Tag: Family

Don’t Make Me Do It

Okay… the thing I didn’t want to talk about in the last post.. the thing I am trying to forget…

Saturday… is my birthday… my..

50th birthday.

The thing I should have included in the last post but didn’t is our 12th wedding anniversary on the 30th. That’s going to be a great day. It will be our second Covid-19 era wedding anniversary but that’s cool. It’s still going to be great. There is only one downside to our happy 12th wedding anniversary…

When it happens…

I will be…

50 years old.

The horror…

The horror…

The horror…

Half Day

I’m working a half day today so that I can go visit my father in the hospital. I’m off the clock at 1:00pm. Sweet. I’m off for a full day on the 18th as that’s the day we help my step daughter move out of her dorm. Mothers Day is Sunday, that should be nice. My step Daughter’s birthday is the 19th and it’s a milestone year for her. Very excited.

There’s something else going on this month too. Another landmark event type of thing. I wish I could remember what it was but it seems I’ve blocked it from my memory. If I remember what it is I’ll probably write about it, but even though it’s a huge landmark it can’t be that important, right?

Thoughts on a Tuesday

I spent my whole afternoon so far looking through a customer’s database for an example of a piece of data that I am now pretty convinced does not exist. Le Sigh, as the French (don’t) say.

The Bruins moved into third place in the division with a win over New Jersey last night. The win also clinched a playoff spot. There will be a post season for the Bruins in this Covid Season #2. There are still a few more games to play but if it ended today they’d be matched with Pittsburgh in the first round. Le Yikes, as the French (don’t) say.

I tore the cellar storage apart twice and that little purple knock off uni-vibe pedal is still MIA. Before the great cellar disaster clean up (I’ll give the details someday, but the wound is too fresh for now) it was in a cardboard box on top of the table next to the bulkhead door under one of the last remaining functional fluorescent lights. All of that stuff was packed up and moved into the storage area just to the left of the washer/dryer. Everything else is there, but the little purple knock off uni-vibe pedal with Jimi Hendrix painted on it is not there. (It’s a Moen Shaky Jimi, if you’re curious). I did have a thought as to one place it could be… it could be over Mike the Bass players house. I have an amp (my beloved Fender Deluxe Reverb) and a small board there that have been off limits to me since Covid. I know my Wampler Tumnus is on that board as well as an MXR Phase 95 and a Seymour Duncan Vapor Trail. I have no memory of putting the Shaky Jimi on that board, but there is a chance that it’s there. Waiting for me. Taunting me. Le Lame, as the French (don’t) say.

I’m going to see my father in the rehab hospital tomorrow. I haven’t been there yet, you need an appointment to visit patients, but my brother has. I talked to him a little today. He said I am going to have to take a Covid test before I can see my dad. He suggested I bring my vaccination card with me. Well, I bring that little cardboard bastard with me everywhere I go. I am willing to pull it out and flash it for all the world to see at the slightest moment’s notice. Hell, most times I leave the house I have to stop myself from stapling it to my forehead on the way out the door. I want everyone to see that little guy. I am vaccinated. Two shots plus two weeks, babie. I am up-to-date. Le Groovy, as the French (don’t) say.

Nana Sitting Wrap Up

I’m still at my mother’s house. I’m not sure what time the change over is happening tonight, but it’s probably soon. Let’s wrap up what we accomplished.

Four meds deliveries, three today and one last night. Three loads of laundry. Three song ideas, all of which are in 7/8 time which is glorious. One movie, Joker. Holy shit was that good. Two episodes of The Handmaids Tale. Holy shit is that show good. An episode and a half of That Pedal Show mostly focusing on Uni-Vibe effects but also Harmonic Tremelo. Uni-Vibes are cool. Harmonic Tremolo is cool too, I guess, but I’m not really a tremolo guy… though the amp I’m recording with this month has one (volume based, not harmonic based) built in and I’ve been sort of looking for a place to use it. Three bags of recycling taken out. Three calls from Dad. The last couple of cans from the 12 pack of Diet Pepsi that I brought over last week finished. Sleep… not so much.

Is that everything? It’s all I can recall off the top of my head.

Sunday Morning Thoughts

I’m up and showered and ready to face the day and all that. I went to sleep at about quarter to one am. I woke up a couple of times before waking up for good at about quarter to five am. My AppleWatch tells me I failed to reach four hours of sleep. I tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t do it. Early to bed tonight, I guess.

Two WordPress.com items of note:

  1. I have recently gained a handful of new followers here. That’s nice, right? They all have the same profile image. Well… that’s not good. It doesn’t appear to be porn spam, which is nice, but it does appear to be spam of some kind, which isn’t good.
  2. What’s up with stats? WordPress.com has a stats page that keeps all sorts of information, including page view counts and unique visitors, sorted by days, weeks, months, and years. There is also a page called insights which is supposed to be like a summary page. I noticed last month that the view counts on the insight page were off. Not just for that month, but for a whole bunch of random months over the life of this account. I found this off putting because the analyst side of my programmer/analyst brain likes digging through the stats. I was hoping it was just a bug in the calculation and WordPress.com would fix it. Nope. It seems to have gotten worse. Yesterday I checked the stats just before midnight. I had a healthy number of views for the day (thank, folks!) and given that it was the first of the month the day and month counts matched. I went to insight, which defaults to monthly counts, and it gave me a big goose egg of a zero. Huh? Sometimes it takes a few seconds to update, but it never did. I checked the stats again just before starting to write this post and I had one view for the day. I checked insight and it showed one view for the month. It basically skipped yesterday. What the hell, bro?

What else is going on? The Bruins won yesterday, They are a point away from clinching a playoff spot (I think) with five or six games left to go (I think). Color me cautiously optimistic. The Red Sox lost last night. They play in Texas again this afternoon. I thought the Rangers avoided day games at home, but I guess it’s still early enough in the spring that they won’t bake the players and the fans in the afternoon heat. Speaking of fans, the stadium was full for last night’s game. I guess Covid’s over, right? Texas says so. I hope they have contact tracing available for the thousands of folks who went to the game as an outbreak is pretty much inevitable.

Dad called a few minutes ago. He’s hooked up to an IV. Antibiotics, I’m sure. He said he thought he was going to have physical therapy this morning, but how can he do that when they have him plugged in? The hospital has limited visiting hours and you have to make an appointment ahead of time and you can only make one appointment per week. I’m going Wednesday. I haven’t seen him since January. I’m looking forward to a visit. Once again let me put my vaccination to work.

Happy Sunday, everyone. Can’t wait to go home and see Jen and Harry. Until then, I’m trying to make the best of it by writing really long, boring, uninformative blog posts. Cheerio, all.

Almost Bed Time

The Red Sox lost, I did a load of laundry, my mother sat up for about an hour before going back to bed, I watched an episode of That Pedal Show that is making me want to go into cellar storage and find my cheap uni-vibe pedal, I wrote the music for another song that could possibly make good use of a cheap uni-vibe pedal, and the first episode of season four of The Handmaids Tale has some seriously dark shit in it.

I’ll be turning in soon. Here’s hoping my mother sleeps through the night. She was asleep when I got here. She woke up a couple of hours later thinking it was morning. I asked her if she wanted dinner as she was fishing out a package of instant oatmeal for breakfast. Hashtag, le sigh.

HVAC

One week ago I gave the details on the very ugly HVAC situation in our cellar. It’s one of many ugly situations in our cellar, but for now it’s the one that’s being worked on.

They looked over the ducts in the cellar and said they needed to come back another day to actually fix things. Today is that day. They gave us an estimate and let’s just say I won’t be buying myself a guitar for my 50th birthday… and maybe not for 51-60 either. In the immortal words of Austin Powers, ouch, babie.

Jen sent me a message about an hour ago. They are there. They are working. They are loud. One them wasn’t wearing a mask. Insert very frustrated non-science denying sigh here.

This whole thing has me very nervous. Central air is one of the highlights of our house. I don’t want to de-evolve to a state where we have fans and air conditioners in the windows. I want to be snooty high society with my air conditioned house. I am also very happy that progress is being made as this has been weighing on me like you wouldn’t believe.

I just want it done and I also want it done right so that we never have to worry about it again. Specifically I want it done right so that I never have to worry about a 10 foot section of duct falling on my head again. Ouch, babie.

12:15 AM

12:15 AM on a Wednesday morning and the phone rings. Not my phone, my parents landline.

It was a reverse 911 call asking for help finding and 85 year old woman with dementia who got out of the house and got lost.

Damn… that’s not our current situation, but it’s close enough that I haven’t been able to fall asleep.

Scary stuff.

Big Things

Two big things going on in our world today. One I will write about. The other I won’t.

I haven’t written about this before (I don’t share everything with you, oh my readers and only friends*, even if I do share WAY too much) and I don’t think I took any pictures so I can’t remember exactly when it happened. I was down cellar and for whatever reason I needed to look for something in the little closet under our stairs. Harry Potter’s bedroom, if you will. I noticed that the HVAC duct was hanging a little low at that spot. We’ve had issues with the ducts before and at some point we had someone come in and sure** it up a little. It hangs off of the ceiling in the cellar and normally the only problem is that I have to duck when I walk under it.

On this particular day though, it was hanging a little low in front of the closet under the stairs. I couldn’t quite see this before the events unfolded, but it was actually partially resting on the ever so slightly ajar closet door. When I opened the door…

A 15 foot long section of duct fell on my head. As I stood there in a mental state that was 50% shock and 50% utter panic, a second, smaller section that connected to the fallen duct also fell off the ceiling.

I don’t remember exactly when this was, but it was probably around Christmas decorating time. There are actually two ducts. Best I can tell, considering I have no idea what I’m talking about, one duct is heat and the other is air conditioning. We did some testing with the thermostat and determined that the fallen duct was on the air conditioning side. That was lucky, given that there was a pandemic and we likely wouldn’t be needing AC for months to come.

Well, here we are in April and it’s getting close to the time we’ll need air conditioning. Fortunately, the three of us are all vaccinated now, and the forth family member will be fully vaccinated by the time she comes home from college, and we can start taking care of all of the crap that has gone wrong in our house over the last year. The HVAC folks are coming this afternoon. Please please please please please let them be able to put the duct back together and secure the whole works because I can’t have this stuff falling on me again. We need our AC to work so that we don’t melt in the summer, but there are also two college tuitions to pay for and we can’t afford to be replacing the whole duct system in the cellar. That would be a nightmare.

Please please please please please let the HVAC situation be resolved today. Please please please please please.

*Yes, I paraphrase that line from A Clockwork Orange too often. You’re just going to have to deal with it.

**There is no way that “sure” is the correct spelling for this usage of the word. I totally used the wrong homonym, right?

Goodnight

The Bruins won tonight. So did the Red Sox. Harry and I spent a little quality time watching The Flash and sharing AppleWatch watch face design preferences (more complications, please!). Jen took some big steps toward a post-vaccine world including one that hopefully will lead to good things tomorrow.

Speaking of tomorrow, it will be two weeks after my second vaccine shot… meaning I’ll be fully vaccinated.

I wonder what that’s going to feel like?