The to do list for tonight, with Bellana about 1000 miles away and all of us missing her:
It’s snowing today. We were expecting 4-8 inches and so far we have barely a dusting.
With the exception of Bellana being 1000 miles away, this is a pretty awesome plan.
Yesterday afternoon I kept the Find My app up on my iPhone so I could keep an eye on Harry’s progress as he drove home from school. Today it’s Bellana’s turn. She’s not coming home though. She’s driving a roommate home to the deep south. The app might be up all day today and tomorrow. I have no doubt that she and the group she’s with will be safe and healthy. In these uncertain and crazy Covid variant Omicron days though, I am also nervous. Be careful out there folks.
It’s Friday at 8:40am. I have to punch into work soon. I don’t want to. Harry has a remote final exam today. After he finishes that I am just going to want to hang out with him. I’m really happy he’s here. I don’t want to do anything else besides just enjoy the fact that he’s here.
Eight days until christmas. I have one gift to wrap and one more on route. I am going to be ready this year with oceans of time to spare. On the subject of christmas I feel that I should note that I have done a better job making sure the tree is watered than I ever have in any real-tree-year ever. Look at me, patting myself on the back. HoHoHo, babie.
Happy Friday.
ADDENDUM: Find My tells me that Bellana is currently driving though Saratoga Springs, NY. That brings two thoughts to my mind. First, I wonder if they took the ferry across Lake Champlain. Second, one of the best Rush concerts I ever saw was on July 5, 2008 when Jen and I road tripped all the way to Saratoga Springs to see them at SPAC. I was only in the town for a very short time, but I thought it seemed like a wonderful place. Someday we’ll go back.
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.
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.
I made two doctors appointments today. One is just a quickie to drop off some paperwork and take some vitals. The other is a zoom meeting.
I told myself that I wasn’t going to write about this… then changed my mind… then changed my mind again… and now I am changing it again. The appointments are to start the process for weight loss surgery. The idea of mutilating my internal organs in the name of health scares the fucking shit out of me (literally?). 20 years of nothing but negative progress in my attempts to get healthier is currently scaring me even more. A lot more. Almost infinitely more. My step kids were six and four years old when I met them for the first time. I missed out on a ton. I don’t want to miss out on any more because I was not able to get my weight down and it caused my heart to explode. Fuck.
So the first appointment is booked and I am freaking out. Also, the first appointment doesn’t happen until mid-January so I am freaking out about that too. Covid-19 forced us to punt on Harry’s high school graduation trip to Disney World last year. The make up date is currently sometime in January 2023. I don’t want to still be in some weakened recovery phase of this process when the trip date comes around. I’d rather delay than screw up scheduling. Granted Omicron is already hinting at a fucked up 2022 to rival the fucked up 2021 and 2020. Fuck. Who knows what’s going to happen.
Anyway… as of right now I think I am going to share my thoughts and experiences on this whole process as they happen, which means you aren’t going to hear a peep for almost two months. I’ll probably change my mind a few dozen times between now and then so you might not get a post about it until it happens. Or, maybe I’ll wait a year after it happens and then just post a selfie of an unrecognizable, healthier me (that is the goal, right?).
Cross your fingers and hang on to your butts, and come along and freak the fuck out with me.
I wrote “fuck” a lot in this post. Oh well.
Assuming I don’t need to add an additional song, I think I finished all of the guitars and all of the vocals for November today. Oh my goodness, my finger tips are on fire. Burning hell fire finger tips. Good heavens.
I think I can stop using the Vox MV50 amp now. I should be able to put it back into the living room with the electric piano. It’s going to be there all setup when the kids come home for Christmas break.
They came over today and decorated the tree and packed up their stuff for school and left. I’m sad for me and excited for them. As usual, right? I just love them. You know how it is.
Inside the Red Head's Head 