Covid Booster: The Day After

I had a Covid-19 booster shot yesterday, the Omicron specific sucker, and boy do I feel like shit today. Body aches, brain fog, and holy crap is the arm I got the shot in sore. File under: Ouch.

It’s a safe bet that today is going to be spent sitting in the living room pretending to watch the TV. I came up with a list of things to do today, mostly musical stuff, and then I actually got out of bed, felt my head swim, and rewrote the list. Today I am going to watch the five episodes of Star Wars Andor while pretending I am not 55% asleep.

Patches was kind enough to let me take her picture, so I don’t have to worry about the photo a day thing. Wasn’t that nice of her? Good kitty.

Lunch Time Photo Shoot

I took a bunch of pictures of my Strat at lunch today. I ended up using the DSLR, the point and shoot, and the iPhone. I don’t know if I can use any of them. The color is too blue. The guitar finish is more green than you can see in any of the images. I tried flash, I tried no flash. I tried low ISO, I tried high ISO (even though ISO doesn’t have anything to do with color, I was just hoping more light would improve the look).

Oh well. We’ll see.

Calling Me… Calling Me…

A follow up to last night’s post about wanted to shoot some film now, thus breaking my pledge to wait until late November…

It’s calling me… calling me… calling me…

Technically those nine rolls of film should be in a refrigerator, but I am not that far down the rabbit hole yet. My desk will do for now.

For now.

I Used to Live Here

I just dropped off my key to my parents house in Tewksbury. The house is empty. A chapter of my past is closing this week. I feel like there will be a time in the future where I am able to look back on my time in that house fondly, but as of right now I cannot see past the last few years there when I was just miserable. Fortunately there was Jennifer waiting for me like a light at the end of the tunnel.

I took a few pics. I don’t know why. The lights in this one look kinda groovy.

Gloomy Lake

The weather is kinda crummy today but in the interest of the photo-a-day thing and avoiding crowds at supermarkets I found myself taking the back roads through Salem, NH and I stopped at Canobie Lake and snapped a couple pics. They suck, but so what?

The question now is, are we going back to Vermont again? Bellana and her roommates were in Massachusetts yesterday and they stopped at the house for a quick hello. We think one of them left their coat here because there is a coat in the dining room that doesn’t belong to either of us. It’s cold out today so we may be bringing it back to whichever roommate left it. No clear plans yet, but we’ll see.

A Few Foliage Pics

Here are a few pics from our drive up to the mountains today.

This spot is a scenic pull off on Bear Notch Road.

These are from a pull off near Crawford Notch, as clearly denoted by the sign.

Here are a bunch from the Willey House in Crawford Notch.

The polarizing filter in action, first:

Second:

Shutter at 1/80th of a second:

Shutter at 0.8 seconds:

A few from outside the Mount Washington Hotel.

My favorite stop of the day, The Balsams Resort in Dixville Notch.

I should probably crop out the street sign.

Pain Pain and More Pain

I put leads on four songs before work this morning. It was a bad experience in three ways. First, I am so rusty it’s embarrassing. Second, the interface problems left me on the verge of screaming in fury and frustration the whole time. Third, I have no callusses on my finger tips anymore and I am in searing, burning agony right now. I played for about 45 minutes and oh my god the finger tip pain.

Fun.

I have four songs to mix by the end of the day. I don’t have an album-in-a-month for September, but maybe I have an EP in a month? At the very least I’ll have my first RPM Challenge Record Every Month song since RPM ended in February. That’s nice. The four songs I have to pick from are AWFUL and the guitar playing is AWFUL and the singing is AWFULAWFULAWFUL, but at least they exist. I guess.

My iPad has a USB C input. I am thinking of trying to use one of my USB interfaces with the iPad to see if the same problems with lagging will happen on that machine. If not, then I can keep writing and recording without wanting to punch holes in the wall in furious angry anger as the input signal drops out for a fraction of a second and fucks up a solid take… again and again and again and again. That would be nice. If the iPad work around doesn’t work… I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ll need to upgrade to a faster USB interface but I most definitely do not have any money for that. Two kids in college, you know? Urgh.

Pics…

Homeownerversary

12 years ago today we bought a house. We done good.

USB C Hates Me

I did some music this morning. The infuriating problems I had with my interface yesterday were worse today. I used different cables and adapters and eventually used a different interface all together and it just kept getting worse. I don’t know what I am going to do. I did manage to get through guitars for one song and vocals for two, but it left me so effing mad, and the performances were complete shit.

There’s two pics though, so I guess that’s okay?