I don’t need another reason to want to work from home more and work in the office less, but I have one. A good one.
There is something about the lighting and the mirror in the men’s room in the office that really points out how much grey there is in my hair. Especially around my temples and right above my ears. The grey hair really just leaps out at you.
Yeah, that’s a damn good reason to want to work from home more and work in the office less. As if I needed another reason, right?
What to do, what to do. The downside of getting old is the increasing disinterest in all things social. The upside is…
is…
Is there an upside to getting old?
I’m down to the final minutes of my lunch break on this fine Friday afternoon. I am pretty exhausted from a lack of sleep over the past… month(s) but I’m hanging in there. I had some Purdue Popcorn chicken and some peanuts and some sugar free Hershey bites for lunch. I really want a drink of water but I still have to wait the better part of an hour before I am clear to drink anything. That’s a gastric bypass patient thing. If you know, you know.
Fed Ex delivered a package today. I am not home to get it, but it contains a new guitar pedal. If I read the amazon shipping notes correctly, it’s a compressor pedal. The first I’ve ever purchased. I have this weird idea of using cleaner guitar sounds for this year’s RPM Challenge in February and a compressor will be a part of that. I bought an MXR Dyna Comp because it’s super simple and it will let me squash my clean signal down to a delightfully mushy… mush. There are two more pedals coming over the weekend. One is a Flanger, the other is an Amp Sim. I don’t have room on my pedal board for any of these kiddos and I don’t have open slots on my power brick… so I am going to need to get creative, I think. It should be fun. I don’t think I bought a single guitar pedal during all of 2024. I know I bought a couple of microphones for band practices that haven’t actually happened yet, but no pedals.
There are a lot of tentative plans for the weekend. We may be messing with our living room and we may be going to some stores for research purposes. I hope to spend some time wandering around town taking pictures with my new/possibly antique (though probably not) camera. I got a gift card for the sugar free bakery in Salem, NH for xmas. I haven’t bought anything from them in about a month, but now I am definitely going back and getting some cookies. Good stuff.
What else… I thought there was something else… One of our cars is going to get a break job. That wasn’t the thing that I am forgetting though… am I going to go shopping for a new iPhone? That’s definitely on the to-do list before we go to Florida at the end of the month, but is it this weekend? I don’t know.
I have to start practicing the guitar. The band is hoping to reconvene (hopefully for real this time) at some point after this weekend. I need to get ready for that. Which guitar should I bring to the first practice? Probably the Les Paul Standard that my wife got me for my 50th birthday in 2021. I really dig that guitar.
I know I had something else I wanted to write about but it has slipped my brain entirely. Don’t get old, kids. This is what happens to you when you get old. Stay young for as long as you can. Unless you’re already old like me in which case… sorry, folks. We had a good run, I’m sure.
I just sent this in a text message and I need to share it with the wider universe….
“I’m so old that I heard that Indiana Jones was looking for me.“
Yeah, your humble narrator is old.
The new episode of House of the Dragon premiers on HBO tonight. It is 8:50pm and the episode becomes available on the MAX app at 9:00pm.
I am so tired right now that I don’t think I am going to make it. Hell, it’s 8:50 and I don’t think I am going to make it to 8:51!
If you’ve ever wondered what being in your 50’s would feel like… this is it, folks. Enjoy!
You know you’re old when your wife asks you if you have any interest in going to bed and just sitting up reading for a little while before nodding off for the night…
And it’s not even 8:00pm yet…
And you are absolutely interested. Absolutely.
I have a screw loose, but you all knew that already, Har Har Har.
But seriously, folks. My glasses. One of the arms was super loose. Last night I had this vision, more like a nightmare except that I was awake, of being somewhere in North Carolina and having the arm fall off of my glasses and not being able to drive anymore because I’m half blind.
Jen has a little screw driver kit on a key chain that’s meant for glasses. I borrowed it but I couldn’t see the loose screw without my glasses on and I couldn’t fix the loose screw while my glasses are on.
Jen helped me out because she’s a saint. All is well now. Thank you, my love.
I was going to go out shooting some film this morning, but after I finished my morning faux joggin’ I completely wussed out. Why? I just don’t wanna go out in the cold. You big baby.
I did something to my shoulder today and I have no idea what. It hurts. Why? I didn’t do anything to deserve it, other than being 51 years old when stuff just randomly starts breaking down.
We’re supposed to get a huge storm sometime tomorrow, I think. I don’t know if it’s rain or snow or both. It might mess up some plans for the weekend, but I can’t tell one way or another yet. I hate snow. I really, really hate snow.
The kids are coming home this weekend. Bellana’s car is dead so we will be selling her (“selling”) one of ours. I want to get it tuned up for her. There’s a software recall and I have an appointment to get that done on Saturday. I want to get an oil change too, and have the tires checked. They should be fine but let’s make sure. The other car needs an oil change too and the wiper blades are falling off. So this weekend’s theme is kids and cars, to start with at least.
Did I mention that I’ve lost 200 pounds since January? I was on cloud nine all day long yesterday. I still am. I even went to the facebook to gloat a little. People are asking for before/after pics. I might give the people what they want. I gloated on post.news too. I was the first person on that network to use the hash tag #GastricBypass, but a few fellow surgical survivors said hello. That made me happy.
We are 20 days away from leaving for Florida. I can’t wait. I can’t wait to travel for the first time in almost three years. I can’t wait to spend two whole weeks with the kids. I can’t wait to experience Disney World with the love of my life once again. Did I ever mention that my original plan for proposing to Jen involved the World Showcase at Epcot? In the end I did it at home because I just couldn’t wait anymore, but we did reenact the proposal I had in mind when we took a trip there with Larry and Nawal a few weeks later. Also, and this is very important, I can’t wait to be warm. I know it is not going to be scorching, but it is going to be a whole hell of a lot warmer there than it is here.
I feel like I should have 100 other things to write about this morning, but I’m drawing blanks left and right. My shoulder is really bugging me. I think I pulled a muscle or something. It’s annoying the crap out of me. I’ll get over it, someday. Mostly I’m just really happy that I don’t have to drive into the office today. I am working from home for the rest of this week and the first three days next week. I have to go in next Thursday but hopefully that will only be for half of the day. Starting next month though (after I get back from Florida) we will be going into the office on Wednesdays. Every Wednesday for the foreseeable future. That’s seriously depressing, but I’ll rise above it, somehow.
Okay. I am going to finish my breakfast and then spend half an hour or so gazing longingly at my weight tracking spreadsheet. Specifically the Total Since the First Check In cell where the number is over 200. Ah, what a thing that is.
Happy Amazon Prime Day. I don’t really know what that means, but my beloved wife spent her pre-work morning shopping for bargains. I don’t know if she got any, but we have a new dorm room to partially populate at the end of next month so fingers crossed for good stuff.
Today is my work anniversary. 18 years ago today I started a new job. Eighteen (18) years… That’s the longest I’ve ever stuck with anything in my whole life. It’s crazy. Crazy, I tells ya.
My father is moving to a new room within the assisted living facility he’s currently living in. The moving day is tomorrow. I haven’t seen his new room, but I’ve seen one that is similar. It’s bigger than his current room and it has an actual kitchen. I took the day off to help out. I’m not sure how it’s going to go yet. We’ll see. I’m optimistic that this is going to be a good thing. I am not sure if my father agrees or not. Again, we’ll see.
Bellana is coming home on Friday. Repeat: Bellana is coming home on Friday. We’re going to have both kids in the house at the same time and it’s everything. Literally everything!
My Ebay camera purchase that I kinda wanted to back out of but didn’t is supposed to be delivered today. Here’s hoping the lens that the seller chucked in for free actually works. I am not sure it will. Unfortunately, Amazon Prime Day doesn’t have any deals on Nikon lenses from the 80’s so there’s no help coming from there.
18 years. I’ve actually stuck with something for 18 years. Who woulda thunk it. I wonder how many other folks from my new hire group are still around. Our careers are old enough to vote. So weird.
I had a serious middle aged old fart moment today.
I was sitting at my desk, eating my lunch, and a thought popped into my head. I finished the laundry. All of the laundry in the house is washed, dried, and folded (though there’s some that still needs to be put away).
I thought to myself… all the laundry is done… that is awesome.
Then I thought, if my 16 year old self heard me say that the laundry being done is “awesome” he would probably kick me in the balls so hard that they’d end up a geosynchronous orbit.
Robert, you are such an old person. Old. Person.
I have to be careful not to let my 16 year old self know how happy I was after I made the bed this morning. Who knows what violence he would befall upon me.
Inside the Red Head's Head 