Tag: Family

Good Morning

Good morning, everyone. How’s your Tuesday going. Hope you’re off to a good start.

I’m at my parents house. My brother is here and he’s working at his desk. He expects to be wrapping up soon so I can hijack his monitors again. I feel like a squatter but it’s okay.

Jen just called me. She’s off work this morning and went out for some errands. One of them was getting the Kia inspected. She had to go into the shop. Pre-Covid that would have been nothing. Now? That’s a huge accomplishment. I’m very proud of her. My wife has some serious guts.

She also set something up for tomorrow that I don’t want to talk about yet that literally took the weight of the world off my shoulders. The relief is so great it’s like a physical thing. Thank you, my love.

Okay, off to work. Happy Tuesday, everyone!

Half Day

I’m at my parents’ house in Tewksbury. About a 17 minute drive from my house. I logged into work about 30 minutes early and now I’m on my lunch break, roughly halfway through the business day.

Any thoughts?

I have a mask that includes a neck strap. I love it. It’s always there. I never have to stop and think about where I put it the last time I took it off. It was around my neck but not on my face when I logged in to my group’s daily meeting. My staff thought it was a bib. It kinda looks like a bib.

I’ve decided that a three monitor setup might be too much for me. I’m not sold on that yet, but I think that might be the case. At home I have a single monitor but it is gigantic. Hijacking my brother’s workspace, his three monitors definitely have more screen real estate than my single monitor, but not nearly as much as you’d think. I initially put my schedule on the left monitor, my email on the right monitor, and then worked on the middle. In theory that is perfect, but in practice I was missing emails because the screen requires me to actually move my head to see it. I moved the email back to the middle and adjusted the windows I was working on so that I could do it in front. Basically reproducing my single monitor from home. I like this.

My mother came over and talked to me as I was waiting for a meeting to start. I was on Zoom with about 10 other people. They asked me if I was trying to talk to them while I was on mute. Nope, just talking to Mom. I don’t know if she gets the telecommuting concept. She seems to, but maybe she just forgot when I told her I was on a meeting. Later, when I wasn’t on a meeting, she walked over and passed me a note. Okay, maybe she does get it. Cool. Thanks, Mom!

There is one thing that I need that I don’t have today and that is a haircut. Soon, my long, flowing red locks. Soon.

Commute?

I am about to head to my parents’ house for the work day. I’m still telecommuting but I also sort of have a commute for the next week. I sort of forget how that works.

A morning commute? In Covid-Land? Does not compute.

Anyway, here’s hoping the traffic is okay.

GarageBand to the Rescue

Harry needed to record a piano piece for school. He was going to put his headphones up against his iPhone’s mic.

Oh no, my good sir. No.

I hooked him up to a two channel USB interface and got him up and running in GarageBand on his Mac.

He’s recording tracks like a pro* now.

*Okay, maybe not a pro. More like an avid amateur, like his step father.

Groovy.

Stop Lights

This used to be the chain you pulled to turn on the lights at my father’s aunt and uncle’s place in Brighton. It was my second favorite part of that apartment. My favorite part was Uncle Jimmy’s little model trollies (he drove the trollies on the Green Line in Boston). Those are on the mantle in my living room.

You know You’re Old When

You know you’re old when your beloved spouse asks if it can be bedtime and you look at your watch and see 8:35 and you still say sure. Then your beloved tells you to check your watch again and you realize it’s not 8:35, it’s 7:35, and you are still 100% okay with calling it bedtime.

Double Whammy

This morning one of our smoke detectors gave us the “please change my battery, you friggin’ savage” alarm. I went through the maze of alarm locations in the house trying to figure out which one was yelling at us. I found it in the mud room. They are kinda a pain to take off the ceiling but I got it down. They are kinda a pain to open up but I got it open. They are kinda a pain to pop out the batteries but I got them out. They are kinda a pain to re-hang on the ceiling but I got it back up.

I made the mistake of pressing the test button. When you do that it doesn’t just test the one you’re holding in your hand, it tests every single alarm in the house. The noise is overwhelming, which is good when there’s a fire but really painful when you just woke up.

None of this is the actual story though.

When the shockingly loud, house-wide test was complete and the smoke detector was hung on the ceiling again……….

…………the smoke detector in Harry’s room started giving the “please change my battery, you friggin’ savage” alarm.

Muthapussbucket

Nothing

I have nothing to say tonight. The cat isn’t even around for a photo shoot. Jen and Harry and I are just hanging out, watching The Flash. Killer Frost is kicking ass, the Bruins lost, the Red Sox are tied, my father is sick, and I’m still basically helpless.

The usual.