What to do, what to do. The downside of getting old is the increasing disinterest in all things social. The upside is…
is…
Is there an upside to getting old?
Tag: age
Nothing to Say
I’m down to the final minutes of my lunch break on this fine Friday afternoon. I am pretty exhausted from a lack of sleep over the past… month(s) but I’m hanging in there. I had some Purdue Popcorn chicken and some peanuts and some sugar free Hershey bites for lunch. I really want a drink of water but I still have to wait the better part of an hour before I am clear to drink anything. That’s a gastric bypass patient thing. If you know, you know.
Fed Ex delivered a package today. I am not home to get it, but it contains a new guitar pedal. If I read the amazon shipping notes correctly, it’s a compressor pedal. The first I’ve ever purchased. I have this weird idea of using cleaner guitar sounds for this year’s RPM Challenge in February and a compressor will be a part of that. I bought an MXR Dyna Comp because it’s super simple and it will let me squash my clean signal down to a delightfully mushy… mush. There are two more pedals coming over the weekend. One is a Flanger, the other is an Amp Sim. I don’t have room on my pedal board for any of these kiddos and I don’t have open slots on my power brick… so I am going to need to get creative, I think. It should be fun. I don’t think I bought a single guitar pedal during all of 2024. I know I bought a couple of microphones for band practices that haven’t actually happened yet, but no pedals.
There are a lot of tentative plans for the weekend. We may be messing with our living room and we may be going to some stores for research purposes. I hope to spend some time wandering around town taking pictures with my new/possibly antique (though probably not) camera. I got a gift card for the sugar free bakery in Salem, NH for xmas. I haven’t bought anything from them in about a month, but now I am definitely going back and getting some cookies. Good stuff.
What else… I thought there was something else… One of our cars is going to get a break job. That wasn’t the thing that I am forgetting though… am I going to go shopping for a new iPhone? That’s definitely on the to-do list before we go to Florida at the end of the month, but is it this weekend? I don’t know.
I have to start practicing the guitar. The band is hoping to reconvene (hopefully for real this time) at some point after this weekend. I need to get ready for that. Which guitar should I bring to the first practice? Probably the Les Paul Standard that my wife got me for my 50th birthday in 2021. I really dig that guitar.
I know I had something else I wanted to write about but it has slipped my brain entirely. Don’t get old, kids. This is what happens to you when you get old. Stay young for as long as you can. Unless you’re already old like me in which case… sorry, folks. We had a good run, I’m sure.
Doctor Jones
I just sent this in a text message and I need to share it with the wider universe….
“I’m so old that I heard that Indiana Jones was looking for me.“
Yeah, your humble narrator is old.
You Know You’re Old When…
You know you’re old when your wife asks you if you have any interest in going to bed and just sitting up reading for a little while before nodding off for the night…
And it’s not even 8:00pm yet…
And you are absolutely interested. Absolutely.
Oh, Ya Big Baby
I was going to go out shooting some film this morning, but after I finished my morning faux joggin’ I completely wussed out. Why? I just don’t wanna go out in the cold. You big baby.
I did something to my shoulder today and I have no idea what. It hurts. Why? I didn’t do anything to deserve it, other than being 51 years old when stuff just randomly starts breaking down.
We’re supposed to get a huge storm sometime tomorrow, I think. I don’t know if it’s rain or snow or both. It might mess up some plans for the weekend, but I can’t tell one way or another yet. I hate snow. I really, really hate snow.
The kids are coming home this weekend. Bellana’s car is dead so we will be selling her (“selling”) one of ours. I want to get it tuned up for her. There’s a software recall and I have an appointment to get that done on Saturday. I want to get an oil change too, and have the tires checked. They should be fine but let’s make sure. The other car needs an oil change too and the wiper blades are falling off. So this weekend’s theme is kids and cars, to start with at least.
Did I mention that I’ve lost 200 pounds since January? I was on cloud nine all day long yesterday. I still am. I even went to the facebook to gloat a little. People are asking for before/after pics. I might give the people what they want. I gloated on post.news too. I was the first person on that network to use the hash tag #GastricBypass, but a few fellow surgical survivors said hello. That made me happy.
We are 20 days away from leaving for Florida. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to travel for the first time in almost three years. I can’t wait to spend two whole weeks with the kids. I can’t wait to experience Disney World with the love of my life once again. Did I ever mention that my original plan for proposing to Jen involved the World Showcase at Epcot? In the end I did it at home because I just couldn’t wait anymore, but we did reenact the proposal I had in mind when we took a trip there with Larry and Nawal a few weeks later. Also, and this is very important, I can’t wait to be warm. I know it is not going to be scorching, but it is going to be a whole hell of a lot warmer there than it is here.
I feel like I should have 100 other things to write about this morning, but I’m drawing blanks left and right. My shoulder is really bugging me. I think I pulled a muscle or something. It’s annoying the crap out of me. I’ll get over it, someday. Mostly I’m just really happy that I don’t have to drive into the office today. I am working from home for the rest of this week and the first three days next week. I have to go in next Thursday but hopefully that will only be for half of the day. Starting next month though (after I get back from Florida) we will be going into the office on Wednesdays. Every Wednesday for the foreseeable future. That’s seriously depressing, but I’ll rise above it, somehow.
Okay. I am going to finish my breakfast and then spend half an hour or so gazing longingly at my weight tracking spreadsheet. Specifically the Total Since the First Check In cell where the number is over 200. Ah, what a thing that is.
Here Comes the Existential Pain
It’s April 30th. The last day of the month. Normally that’s not a big deal, but this month… this month…
April 2021 is the last full month of my forties. There is a day in the month of May… a day that is coming soon… a day that the first digit in my age changes, and that is a bad thing. When it changed from zero to one it was awesome. When it changed from one to two it was also awesome. When it changed from two to three… well that sucked. That sucked bad. When it changed from three to four it was painful but by then the damage was done, and I also had Jen to make me feel better about it.
Four changing to five feels about the same as three to four, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. I’ve got eight days left. Eight days left in my forties, which I didn’t even want in the first place but now that they are ending…
crap.
…….and I just found out my friend’s kid has Covid. The universe is a prick.
Pissed Off About Time Passing
I just had to open a file for work. The name of the file needed to be the date that next week ends in yyyymmdd format. In other words, 20130104.
2013. Can you believe that next week is 2013? I sure has hell can’t.
I met my wife in 2007 which is proof of that statement, “Time flies when you’re having fun” because it feels like our lives together have really just begun. How can we be entering our sixth calendar year together? That’s crazy!
I started my current job in 2004 with the belief that I would be out doing something else in two years. Now it’s 2013 and I’m still here.
After Star Wars became a huge hit in 1977, George Lucas announced that he would be making nine Star Wars films in all and that each would take three years to make. That would put the release date for episode nine in 2001. My dad joked that I’d be 30 years old and that I would have to take him to the movies instead of the other way around. 2001 was 11 years ago.
I graduated high school in 1989. The turn of the century felt like some far off distant land. Now we’re in the third year of the second decade of the new century. That’s insane! I should also mention that my 21st birthday turns 21 in 2013. Think about that.
The Red Sox ended all of that curse of the bambino bullshit in 2004… Nine years ago.
Carl Yastrzemski played his final game in 1983… 30 years ago. (oh and by the way, Yaz is now 73 years old)
Here’s the worst one, by far…
I still remember being all jazzed up about the start of the 1980’s. The 70’s are over, man. It’s time for the 80’s! Bring on the flying cars and moon bases! WOOHOO! I was nine on January 1, 1980. It seemed like such a massively humongous event. Now, suddenly, 1980 has morphed into 2013. Urgh!
What the hell happened???
Inside the Red Head's Head 