Morning Madness

I slept a little late this morning but I was still able to get all 30 minutes of my daily exercise goal in, and I finished Breaking Bad. Finally. I know I still have the movie and the whole run of Better Call Saul to go, but the main show is done and all is well.

Last night I got all excited about the third period of game one of the Stanley Cup Final, only to see Tampa lose in overtime. As I wrote last night, I think I am on the Tampa Bay wagon, but if Colorado wins the cup I will be pretty much equally as happy. I have to admit that I sided with Detroit in the Great Avalanche vs Red Wings blood bath back in… whenever that was. Then Ray Bourque was traded to the Avs and I obviously switched sides. I’ve been a casual Avalanche fan ever since.

Still… threepeat. We haven’t had one of those since the Islanders won their fourth in a row in 1983. The Oilers then won four of the next five and five of the next seven, but the last actual threepeat was a fourpeat in 1983. It would be cool to have another one. I guess I am rooting for the streak more than I am rooting for the team. Whatever. It should be a fun series.

Did you see episode four of Obi-Wan Kenobi? Did you have your mind absolutely blown the way we did last night? Holy shit, I could not love this series more. I have been listening to a lot of Star Wars podcasts during this series’ run and a lot of them are down on the show. I think those people need lobotomies because this show is amazing. It’s bordering on perfect. I can’t overstate how much I am loving this show.

I read yesterday (or was it the day before) that they are going to show the entire series in theaters, and Obi-Wan Kenobi will sort of become the next official Star Wars movie. I am all for it. I told Harry last night and he was so excited he almost exploded. I don’t know how I am going to feel about it Covid-wise, but we’re already thinking of trying to go to a matinee of Thor: Love and Thunder as a possible first trip back to the theater. We’ll have to see.

What else… I was thinking of doing some car music today but I slept too late. Maybe tomorrow. Definitely over the weekend. I don’t have any songs ready for guitars yet, other than one that is ready for leads, so I want to finish the bass/drums bed for a couple more songs too. I have my big amp, the one I used at the last gig, in the music nook now and I want to use it. Things to do, things to do.

Friday Thoughts

I am going to dash out of work today as soon as my shift is over and run over to the hospital to visit with my mother. Yesterday was a banner bad day. Word is that today is a little better. Here’s hoping. I will be going back tomorrow morning and Sunday afternoon. I’m back to reality now so it’s time to pitch in. Gladly. Even though it’s going to be awful, I am ready to help.

That probably means a delay in getting the band back together. That’s tough, but necessary. I have a doctors appointment on June 30th, which means I will be 2/3 of the way to the Guitar Center in Nashua. I’m thinking that might be Stratocaster Trade In Day. What comes next depends on the book value of my Strat. I guarantee it won’t be enough for anything new. What if they have a used Deluxe Reverb in stock? What if they have a used Les Paul Junior in stock? Who knows.

I spent my lunch break exercising. Every day this week so far I have done a full 30 minutes of exercise in one shot. It’s all walking in place, but it’s something. I was most definitely not able to do that at any time over the last few years. It’s only since the surgery and recovery. I think I have actually done a single 30 minute workout for 10 days in a row. I am shocked.

Now, having said that, they are not exactly killer exercises. My heart rate is going up but it’s not going up as much as it should. Wednesday will be the six week mark, which means the restrictions on how much weight I can lift will start relaxing. The first thing I will do is change the cat litter. The second is to start thinking about maybe lifting some small weights? I might wait an extra couple of weeks before anything like that, but the thought is out there. I need to exercise to make up for lost muscle mass, or something like that. I need to do right by my new physical condition.

Television. I still haven’t finished Breaking Bad and I am so close. Something like five or six episodes left. I need to wrap that up. Season Three of The Boys has started. I think there are four episodes out. I’ve watched the first few minutes of episode one (so worth the herpes) and that’s it. Why have I not dug into it yet? I still haven’t watched yesterday’s episode of Strange New Worlds. Why? What the hell, Robert? I haven’t even thought about starting the new seasons of The Orville or Stranger Things. What is wrong with me?

I have a lot of recording I want to get to as well. One song ready to mix. Two ready for vocals and one ready for guitar leads. Come on, man. Get it done!

Okay. Work time.

Day Nine

Hello and welcome to day nine post-op. What’s on the agenda for today?

Yesterday I had three one-teaspoon sized “meals” of pureed food. The goal is to get up to five quarter-cup sized “meals”. Based on yesterday’s success, I think that will be doable eventually, but not right away. Today, I’m thinking of bumping up from a teaspoon to a tablespoon. I think that’s a good enough push for myself for one Friday.

I also need to keep up with the liquids. Dehydration is the one troublesome thing over the last week. If I stay on top of it I’m okay. If I don’t I get a little light headed. It doesn’t sound like hard work, but damn, it seriously is. I’m doing okay, it’s just tough and I struggle with it here and there. I also need to continue to get off my ass for a few minutes each hour and move around and keep the circulation moving. That has not been a problem at all, I just need to stay vigilant. The Apple Watch Activity app’s stand hours goal is a help there. I think I’ve missed one stand hour in the last week. No troubles there.

I am turning into a television binge watching couch potato though. I mean, enjoy it while it lasts, right? I mentioned all the Star Trek yesterday, but I also got it into my pea brain to get back into Breaking Bad (I’m about to finish season two), and there’s a new horror show on Prime Video called From that looks okay. I watched the first episode yesterday. Today is also supposed to be the debut of the new season of The Kids in the Hall, the first in 30 or so years, also on Prime Video. I can’t miss that. Over on Netflix, I plowed through the second season of Russian Doll in world record time. It wasn’t as good as the first season, but it was still excellent. I’m also trying to stay connected to the guitar universe. I’m a little nervous about playing, what with the incisions in my gut to worry about, but there’s still That Pedal Show and Five Watt World and half a dozen other must-see YouTube channels.

Yeah… couch potato.

Before we get to any of that though… time to make myself a protein shake, then a tablespoon of pureed sweet potato. Later today, around lunch time, I’m thinking of maybe cracking open a little package of applesauce. Mmm, delicacy.

Projects

March kinda sucks.

I go through this every year. I finish my February music projects and then feel this gaping hole in the universe during March. From reading blogs and forum posts on rpmchallenge.com I’m clearly not alone in feeling this way.

So what to do?

A few months ago I was working on a way to add the rest of my old myspace blog to this site. I started up on that again last night. WordPress.com is able to back date posts but it’s a royal pain in the ass to go back to 2007 and 2008. Instead, I created a Blogger account and I’ve been posting back dated entries there. Once I have them all I’ll export them to an .xml file and import them here. That should work fine. The myspace blog covered pretty much all of 2006 through November 2008. I had pulled all of 2006 into my previous wordpress.com site so those are all here already. As of last night the Blogger page has almost all of 2007. I think I have about 75 more posts to go.

I’m still going with my Flickr photo-a-day project. It suddenly feels difficult though. It was easy last month. There was always music happening so I could take pics of that, and Disney made things even easier. Now? What the hell do I take pictures of now? Where’s the cat when I need her?

Back in January Jen and I did a tutorial for a javascript extension (I think that’s the right way to describe it… a scripting language built on top of javascript). It was fun and interesting but my javascript knowledge is ancient and more or less nil at this point. I thought I might have gotten more out of it if I did a javascript tutorial first. I would like to try something like that in the coming weeks. I would like to be a better all around programmer than I am right now. My company’s development tools and programming languages are proprietary, so even if I’m firing on all cylinders at work it doesn’t really extend to the rest of the world.

Years ago I found a set of wordpress.com tutorials called Blogging University. There are various beginner and intermediate level courses to help you get the most out of your wordpress.com experience. There were classes for customization, writing, photography, and interacting with other blogs. I might give some of those a try again, just for schnitzengiggles. If I remember correctly they were mostly prompts. Things like, today you should write a better About page, or today you should take a picture of water. Stuff like that. The photo stuff would be fine to redo, as I just said I’m always looking for ideas for photo-a-day. The basic blogging stuff is probably too simple for this page, but there is always the lizardfishmusic.com page. I could make some changes there. I don’t think I’ve made any changes to the layout there since I first created it. Maybe a face lift would be fun?

Exercising should be an obvious target for new projects. I had a really bad night Weight Watchers wise last night and I’m feeling a little crummy about myself today. I got home from work and just started shoveling food into my face and I really didn’t stop until I fell asleep. I need to be better than that. The gym might help in that regard, or at least minimize the damage of any future bad days. Right now I am having a problem with one of my feet (again). My right foot feels a little swollen and it hurts to walk. It’s not the same thing I had a month or so ago, and it’s not nearly as bad, but it is slowing me down right now. Once that eases up I need to get back to the gym, and I need to get into a regular routine.

There is always more music to record, and more songs to learn for Lizardfish, and more practicing in general to do. Just because February is over doesn’t mean I can stop playing. I was doing pretty well with finding time to practice back in January. I need to keep up with it. I’m tired of feeling like the weak link in the band. I’m also thinking of trying something new gear wise. I want to try to run a two amp rig in the band, but most of the amps I have now are way too powerful and if I paired them up I’d be unable to not drown out the rest of the band during rehearsals. I keep looking at my 15 watt Fender Bassbreaker as the solution. If I could pair that with another lowish watt amp that could work. I am thinking about going to Guitar Center to inquire about trading my Fender Stratocaster in for a Vox AC15. I think that might be the key to making it all work. A Fender Princeton reissue could do it, but it’s only a 10 inch speaker and I’d prefer to stick to 12 inch speakers if I can. I just like them better. We’ll see.

Should I start looking into using in-ear monitors? One of the guys in the band uses them. One of the hosts of the Gig Gab podcast swears by them. So much so that he’s always inspiring the other host to try them, even though he has a hard time with them. I don’t really want to spend money on it, but we’re getting to the point where we’re going to be mic’ing the room during rehearsals and I always wear ear plugs anyway. Is it time? I’m trying to decide. I’m definitely on the fence. We’ll see.

I was hoping that by this point in 2020 I would be able to do something to help out with the Warren for President campaign. I guess that isn’t going to happen. At least it seems highly unlikely now. I can get behind Bernie Sanders, but the idea of a candidate in his late 70’s who has already suffered a heart attack during this campaign is a little depressing. Platform wise I can 100% get on board. Human wise… ugh. As for Joe Biden. He’s a great guy and I love him to pieces, but he’s literally my last choice of all of the candidates we’ve had. Dead last. Yet another guy in his late 70’s but this time one who just feels like a frat boy who got lucky. He just seems a little too dumb ass for the oval office, and we already have a total dumb ass in the office now. If he ends up with the nomination he’ll get 100% of my support… I was just hoping the rest of the country would jump on the Warren bandwagon, that’s all. Yet another reason to feel let down by my fellow Americans.

There are a crap ton of TV shows that I want to watch. February has resulted in me falling way behind on all of the CW super hero shows that I like to watch. I’m like two months behind on The Flash, Supergirl, and Batwoman. I’ve been trying to get caught up on Star Trek Discovery. Season two is really good, I just haven’t had time to power through. The last season of Star Wars The Clone Wars is either about to come out or has just recently come out. I wanted to binge the whole series before I watched the new season but… Jar Jar… he kinda killed my interest in that. I want to finish season two of You even though it’s definitely meh. I want to watch Lock and Key and The Expanse and I still want to get back into Breaking Bad and Preacher. I’ve started both of them, but just haven’t been able to keep going. I’m not sure why, the are both good. I’m caught up on The Walking Dead, and the second spin off is just a month or so away. One show that I did not fall behind on in February is Star Trek Picard. It is so good. Just, so very good. I wish it was going to be a 25 episode season instead of 10 (I think it’s just going to be 10). I don’t want it to end… ever.

I’m sure there are other projects I can come up with that are just there for fun and a sense of creative accomplishment. If we get lucky and Spring actually gets here there are always day trips up to the mountains that I can drag my beloved Mrs to. There are so many waterfalls, and so many scenic views up there. They are all just sitting there, waiting for me and Jen and my camera to come and visit.

There’s also always Disney World. Or Disneyland. Or Euro-Disney, if that’s even still a thing. I’d say Tokyo Disney too but I have a co-worker who was supposed to go there next week and he told me it’s closed due to some global pandemic* thing. Maybe you’ve heard of it?

On an unrelated note, I am trying a new browser again. The same podcast that inspired me to try Brave has inspired me to try Vivaldi. This post is the first thing I’ve done with it. Isn’t that exciting? I’m just glad that the Last Pass plug in for Chrome works in Vivaldi too. That makes life a tiny bit easier.

*Go wash your hands. Seriously.