 1st

April 1st

Oh shit… it’s April Fools Day. Never have I ever had less interest in playing along with this bullshit. The fascist states of america is already filled to bursting with fools and idiots and pure, unadulterated evil. Why anyone would think fake stories on the internet is entertaining during times like these… I just don’t get it.

Change of subject. The Red Sox are off today. We will be spared the slaughter and the constant strike outs. In five games thus far this season the team has struck out 123644258686134 times with about 86358629357 being Devers alone. Unfortunately, the Bruins are not off tonight. They will be annihilated by the Capitals. Times are tough in Boston sports-land these days. Why not? Times are tough everywhere.

Change of subject again. When was the original Star Trek given the Star Wars Special Edition treatment? After finally getting through Star Trek the Animated Series the other day, I decided to watch the original show all the way through. I’m through the two pilots and up to episode five now. I just watched Sulu take on the bridge with a sword while the Irish guy sings badly over the ship’s PA. I’m a little put off by most, if not all, of the exterior shots of the Enterprise being replaced by CGI. When did that happen? It doesn’t affect the episodes at all, but I still kinda don’t like it. I want my 1960’s models back. I want the pure form of the show back, even if it is less impressive and cheesy looking.

Change of subject again, again. Sticking with television, what is the deal with the month of April? We have the start of new seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale, Andor, The Last of Us, and Doctor Who. We’ll also see the last two episodes of Yellowjackets this month. This feels like collusion. This feels like the television industry conspiring to keep me from sleeping for the foreseeable future.

Again with the change of subjects again, again. I did not participate in the RPM Challenge’s Record Every Month thing. I wanted to. I was going to. I just didn’t. I’m thinking of maybe compensating for my failure by trying to do an April album in a month instead. Write and record 35 minutes worth of new music before the month ends. Will I be able to muster up the motivation? Probably not, but let’s give it a shot, eh?

Okay. Time to go and get ready for work. Welcome to April. Stay away from those damn April Fools jokes. It’s going to be a long and painful day on the ol’ internets. Good luck, everyone.

The Worst Attitude

I think that the worst attitude an american can have right now is apathy. The natural inclination is to look at current events, decide that it’s so far out of our control that there is nothing we can do about it, and then give in to indifference.

I get it. I completely understand the urge to go that route.

But then you read a headline about someone torching a bunch of swasticars in Germany and you start thinking that there is always something you can do to resist the fascists. Even if it’s just sharing news. Maybe you’ll say something that will fall on the right ears and change someone’s mind about the drain we’re currently circling and, who knows… maybe it will make a difference.

  • Luke Skywalker: Look, I can’t get involved. I’ve got work to do. It’s not that I like the Empire; I hate it, but there’s nothing I can do about it right now… It’s all such a long way from here.
  • Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi: That’s your uncle talking.

We need to stop listening to Luke Skywalker’s Uncle Owen. We need to spend more time listening to Ben Kenobi. He’s a cool dude. He knows what’s what.