And just like that, all of the xmas decorations have been removed from the living areas of the house and placed back in the cellar storage.
Insert an emphatic sigh of relief here. We can start 2025 now.
Oh wait… 2025 is going to suck… crap, let’s put the xmas stuff back up and see if we can stave off the inevitable societal collapse.
HoHoHoly crap.
I don’t like what the calendar does to me at this time of year. We’re so close to the holidays that I just stop being able to deal with the days that still lay between me and the big dates.
We are currently seven days away from xmas and 14 days away from New Years. That means 13 days until New Years Eve, but NYE is a work day for me so that’s pretty screwy in general.
As an added bonus, we are 38 days away from the next vacation too. I sure hope it’s nice and warm in Florida in January. Last time we visited in January it was cold-ish in the morning and warm in the afternoons. I can live with that.
With the possible exception of anything that might be added to any one of the many piles of xmas gifts in the next few days, everything that isn’t for my wife or for a Secret Santa has been wrapped. I’ll have it all done by the weekend, with oodles of time to spare before the big day arrives.
I just want it to get here. I want Santa to arrive and unlawfully break into the house do his dirty work. I want the kids home with us, even if it is just for a short time, and I want to see the niece and nephews and the siblings and the in-laws on both sides of the family. I just want it to get here already. Is that too much to ask?
It’s New Years Eve again. Wasn’t it just New Years Eve a few weeks ago? 2023 is ending? How the hell did that happen?
We don’t have any solid plans for today apart from picking up some take-out Chinese food. Maybe some board games? Maybe another round of Yahtzee?
I watched Rebel Moon on Netflix. I was conflicted. I wanted to watch it but I also did not want to watch it. See the conflict? My spoiler free review is to recommend that you wait until part two comes out in April. This movie feels like two hours worth of a four hour heist movie, where generally the first half of a heist movie is assembling the team. That means the movie that is out now is really just the assembling of the team. That’s why it doesn’t have a coherent story. It’s more like a bunch of mini-movies introducing all of the characters. Hopefully part two will make sense on it’s own. So if you wait for part two to come out and then watch them both together, maybe it will be a decent movie as a whole. For now though… eh.
I have to play guitar today. I have two songs in progress for this month’s Record Every Month challenge. They both need lead guitar parts. I need to record them today and then mix the two songs and then I will have my first R.E.M. win since September. It’s a must.
Speaking of guitar, I went down a rabbit hole last week that I find myself visiting once every couple of years. If you read this page you might have noticed that I have been obsessed with the band Rush since 1981. Back then there were two bands that I was obsessed with. The other was Led Zeppelin. As I got older though, the whole unending adolescence vibe that Zeppelin had sort of got tiring for me and I moved away from them. Also, Jimmy Page is one of my guitar heroes, and he is definitely one of the reasons I NEEDED to learn to play guitar when I was a kid. When I look at my own playing objectively though (if that’s even possible) I don’t hear a lot of his style in my playing. I think as I moved away from the debauchery that Zeppelin represented, I sort of moved away from Page too.
Every once in a while though, I feel the need to really dig into the catalog and try to remind myself that there is a lot of value there. That comes up once every couple of years, and it came up for me on Thursday. I put together a playlist with all of their studio records and over the course of the work day I plowed through all of it. Did the old musical feelings I used to get when I listened to Led Zeppelin as a teenager come back? Yes. Not exactly the same, as I am no longer that kid that I used to be, but it was close enough that I felt good about the whole experience. Now I can move on to other things again until the next time I feel cosmically compelled to examine the Zeppelin again. Probably some time in 2025, I think.
Okay then, it’s almost 11:00am. I have not had anything to eat for about three hours. It’s time to have a snack to keep my stomach happy. Gastric Bypass for the win!
Happy New Years Eve, everyone. HoHoHo.
We are home again. Another xmas gathering is in the books. We went to my in-laws and had dinner and swapped gifts. It was lovely and it brings the holiday to a close.
Tomorrow? Back to work. Not only that, but it’s an in the office day.
Crud.
The count down to New Years is on. We thought about New York (but not Times Square) but now we’re thinking of maybe taking a day next weekend and visiting Newport, RI. Newport is famous for gilded age, rich people houses but for me it’s more famous as the birthplace of Throwing Muses.
Will we do either of these things? Who knows. There are three more days until the next long weekend. As Traffic said on their amazing second album, who knows what tomorrow may bring?
The kids are here today. They go to their father’s house tomorrow morning and stay there until Christmas Eve. Then they stay over until Christmas morning before going back to their fathers until the day after New Year. Then on the 4th we hop on a plane and fly to Disney World for the better part of two weeks.
Christmas is one week away. That means we have five grueling work days to go before the first of the two holidays. Then we have a holiday, then four grueling work days until the second holiday which extends into a two week vacation. Damn, I hope it’s warm in Florida in January. We did February in 2020, now we try January.
I don’t want the kids to go, but if we’re going to monopolize their times on the trip to Florida then we should give dad equal time before we leave. It’s fair, even if it sucks donkey balls.
We finally completed the last christmas decoration of the year tonight. We bought this year’s ornaments and hung them on the tree. Can you guess what mine is? Of course you can. It’s a little camera. I’ll see about getting a picture of it later because what’s more artsy then a camera taking a picture of a fake camera?
We’re spending the day with Wes Anderson movies today. The French Dispatch is on right now. Is everyone in his movies a veteran of James Bond movies? I think so.
Christmas Eve get together on New Years Eve. It still works. Everyone is tested and all is well.
We are less than 90 minutes away from December 31, 2021. While I am strongly looking forward to telling 2021 to fuck off and die, I’ve also started thinking about how to celebrate the end of this dirtbag year and the start of the next year.
I’ve started thinking, but I got nuttin’.
We are going to have the first ever full family Covid test tomorrow. Nana and Papa are coming over for the delayed Christmas Eve and we need to ensure everyone is safe. Rapid tests for all and for all a negative rapid test!
I am going to set up the alternate music nook in the cellar tomorrow. I want to use my new pedals with my 18 watt amp and my KTR overdrive pedal and the rest of the band pedal board, and I also don’t want to mess with the cool setup I have in the bedroom. So two nooks it is! I’ve got a couple of tunes ready to record so I’ll use them to test drive the set up. I’m not sure I’ll actually get to play tomorrow but it is a long weekend so fingers crossed.
As for traditional stuff like New Years resolutions, I don’t have anything yet. I might not at all, but if I do I’ll share it soon enough.
Until then, happy New Years Eve Eve! What’s left of it.
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.
As December 22nds go, this one was probably my worst. This morning was just awful. Really bad.
No Christmas for us this year. Maybe a New Years-mas or something, but no Christmas.
Just a five alarm shit hole of a day.
Thanks to some lucky calendar coincidences, I only have a three day work week this week. Talk about a relief.
Christmas is a day off for us. Christmas is Saturday. When Christmas falls on the weekend the rules are we get Friday off for Saturday holidays and Monday off for Sunday. Therefore we get Friday off this year. Sweet.
Christmas Eve is also a day off for us. We’ve had this particular non-national holiday for a few years now, but this is it. Starting in 2022 (2020 too) it’s back to working on Christmas Eve. This year though, Christmas Eve is on Friday, but we’re off on Friday because of Christmas Day, so we “celebrate” Christmas Eve on Thursday and we get Thursday off.
Every once in a while, the calendar just comes through for you, man. In a big way.
So we’re off on Thursday and Friday and we only have a three day week. Next week will also get some calendar magic as New Years Day is also a holiday that falls on Saturday, meaning we get Friday off. We don’t have a New Years Eve holiday, but the schedule works out that we’re off that day anyway.
Let me take this opportunity to praise 2021 for ending on this little up note, even though almost everything else this year has been rotten festering garbage and thanks to omicron there’s no reason to expect 2022 (2020 too) will be better.
HoHoHo!
Inside the Red Head's Head 