Tag: college kids

Back to Work

Well… I knew I couldn’t fight it. I punched into work a little before 9:00am and stuck the final nail in this year’s holiday season’s coffin. It’s over, folks.

The kids are still here. I figured they would have left by now so I am pretty happy. They did both sleep really late though so that might be the reason. I don’t care. I love it when they are here. Even when I am working and can’t go hang out with them.

Today has been really quiet overall. Not much to write about. The Bruins played twice over the weekend, finally coming back from the long Covid-19 shut down. I watched a few minutes of Saturday’s game against Buffalo and the little that I saw looked pretty awful. They straightened it out and won in overtime. I didn’t see yesterday’s game against Detroit but they spanked them pretty thoroughly. Here’s hoping that’s a sign of good things to come.

Major League Baseball is still locked out. I keep seeing stories tweeted out from all sorts of sources talking about the things such and such a team needs to do to improve and yadda yadda blah. I haven’t been reading the articles but I am really hoping they all boil down to something along the lines of “don’t be locked out.” Everything else is sort of superfluous* until that happens.

What else, what else… did I mention that all of my workout time that my Apple Watch tracked last week was on the exercise bike? I’m pretty sure that was a first for me. Does it mean anything? No. No, it does not.

I haven’t given much thought to the RPM Challenge this year. The only thing that’s come to me for something different to do is to use two guitars. I always double track my rhythm guitar parts. What if, instead of just tracking everything twice, I use a different guitar for each take? My Les Paul Standard would be playing in one ear, and my SG would be playing in the other. What about that for goofy nerdness? Maybe even use a different amplifier with each guitar. I’m thinking about it.

Okay, 2:00pm approaches. Time to wrap up this lunch break post.

*I had to pay $0.10 to use that word.

And So This is Monday

Marjorie Taylor Greene has been permanently suspended from Twitter.
Devin Nunes has left Congress.
Monday has arrived and the holiday season is over. Back to work with us.

That’s the news and I am outa here.

I don’t want to go to work today. I am sitting at my desk, looking at my computer and just thinking over and over again, I don’t want to go to work today. Really, once I punch in I will be over it and everything will be normal again, but right now? Damn it, I don’t want to go to work today.

There isn’t much else going on. I think we’re a little burned out from Christmas/New Years and are sort of ready to settle back into life. Not work though. I don’t want to go to work today. The kids will be going to their father’s tonight and staying there until some point on Wednesday. Bellana leaves for her study abroad program next week and Harry returns to school the following weekend.

For me personally, I have super shaggy Covid hair again. Back when the pandemic started, about 22 months ago, my hair was in need of a cut. Everything shut down though so I had to deal. After a month or so it was so long it was insane and Jen cut it for me. Now here we are, two years later. I was planning on getting a hair cut at the beginning of December, but that little omicron bitch came along and messed that up. I know I have three vaccine shots and everyone will be masked up, but I still don’t want to risk getting something and passing it on to the kids and screwing up their plans. Once Harry moves back to school I’ll get a hair cut. Until then… super shaggy Covid hair. Again.

There is only one other item of blog-worthy note today. It feels like it’s kicking off quite a bit early this year but…

I’ve signed up already.

Prepare yourself for the obnoxiously boring posts.

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

Plant Sitting

Bellana is going into a study abroad program next month. Her Spring Semester will be in Europe. While she’s world traveling, some one is going to have to look after her plants. Our plant stash is going up from three plants to five (the Japanese Peace Lily is out of the shot).

Here’s hoping I don’t kill them.

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.

Tracking is Done, I think

Assuming I don’t need to add an additional song, I think I finished all of the guitars and all of the vocals for November today. Oh my goodness, my finger tips are on fire. Burning hell fire finger tips. Good heavens.

I think I can stop using the Vox MV50 amp now. I should be able to put it back into the living room with the electric piano. It’s going to be there all setup when the kids come home for Christmas break.

They came over today and decorated the tree and packed up their stuff for school and left. I’m sad for me and excited for them. As usual, right? I just love them. You know how it is.

Attenuation

Usually when we go up to Vermont we leave as early as humanly possible so that we can spend as much time there as we can and still get home at a non-ridiculous hour. Today is a little different. I have to time my arrival to match up with his class schedule. That means I have another hour or so before I have to leave.

I was thinking about playing some guitar before I go, but Jen is working and a few minutes from now she’ll be in a meeting. Better for me to keep quiet. It got me thinking about gear though. The amplifier I am going to use for November is a Vox MV50 Clean. There are a ton of MV50 models, but the Clean is the only one that comes with an attenuator. The others have a master volume. Blah.

It’s supposed to be a 50 watt amp and the attenuator has three settings; Off, 1/10th power, and 1/100th power. So it can be 50 watts, five watts, or 0.5 watts. At 50 watts it is loud. Great googlymoogly it is loud. At 0.5 watts it’s not. It’s a nice, useable at home volume. Well… still maybe a smidge loud, but not bad. I keep it at 0.5 all the time.

But should I? I was complaining the other day about it caving in when I bomb it with signal out of one of my overdrive pedals. Maybe I should set it to 1/10th power and just keep the volume control really low. Hell, maybe I should turn the attenuator off and see if I can use the volume control to keep things manageable. It’s doubtful, but maybe worth a try?

Huh… we’ll see.

Change of subject: Last night I don’t know what I was thinking. Two nights ago I had a memory lapse and got into bed without putting my CPAP mask on. Dumb ass. I realized the mistake before my head was on the pillow and all was right with the world again. Last night I missed two things. I forgot to top off the CPAP machine’s humidifier tank. Oops. It didn’t run out, but it’s close to empty.

I also forgot to charge my friggin’ watch. I finished my 30 minutes of exercise and just forgot to put it on the charger. Next thing I know I’m dozing off and my battery is at 30 something percent. Crap. Well, if it dies it dies. What’s a red head to do? I went to sleep. When I woke up today it was at 12%. It’s good to know that I can go 24 hours without a charge. The downside of course is that it’s been on the charger for about 90 minutes and it’s only back up to 52%. It’s probably not going to be fully charged by the time I have to leave. That’s okay. It’ll be charged enough.

I still need to top off the gas tank (it’s about 190 miles each way. In my hybrid Kia, if I start with a full tank I can get there and back and still have about a quarter of a tank left. I friggin’ love science) and pick up some caffeinated beverages for the ride. After that the only question is music or podcasts? If it’s music I might go with the new live record from The Pineapple Thief. I first stumbled across them a couple of years ago and it’s all good stuff, just nothing that sets the world on fire for me. Their new live record (they couldn’t tour last year so they did one show in an empty room and webcast it everywhere. The new record is that show) does it. It sets the red head’s head right on fire. Great album. I was seeing all this potential and waiting for a record that lived up to it. The last one was close. This new one nails it. Having said that though… I’ll still probably go with podcasts. That’s just kinda where I’m at this morning.

Happy travels, folks!

Road Trip on the Books

It’s official. I’m Vermont bound in the morning. Three hours up, drop off a laptop, three hours back. Sounds like a fun day to me.

The last time we went up there we took the kids to lunch. Covid dictated we get take out and eat it in the car. Someone, I’m not sure who, did not finish their lunch (it wasn’t me, I scarfed my sub down like the universe depended on it). I went to get something out of the car this morning and… oh the smell was powerful. I cleaned out the food and opened all of the windows. I think it’s okay now.

I mentioned before that I started a time lapse video with my iPad before work this morning. It’s still running. I’m going to stop it soon. It’s been over 10 hours. That should be a pretty good chunk of data for the iPad to work with.

I was thinking about time lapses and the road trip that’s coming and trying to figure out a way to have a time lapse running out the window of the car for the whole way up and the whole way back. Can I do that? I’d have to figure out a way to either aim out the window, or balance the iPad against the window. I think it might be more trouble than it’s worth. I wish I still had that little iPod Touch. If I could keep it plugged in that would work. Too bad it died.

Oh well. Probably not worth the effort.

Okay, I need to go blow out the candles. Talk to you later.

Change of Plans

Today was supposed to be a trip up to Vermont to visit the kids. Lunch with one and a swapping of warm clothes for summer clothes for the other. Alas it was not to be… yet. Next week. An ear infection and a stomach bug have derailed the plans for today, but we’ve already rescheduled for next week.

Instead, Jen and I took a crack at the mess that is Bellana’s room. When the cellar was flooded the first time we started storing stuff in her room. When the cellar flooded the second time we continued to use her room for storage. We didn’t do it a lot, but we did pile up some stuff. We spent a good chunk of our Saturday morning getting rid of crap we don’t need and finding new homes for the stuff we might need in the future. The cellar, specifically.

My back is killing me from going up and down the stairs. That’s okay. I’m at my desk in the bedroom with the window open enjoying what is probably the last moments of decent weather. I hate fall. The leaves are starting to fall. Bite me, mother nature.

Oh well.

Baseball at 4:00, hockey at 7:00, guitar at?

Awake

Still awake. I wanted to go to sleep early but it wasn’t happening. Oh well, I’ll keep trying.

I just watched the first episode of Y the Last Man on Hulu. Color me hooked so far.

I wish Major League Baseball had booked game one of the ALCS for tomorrow instead of Friday. I have all this built up hype and no where to put it.

I still don’t know why the NHL season opened on the 12th but the Bruins don’t play until the 16th. Is it a TV rights thing? The NHL is back with ESPN for the first time in something like 300 years. Figures. NBCsn streams to an iOS app. ESPN only streams to subscribers. Jerks.

I mentioned we are going up to Vermont on Saturday. We are bringing cold weather clothing to Bellana (and bringing warm weather clothes back home with us) and we are meeting Harry for lunch. I can’t wait. Weekly FaceTime calls are great, but I’m looking forward to actual face time.

Okay, I’m going to put some music on and see if I can sleep. Talk to you all tomorrow.