Highway traffic heading north was insane today. Coming back from my dad’s I detoured through Lowell. Pics from the road.
Detour Through Lowell
It’s Like That, Right?
Daily Habits
Daily habits. I don’t know if I really had any daily habits prior to the whole weight loss surgery thing. Now I have a bunch of them, mostly due to having all of these post-op goals to hit every day.
- Have some water and my morning vitamins before breakfast
- Exercise every morning before breakfast
- Eat a lot of protein for breakfast
- Make sure the cats are fed
- Make the bed (I fail on this one a lot, but I hate it when I do)
- Exercise again during lunch, just a bit
- Hit my daily water/liquid intake goal of at least 64 ounces
- Hit my daily protein goal of at least 80 grams
- Hit my daily Apple Watch Activity app exercise goal of at least 30 minutes, preferably more like 60
- Hit my daily Apple Watch Activity app move goal by burning at least 1000 calories
- Hit my daily Apple Watch Activity app stand goal by standing for at least one minute each hour for 12 hours
- Write at least one blog post
- Take at least one photograph, preferably with my Nikon Z5
- Most important of all, be kind and loving to my wife
- Track my sleep stats with my Apple Watch
- Wake up and do it all again
I am sure I am missing a few things. I find the whole exercise and post-op thing a ton easier if I stick to a routine. Like, I overslept by almost two hours this morning and I am worried about staying on target for all of the exercise and food/water goals already. It’s only 7:30am, but I should have a bunch of that stuff done already. It bugs me a bit.
Anyway, those are some daily habits. I may be insane. Just a smidgen.
Finished
I just finished my June album in a month challenge thingie. 10 songs down. I am not sharing any of the songs I finished yesterday or today on this page though because they suck.
They suck.
They Suuuuuuuuuuck.
Oh well. I think we’ll punt on the rest of the May stuff and take a couple of days off before starting the next challenge, to write 50 songs in 90 days without logging onto the actual fifty ninety site at all. Faux 50/90 or bust, kids.
Light Leak
That light leak on the right might be from using the Pentax lens on the Nikon camera. I assume so at least.
We are still on course to go back to Disney World in September.
June is Ending
Today is the last day of June. I haven’t mentioned the June music project lately. How is that going? Are you going to reach your goal of writing and recording ten (bad) songs within the 30 days of June?
Maybe?
I mixed two songs yesterday. That put me at seven songs complete. At the start of the day today I had one song that needed lead guitars and two more that were ready to mix. Well, I just put some really pathetic guitar leads down on that one song, which ironically is song #1 for this month. Why is the first song started going to be the last one finished? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
Anyway, that one guitar track being finished (poorly) means that tracking for this album in a month challenge is done and I just have to mix three songs. I think I can do that today. We’ll see.
What about the 10 songs from May? I gave myself to the end of the day on July 3rd to finish those 10 songs. I don’t think I am going to make it. I still have one song that doesn’t have rhythm guitars, and six that don’t have lyrics. Yeah, there’s pretty much zero chance of me hitting this new deadline. 50/90 starts on the fourth of July so the May stuff is probably going to be ignored for a few additional months. Oh well. I am not really doing 50/90. Not officially at least. I am going to see what I can do with a faux 50/90. We’ll see.
Okay, time to add a couple of guitar pics and then punch into work on this fine Friday. 8 hours and 45 minutes until the weekend.
Week Two, Run Two
Two minutes walking, one minute running, repeat eight times. I cannot express how much that sucked. It was different than two days ago, somehow. It seemed tolerable until the last two rounds on Wednesday. Today it got harder much earlier, but at the end I don’t think it felt as tough as it did at the end last time. I’m not really sure how to describe it.
I took a slightly different route this time. Instead of just going around the circle I went down the road a ways. My map looks different and that’s something, at least. The next run will be on Sunday and that will be two minutes walking, one minute running, repeated 10 times. That is going to suck out loud.
I knew this was going to be a tough challenge, but it’s difficult enough that I would not be surprised if I abandon this little quest at some point. I don’t know if I have running a 5k in me. I am not ready to give up, I just won’t be upset with myself if I get further along in this process and come to the conclusion that I am just not a runner.
Maybe if that happens I’ll take up bike riding. Probably not.
When I got back to the house, this scene was waiting for me.
Sustainability
Daily writing prompt
Are there things you try to practice daily to live a more sustainable lifestyle?
I’ve only been playing this daily prompt game for a few days, and since jumping on the wagon there haven’t been any questions that required any thought, or made me want to… you know… write anything. Now we have one and the theme is going to be shame.
I am going to have to turn in my hippy membership card after this one because up until recently I haven’t really lived my life in a way that could be in any way considered sustainable. The only exception being driving a car with a hybrid engine. Sometimes. Also, that’s only been a part of my life for a few years now. We have two cars in our household an one is a hybrid. The other… very much isn’t. It gets okay gas mileage but nothing to write home about. I drive a lot and when I am covering any notable distance I drive the hybrid. Other than that…
Until recently I never recycled. I produce what feels like a lot of waste. We order food for delivery more than we should and that always comes with tons of packaging that goes into the trash. Plastic, Styrofoam, the works. Fortunately for the Earth, my city sort of forced recycling upon us not long ago. They instituted automated trash pick up and issued a trash barrel and a recycling barrel to each residence. That put me onto the recycling wagon so when it comes to sustainability, I am pleased with myself for adding that to my personal list, but still disappointed with myself for making it to my 50’s before getting on that particular bus.
So I guess I am doing a couple of things to be sustainable now. I just feel like I should have been doing it a lot longer than I have. I seriously doubt I would make any difference, as my hippy self is often overpowered by my much more insistent cynical self, but as a proud bleeding heart liberal my lack of sustainable habits have always been a major source of hypocrisy.
I’m doing better now though. I will continue to do better in the future. I promise.
Progressive Rock Cat
Gear Acquisition Syndrome, Again
Figures. I finally cave in to recording my guitar direct through some sort of amplifier simulation and almost immediately a pedal company releases a new line of amplifier simulation pedals. TC Electronics is the culprit. I doubt that these new pedals are going to be in the same league as the one Strymon makes, or Universal Audio’s line, but the TC stuff will be a whole lot less expensive, I can pretty much guarantee that.
I am not going to buy one of these… yet… I am going to think about buying one often. Very often. Even if I did pony up the cash, I would never like it as much as my actual Deluxe Reverb. You know, the actual amp this thing simulates? Yeah, real is always going to be better. It’s just that the sim is less likely to wake up your sleeping wife when you play through it at 5:00am.
Inside the Red Head's Head 