Thanksgiving Part Two

The kids and my in-laws are coming over today for a second round of Thanksgiving dinner. Jen and I are going to start cooking in about half an hour (at 7:00am). If Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, then today is the day that I am talking about when I talk about my favorite holiday, even though it is not technically a holiday.

Based on the previous sentence I should create a new holiday to celebrate run-on sentences. That would be a gas, don’t you think?

We are also going to put up the xmas decorations while we have the kids here. I’m not sure what else we’ll do for our holiday festivities but we’ll think of something.

Happy Thanksgiving, Part Two.

They Fear Change

We had to move some furniture to make room for the xmas tree. The cats were pretty shell-shocked by the whole ordeal. They’ve just started to sort of act like everything is okay, but I think that means that they are going to start fighting a battle royale any second now.

Broken Record

I sound like a broken record here but I need to find the time and energy to go out and shoot photos. I have a new camera to play with and I haven’t used at all yet. What am I waiting for?

Sunday morning? I am going to be busy tomorrow morning, so that’s out. The next day though is Sunday. Maybe? Probably not, but maybe. We’ll see. It’s gettin’ cold out there, kids. If I don’t get out now I won’t be up for it for months.

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Traffic Jam

I got stuck in a traffic jam on a back road in Salem, NH tonight. There was a flock of wild turkeys crossing the street… single file… yeah, we were stopped there for a long time. There were at least 20 of them, but I couldn’t count them because they kept hiding behind the other stopped cars.

The irony of getting stopped by turkeys on the day after Thanksgiving is… dare I say it… delicious?

New Tradition?

My extended family used to do a thing where a bunch of us got together on a weekend near xmas and visited the graves of most of my grandparents. We sarcastically (and a little playfully irreverently) refered to it as The Dead Relatives Tour (DRT for short).

Today, Jen and I visited my parents’ grave in Tewksbury, then visited her grandparents and her aunt’s graves in Methuen. Has a new tradition been born? Could be.

In the old days we all went out to lunch together at a restaurant near the cemetery. Today? We just went home and heated up some leftovers from yesterday’s Thanksgiving for two feast.

No! Please, No!

It’s not that I hate xmas, I don’t really. It’s just that I want it to wait. I want the xmas season to last about at most 4-5 days. Hell, I will be generous and let it last a whole week. What I hate is that it’s not even December yet and we’re being hammered over the head with all things xmas and there is no escape.

I give in to everything because I know how happy it makes my family. I am a scrooge surrounded by xmas lovers. We bought the tree today because the kids will be here this weekend before going back to Vermont and this weekend is the only time we’ll all be home to decorate. Seriously, if it were just up to me I would put up the tree on xmas eve.

So there are two things that I hate. One is the over-commercialization of the holiday that results in the xmas season starting before Halloween. The other thing I hate is xmas music. I was 11 years old when I played my first school xmas concert. I was 20 when I played my last one. That is enough xmas music for a lifetime, I think. It can all go away now, thank you very much.

Ugh… I guess I am just a scrooge for a while. Come December 22 or 23 or so, I will be in merry-xmas mode and loving it, but for now? On November 29th?

I am exaggerating a little.

A little.

2024 NaSoAlMo Day 28/30

This will be the final NaSoAlMo post this year. The project is complete. Success!

I mixed the last two songs yesterday. I also came up with a final running order and took a cover photo with Hipstamatic. I tried putting text onto the photo but the app I normally use was acting buggy and I just gave up. Not a big deal.

Here’s a link to the final playlist on alonetone.

Here’s my not very imaginative cover pic:

Here are links to the songs, in the order they were finished which also happens to be the order they were started.

An “album” called Sevens and it is made up of seven songs in 7/8 time. The lyrics to all seven songs also deal with the same topic. I’m not going to say what but you can probably guess given current events. I guess this means that this is my first concept album.

I guess that concludes our internet music challenge projects for 2024. Up next will be the 2025 RPM Challenge in February. That’s the big one for me.

Finished

I just finished mixing the seventh and final song for this year’s National Solo Album Month project. I’m done! Not only that, I am done on the 28th day of the month, just like the February RPM Challenge. I might be hardwired to do album-in-a-month projects in 28 days.

Sevens