Tag: Kids

And So This is Monday

Marjorie Taylor Greene has been permanently suspended from Twitter.
Devin Nunes has left Congress.
Monday has arrived and the holiday season is over. Back to work with us.

That’s the news and I am outa here.

I don’t want to go to work today. I am sitting at my desk, looking at my computer and just thinking over and over again, I don’t want to go to work today. Really, once I punch in I will be over it and everything will be normal again, but right now? Damn it, I don’t want to go to work today.

There isn’t much else going on. I think we’re a little burned out from Christmas/New Years and are sort of ready to settle back into life. Not work though. I don’t want to go to work today. The kids will be going to their father’s tonight and staying there until some point on Wednesday. Bellana leaves for her study abroad program next week and Harry returns to school the following weekend.

For me personally, I have super shaggy Covid hair again. Back when the pandemic started, about 22 months ago, my hair was in need of a cut. Everything shut down though so I had to deal. After a month or so it was so long it was insane and Jen cut it for me. Now here we are, two years later. I was planning on getting a hair cut at the beginning of December, but that little omicron bitch came along and messed that up. I know I have three vaccine shots and everyone will be masked up, but I still don’t want to risk getting something and passing it on to the kids and screwing up their plans. Once Harry moves back to school I’ll get a hair cut. Until then… super shaggy Covid hair. Again.

There is only one other item of blog-worthy note today. It feels like it’s kicking off quite a bit early this year but…

I’ve signed up already.

Prepare yourself for the obnoxiously boring posts.

The Last Lunch Break of the Year

December 30th. Tomorrow is a holiday from work. That makes today’s telecommuting lunch break the last lunch break of the year. I am so ready to put 2021 behind me. 2020 was a nightmare. 2021 was worse. 2022 (2020 too) is the great unknown, but for once I am thinking the devil I don’t know is preferable to the devil I know… or something like that. What was I saying? Oh yeah, this is the last lunch break blog post of 2021 and that pleases me.

The United Parcel Service paid me a visit. They brought a box with my name on it. Inside the box was two more, smaller boxes. In one box was a Real McCoy Custom RMC10 Wah pedal. In the other was an EarthQuaker Devices The Depths pedal. A new wah pedal and a new uni-vibe pedal. I don’t know when I am going to have a chance to play them. Maybe tonight? Maybe not. I’m looking forward to it. New boutique guitar pedals for this boutique guitar pedal snob.

We missed out on our Christmas Eve festivities this year because of a Covid scare but we are going to give it another try tomorrow for New Years Eve. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I am seriously ready for this. New Year, Christmas Eve, both at the same time. Yes. Gimme gimme gimme.

Three hours and one minute left in the work day. I don’t know if I can make it through. I needs me some long weekend and I needs me some long weekend right now.

The Long Weekend Awaits

Today is going to be rough. Mostly because I convinced myself that yesterday was Friday when it was only Wednesday.

I put up a post yesterday listing off all of the things that were going well at that moment and wondering what was coming along to spoil the vibe. Nothing did. I was worrying about work, but it stayed quiet and all was well. Only my brain trying to skip over today was less than happy.

Today’s a little different. Nothing bad going on, just not quite as 100% positive as yesterday. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night. I know I got a lot more than the 4.5 hours my watch registered, but still not a lot. I think I was a little under six hours. Okay, but not great. I woke up with a bit of an upset stomach. I feel a lot better now, but it is sort of like getting off on the wrong foot.

Now there is just a single 8.5 hour work day standing between me and a long weekend. New Years Day is a holiday for us and since it falls on Saturday this year we “celebrate” it on Friday, which means we get New Years Eve off. I love it when the calendar works out that way. It’s like a nice little bonus. The downside is that our holiday schedule is changing as of 1/1/22 and we don’t have another holiday until Memorial Day in May. Yikes! We have floating holidays now in place of the non-national holidays we used to have, so we don’t lose any time off. We just don’t automatically get the non-national days off anymore.

Okay so in summation, yesterday started as a good day and stayed that way all day. Today hasn’t been quite as good but it’s already starting to look up.

Oh, and both kids are here. So it’s going to be a good day no matter what.

55 minutes until I have to punch in to work.
Nine hours and 55 minutes until the long weekend.

Hang in there, boys and girls. We can get through this day together.

Today is Not Friday

Today is the first time since Bellana finished her Fall semester at school (apart from a few hours of miracle on Christmas Day) that both kids are home. They will both be here until Monday morning and I am as happy as a middle aged red head gets.

We were supposed to have a fancy dinner on Christmas Day but we didn’t due to all of the various circumstances. We are having the dinner that we had planned for Christmas tonight. Jen is in the kitchen right now while I watch the clock inch through the last 36 minutes of the work day.

New Years Day is this weekend.

All of these things together have combined to convince my tiny, teeny, tiny little brain that today is Friday. No. Today is not Friday. Today is Wednesday. Wednesday, not Friday. I still have a full day of work tomorrow that I have to get through before the holiday weekend starts.

My brain is broken. My brain cannot process the fact that today is not Friday. I feel like I’m losing my mind!

Thumbs Up

Just a quick note here. (Might this be better as a Tweet? Probably. Maybe a Facebook post? Nope, the Facebook boycott is still going strong)

The kids are here and Bellana gave the Tewksbury Tweets I made last night a thumbs up.

Dessert success! Culinary Win! My work here is done!

What Will Go Wrong?

The kids are coming over today.
There’s a new Star Wars show premiering today, The Book of Boba Fett.
We are going to have the Christmas dinner we were supposed to have on Christmas but didn’t.
It’s not too cold out (forecast calls for mid to high 30s).
I got a pretty good night’s sleep last night.
I put down all of the midi tracks for two songs this morning before work.

That’s a lot of good stuff for a Wednesday, don’t you think?

I wonder what’s going to come along and blow the happy vibes?

Hang in there, kids. Only two more work days until New Years Eve.

Tweet Worry

I’m worried about my Tewksbury Tweets. They look okay, but you’re supposed to let them sit for a while and harden before putting them into the fridge. I let them sit for about 90 minutes, maybe a little longer. That should have been more than enough time, but when I took them off the wax paper they were still really gooey. I’m sure they will taste fine once they are cooled, but they won’t be perfect.

Weirdly, the bigger the tweet, the less gooey it was. I’m not sure how that worked out.

Who cares, the kids are coming tomorrow! WOOHOO!

Monday Lunch Break

No spoilers here, but I think the one thing Marvel’s Hawkeye has taught us is that the universe needs a Kate/Yelena buddy cop show. There is supposed to be an Echo show coming and that could be a sort of Hawkeye spin off and if we don’t get a Kate/Yelena team up then we’re going to absolutely need a show of their own. Come on, Marvel/Disney+, let’s make that happen.

While we’re on the Marvel TV subject, let’s get going on Daredevil season 4, m’kay? Bring the whole gang back. They’ll have to tone down the blood for Disney+ viewers, but they can totally do it. Get it done.

While we’re on the Disney+ subject, The Book of Boba Fett launches in two days. I need this show to be amazing. I need it. I am not one of those Star Wars fans who think Boba Fett is the balls or anything. In three movies (from the point of view of the special editions) he’s on screen for a grand total of, what? 10 minutes? How many lines did he have? Was it more than two? There’s the “he’s worth a lot to me” line and the “put captain Solo in the cargo hold” and that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. He gets more in Attack of the Clones and in the The Clone Wars TV show (and Rebels too? I can’t remember, was he in Rebels? I don’t think so), but that’s him as a kid and not the ass kicking bounty hunter he’s supposed to be. He had a good showing in season two of The Mandalorian, but I need the new show to live up to the character’s hype and I don’t know if that is actually possible without bending the laws of physics.

What else is going on?

NASA gave us a gigantic Christmas Present with the launch of the James Webb telescope. I haven’t read up on any of the details yet, but I hear everything went well. I remember the launch of the Hubble though, and I remember those blurry photos. I won’t relax about Webb until we start seeing results. Hubble was in Earth orbit and we could send folks up to fix it. Webb will not be reachable by humans. It has to work on the first try. I’ll read up on the news when I get a chance, but I’m hoping we’ll keep getting good news.

The kids are still at their dad’s. They will come back here on Wednesday and then be here through the weekend, including New Years Eve and New Years Day. I cannot understate how happy that makes me.

Right then, it’s 2:00pm and I have to get back to work. Have a good afternoon, my readers and only friends.

Christmas: Recap

We got a little Christmas snow last night, though it may have actually been Boxing Day snow. I’m not sure. Not enough to worry about, but I started cleaning it off anyway. I’m halfway through and my back hurts so much that I can’t stand. So I will rest up a bit before taking another shot at it and while I do that I will write about what was going on over the last few days.

Last week the kids finished up their semester. Harry drove Bellana’s car home on Thursday. Bellana didn’t come with him. One of her roommates lives down south in the former confederacy (which should be pronounced the way Eric Cartman pronounces it, confederasaw). She and a third roommate helped her drive home. They made it to Virginia on Friday and the rest of the way on Saturday. She was booked to fly home late Wednesday night and get here just after midnight on Thursday.

While she was down south her roommate’s brother started showing symptoms. She saw him on Sunday and then he tested positive on Tuesday. Bellana decided she would do her quarantine at dad’s house while waiting for her PCR test results which probably wouldn’t come back until Sunday. And as such, Christmas at our house was postponed and Jen and I were crushed.

Originally we had talked about moving Christmas morning to New Years Eve as that would be the first day that Jen and I were both off from work and we could do the whole Christmas experience as if nothing had happened. Later it was decided that we would do Christmas morning on Wednesday evening as that would be the next time the kids were here (barring a positive test, of course) and really no one was going to want to wait an extra couple of days.

Yesterday they did their Christmas morning at dad’s house, which they were going to do this year regardless of Covid. In a normal year they would wake up at dad’s and come to our house in the late morning. Next year it will be the opposite. Yesterday though, as the clock ticked over to the afternoon and no kids arrived it was really just devastating. It’s such a silly thing. What difference does the calendar date make anyway. Christmas is a concept. Christmas is a feeling. Christmas is family. So what if we push it off a few days? Well… apparently the calendar date is a big deal because yesterday just felt awful.

And then…

Around 1:00pm, with our Chinese Food “traditional Jewish Christmas dinner” en route, Bellana sent a text. The PCR results were in early and she tested negative. Can they come over around 4:00pm? Yes! Yes you can! They got here and massive hugs were exchanged and Christmas commenced and all was right with the world. They were even able to join in on a quick zoom call with my brother and sister and their families. HoHoHo! Literally a Christmas miracle.

Covid can suck it, we had Christmas after all.

I can’t say it was the best Christmas ever, because the first half of the day was by far the worst, but as Christmas miracles go… I’ll take it!

And that, loyal readers, is the story of the 2021 Christmas that almost wasn’t. Covid Christmas II: The Year that Had a Santa Claus After All.