Lunchtime Post

I haven’t done a lunchtime post in a while because I’ve been too busy to stop working during lunch. The last few work days have been insane. Today is nuts but slightly less nuts so I’ve got a minute.

Usually work slows down a bit during the summer. That’s not the case this year. Is that due to the pandemic? Summer is meaningless when you’ve been locked down for a year and a half? Maybe. More likely it’s just bad luck.

I need things to change. I can’t keep doing this staying at my parents house for much longer. I feel like I’m coming unglued. We need things to change. I feel like Glen after Negan hit him the first time. Read the first 100 issues of The Walking Dead comic. You’ll understand.

Hold on, I have to give mom her pills….

….okay, I’m back. What was I talking about? Mom is watching soap operas. That’s new.

Spoke too soon. She just changed the channel back to a game show. That’s a whole lot better than the catholic channel she had on this morning, and it’s astronomical units better than Jerry Springer. Where did I put my headphones?

Do you own a pair of Apple AirPods Pro or AirPods Max? Turn on transparency mode and then have a fan blow into your face. The noise is incredible.

Eight minutes left in my lunch break. I have two meetings this afternoon. I want to take a nap, but that’s not unusual for 2:00pm on a Wednesday.

Wait a second… am I feeling out of whack today because it’s the first Wednesday in six weeks that didn’t have a new Marvel episode? Loki ended last week and What If doesn’t start until next month. Not sure how much interest I have in What If. Animated Star Wars is acceptable to me for some reason, but I am not sure if animated Marvel is also acceptable. We’ll see.

Okay, now it’s back to work. Have a good afternoon, everyone!

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Marvel: Caught Up

Jen and I watched Black Widow tonight. I am once again completely caught up on all things Marvel MCU. Well… I never saw the Inhumans show, and there was at least one other that I haven’t seen… Runaways? Is that what it’s called? Whatever, I am all caught up with the movies, and the Disney+ and Netflix shows… but I guess not the X-Men movies or the two Fantastic Four disasters. Okay, so I am caught up with all of the Disney related content. I think.

You get the picture.

It was good. It would have been 10 times better if it had come out after Captain America Civil War, but whatevs. It was good.

And that’s all the movie review you are going to get tonight. You’re welcome.

robertjames1971

Tag Team Glasses

I picked up my new glasses yesterday. One pair of progressive lenses for general use, and one pair of intermediate depth for sitting at the computer.

It’s kind of a whole new world.

My old glasses were progressive so when I worked at the computer I had to search around to find the sweet spot that gave the clearest view of the screen. Normal walking around or driving stuff didn’t require any work. Reading a book… that was tough.

So far the new glasses, both pairs, are doing fine. The Computer glasses felt odd when I first sat at my desk yesterday. I thought I might struggle getting used to them. Next thing I knew an hour had passed and I never noticed them at all. It was like I wasn’t wearing them. Brilliant! The progressives are… progressives. Looking straight ahead is fine. Turning your head can cause the world to go a little out of whack. Shapes and angles get a little screwy, but only a little. No issues walking around or driving or watching TV or anything.

The issue I am having is remembering to switch. I sat at my desk for an hour or so this morning then got up to take a pit stop before my first meeting. I forgot to swap glasses and the walk to the can was a blurry adventure. It wasn’t a problem, it was just different. I came back from lunch and forgot to switch from general to computer and the screen looked a little freaky. Oops, gotta make the change again.

I got bigger frames this time and having more lens in my face is making a big difference. Give me a couple of days and I don’t think I will be able to function with my old glasses anymore. That’s kinda the point though, right?

Three hours and eight minutes until the weekend. I just came back from two days off, sort of a mid-week weekend, so I shouldn’t be in that I need the weekend right now state of mind… but I totally am. I need me some weekend. I don’t have to nana sit until Sunday, so I’m hoping for a nice, calm, fun, relaxing day with the love of my life tomorrow. Maybe we’ll watch Black Widow. We can kick back and relax while watching an Avenger beat the shit out of bad guys. Sounds like a good Saturday to me.

robertjames1971

Marvel Night

After a full day of working from my mother’s house, I am so stoked for Marvel night with Jen and Harry. Harry and I will get home at close to the same time and once we both get in and get settled it’s time…

Burgers and Fries and muthatruckin’ Loki episode five.

Why is the clock moving so slowly? I needs me some family Loki time!

robertjames1971

Raccoon?

I took this picture when I got home from Nana Sitting this evening. This guy was just hanging out in the slightly too long grass.

I think it’s a rabbit, but I’ve been watching a lot of Marvel movies lately so maybe it’s a raccoon? I’m not sure. What would Thor say?

robertjames1971

On the Clock

My Nana Sitting shift has begun. The doors are alarmed and the pills have been distributed. She’s okay right now, she’s dishing out some ice cream for herself, but I know pain is a bit of an issue.

I was planning on putting the Red Sox game on with the volume down and then streaming something on my laptop through headphones but the USA Network is running a slew of Marvel movies. Harry, Jen, and I watched Antman this afternoon (on Disney+, not USA). When I got here Age of Ultron was on and now Captain America Civil War is on. Okay, so it’s a Marvel night. That works for me.

50/90 starts in under four hours. I had this idea to write a series of songs that have all of the verses and choruses written as haikus. Anything to force a little creativity, right?

Okay, I’m going to sign off and watch some super heroes and be sad that I am not at home. Until next time (which, knowing how Nana Sitting goes will probably be three or four more times before I go to sleep).

robertjames1971

All Signed Up

I signed up for this year’s 50/90 today. We’ll see how long it takes before I burn out on it. Initial plans are to swap out the Vox amp for one of the Fenders and to keep using the same 3-4 pedals I’ve been using over the last few months. I will start the first day (Sunday the 4th) at my parents’ house. I won’t have much to do outside of Nana Sitting duties so maybe I can get a good jump on things. I have a Trello board setup, but we only get five freebies now so I will probably delete it when I’m done. Whatever. I used to have a Tumblr account that I used for daily check ins on recording projects. I might do that again too. Anything to manufacture some phony BS motivation.

I am up to date on Loki now. Episode four was totally worth the wait. I will be up to date on The Bad Batch in about six minutes when the episode I am watching right now ends. Disney+, I am keeping up with your mad pace.

What else is going on? Right now? Not much. It’s Friday and this weekend is a three day weekend. Glorious. Quitting time is in about nine hours. I can make it that far. Just hold on, fat boy. You can make it that far.

robertjames1971

Spoiler Free: So Far

Due to Nana sitting coverage last night we were not able to do our weekly Burgers and Marvel night. We have burgers and fries for dinner while watching whatever the newest episode of the current Marvel TV show on Disney+ is. Right now it’s Loki and this week is episode four out of six.

We will remedy the oversight tonight when I get home from Nana sitting and then shortly afterward Harry gets home from his totally kick ass new job (I am literally jealous).

That is all going according to the revised plan, but the revised plan leaves us open to a huge negative (apart from the given negative of me being away from home for 24 hours). What am I talking about?

Spoilers.

I still have a couple of hours to go before we watch the new episode so I might be speaking too soon, but as of right now, 5:13pm on Thursday July 1, 2021, I have not had a single spec of the episode spoiled. How did I do this? I stayed away from Tweeter, and I mostly stayed away from BookFayce. I say mostly because lunch time included some surfing around various guitar playing BookFayce groups. One guy posted that he was pissed at the universe because he bought a $150 USB 2.0 cable to use with a USB audio interface, then upgraded to a new USB interface which has the nerve to run on USB C. Really. He was ignoring the massive performance improvement because he spent $150 on a cable that is probably the most obvious example of planned obsolesces in the entire tech industry. Damn… priorities, dude.

Anyway, I have not been spoiled, though now I expect the guy who was looking for sympathy about his obsolete $150 cable that likely had the same performance metrics as a $5.00 cable you could get at any Best Buy will come flying out of the woodwork to fire a cannonade of spoilers right into my idiot face.

Whatever. The theme of this post used to be Loki but now I think it’s run on sentences. Right?

13 minutes to go until I can punch out of work.

robertjames1971

Lunch Break

It’s the tail end of my lunch break. What’s going on in the world?

What the hell is the deal with Apple’s podcast player? Both on iOS and iPadOS? I’ve been using them both for years but over the last few weeks they’ve become useless. I’ve found myself using Stitcher out of frustration. The app is garbage these days. I’m almost afraid to try it on the MacOS, though it’s pretty much always been garbage there.

At this moment, the third podcast I have queued up is a hockey podcast talking about game one of the Stanley Cup Final from last night. I only watched the first period and I fell asleep before the third period started. The final score was Tampa Bay 5, Montreal 1. That’s what I am talking about, hockey fans! I hate Tampa Bay but anything is better than Montreal. Tampa Bay, keep up the good work. Let’s win this one in four. Pretty please?

Work has been weird today, and I am not talking about my idiotic forgetting of my badge this morning. Not sure if it’s something in the air or what, but lots of weirdness going on. Nothing we can’t handle, just… odd.

I finally made myself an eye appointment. I’ll be visiting my local Lens Crafters this weekend. I think I am 100% on board with a dedicated computer glasses. I think that will make my work day a little less blurry.

I am a bad person. I have to nana sit tomorrow, which means I need to go over there around 6:30 or so. Harry has a new job and he won’t be getting home until after 7:00. That means we can’t watch the new episode of Loki on the day it’s released. At least we can’t watch it together. Maybe we could do one of those… what do they call them… viewing parties? Or we can just wait until Thursday. Or Harry and Jen can watch it without me. I don’t want that, but I would rather the two of them be happy than anything else. I feel like I am breaking my own heart every third day. I just feel awful.

It’s 95 degrees out right now. As bad as that is, it’s better than 110, or whatever it is over in the Northwest. The air conditioner is keeping up here. May it continue it’s good, heroic work.

Okay, it’s 2:00. Back to work, red head.

robertjames1971