I Don’t Want to Work Tomorrow

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.

Pre New Years Eve thoughts

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.

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.

Three Days

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!

New Year’s Resolution

What’s your New Year’s Resolution? Is it to lose weight? To eat healthier? To exercise more? To practice the guitar more? To be nicer to the people I care about? To work harder? To be a better person?

Sure, all of that. Also, none of that, really.

My New Year’s Resolution for 2021: Get two doses of a Covid-19 vaccine and make sure my family gets them too.

Simple.

A Crappy Couple of Weeks

You know what?  These last two weeks or so have pretty much sucked.  Christmas and Christmas Eve celebrations have been the only bright spots in an otherwise ugly period of time.

First I got sick with what was probably the flu.  Immediately after that, my wife got sick with what appeared to be the same bug.  We still had a lot of Christmas shopping and prepping to go but we spent most of the week prior to the holiday in a nyquil induced haze of uselessness.  Entire days were spent in bed trying to sleep through the illnesses.

Near the end of last week Jen started improving.  A day or so later I started to slowly improve.  We scrambled through the end of the Christmas shopping, and started getting ready for the Christmas Eve party, but for the most part it was just a struggle to keep ourselves up and at ’em.  Once I started to feel a tiny bit better, Jen started feeling worse.  Oh great.  Christmas Eve came and she fought her way through the cooking and hosting like a trooper.  Christmas day she did the same, all while getting sicker and sicker.  We both felt like Santa was at less than his best this year.  Jen took care of all of it, and I am dazzled by the success she had, but I feel like I could have been more helpful, and if we hadn’t lost that week to the flu we could have made some of the kids’ last minute gift wishes come true.  That was a big part of the problem this year, the kids took their sweet time putting together a wish list and in the end my step son was still asking for things as late as 12/23, and then come Christmas morning he was expecting to get those things.  He tried to act like he wasn’t disappointed, but we could tell he was a little bit.  Next year I need to do a better job getting a list to Santa out of them both as early as humanly possible.  I might have them start taking notes on ideas for next year, tonight.

Don’t get me wrong, Christmas was a big success.  Everyone was happy.  I just feel like I should have contributed more, and I failed to surprise Jen at all.  She got great stuff.  It’s just that everything she got was on her wish list.  I didn’t manage to wow her with anything.  As for the kids, the last paragraph makes it sound like they got socks and underwear and nothing else.  That’s not true.  They got new iPads!  They got awesome games.  They got books that they are going to love.  They got a lot of great stuff.  I just wanted to do better by them and I couldn’t because I spent the week leading up to Christmas as a flu riddled basket case.

So maybe you’re asking, this is all in the past.  Why is that fat red head saying that he’s still having a bad week?  Well for me, New Years is ruined because of work.  I’m on call all day, and they are guaranteed to work my fat ass off all day and night.  It’s going to suck.  I still have a lingering cold and cough.  Not bad, but it is still there.  As for Jen?  Oh nothing.  Just fricken walking pneumonia, that’s all.  She kept getting sicker so she went to the doctor yesterday and got the news.  Pneumonia!  Are you serious?  How bad does that suck!  She feels really sick and she is just miserable about it.  I feel miserable because I’m here at work and not at home rubbing her feet and cooking her some Campbell Chicken Noodle Soup.  I should be home with her right now, but instead I am here working.  I hate it.

So what it comes down to is this.  This week and last week have sucked in many ways.  I am hopeful that things will start turning around soon, but the next few days still may be a continuance of the current suck fest.

Send some get well wishes to my beautiful bride.  She’s an angel and she needs to feel better soon.