Tag: Christmas

Composing Topical Christmas Songs

Now that it looks like we are going to be quarantining for Christmas I feel the need to come up with some topical new Christmas carols*. I’m coming up empty though. The best I have are just parodies and they are awful. Weird Al would be so disappointed in my work.

For example, change “I want a hippopotamus** for Christmas” to “We’re going into quarantine for Christmas.” I told you it was awful.

The only other one I have right now is to change “all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth” to “all I want for Christmas is no quarantine” but that’s just embarrassingly bad.

I think I am going to quit while I’m ahead. Blah. I’m guessing the universe will thank me for stopping before it gets out of control.

*The reason I feel the need to come up with some topical new Christmas carols is because I need to do something to distract myself from the need to just start screaming in frustration. Covid can kiss my ass… again.

**I spelled hippopotamus correctly on the first try. I am pretty proud of myself for that.

No Olympics for Us

I was really looking forward to the NHL sending players back to the Olympics this year but I really should have known better. It’s no use getting our hopes up about anything anymore. Here in Covid-land it’s all gone to shit and we’re just going to tread water in said shit for the rest of our days.

One year ago today I wrote this:

“Now we just have three work days, and a Christmas Eve to go before our first and hopefully last ever Covid-19 Christmas. Here’s hoping the little bastard goes down in history as a unique little blip on the universe. HoHoHo.”

Nope. It was most definitely not a unique little blip on the universe. It was a solid kick, square in the balls. Fuck you, universe.

Fuck. You.

Okay, so that got more dramatic than a handful of hockey games deserves, but on the scale of life, the universe, and everything… yeah, fuck you.

Hockey Takes an Early Christmas

The NHL was supposed to go on its Christmas break after the end of play on the 23rd. There would be no activity, including travel, until the 26th.

As it turned out, all of the games on the schedule for the 22nd had already been postponed due to the league shutting down individual teams for Covid outbreaks.

So the league and the players did the smart thing and decided to start the Christmas break early. It now starts at the end of play tonight (the 21st) and all of the games on the books for the 23rd, there are five of them, will be postponed.

I got my info from the players association’s news site.

Now while I think that their hearts are in the right place, I think they are coming up short. Personally, I think they should shut down until New Years Day. Let the infected players recover and then come back on 1/1/22 with the Winter Classic.

But that’s just me.

One Down, Two to Go

What do I have to accomplish this week?

I need to cook dinner tonight. I’ve got one or two gifts to wrap. We need to figure out a Covid safe way to see Spider-Man. I need to bring the Christmas gifts we got for my niece and nephews to them. Not sure how/when that can happen. We never cleared the snow off the cars on Saturday and now they are covered in blocks of ice. We need to figure out what we are going to eat on Christmas Eve. We need to get Bellana home (though really she’s taking care of that one), I still have some tunes to finish, we have to make sure the kids are all set with their Christmas shopping, we have to not catch covid (omicron persei 8).

Yeah, that’s a start on a to do list.

Damn.

Three Days

Thanks to some lucky calendar coincidences, I only have a three day work week this week. Talk about a relief.

Christmas is a day off for us. Christmas is Saturday. When Christmas falls on the weekend the rules are we get Friday off for Saturday holidays and Monday off for Sunday. Therefore we get Friday off this year. Sweet.

Christmas Eve is also a day off for us. We’ve had this particular non-national holiday for a few years now, but this is it. Starting in 2022 (2020 too) it’s back to working on Christmas Eve. This year though, Christmas Eve is on Friday, but we’re off on Friday because of Christmas Day, so we “celebrate” Christmas Eve on Thursday and we get Thursday off.

Every once in a while, the calendar just comes through for you, man. In a big way.

So we’re off on Thursday and Friday and we only have a three day week. Next week will also get some calendar magic as New Years Day is also a holiday that falls on Saturday, meaning we get Friday off. We don’t have a New Years Eve holiday, but the schedule works out that we’re off that day anyway.

Let me take this opportunity to praise 2021 for ending on this little up note, even though almost everything else this year has been rotten festering garbage and thanks to omicron there’s no reason to expect 2022 (2020 too) will be better.

HoHoHo!

Find My

Yesterday afternoon I kept the Find My app up on my iPhone so I could keep an eye on Harry’s progress as he drove home from school. Today it’s Bellana’s turn. She’s not coming home though. She’s driving a roommate home to the deep south. The app might be up all day today and tomorrow. I have no doubt that she and the group she’s with will be safe and healthy. In these uncertain and crazy Covid variant Omicron days though, I am also nervous. Be careful out there folks.

It’s Friday at 8:40am. I have to punch into work soon. I don’t want to. Harry has a remote final exam today. After he finishes that I am just going to want to hang out with him. I’m really happy he’s here. I don’t want to do anything else besides just enjoy the fact that he’s here.

Eight days until christmas. I have one gift to wrap and one more on route. I am going to be ready this year with oceans of time to spare. On the subject of christmas I feel that I should note that I have done a better job making sure the tree is watered than I ever have in any real-tree-year ever. Look at me, patting myself on the back. HoHoHo, babie.

Happy Friday.

ADDENDUM: Find My tells me that Bellana is currently driving though Saratoga Springs, NY. That brings two thoughts to my mind. First, I wonder if they took the ferry across Lake Champlain. Second, one of the best Rush concerts I ever saw was on July 5, 2008 when Jen and I road tripped all the way to Saratoga Springs to see them at SPAC. I was only in the town for a very short time, but I thought it seemed like a wonderful place. Someday we’ll go back.

Rush 7-5-08 Saratoga Springs, NY 1002
Rush 7-5-08 Saratoga Springs, NY 416

On the Way

Harry is on his way home, I think. I have it on good authority (iOS Find My app) that he’s on route 89 heading South. I think he’s coming straight here, but I don’t know that for sure. This makes me happy. Very happy.

One of our christmas presents was ordered online and set to deliver to the recipient’s address. It wasn’t supposed to ship until next week, but it was delivered today. It’s like the theme from Facts of Life. You take the good, you take the bad, yadda yadda yadda. HoHoHo. The gift giving bonanza is officially underway.

Want to know something that I hate? I hate when I go to Google News, find an article worth reading, open the article, and find it’s behind a paywall. Can’t Google filter that shit out? Do they already do it and I just haven’t turned it on yet? I don’t know. I hate it. Either way.

Pink Floyd just surprise released a shit load of live albums today. They are all from 1970-72. Almost all of them are from 1971. Back in my bootleg hunting days, I went through a major Pink Floyd bootleg obsession. I have heard most of the shows they released today. I was hoping they were going to magically have high quality, multi-track recordings of those shows but they didn’t. They basically just released the same bootlegs I listened to years ago. I tried listening during work, but the bad sound quality stopped me. Don’t get me wrong, I am going to listen to every note that came out today 100 times each. I am not complaining about the sound quality. My favorite bootlegs are all from 1970, but the 1971 shows were magic too. Echoes! They were still improvising then. Not as much as they did in the beginning, but it was still a big deal. I am going to listen to all of this stuff in headphones and get as much inside of it as I can. Oh, and there’s a partial show from ’72 that has most of a pre-release Dark Side of the Moon. The song titles match the studio versions, but does the music? Might there be a Preacher in there? Might there be a jamming version of On the Run? (please?please?please?)

Okay, enough of my yakkin’. Back to work. When Harry gets here and the work day is over, we’re doing Marvel and Burgers night, just like we did before he went off to college. Awwww.

Coming Home Tomorrow

My step son is coming home tomorrow. Have I mentioned that? Do you/they know it’s christmas time at all?

Jen just came into my bedroom/office/work nook and said that to her, today feels like Friday. It was a great minds think alike moment because I had been thinking the same thing all day. It’s only Wednesday but it totally feels like Friday. That’s going to make the next two days suck. I checked my work schedule tomorrow and it’s blank. I don’t have any meetings booked at all. It’s almost creepy.

My christmas wrapping is almost done. Did I mention that? I’ve still got a couple of things on the way (package delivery, a symptom of ‘Covid Christmas Too’) but as of now, everything I have to wrap is wrapped… and there are still 10 days left until christmas. That is also almost creepy.

I was going to do car music this morning, but I didn’t. I did a couple of errands instead. I snaked the drain like a faux plumber. As it turned out, I was able to sneak in everything I had left to do during lunch. You may have noticed that there wasn’t a lunch break blog post (no you didn’t. No one did. No one should). Two songs need both rhythm and lead guitar parts. Four just need lead guitar. Two more are already ready to mix. Music, ya know?

Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden has a podcast. World class fencer, airline pilot, novelist, metal god. The dude has range. It’s called Psycho Schizo Espresso. It’s Bruce and a psychologist talking about stuff. Okay, I’ll give it a spin.

Four minutes until the work day ends. Fingers crossed nothing comes my way during those four minutes, because I am cooking dinner tonight and the oven is already pre-heated. Chicken and Quinoa. They should call Chicken and Quinoa, ‘The Robert’ because it’s pretty much the only dish I am capable of making.

Three minutes to go…

Okay, clicking Publish now.