Things I am Happy About Today

Here’s a short list of things I am happy about today…

  • Bellana’s coming home tonight!
  • In less than an hour I’ll get to go home and see Jen. Well… in less than an hour I’ll get to leave the office, then drive for an hour+ and then see Jen. Also, I’ll get to see Bellana.
  • The Florida Panthers lost the Stanley Cup Final! Thanks, Vegas Golden Knights! (predictions wrap up post will likely be tomorrow or maybe later tonight)
  • In less than one hour I will get to leave this frozen tundra disguised as a conference room and go outside where it is currently 75 degrees out… though it was 80 degrees about an hour ago. Uh oh.
  • Going to see my father on Father’s Day this coming Sunday.
  • Kitties
  • Electric guitars. Specifically Gibson guitars. Specifically, specifically Gibson Les Pauls.
  • There’s a new season of Star Trek Strange New Worlds premiering tomorrow. There’s a new Walking Dead spinoff, Dead City, premiering this weekend. There’s a new Marvel show, Secret Invasion, premiering next week.
  • Jen. Bellana. Harry.

Stress

Why are things stressing me out today? Everything is rubbing me the wrong way. I feel like I am fucking things up at every turn. First my stupidity with the trash pickup this morning. I’m not even going to mention the mouse trap incident from this morning. That would just make me sad.

There isn’t anything specific that’s going wrong today, it just feels like everything weighs 10 times more than it should, emotionally speaking, and I am doing everything wrong.

What the hell, Robert? Stop being like that. Everything is fine.

Everything that is except for the fact that I am in the office when I would rather be home, and it’s friggin’ freezing in this conference room right now. Brrr, babie. I wanna go home and hug Jen and pet the kitties and play some shitty blues rock on the guitar. Those are my happy places. Those are my mental health medicines.

Success and Failure

The days playing guitar streak has hit seven! One full week, babie! I added a new song idea last night. It was short and super easy. I put rhythm guitars on it this morning after finishing my faux jog (yog) in the cellar. I didn’t plan it that way, it just worked out. I finished the one song with enough time to take a picture and write this post.

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That’s the successful part of the morning. What’s the failure? Is it senility in my old age? I say that with a tiny percentage of seriousness after witnessing what my mother went through over her last decade.

Last night I put up a to do list for this morning. It included taking the trash out to the street. Today is Wednesday. Our trash pick up is Tuesday. How did I get that wrong? How did I screw up the days like that? I was already worried that our outside barrel was too full, now it has to go a whole second week. Shit. Also, today is recycling pick up. That means the recycling has to go a whole two extra weeks. What the fuck, Robert?

Okay. Time to pack up the lunch for work and get showered and dressed. I don’t think I can fuck those two things up. At least I played a little. Focus on that, you moron.

Pre-Commute Plans

If I can pull this off it will make me happy.

Get up at 5:00am. Take the trash out to the street. Go down cellar, take my vitamins, and run in place until around 6:00am. Break out the Les Paul and record rhythm guitars on one, maybe two songs.

Make lunch, pack up my laptop, shower, get dressed, get on the road by 7:30.

Yeah, right. Good night, folks! It’s bed time!

Minor League Baseball

I had a weird moment this morning. A weird moment where I really wanted to get back into minor league baseball. I don’t know where it came from, or why, but there it was.

My father used to split a season ticket package for the old Lowell Spinners team. We went to a ton of games and I always really enjoyed it. The Spinners no longer exist. I never went to a Pawtucket Red Sox game. They don’t exist either, though they are now in Worcester, which is easier for me to get to. I haven’t been to a Worcester game either. There’s the Portland Pirates up in Portland, ME. I’ve never been to one of their games either.

The team I forgot about, that is suddenly very interesting to me, is the New Hampshire Fisher Cats. They play in Manchester. Manchester is really close to home. Jen and I went to a Fisher Cats game on one of our first dates.

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June 14, 2007

I suddenly really want to go to a Fisher Cats game. I asked Jen if she’d go to a game with me this summer and she said sure, though she looked at me like I was weird. I think it stems from me wanting to go to a UMass Lowell hockey game this year, but never actually getting to one. I think this is an extension of that.

I miss minor league sports. I miss live baseball. I miss live hockey. I miss live music. I miss live life, a little. Not too much. I’m still 100% introvert, you know.

This is a weird state of mind I suddenly find myself in. Maybe I’ll catch a Fisher Cats game and this state of mind will go away. We’ll see.

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June 14, 2007

Six Days and Counting

The consecutive days of guitar playing streak is up to six days. I didn’t get any playing in last Wednesday as it was a commuting day and I didn’t get up early enough. The following six days, including this morning, I played at least a little bit. I used my SG to put leads on two songs from May. I played especially poorly. I don’t think it was rust this time, I think it was physical impairment. Specifically, my finger tips didn’t work correctly, in part because the calluses are gone but the pre-callus blisters are coming in. Ouch. When I took a shower after I finished my crappy playing the hot water hitting my fingers stung like a mutha.

Oh well. Hopefully I’ll get up early enough to get a little playing in tomorrow, given that it is another commute day. It would be nice to have the streak hit the full week mark.

The playing was bad today and so were the obligatory pointless pictures. I had to take a second batch because the first batch was crap.

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Nutube, babie!
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Mouse Hunt 2023

Remember last week when I wrote all of those posts about the cats hunting mice? Remember how I saw a mouse in the cellar and said the cats weren’t allowed in the cellar, thus implying that it was up to me to take them out with extreme prejudice?

We are a household with two expert mousers. I was hoping to join their ranks and make it three. I put out a bunch of traps but I failed to catch anything. Worse, rather than just ignoring the traps, when I checked them yesterday the bait had been picked clean. The cellar mouse was just messing with me.

That changed this morning. I checked the traps a few minutes ago. I guess the bait wasn’t quite gone on the trap I put between the two desks.

Maniacal laugh.

I guess we are a three mouser house after all.

New Song for June

The Record Every Month Challenge: June Edition is a success! May was an epic fail, but June is a win.

Here’s the first of what will hopefully be a whole big bunch of new songs this month. Just in case you were wondering what my Les Paul Standard into an Analog Man King of Tone pedal into a Vox MV50 Nutube amp’s direct output with cabinet simulation sounds like. It sounds half decent to me, I guess. Not as good as it would sound through an actual speaker, or through my Fender Deluxe Reverb at about 100 decibels. This works though.

Sleepy

Despite the possible influence of a mild migraine headache overnight last night, I thought I got a decent night’s sleep. Apparently I was wrong. I have felt seriously exhausted all day today, and it’s especially bad (as it often is) after I finished lunch. I just feel really tired and I wish I didn’t.

I didn’t use my CPAP machine last night. For some reason I thought it would be a mistake to wire myself up while dealing with a migraine. I didn’t want any extra noise or distractions. I just wanted to pass out and stay that way until the alarm went off. I think it worked, but now I expect if I had put the machine on I would feel better tonight. Hindsight, and all that crap.

Change of subject, all of the guitar playing I’ve done over the last few days is really making me want to get the work I need done to my two 1970’s Gibsons. I have two shops I want to bring them to and get an estimate from. One is in Rockport, MA, which is an hour away from here. The upside of that shop is that it’s open on Saturdays. The other shop is in Malden… or Medford… same difference. They are not open on weekends though, but they are open until 7:00pm on weekdays. I should be able to get there before they close. I am thinking of making an appointment for 6:30 or so next Monday. I have no clue how much they will charge for frets and wiring. I just hope it’s low enough that I can pay for work on both guitars without needing to sell anything else. If I do need to raise a little more money I will probably sell my Fender Bassbreaker 18/30 amp, but I don’t think I will be able to get very much for it.

I might sell the 18/30 anyway, even if the money I raised is enough to pay for the three things I need. Maybe I could raise a little more fundage and pay for new pickups for the Les Paul Custom. I don’t know. That’s a pie in the sky kinda thing.

I am really tired and I still have 2.5 hours to go in my work day. Blah. I hope to get some better sleep tomorrow. I might mix a song before bed though. I have three songs ready to go. Huzzah, right? Rock and Roll.