Tag: Family

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I drove for over six hours in total. From home to Burlington , VT where we took the kids to American Flatbread for lunch. The pizza was good, the company was better. After lunch Harry had to go home to do some studying. Jen and Bellana and I went to a bookstore, which was a treat. When was the last time anyone went to a bookstore? Then Bellana had to get home so Jen and I made the 3+ hour drive back.

Next on the agenda is seeing if frozen hamburger patties work in the air fryer. I assume they will, everything else does.

Happy Sunday, folks!

Vermont Bound

We are Vermont bound today. The plan is to have an early lunch, brunch if you will, with the kids. Beyond that? Who knows.

We’re going to leave about an hour from now. Three hours in the car and then some quality time with all three of my favorite people.

Sounds like an A+ Sunday to me!

Gross

Is carving up a pumpkin and making a jack-o-lantern the single grossest thing that we as a society do? No? Is it in the top 10? Yeah, probably.

Why do we do it? Specifically, why do I do it when our kids are old enough to have moved out of the house and we don’t have them here at all during the Halloween season?

I don’t know, but I still do it. Specifically, I just did it. Meet our 2024 jack-o-lantern. I am still thinking of a name for him. Smiley? Jackass? Putz? They all seem appropriate.

My beloved wife and I watched It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown last night. I completely forgot about the scene where Lucy and the girls used Charlie Brown’s big bald head as a template for a jack-o-lantern. Freakin’ hysterical.

Toy Cameras

I really want to try medium format film, but I don’t have a medium format camera and I really don’t want to spend any noteworthy amount of money on one.

Should I get a Holga (a cheap plastic toy camera that just happens to shoot medium format film) just to dip my toes into the water, so to speak? Will that turn me off of the whole thing, or will it send me spiraling down a rabbit hole that my bank account and I will never recover from?

Why can’t I just make a decision?

On an unrelated note, our drive to Vermont to see the kids tomorrow has been postponed for one day. That should not make me sad (we’ll see them Sunday instead of Saturday) but it really makes me sad. I think I might be overtired. Everything is getting to me right now. Go take a nap, Robert.

World Series Blues

It’s bad enough that the Bruins have lost three games in a row and can’t play defense and can’t play offense, but we’re a few minutes away from the start of the World Series and no matter how it turns out a team that I royally hate is going to win. The question is, will it be a team that a hate with a burning passion, or will it be the team that I hate more than all other teams I hate combined?

Some times I just think that pro sports can just bite me, you know?

On the upside, we’re going to Vermont tomorrow and we’re going to see the kids. That’s some first class, grade A good news right there. It’s the weekend and it is a kids weekend. Just like the old days, right?

Happy Friday, oh my brothers and sisters and only friends.

Scary Demon Monster

I saw something scary in the cellar this morning. A demon from hell that is the scariest monster in the known universe.

I saw…

I can’t even type it, it’s so terrible…

I saw a house centipede.

Pause to give everyone some time to scream in abject terror for their very existence.

It was on the floor next to my pedal board in my music nook. I am pretty sure it was dead. It didn’t move as I approached it and if you know anything about house centipedes you know that they are the fastest muthas in the west. They don’t just let you walk up to them. When they see you coming, they bolt. This guy just sat there and even let my foot hover above him for a couple of seconds. Yeah, it was already dead.

If it wasn’t dead at that point though, it was certainly dead after I stepped on it. Squish, babie. One less demonic asshole in the world. Normally I would feel bad about squishing a little living thing, but these guys are so evil looking (and they scare the shit out of my wife) that I have sentenced all who enter my domain to death. Sorry, nature. I know they are actually good to have around because they eat all of the other bugs, but sometimes you cannot let evil like this exist, ya know?

Change of subject.

I am a dope. I also can’t tell time and I have a memory like a sieve. My wife is going to the office today. She told me she was leaving at 7:45. I made a note. I would make sure I got through my whole morning routine before then so that I could properly say goodbye to her.

I got up early and dashed down cellar to do my morning exercise. Success. I came upstairs and did a couple of things and then at the appropriate time I walked up to her office, where she was sitting at her desk, and was about to say that I was ready to wish her a good day whenever she was ready to go… and that was when I realized she said 7:45, not 6:45, and the current time was actually 6:45.

I am an idiot.

Well, at least I am ready to say goodbye when she is ready to go. I’ve got that going for me, right?

Film is Fun

I feel stupid over how giddy getting film scans back makes me. I am such a doofus. I am such a nerd.

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One roll had a sad surprise. It was actually the same roll as the picture above. It wasn’t from Salisbury Beach though.

I took a film camera with me to my father’s for Father’s Day. I took a few really bad pictures and then promptly forgot about the whole thing.

The scans today included four bad pictures of my father. Two just sitting at the dinner table next to my sister. One had a bad light leak. Where did that come from? The other two were him seated with my niece and three nephews surrounding him. Again, one had a light leak. How? In five rolls of film shot with my Nikon FG-20 there were a total of three photos with light leaks. Or was it four. Whatever, very few. How? How did that happen.

Anyway, back on topic. Those picture of my father are probably the last pictures I ever took of him. Seeing them made my happy and sad at the same time. I miss my dad.

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I warned you that the pictures were terrible.

Weekend: So Close

It is 2:25pm on Friday afternoon. I just finished lunch and am about to get back to work. I have been having a very productive day at work so far. I am pleased. Of course I probably just jinxed myself and the proverbial shit is going to hit the theoretical fan any minute. For now though, I feel like today has been a good day on the job.

The weekend starts in three hours (approximately) though and I don’t know what the plans are. We are going to do some family stuff on Sunday. There is a birthday. There is also a birthday today that I have to send off a happy birthday text message for. Very important. Outside of those two things? No clue.

After failing to get sunrise pics last weekend I am thinking about trying again tomorrow. The weather forecast looks excellent, though too cold for my taste. I wanted to grab the sunrise on the beach in my usual spot, then drive North up the coast a bit and get some ocean pics from the hills overlooking the coast. Then I could stop at a few of the usual spots on the way home. I would like to do that, but it all depends on how much sleep I get tonight. Well… that and the clouds, of course. I learned that the hard way last weekend.

I have yet to play my guitar during the month of October. Today is the 11th. I’ve taken pictures of guitars, case in point…..

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(that is today’s photo a day picture)

…..but I haven’t actually played at all. I have a bunch of old songs I was working on re-recording a few months ago. There are a lot of things left to do for that little project, and I also picked a bunch of this summer’s project songs that I want to see if I can improve on. Maybe I’ll get back to it this weekend.

I don’t see us going to the mountains for fall foliage this weekend. It is definitely THE weekend to go, but the traffic is often nightmarish and I don’t think we have the oomph to deal with it. Maybe we can day trip/road trip somewhere down South here in Massachusetts. Go someplace interesting before the weather gets too cold and the ice starts piling up.

Maybe I’ll just stay home and watch the Bruins tomorrow at 1:00pm when they play the L.A. Kings.