Tag: iphoneography

Two Days, Not Three

Today is Sunday. I went into this weekend expecting to have a three day weekend. My beloved bride had a medical thing scheduled for tomorrow (Monday) and it was my job to get her there and back so I took the day off from work.

Well… she’s not feeling well today and it was recommended that she reschedule the appointment. I could keep the day off but my staff at work is going to be super short handed tomorrow so I have decided to cancel the time off request and go to work.

That sucks.

Change of subject…

The Patrick Stewart Memorial Star Trek the Next Generation Rewatch is nearing the end of season one. I have watched this show all the way through multiple times, but it’s been a really long time since I’ve seen this stuff. I remember the first two seasons being rough. It often took Star Trek series’ a few seasons to figure themselves out and Next Generation was the template for that. There are only a couple of major plot points from season one that affect the overall course of the series. They meet Q in the pilot episode. That’s one. Another is in episode 22 and I watched that one today. Spoiler alert for a nearly 40 year old show but Security Chief Tasha Yar gets wacked in episode 22.

Back in 1987 when this episode aired it was unusual for a TV show to off a main character. These days, in the post-Game of Thrones and Walking Dead world, main character deaths are common. I found it pretty funny that Star Trek actually followed one of the character death tropes. In the first scene of the episode Tasha has a really nice character moment. She’s talking to Worf, the guy who by episodes end takes over her job, and he says something nice about her and she lights up like she’s the happiest she’s ever been in her life. If you see that in an episode today it is GUARANTEED that the character’s death is imminent.

As I approach the end of the first season how has the show lived up to my memories of it? I remember thinking Denise Crosby (Tasha) and Marina Sirtis (Councellor Troi) were… lets just say they weren’t the best actors. Now? Maybe I’m just more forgiving than I was 30 years ago or so but I thought they were both fine. I didn’t have a problem with either of them. I remember thinking that Brent Spiner (Commander Data) needed some time to figure out his character and I think now that was probably accurate. I remember everyone on Earth hating Wesley Crusher but I didn’t have a problem with him. Now? Same. I don’t really get what all the fuss was about. He was a kid. He acted like a kid. He was normal. I thought he was fine. The thing I did not remember was Lavar Burton (Geordi Laforge) is absolutely killing it in season one.

I think I have 3–4 episodes left in season one. After that, obviously, we move on to season two… also known as the dark ages… the black hole… the Doctor Pulaski year. Yikes!

Change of subject again…

I have been playing guitar since the mid-1980s. When I first started playing, Star Trek the Next Generation had not premired yet. That’s how long I’ve been playing. I like to think that I have developed a certain level of skill. I’m not saying I’m good or anything, I just feel that I can play well enough that I can get stuff done. Why then does all of my skill vanish down the crapper every time I put down an electric guitar and pick up an acoustic guitar. I just suck. I suck so bad.

I’m working on this National Solo Album Month thing. I have 10 songs in progress. I am putting acoustic guitars on all of them. Not necessarily playing all the way through each song, but at some point there is an acoustic guitar part in every song. I’ve finished those parts on eight of the 10 songs and my playing is just awful. Terrible. I have worked all of the parts out in MIDI before I even looked at a real guitar and on a few ocassions I’ve actually had to dumb down the part so that I could get through it. Damn, do I suck.

And that, friends and neighbors, is the state of my Sunday night. Here’s hoping that work is quiet tomorrow and I don’t regret not keeping my day off. Fingers crossed.

Rush-Free

The Rush concert we were supposed to go to tonight was scheduled to start about nine minutes ago. If they went on on-time then they are mid-way through Xanadu right now. Geddy and Alex are both playing their double neck guitars.

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Rush at Madison Square Garden back in June

Obviously I am sad to not be there, but its okay. We saw two shows this tour. They were both great. That’s all kinds of win. I hope everyone there has a great time tonight. I hope the band slays, as they always do, and I hope Anika’s gag at the end of the show is epic.

In other, more personal, less interesting, musical news, I am supposed to start another internet based songwriting/recording project this month. I haven’t done any writing or recording yet today but I did put new strings on two guitars. I also cleaned and conditioned the holy hell out of both necks. I’ve never done that before. Let’s see if I made things worse or not.

The goal for this project is to use my acoustic guitar a lot and play a shit load of saxophone, if I can.

Dig how shiny those bronze strings are

Still on the fence about going into Boston to play photographer tomorrow. I haven’t checked the weather yet and if I do go I need to wait until after the morning rush. We’ll see.

For now, I am just hanging out with my beloved bride, my wife, the love of my life. She made dinner and it was fantastic. Now we’re just hoping the phone doesn’t ring with work to do. Fingers crossed.

That’s all for now. In closing, another Xanadu pic. This time from Cleveland.

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Deep Conversations

So this morning I was having a chat with Robin the Cat. I asked her if she knew why I had the Lavern and Shirley theme song stuck in my head.

She didn’t answer. She didn’t know. It remains a mystery for both of us.

Earlier this evening I was talking to Lily the Cat, our home’s other furry resident, and I asked her if she was aware that the word on the street is that it was Agatha All Along.

She didn’t answer. She was not aware. Let’s just chalk it up to another mystery.

Sunday Agenda

We spent today (Saturday) visiting with my wife’s mother and step father. It was a good visit. Gastric Bypass boy over here had a mild case of The Foamies after dinner but it wasn’t too bad. I coughed up a little bit of something but never full on puked. Breath that sigh of relief, Robbie.

Tomorrow is Sunday. What am I going to do with the day? My wife let me know that she just wants to hang out and be lazy. I am all for that. I have to go grocery shopping at some point tomorrow but I think that’s the only thing I have to do. I am thinking about going to the ocean for sunrise photos. I mean, sunrise tomorrow is at 6:59am. I don’t even have to wake up early to make it there on time. I feel like I need to take advantage of the super late start time at least once before Daylight Savings time ends in a couple of weeks. I also have to shoot a roll of film for the Frugal Film Project thing. Yeah, I think I will go to the ocean tomorrow morning to catch that sunrise.

In closing, here’s a cat. This is Robin Sparkles. She’s adorable.

First of the Season

I looked out the window this morning not long after sunrise and saw this. There are actually two deer in this picture. The other one is on the other side of the bush that they were both sowing down on.

I took this through a window (obviously) using my iPhone. There was no noise at all but as soon as I snapped the pic both deer turned toward me and just stared at me. For a long time. It was like they were gazing into my soul, trying to decide if they were going to jump through the window and eat me.

I’ve had a super stressful week at work this week. Lots of shit going down. Nothing truly bad, just lots of stress. Knowing that I lost a staring contest to two super annoyed does at the very start of my day was just the kind of weirdness I needed to put it all into perspective.

Unrelated note: I think its 25 days until we see Rush again.

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 80/90

And just like that, we’re back babie!

After a few days of not making any progress at all, I finally got something done yesterday. Day 80 was spent getting back to work and dealing with a stomach bug (or something) that has been seriously kicking my fat ass. No clue, but it was not successful in stopping me from being silly, musically, though it was a close call.

I didn’t start thinking about 50 songs in 90 days stuff until after 10:00pm last night. At that point I sat up in bed with my laptop and my goofy little USB piano keyboard and I started another song… and then another song. Two new songs, numbers 58 and 59 if you’re keeping track.

One of them is in straight 4/4 time and isn’t very interesting. The other is a math problem. I’ve been messing with weird time signatures all throughout this challenge. I’ve done more work in 5/8 time than I had done in the previous 55 years combined. I also did one song in 9/8, which I treated like 4/4 with an extra eighth note. Last night I thought to myself what if I did 4/4 but only added an extra eighth note on every other bar? Next thing I know I’m trying to write riffs in 17/8 time. Yup. Song number 58 is in 17/8 time.

It’s not good. Not even close. It’s overly simple because I was afraid if I did anything even minutely complicated on top of the weird time signature then I would never, ever be able to play the guitar part. Nope. I kept it simple as well as rhythmically silly.

Oh, and spoiler alert for tomorrow:

2026 50/90 Challenge Day 51/90

I was hoping to have a lot of time to work on music, specifically vocals, on day 51 but I was also pretty sure I would not have time for anything. Turns out I didn’t have time for much. No vocalizing for me yesterday.

I did add two new songs to the list. No real instruments yet, but all of the music has been worked out including the melodies and lyrics. They are songs 46 and 47. I also managed to mix one song. Yet another song with really crappy vocals. Hooray.

I’m not sure how the time is going to work out this week. I have three days in the office coming up and there will be one late night when I will check seeing a band off of my I-have-to-see-them-before-I-(or-they-or-we)-die bucket list. I’ll try to get short bursts of musical work in whenever I can.

Oh yeah, and spoiler alert for tomorrow…

Conflicted

I am conflicted and I always get into this state when the kids are involved.

When my step daughter moved away to college in 2019 I was conflicted. On the one hand, I wanted her to go away to school and have a fantastic experience and learn a ton and make new friends and start her life and have everything be amazing. On the other hand I wanted her to stay home with us forever.

Two years later when my step son went away to college it was the same thing. I wanted him to go to school and have the time of his life and learn incredible things and have adventures and excitement and make memories that would last a lifetime while also not wanting him to leave us, ever.

In May of 2025 my step daughter moved home. She graduated and worked a two year contract at the University. When the contract ended she came home to live with us while she figured out her next move. The next move was grad school, but she had to work out the details. It took a little more than a year, but next month she is going to start school in California. 

I am so excited for her I could burst… again… just like 2019. Just like my step son in 2021. I fear I might spontaneously combust out of excitement for her future. She’s going to finish grad school with a PHD and then every time I see her I will ask her, “what’s up, doc?” and it will be epic and no one will ever get tired of that stupid Bugs Bunny joke and we will always laugh and it will be perfect.

Also, I don’t want her to move. I mean, I thought moving from Massachusetts to Vermont was bad… California? No way!

She’ll still be here for a few more weeks, but the next milestone in the moving process happened today…

It’s time to start packing. I’m excited and sad at the same time, but what else is new?

What’s Going On?

The nazi fuck in the white house is going to give a speech tonight where he will say the 2020 presidential election was stolen even though it clearly was not stolen. There is zero credible evidence to say it was stolen, but the nazi pedophile rapist in the white house (which I legitimately just typo’d “shite house” and will probably forever call it that from now on) wants to pass the uber racist/sexist and utterly unnecessary save america act which will effectively remove voting rights from millions of americans including all married women who took their husbands name so he’s going to lie to our fucking faces again (which he does literally every time he opens his nazi fascist pedophile rapist racist mouth) and tell us how he has evidence that 2020 was stolen even though he will present no evidence because no evidence exists and his base will get down on their knees and swallow every word.

Okay… I need to calm down. I’ll change the subject.

On my personal laptop, I use Vivaldi as my web browser of choice. It has recently started being unable to connect to certain sites. Like, random sites that no browser should ever fail to connect to. Things like… wordl. Why? Why are you fucking with my word games, Vivaldi? I can connect using Chrome and Firefox. Why not Vivaldi? It’s not me, it’s clearly you. I don’t want to go back to Chrome, damn it. I’m not as pissed about this as I am the nazi fascist pedophile rapist racist in the shite house, but I am pretty pissed about it.

Ugh… what else. Music. Let’s talk about that. The 50 songs in 90 days Challenge. I have had three days in a row with little to no progress. Today I recorded some guitars. I feel a little better. Not much, but a little. 

I had used my Les Paul Standard on everything I’d done since the project started on July 4th. Today I changed guitars. I was going to go to my Les Paul Custom but instead I went to my SG. I hereby declare that today is officially Gibson SG Standard day in my basement music nook. You heard it here first.