Bellana is going into a study abroad program next month. Her Spring Semester will be in Europe. While she’s world traveling, some one is going to have to look after her plants. Our plant stash is going up from three plants to five (the Japanese Peace Lily is out of the shot).
Here’s hoping I don’t kill them.
Harry is on his way home, I think. I have it on good authority (iOS Find My app) that he’s on route 89 heading South. I think he’s coming straight here, but I don’t know that for sure. This makes me happy. Very happy.
One of our christmas presents was ordered online and set to deliver to the recipient’s address. It wasn’t supposed to ship until next week, but it was delivered today. It’s like the theme from Facts of Life. You take the good, you take the bad, yadda yadda yadda. HoHoHo. The gift giving bonanza is officially underway.
Want to know something that I hate? I hate when I go to Google News, find an article worth reading, open the article, and find it’s behind a paywall. Can’t Google filter that shit out? Do they already do it and I just haven’t turned it on yet? I don’t know. I hate it. Either way.
Pink Floyd just surprise released a shit load of live albums today. They are all from 1970-72. Almost all of them are from 1971. Back in my bootleg hunting days, I went through a major Pink Floyd bootleg obsession. I have heard most of the shows they released today. I was hoping they were going to magically have high quality, multi-track recordings of those shows but they didn’t. They basically just released the same bootlegs I listened to years ago. I tried listening during work, but the bad sound quality stopped me. Don’t get me wrong, I am going to listen to every note that came out today 100 times each. I am not complaining about the sound quality. My favorite bootlegs are all from 1970, but the 1971 shows were magic too. Echoes! They were still improvising then. Not as much as they did in the beginning, but it was still a big deal. I am going to listen to all of this stuff in headphones and get as much inside of it as I can. Oh, and there’s a partial show from ’72 that has most of a pre-release Dark Side of the Moon. The song titles match the studio versions, but does the music? Might there be a Preacher in there? Might there be a jamming version of On the Run? (please?please?please?)
Okay, enough of my yakkin’. Back to work. When Harry gets here and the work day is over, we’re doing Marvel and Burgers night, just like we did before he went off to college. Awwww.
A new episode of Hawkeye came out yesterday. We haven’t watched it because Harry is coming home tonight and we want to watch it with him. Yesterday morning I started seeing a lot of social media accounts tied to cast members from the now cancelled Marvel Netflix shows posting pictures of Charlie Cox. Uh oh. Is that a spoiler? Did Marvel announce something? Did he show up in Hawkeye? Even worse, does he show up in the new Spider-Man?
Spider-Man No Way Home is out in theaters now. Harry is going to put on a radiation haz-mat suit and see it in a theater next week. I am not. I will be waiting for it to come to Disney+.
I am now in full Spoiler Avoidance mode for both things. At least Hawkeye we can get out of the way quickly. No Way Home though… I don’t want to know anything, not even a tiny thing. Nothing. lalalalaICantHearYou.
I don’t think they have announced when No Way Home will start streaming. The only thing Google found was sometime in 2022. It’s going to be a long wait, folks. A long wait.
My step son is coming home tomorrow. Have I mentioned that? Do you/they know it’s christmas time at all?
Jen just came into my bedroom/office/work nook and said that to her, today feels like Friday. It was a great minds think alike moment because I had been thinking the same thing all day. It’s only Wednesday but it totally feels like Friday. That’s going to make the next two days suck. I checked my work schedule tomorrow and it’s blank. I don’t have any meetings booked at all. It’s almost creepy.
My christmas wrapping is almost done. Did I mention that? I’ve still got a couple of things on the way (package delivery, a symptom of ‘Covid Christmas Too’) but as of now, everything I have to wrap is wrapped… and there are still 10 days left until christmas. That is also almost creepy.
I was going to do car music this morning, but I didn’t. I did a couple of errands instead. I snaked the drain like a faux plumber. As it turned out, I was able to sneak in everything I had left to do during lunch. You may have noticed that there wasn’t a lunch break blog post (no you didn’t. No one did. No one should). Two songs need both rhythm and lead guitar parts. Four just need lead guitar. Two more are already ready to mix. Music, ya know?
Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden has a podcast. World class fencer, airline pilot, novelist, metal god. The dude has range. It’s called Psycho Schizo Espresso. It’s Bruce and a psychologist talking about stuff. Okay, I’ll give it a spin.
Four minutes until the work day ends. Fingers crossed nothing comes my way during those four minutes, because I am cooking dinner tonight and the oven is already pre-heated. Chicken and Quinoa. They should call Chicken and Quinoa, ‘The Robert’ because it’s pretty much the only dish I am capable of making.
Three minutes to go…
Okay, clicking Publish now.
The drain in our bathroom sink clogged. I put some drain-o in yesterday and it helped a little, but it was still really slow. Jen ordered a drain snake. It was just a little plastic thing you stick into the drain from the top and it’s supposed to help you yank out clogs.
The only experience I had with snaking a drain was at my parents house in Tewksbury where we had to go into the bathroom tub drain from below. It was this crazy long wire with a snag at the end of it. I don’t think I am exaggerating by saying it was the nastiest, grossest experience of my life.
I tried the thing Jen bought today. I don’t think it was long enough to reach the bend in the pipe where you would expect the real nastiness to live. I put it into the drain, twisted it around, and brought it out. There was definitely some gunk stuck on it. That was nice. No hair though. Nothing that looked like an obvious clog source. I didn’t think there would be. I didn’t feel anything blocking the line. I tried a second time. I put it in past the drain stopper and immediately some gunk popped out.
Wait a tic… I ran the thing around the drain stopper itself, pulled it back out, lots of gunk. Was the clog stuck to the stopper itself? I ran some water into the sink. It drained out perfectly.
Hot damn! Look at me being all plumber and shit! I tried it in the other bathroom too…
Nope… that puppy is still good and clogged.
Oh well.
I was sitting at my desk a few minutes ago, looking at the Covid-19 numbers for the day (they were bad. Very bad). Patches decided to jump up onto the desk and say hello. Her aim was a little off and one leg missed. It slipped off the desk and onto my leg. Her claws were out. She got me. No broken skin, but ouch.
The other day she got Jen on the shoulder when Jen tried to pick her up (she acts like she HATES being picked up, but she always purrs like crazy when Jen does it. I think she’s just playing hard to get and secretly loves being picked up).
We don’t have to worry about turning into some shitty 70’s rock song, do we?
#sarcasm is a given, okay?
No car music this morning. The extra hour of sleep I got by staying in bed was necessary and very welcome. I’m hoping to have the four songs I have left to do tracked by Thursday. I don’t know if there are enough hours in the days, but there are only 12 days left until Christmas and I want to be able to stop foolishly focusing my limited brain power on such foolish things and get on with the season.
On a happy note, the first kid to come home for Christmas will be arriving on Thursday. Assuming everything goes to plan, of course. That makes me very happy.
Right then, on with Monday.
Tomorrow is going to be a weird day. I’m nearly done with the work task I mentioned before that I really wanted off my plate on Monday. I need to wrap that up and send it off, then go to a couple of meetings and then BAM! Half day. Yeah, I took the afternoon off for no good reason at all.
The only definite item on my post-work agenda is cooking dinner. Outside of that? No idea. I’d like to do some music. I have two songs ready to mix. If I can sneak out for some car music before work I might have some leads to record too. That’s a big if though.
There is a new Hawkeye episode tomorrow. Hopefully we can set up a watch party with Harry and all watch it together. We will see.
Based on what I’ve written so far I’m sure the question burning a hole in your very soul right now is, what am I cooking for dinner?
I’ll end this post with the life affirming, world rocking answer:
Spaghetti and meatballs. Awww yeah.
It has arrived. We knew it was coming eventually, but now it’s here.
The most dangerous part of the holiday season….
….the time you start baking stuff.
Oh the horror… the horror… the horror…
There has been a request for the no-bake cookies aka Tewksbury Tweets that I started making at the start of the lock down. I guess I can come out of retirement for that.
The only thing left is to start christmas shopping. Wait, now THAT is the most dangerous part of the season.
When we decorated the tree last week, Harry put a tree skirt around the base that covered the entire stand. We were no longer able to see into the stand to see the water level. Jen and I were just filling up a quart measuring cup with water and pouring it into the little funnel thing and forgetting about it.
Well, today I opened up the tree skirt to see the actual level and… I couldn’t see any water at all. Granted the angle is bad and so is the lighting so I couldn’t actually see all the way to the bottom, but there was nothing within my field of vision. It took a whole gallon before it looked full again. Fingers crossed we didn’t let the tree die over the last week with our measly quarts. Also, fingers crossed I didn’t just drown the poor bastard.
HoHoHo.
Inside the Red Head's Head 