My exercise ring is closed. I am up to 32 minutes. Two minutes over my goal. I usually walk to close the ring. Today I changed it up a little.
I went with the bike. Oh sweet merciful universe did this thing kick my ass. It was in five minute increments wrapped around large chunks of time wallowing in the pain and suffering that riding the bike caused.
Still…. The ring is closed. The activity app can suck it.
Another lunch break with out much to talk about. We had plans to go up to Burlington to see the kids this weekend, but the weather is looking bad and thanks to Covid we want to stay outside so we’re looking at rescheduling. I guess I don’t quite need to have Bellana’s Fall laundry done tonight after all. I’ll still try though.
This is going to be broken record-esque. but my back and my shoulders and my legs are killing me and I haven’t don’t any of my exercise yet today. Not good, Robert. Not good.
I started a new candle yesterday. When I lit it again this morning I started a time lapse video. I’ll post it later today and you can bask in the glory of the glorious gloriousness of the candle burning time lapse iPad video.
This has felt like a super long week, but it hasn’t been particularly long at all. I think the start of October just makes everything suck. Not that September’s generally any better. Hang on to it as long as you can though. Don’t leave, September! Stay with me!
I haven’t a clue what I’m talking about anymore.
Okay, back to work. Lunch break is over.
My lunch break is ending. Time to throw up a post.
I got nothing.
Nothing at all.
The last three days have felt like the longest six months ever, har har har.
Jen asked me a question about a Lizardfish show from a few years ago. I had to go to the Lizardfish website to get the details she wanted. Turns out the domain has expired. Did I know that? I think I did. lizardfishmusic.com is no longer a thing. Lizardfishmusic.wordpress.com is though. Turns out I never added the 2/1/20 show to the list of past shows. There’s a post for it, but I never took the next step and added it to the list. I’ll fix that. While I was there I took a second to add a new post saying that we’re missing it. Because we are.
My back is killing me. My neck is killing me. My shoulders are killing me. My legs are killing me. My feet are killing me……. and I still have 28 minutes of exercise to do today. Yikes!
We are planning a drive up to Vermont to check in with the kids and deliver some seasonal clothing. The closer we get to the weekend the more excited about it I get. I’m really looking forward to it, even if it requires me to do a shit ton of laundry. Can’t wait.
See? I had nothing to talk about.
I hope to be posting these things for a long time. Hope you don’t mind.
I just had an unsettling parent sitting flashback. It probably has more to do with being really tired than anything else, but here’s the story…
There are exactly two drinks that I chose to drink at home. One is Diet Pepsi because regular Coca~Cola (my personal drug of choice) is the primary reason why I am as grotesquely fat as I currently am. The other is grape flavored water. We have a Poland Springs cooler which is amazing. I fill up a water bottle with spring water and then poor some of that liquid flavoring stuff into it. Fruit Punch is good. Lemonade is all right if you get the right brand. Grape flavoring rules all. Unfortunately it’s expensive and I am trying to cut down on how quickly I blow through bottles of it by just sometimes drinking plain old, boring spring water.
That’s the first back story. Here’s the second. During the parent sitting adventure I would take a water bottle full of the delicious grape flavored water. I would also bring a second water bottle, but it would not be drinking water. It would be distilled water for my CPAP machine.
(Pause for a second to check on work. I’m still working. We were supposed to start around 4:00pm on Saturday. We instead kicked off our piece of the puzzle at 11:00pm. It’s 2:10am on Sunday and I’m still going strong.)
Here’s the flashback moment. Since dinner time I have had two 32 ounce water bottles full of the delicious grape flavored spring water. I don’t think I am going to bed any time soon and I was dealing with a little dry mouth so it was time for more water. I decided to go without the grape goop this time and just have boring plain water. I wanted to use a clean bottle though so that I didn’t get that little hint of flavoring left over from the last go-round.
I went out to the kitchen and opened up the cabinet to get a new water bottle. The first one I saw is the one I used to keep the distilled water in on parent sitting nights. I saw it there on the shelf and thought that I can’t drink out of that, it’s for the CPAP machine. Woah, wait a tick. I’m not parent sitting tonight. Sure, I am overly tired and my brain is starting to slip into autopilot, but that was weird. I was 100% positive that I could not use that particular bottle because it wasn’t for drinking.
In protest against the way that the parent sitting experience made me feel I took that bottle, filled it up with clear, clean Poland Springs water, and then chugged the fucker.
(Pause to check on work again. The two current utilities are still cranking along. Good good good)
On a totally unrelated note: I finished Saturday’s 30 minutes of exercise before work took off at about 11:00. Knowing that a lot of what I am doing tonight involves kicking off programs and then waiting for them to finish, and knowing that some of them would likely run for an hour or so, I decided to start Sunday’s exercise as soon after midnight as I could. I’m already up to 21 of my 30 minutes. When one of the two programs running completes I am going to kick off another one, and after I do that I am going to walk that last nine minutes. Well, some of it at least. It would be cool to have my 30 minutes in before the sun comes up. It would not be cool to make that a regular thing, but just this once? Groovy.
Should I live blog my Saturday evening work experience?
No. No, I shouldn’t.
I logged in and did about an hour and a half worth of prep. I’ve been waiting for the go ahead to actually start for almost two hours, and it’s probably going to be another good chunk of time before I can actually start.
I just watched this week’s episode of What We Do in the Shadows and it was freakin’ hysterical. Now I’ve said before that I am willing to consider the idea of naming Matt Berry the funniest man in the universe. That’s still true. (he was so freakin’ funny on The IT Crowd that it is hard to describe) However, I am starting to think that Colin Robinson is the best character on that show, and maybe on all of television. He’s a vampire but he isn’t a normal vampire. He’s an energy vampire. He doesn’t drink blood like the rest of the gang, he feeds off of other peoples’ life force. Basically he feeds by boring the crap out of everyone. Just watch the show, you’ll understand.
What else, what else, what else……..
I just queued up a bunch of podcasts to listen to on my iPad. I have a couple of songs for 50/90 ready to mix. I didn’t do any car singing today even though I should have. I had a shitty night sleep last night and I just couldn’t get out of my own way when I got up. If things continue as they are right now I will probably be oversleeping tomorrow too. Not sure, of course. Should I try to mix one of those songs while I wait? Should I try to wait until I sign out of work? Oh boy, the questions.
Oh yeah, and I still have to do all 30 minutes of today’s activity app exercise. Yay!
Okay. I am going to post this now. I am not Live Blogging my work night, but I am likely going to get pretty bored while I wait and when I’m bored I tend to blog… or something.
Hooray, babie.
Now that you’ve found the wagon again, STAY ON IT!!!
I was able to sneak into the cellar and play the guitar twice today.
I got a lot done for 50/90, which was nice, but I reached the point on the second go-round where my hands just wouldn’t do it anymore. That’s actually not a bad thing. I really need to build up more stamina, but I’ll get there.
On a gear note, I have my little recording nook in the master bedroom that has my current recording pedal board and my little 15 watt Fender amp. My big use-with-the-band pedal board and my Vox 15 watt amp (and my 30 watt Fender amp) are all in the cellar because Covid was slowing down and I thought they would be traveling to Mike the Bass Player’s house soon… and of course that hasn’t happened because the universe has intervened. The upside is I could set all of that stuff up in the cellar to keep working on 50/90 while I’m locked out of my bedroom. I bring my new Les Paul and my MacBook Pro up and down with me, as there is no way in hell those puppies are staying down there in the humidity. I set everything up far away from the flood zone, but you may note from the previous pictures that none of the electrical stuff is actually on the floor. The pedal board is, but the pedals themselves are not. That’s for flood damage prevention reasons.
So that is what I am doing to keep 50/90 going this week.
I also wanted to start with the exercising again. I started a couple of weeks ago and then fell off the wagon. I wanted to start up again today, what with it being a Monday and the iPhone Activity app starting its week on Monday. Jen wanted to do the same thing and she totally kicked ass all day today. Me? I was at two minutes of exercise as of 7:00pm tonight. Looked like I was going to fail for the day. Well, screw that folks. I’m up to 17 minutes now with 3.5 hours left in the day. I’ll get to 30 minutes, you betcha.
Okay. I need to go get a bottle of water and do another few minutes of exercise.
Looking for the bright side of self isolation. It’s tough to find, but it might be out there. Probably not, but maybe I might be able to pretend.
The clock was fast approaching 10:00pm and thanks to our glorious flake day I still hadn’t closed two of my Activity app rings. Move was about 3/4 done, but exercise… I had five minutes from going up and down the cellar stairs for laundry and flood clean up, but that was it. Five minutes down and 25 to go.
When Jen went to bed I went down stairs to check on the flood situation. While I was down there I “exercised” for 15 minutes. That’s the longest I’ve gone at once since I started this whole ring closing push two weeks ago.
After that I went upstairs to the bed room and gave my back a good 20-30 minutes of rest before getting up and finishing with 10 more minutes. Kick ass! I had all three rings closed at 11:00, with a full hour to spare.
I’m going to be busy tomorrow so it’s not a guarantee, but I’ve got a shot at my first perfect week in a long time.
Kick ass, dude.
I love my family. They are the best. You will never meet finer people.
Knowing that I am going to be at my parents’ for two whole days and that I won’t see them at all during that time, they asked me if I wanted to play a game of Ticket to Ride Online with them. We all have it on our iPads and figured it would be a nice thing to do together even when we aren’t together. Look me in the eye and tell me that isn’t the nicest thing anyone has ever done. I mean, seriously. How wonderful are Jen and Harry? I know Bellana’s not a big fan of that game, but maybe we can find something we can all play, assuming we can sneak it in around her work schedule as she is working up a storm in the final weeks before school starts.
I’m not sure who setup the network at my parents house, but I am pretty sure they have a firewall of some kind that is blocking online games. I’ve mentioned my troubles with World of Warcraft in the past, and tonight I had to switch from the wifi to my iPhone’s hotspot in order to connect to the game. I know my sister’s kids were doing some of their remote school here last year. I wonder if they put something in to keep them honest.
Speaking of online games, Jen and I have been playing World of Warcraft for the last month or so. WoW is owned and operated by a company called Blizzard. Blizzard has been getting demolished with charges of various kinds of sexual misconduct in the work place. I believe their CEO resigned over it recently. Karmically speaking (I do not believe in Karma, but the principal still applies) we are both starting to feel uncomfortable supporting the company so we’re looking for something else to play. Jen was looking into Star Wars: The Old Republic today. She won’t have to twist my arm to play that one. A game where I can be a Jedi? Sure! A game where I can get in touch with my dark side and be a Sith? Sure! I’ll have to download that one when I finally get home from this nana/papa sitting shift, sometimes in 2043 or so.
Last time I was here I mentioned that the only place I feel comfortable doing my “exercise” is in the cellar, and I don’t like going down there and leaving my parents alone without having a legitimate reason to go down stairs. There is laundry to do tonight, so I have my reason. I didn’t have a chance to start it until a little after 9:00, and only had five out of 30 minutes done, but I think I can close the ring. I have been down stairs once and I got my time up to 15 minutes. I think I will have two legitimate reasons to go into the cellar before midnight and I think I can get in the 15 remaining minutes. We’ll see. It’s really hot here and the humidity is unreal. We’ll see.
I left work for the day at 3:30 today so that I could spend some time with Harry before I came to my parents house. We watched the first episode of What If…? It was really good. I can’t wait for more! While we were busy with the Marvel fun, an email was sent to the whole company saying that our return to the office policy was changing again. Our requirement to come in approximate once a week has been temporarily put on hold due to the increasing Covid-19 numbers (which reminds me, I haven’t updated my spreadsheets yet). My boss called me a little while ago to make sure we were all on the same page. It’s looking like going into the office is off the table until (probably) mid-October. Obviously that could change at any time, but I feel much safer. It was pretty uncomfortable being there the last couple of times. I didn’t feel unsafe per se, I just didn’t feel comfortable. Tonight’s announcement was like a sigh of relief.
Okay, I need to update my MA and US Covid-19 numbers spreadsheets, and then I need to mix a song. All of that sandwiched around laundry and “exercising” and actually going to sleep and stuff. Here’s hoping the quiet night stays quiet. Fingers crossed.
Inside the Red Head's Head 