My step son’s plane landed a little over an hour ago. My wife went to the airport to pick him up and they are on their way home now.
Another happy landing! The plane is on the ground, safe and sound. Welcome back to Earth, Harry!
Tag: Family
Flying
My step son woke up this morning in Scotland. He’ll sleep tonight at our house. He’s already part way through quite the travel journey today.
I used flightaware.com to watch his first flight, from Aberdeen, Scotland to London, England. In less than five minutes he is scheduled to take off on his second flight of the day. This one from London to Boston. He’ll land sometime around 9:00pm, or a little before then.
As is always the case when one of the kids is traveling by air, I am nervous. Hell, I’m always nervous, but like the good American who comes from Irish immigrants, I suppress my nerves and emotions and just bottle them up until I explode. See the collected works of Dennis Leary for more stereotypical information on this stereotype that is probably not accurate but sometimes feels like it is.
Yeah, I am nervous. I watched the first connecting flight circle Heathrow airport a couple of times and I started getting scared that there was something going on in London. Nope. Just a busy day at the ol’ airport. Everything is fine. Everything went fine. All is well.
Flightaware says the plane is taxiing for take off. I’m not superstitious, but I (figuratively) have my fingers crossed. Here’s hoping for the best.
Safe flight, Harry. See you on the ground, back home in the good old U.S. of A.
Office Day
We are in our second week of having to come into the office twice per week instead of once. It’s Monday so here I am. At my desk. In the office. Monday feels like a really crappy day to come in, but I need to pick a day to go along with our usual Wednesdays and I don’t want to come in two days in a row and Monday just feels better than Friday so I’m here on Monday. I did Friday last week and the morning commute was all right both days. Friday had the benefit of having far, far fewer people around. Monday has the benefit of getting the second day out of the way really fast. I think we’ll stick with Mondays for now.
My step daughter is flying home tomorrow afternoon. I took the afternoon off so I can get her at the airport. I am thankful to have as much personal time available to me so that I can do stuff like this. It’s a good thing and it makes me happy.
I took a pic this morning. Nothing special but it’s a photo a day challenge kinda thing.
I need a haircut. Did I mention that? Do you care? No? That’s okay. I need a haircut anyway. Just sharing, or maybe just over sharing.
What else… I don’t know. I have a meeting in half an hour. That’s fun, right?
I watched the third episode of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live (aka the Rick and Michonne show). It’s the weakest of the three so far (there are three more coming this season), but it was still pretty good. I am pleased with the season to this point but I am hoping the quality goes back up starting next week. No spoilers. If you like The Walking Dead, you should be watching. That is all.
Jen and I have been watching Star Trek: Lower Decks. I started watching Penny Dreadful the other day. I’m still plowing through The X-Files. I watched the first movie after finishing season five. Tomorrow morning I’ll start season six. I’m getting near to the point where Mulder leaves and that’s going to make it hard to power through. I’ll stick with it though. I promise.
Okay, back to work with you, Robert.
Happy Friday
Happy Friday, everyone. Hopefully Friday has meaning for most if not all of us. It has extra meaning for me this week. Starting this month my company has changed it’s hybrid work requirements. Where it used to be that we had to be in the office for 20% of each pay period (basically one day each week), as of March 1st we have to be in the office for 40% of each pay period (basically twice per week). Today is my first, second day of a week. None of us our happy with this, but it’s a whole ton better than being back 80%, which is what we had prior to the pandemic shut down. Oh well. I’ll deal with it. I am still coming in every Wednesday. My group has Wednesdays as a mandate and the second day each week is at everyone’s personal discretion. I am sort of planning on making Mondays my regular second day, just to get it over with, but that didn’t work this week due to the contractors working in the kitchen. Friday was the only day that worked for me. Fortunately there was zero traffic today. I made the 40 mile drive to the office in 45 minutes. If only it were like that every morning.
In other news, the kids are on the ground. Bellana’s flight landed in Georgia (the US state, not the European country) before I went to sleep last night. Harry’s first flight landed in London well after I nodded off for the night, and his connecting flight landed in Scotland before I woke up this morning. All is well on both of those fronts. Here’s hoping they both have a great time on their trips.
I am taking advantage of the fact that I am 40 miles from home right now to make my way to IKEA after work. IKEA is about 60 miles from home, but only 20 miles from work. I will head down there as soon as I am free and go to the returns department and bring back a great big pile of stuff that IKEA included in our kitchen redesign blue print that we didn’t end up needing. There is a lot of stuff to return. A lot of stuff. If I get it all done tonight then we don’t have to worry about it, and with the money we get back maybe I’ll be able to afford a hair cut this weekend because damn, do I need a hair cut!
Anyway, here’s today’s photo-a-day picture. I took it before I did my workout this morning at about 5:40am. It’s only 9:14am now but it’s already felt like a long day.
Tomorrow
So the plan for tomorrow, a sort of random vacation day in the middle of the week.
We have a ton of stuff that we bought for the kitchen remodel that we didn’t end up needing. Some from Home Depot, some from Lowe’s, and some from Wal-Mart. I plan on spending a nice chunk of the morning returning as much of that crap as I can. I thought about going to IKEA to return some of the mountain of leftover stuff we need to bring back but the receipts are all confused. We have to work it all out before we bring stuff back.
When I get home it will be about time to head to the airport. Both kids should be here by the time we need to leave. One, Harry, is here already. The other, Bellana, will be cutting it close but there should be enough time. It’s going to work out so that I can drive them both into the city at the same time. Originally I thought I would be playing Robbie the Airport Shuttle Guy twice, but now it looks like we can consolidate the two down to one. Nice.
After that I will go home again and make dinner for the love of my life and then hang out, missing the kids, until bed time.
Busy day on tap, yes it is. It should be fun.
Day Off Tomorrow
I took a vacation day tomorrow. Nice!
Both kids are going on Spring Break trips, and they are both leaving tomorrow, and they are both flying out of Boston Logan Airport. I am going to drive them both. Just call me Robbie the airport shuttle.
My step son is coming here tonight. My step daughter won’t be here until tomorrow. We won’t have a lot of time to hang with them before they jet off to more exciting places, but I’ll take what we get. I do love it when my step kids are here. Even when it’s only for a few minutes.
Stressing Out
I’m trying not to lose my shit today. The stress level is very high.
IKEA has not delivered yet. When they do they are going to drop off almost 200 boxes worth of kitchen cabinets and related stuff. Those nearly 200 boxes are likely going to fill up every single spec of empty space in our house. When it gets here we need to catalog the whole batch to make sure nothing is missing. Yeah, I am freaking out.
On top of that, someone important to me tested positive for Covid-19 today. Fuck-a-doodle-do.
Robin is completely unphased by any of this and I am freakin’ jealous.
Like Some Kind of Lame Canary
I did some RPM Challenge work this morning after finishing my exercise and my breakfast and my daily writing prompt. What did I do? Vocals. I drove off to an empty parking lot in town and recorded the vocal tracks for four songs while sitting out in the cold. I really wish I wasn’t so shy about recording myself singing. It would be so much easier to just do this at home. The negative then would be all the noise I make and how annoying it would be to my wife, rather than me just being a wimp who is too shy to sing when other people can hear me. I’m fine singing with the band, but in those cases there is enough noise that I can trick myself into thinking I am hiding behind it. Also, I am playing guitar at the same time and for some illogical reason that makes a difference. Why? Who knows.
The only interesting thing about today’s car music is that I only had three songs prepared with a melody and lyrics. After I cranked out the vocal tracks for those three songs I wrote the lyrics and melody to the fourth song while I was recording. I wouldn’t say I improvised the vocal parts, but they are lame enough that you might think they were improvised. Who cares. I sure don’t. This means I have 11 songs with vocals, and the RPM Challenge definition of an album is 10 songs or 35 minutes… which means that even if I don’t record another vocal track for the rest of the month, I can still finish a full album. Nice.
Here are some pics from my “studio” for today.
Can you guess where the snowplows dump the snow when they clear the mall parking lot? I can.
Also, here’s the obligatory down town clock, because reasons…
Also, because I can’t resist, I happened to catch the cats sitting together on the old cat tree just before I left the house, so you get that picture too.
Best Gift Ever
Share one of the best gifts I’ve ever received? No. I’ll share two of them. Today’s daily writing prompt is a two-for-one special babie, yeah!
When I was a little kid one of my friends had a toy Tonka ambulance. It was awesome. It was the best ambulance on Earth. It was the best Tonka truck ever. Damn if I wasn’t one jealous miniature red head. I did what most American kids do when they want something awesome. I asked Santa Claus to bring it to me for Christmas. Santa failed me. I asked again the next year. Santa failed me again. Santa never came through at all.
Fast forward to December 2007. I’d been dating this amazing woman for about eight months. She was amazing. I was nuts about her. I think she may have liked me a little in return. I say that because she went to Ebay, found the legendary Tonka ambulance and bought it for me as a Christmas present. Holy shit, what an amazing gift! I could not, and literally still cannot believe it. I told you she was amazing. I should note that I am still absolutely crazy in love with her. We have been married since 2009. She’s the one.
The second part of this two-for-one extravaganza comes from 2021. It was my 50th birthday. Things were very tough for me that year. My father was in the hospital and my mother was dealing with an advancing case of dementia. My brother and sister and I were taking turns staying with my mother while my father was recovering. I woke up at my parent’s house on my birthday and didn’t get home until the afternoon. When I did, my wife and my step son threw me a little birthday party. I was so happy. I can’t even begin to tell you how happy they made me that day, and that was before I opened any birthday presents.
There was one gift that they were both practically giddy over. I opened it and saw this:
They bought me a guitar. Holy shit snacks, My wife got me a guitar for my birthday. What a legendary surprise! Before I even opened the case it was already tied for first for the best gift ever. Then I opened the case and found a brand new Gibson Les Paul Standard ’50s. Absolutely epic!
There you have it. Two absolutely Earth rocking gifts. By far the two best gifts I’ve ever received. No question. I told you my wife was amazing. I told you!
Hey Gemini, generate an image of a jedi knight sitting under a christmas tree opening an amazing christmas gift.
Mom and Daughter
Robin is Lily’s mother. Lily is Robin’s kitten. We adopted the whole family.
Inside the Red Head's Head 