Daily writing prompt

What daily habit do you do that improves your quality of life?

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I’m pretty sure this is the third time we’ve had this as the daily prompt. Not exactly the same prompt, of course, but essentially the same. I’ve only been playing along for a couple of months. I wonder how many daily habit questions they’ve given us in total.

The answer, of course, is having dinner with Jen after work. That only works when we’re both working from home. I have one day a week (sometimes two) where I am in the office and the evening commute throws off the time table and messes everything up. Jen is now in the office once a week too, but she’s a lot closer to home and gets out a lot earlier too. She’ll likely be able to keep to the dinner schedule.

Honorable mentions go to getting up early, exercising before work, sticking to regular meal schedules (for gastric bypass reasons), spending evenings with Jen even if we don’t actually do anything together, playing music, watching good television. Stuff like that. It’s all good for the mental health.

Daily writing prompt

What was the last thing you searched for online? Why were you looking for it?

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This one is going to be uber exciting.

Yesterday was this week’s day in the office. Usually that means one of our two or three buildings in Westwood, MA but this time it was Foxborough. That’s the second farthest commute possible without traveling to a building outside of New England. My GPS app took me on the fastest route which was also the long way around. It was 73 miles.

I spent the morning in Foxborough but was able to move up to Westwood for the afternoon. That’s the building closest to home, about 40 miles away. I did not have enough gas left in the car to get me from Foxborough to Westwood, and finally Robert gets to the point.

The last thing I searched for online was, “gas stations near <insert the Foxborough building’s address here>” in Google Maps.

What an animal I am, eh?

Daily writing prompt

What TV shows did you watch as a kid?

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I watched a lot of TV as a kid. So much that I am sure I forget more of the regulars than I actually remember.

After school it was channel 56 in Boston. They aired cartoons in the afternoon and then sitcoms in the evening. We sort of put it on and just let it run.

Cartoons included the Hanna-Barbera stuff mostly. Flintstones, Jetsons, stuff like that. They aired various incarnations of Tom and Jerry and Loony Toons too. Bugs Bunny was my favorite of all of those, but the Loony Toons stuff was so much better than Merry Melodies.

The sitcoms got increasingly more adult focused as the evening rolled on. Happy Days and Lavern and Shirley were on earlier than Three’s Company or Good Times or All in the Family. I much preferred Happy Days. That was right up my ally when I was a kid in the late ’70’s.

Saturday mornings were all about cartoons too. The Super Friends were and still are the best. I am having a tough time remembering anything else. For a while we used to get Land of the Lost, which wasn’t a cartoon but was awesome.

I’m sure there are 10 or 20 thousand more shows that we all watched regularly but I can’t recall much more than these at the moment. Also, it’s a work in the office day and it’s 6:39am and I have to get a move on so…

…Rob clicks publish (without proof reading, sorry).

Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite time of day?

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What’s my favorite time of day? Do I have a favorite time of day?

I don’t think I’ve thought of this since the days of my carefree youth when I was such a night person I slept until at least noon whenever I could.

Today? I think my favorite time of day is tied to working from home in a way. I punch out of work at 5:30 or so and come upstairs and make dinner for me and Jen. Most nights we sit in the living room and eat dinner together there. That’s when my favorite time of day starts. That moment when dinner is served and we sit down together. From there until we turn in for the night, that’s my favorite time of day. All of the responsibilities have been taken care of, all of the work done. We just spend time together.

That’s the perfect time of day. That’s gold.

Daily writing prompt

What’s your favorite recipe?

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What’s my favorite recipe? Do I have a favorite recipe? I suppose I used to, but since having gastric bypass my ability to eat has been drastically reduced. These days my favorite recipe is probably a frozen chicken patty and a handful of frozen french fries cooked in an air fryer and chased by a protein bar, followed at least 60 minutes later by a water bottle full of sugar free lemonade mix.

Basically anything in an air fryer gets it done for me today. Chicken, fish, anything on the lighter side. I find myself in the second year post-op getting in touch with my Irish heritage by craving potatoes all the time. Mashed, baked, fried, whatever. I just like potatoes a lot now. It’s kind of weird.

On the more adventurous side, Jen cooked a veggie egg dish a couple of weeks ago that was really good. She also makes a quinoa dish with taco seasoning that is amazing. So amazing I tend to eat too much of it too quickly which makes me a little sick. I need to be more careful when she cooks it. I went grocery shopping yesterday and she put taco seasoning on the list. Was that a hint? We’ll see.

So do I have a favorite recipe? Not really. I have things that work for my bypassed digestive system and I expect I will be eating them regularly for the rest of my life. That is 100% a-okay with me.

Now I am going to publish this and have a protein bar for breakfast and then go and do some car music. Happy Sunday, everyone.

Daily writing prompt

Tell us about the last thing you got excited about.

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The last thing I was excited about, well that’s simple. Harry came home for a week. He had an appointment at an auto body place in Salem so he came home and stayed with us while his car was being worked on. Having him come home for an unexpected visit was the last thing I was really excited about. He’s back home in Vermont now but his car is still in the shop. We’ll get to see him sometime next week when he comes back to swap the rental car for his actual car. That won’t be much of a visit, but I am pretty excited about that too.

How about a few honorable mentions, just to make the writing exercise last a smidge longer?

I was excited about going to Bar Harbor a couple of weekends ago. Both because it was a long weekend get away with the love of my life, but also because my step daughter Bellana went with us. I was super excited about that plan as I am always excited about travel plans. Also, that last sentence is what we call a transition sentence and I guess it’s also technically foreshadowing as well.

Speaking of travel plans (see what I did there?), the next thing to get excited about is another long weekend get away. This time it’s Disney World. A few weeks from now Jen and I are going to fly down to Orlando on Wednesday night and come back after a few days. Two nights ago while on a very lovely dinner date at a Greek restaurant, Jen looked at me and said, out of nowhere, “I am really excited about Florida.”* I agreed wholeheartedly. I still do.

*That may not be an exact quote, even though I wrote it as if it were. You get the gist at least.

Daily writing prompt

How would you design the city of the future?

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My first thought when I read today’s prompt was to think, “nope. Not playing along today. This one is dumb and I don’t care.” Then I thought about it for a few seconds and came up with one or two ideas and now I am back to playing along.

I come from Boston, Massachusetts, USA. My city was founded 400 or so years ago, centuries before the industrial revolution kicked off. The city wasn’t designed, it evolved. What we now call roads, both major and minor, were originally probably cow paths or hiking trails or horse and buggy lanes. They likely didn’t make any sense at the start and given modern transportation options they sure as hell don’t make sense today.

If I were to design a city for the future I would start from there. I would lay out the roads in an efficient, smart manner. Either a grid or a wheel with spokes or something like that. The roads would be wide enough to support multiple lanes of traffic. There would be routes reserved for cars, routes for trucks, routes for bicycles and other pedestrian traffic, and plenty of space for foot traffic. I imagine the foot traffic areas would be separated from the roads somehow and probably look more like parks. In Boston we have Commonwealth Avenue and the Rose Kennedy Greenway. I’d probably design it similar to those ideas.

Under the city would be great big gobs of public transportation. An extensive subway system. If I am going to have all of this space for surface traffic it’s going to mean my swanky city is going to be pretty huge in terms of square footage, you know? You’re not going to be able to easily walk from one end of town to the other so subways will take care of that. I’m not an economist (or an engineer) so I don’t know how, but I would hopefully figure out a way to make public transportation free. We’ll see about that, capitalism.

The buildings would need to be tall. My town will be a skyscraper town. I would want the commercial and residential districts to be close to each other in hopes that people could get an apartment close to work, or get a job close to home. I don’t know how to do that, but it’s an idea. I’d have to hire smart engineers to piece all of these wacky ideas together, but I’m sure someone would have the know-how to pull it off.

Now all I need is the land to build this goofy metropolis. It’s going to need a lot of space. How close are we to terraforming Mars? That might be enough square footage, maybe.

I guess my next thought is… did I just plagiarize Epcot? Probably. That would make sense.

Daily writing prompt

Where did your name come from?

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Yeah… On July 28th the daily writing prompt asked where your nickname comes from. I don’t have a nickname so my response included explaining where my name comes from.

So yeah… I have literally done this one already. Oh well.

My parents were expecting their second child. The first was a girl named Lisa. For their second child, I don’t know what the chosen female name would have been. The male name was my father’s name. Robert James. That second child was a boy… me. 52 years later, my father and I are still both named Robert James. He goes by Bob. I go by Rob.

And that, friends, neighbors, and loyal readers, is that story.

Again.

Daily writing prompt

What motivates you?

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I have no idea how to answer this question. Also, I am running late this morning so I don’t have any time to spend thinking about it. You’re just getting a gut reaction post today. Sorry.

My main motivation for pretty much everything is my family. I do what I can with the primary purpose of helping Jen and the Kids. Helping however they need help. Making them happy, making them secure, making their lives slightly easier by doing things so they don’t have to do them themselves. That sort of thing.

Outside of family, the motivation at work is the pay check that comes at the end of the month. That’s pretty standard and straightforward, right? I also am motivated to make things easier for my staff, and to make them look good to upper management. That sort of thing. Whatever I can do to help.

There’s also the creative motivation that pushes me to keep making bad music and bad photos. I am not sure what the purpose behind all of that is beyond my own mental health. Some sort of creative outlet makes me feel better about the world around me. It’s hard to stress about nazis in your neighborhood when you’re playing guitar at a gratuitous volume, you know?

Those are the main ideas, I think. Now I have to publish this so I can finish getting ready for work and get out the door to the office in time to sit in an hour and a half worth of gridlock. Yippee.

Daily writing prompt

What are your top ten favorite movies?

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My top 10 favorite movies? Nope, this question is impossible to answer. There’s no way I could narrow it down to 10 and there’s no way I could rank them appropriately. This is one of those lists that changes daily with the weather, or my mood, or my health, or whatever.

I’ll try though. They will be in no particular order (besides number one), and the list will be more like film franchises than individual movies. Okay… here goes.

1. Star Wars. Empire Strikes Back is the best of the bunch but all of the Star Wars movies are grouped in here. The original trilogy is the best, but I am including the prequels and sequels and stories too. I love them all. They are my favorite movies ever. A bad Star Wars movie is better than any other movie ever made, though to me there are no bad Star Wars movies. I adore them all.
2. The Godfather. Godfather 2 is probably the best of the three. Godfather 3 is by far the worst of the three, but I include them all because they are all brilliant.
3. The Highlander. This one does not include the sequels. It’s just the original. All of the others are garbage. The original is pretty terrible too, but in a really good way, you know?
4. Good Marvel movies. Not all of them, just the best of them. Infinity War/Endgame, Winter Soldier, Ragnarok, the first Avengers movie, Civil War. There are probably a few others that deserve to be listed, but those are the big ones.
5. The Dark Knight.
6. The Cornetto Trilogy. Sean of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and World’s End. Sean is the best by light years, but they are all pretty much perfect.
7. Star Trek: The Even Numbered movies. Wrath of Kahn, Voyage Home, Undiscovered Country, First Contact. The greats. We can also include the Kelvin timeline movies here. I seriously dig those as well.
8. Goodfellas
9. The Naked Gun. Let’s include the bigger of the Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker movies. Naked Gun and it’s sequels, Airplane, Top Secret. Also, BASEketball which is a terrible, terrible movie but I love every stupid, idiotic second of it.
10. Harry Potter. I love them all, despite Rowling turning into an fucknuckle. My favorites are Azkaban, Goblet, and the two Deathly Hallows. Phoenix is especially important to me because my wife and I saw it multiple times together when we were first dating. It will always hold a special place in my heart for that.

Like I said at the start, if you were to ask me this question tomorrow the list would be very different. This works for today though.