Tag: Podcast

Empty Nesters… Again

Bellana is back in Vermont. She left last night and stayed over one of her friends’ house in order to cut down on her morning commute today. At our house she was three hours away from work, and today is a work day for her. I get it. It makes me sad to see her go, but I am also really happy we had her for a few days. Even more so as we had Harry for a few days before that, and their visits overlapped so we had them both for a day. That made me really happy. That was an extra good night.

Jen is working from the office today. I am working from home. That means I am here by my lonesome, just me and the cats. I have a podcast playing on my MacBook and it’s streaming to Home Pods scattered all over the house. I don’t have to pause the podcast if I need to get up and leave the room. Heh heh. Technology is cool. When Jen comes home I’ll shut off any streams that are anywhere other than Harry’s room/my office space.

The Great Heatwave of 2024 is going to become official today. The forecast calls for the temperature in my little city to hit 99 degrees. That will be three days over 90. Heatwave: Confirmed. It is 9:10am right now and it’s already 83 degrees. It’s going to be fun.

The forecast for the rest of the week? Rain and clouds and awful. Back to normal, I guess.

After complaining about crappy sleep for the last week or so, I finally topped six hours last night. In fact, I topped 7.5 hours. It was broken though. I fell asleep at 9:30pm. Not by choice. I just couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore and zonked out. Normally I try to eat something before I go to sleep out of fear that my stomach will get so empty over night that it will hurt. A snack at bedtime avoids that problem, but I didn’t have one last night. My last bite to eat last night was at 7:49pm. I woke up with a bit of a stomach ache at 2:30am. I had a little snack and felt better, but I couldn’t fall back to sleep until well after 3:00. Oh well. I felt really tired when I woke up today (almost an hour later than I had planned) but I feel okay now. Here’s hoping I won’t be totally exhausted today.

Okay, red head. Back to work.

Deep Space 9 Podcasts

Over the weekend I got back into my rewatch of Star Trek Deep Space 9. When I paused it at the start of the ridiculous Doctor Who binge I was a few episodes into season two. Today I went looking for a rewatch podcast or two that I could listen to in conjunction with watching the episode. You know, like you do.

I found one called The 7th Rule that features Cirroc Lofton (who played Jake Sisko) and the late Aron Eisenberg (who played Nog). I am listening to their recap of an episode called Rivals (season two, episode 11, I think) and they are basically just making fun of Doctor Bashir’s outfit and it’s pretty freakin’ funny.

I just wanted to share.

Netflix Fail

We pay too much money for streaming services. We (meaning, me) are TV crazies and watch a lot of shows across a lot of networks. We have been downsizing a little. That includes dropping from an add-free Netflix plan to a lower tier, add-supported plan.

Unrelated (yet), my favorite Walking Dead podcast, formerly known as The Walking Dead ‘Cast and currently known as The ‘Cast of Us, started a rewatch of The Walking Dead this week. I figured I’d play along. I went to Netflix to watch the first episode before listening to the podcast episode.

That’s when I found that the show is not available on add-supported plans. It is only available on add-free plans.

Screw you, Netflix. Screw you, right in your eyes.

Coming Home Tomorrow

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.

Don’t Forget the Water

I was listening to a hockey podcast this morning. It was three hockey writers shootin’ the breeze. They veered off topic and started talking about the pros and cons of real vs fake christmas trees.

Shit, thought I, I forgot to water the christmas tree yesterday.

The downside of putting up a real tree right after Thanksgiving is you have to be extra careful about maintenance. If you want to have a green tree on christmas morning then you better keep it watered. Otherwise Santa will be putting presents under some dead, ugly, brown thing with needles all over the floor.

I’ve also listened to a couple of amateur musician podcasts today and the topic of discussion in each one is the Get Back documentary. They all agree with me. Despite being 800 hours long, that movie is absolutely magnificent. It’s just an utter delight. Where else do you get to see the creative process where Paul McCartney literally wills the song Get Back into existence? That song didn’t exist at all until Paul sat there, strumming on his bass, forcing it out of his head. It’s just magic. It was genius at work. Literally.

One little item that I didn’t really catch had to do with Paul. For huge swaths of the movie the band is playing like shit. There’s so much noodling and farting around, whether it be all of them together, or just one or two, or whatever. The question was posed… in all of that mountain of playing… do you ever hear Paul play a bad note? I need to watch the whole thing again, but right now I can’t recall anything. So not only was he pulling super classic music out of his ass, over and over again, he is also playing so well he seems incapable of doing anything that doesn’t sound right. Hell, he’s even playing his Rickenbacker bass at one point and one of the strings pops out of the nut and lays against another string, and he’s still playing great. How is that possible?

Okay. Back to work. I had a deadline moved up on me and the pile of stuff I thought I had two days to do suddenly has to be done today. Enough of my yakkin’, let’s boogie!

WTF Reading List

Marc Maron’s WTF podcast had Bob Spitz on today. Maybe it was yesterday, but I listened today.

Spitz is best known for writing a gigantic biography of The Beatles. I bought it and devoured it the instant I leaned of its existence. I’m pretty sure someone got it for me for Christmas or something. It was a great read and I recommend it to anyone who has any interest in The Beatles.

He was on the podcast promoting a new music biography that comes out next week. It’s on Led Zeppelin. That brought me back. The first rock band biography I ever read was Hammer of the Gods by Stephen Davis . I bought it on my high school band trip to Connecticut in 1986. It was an industry eye opener for this particular high school freshman, let me tell you.

Pretty sure I’ll be reading this one, for old times sake, and I don’t think I’ll be waiting for Christmas.

A Downside of Weekend Work

So there is a hidden downside to working around the clock over the weekend.

There are a bunch of podcasts that I like to listen to during the work week that release new episodes over the weekend. This week I’ve listened to all of them. Now I have nothing to listen to during my actual work shift tomorrow.

Bummer, dude.

Unrelated to work, there was good news today. First, we got to see Bellana for about five minutes. She was passing through town and stopped in to say hello. Second, we had a FaceTime call with Harry! Both kids on a random Sunday! If only I had had a chance to shower and change out of yesterday’s clothes! Also, if I don’t get a haircut soon my head is going to collapse under it’s own weight. Keep an eye on the news. The headline will likely be, “Red Head’s Head Implodes. News at 11:00.”

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.

I am Bad at Predictions

More proof that I ain’t no prophet, right?

In the last post I wished everyone an easy Friday at work. Within 10 minutes of punching in this morning I got hit by a metaphorical bus known as one of our biggest customers. Everything is under control now, but yikes, eh?

Why does Apple’s podcast app suck so bad? Specifically on iPadOS. It keeps crashing and losing it’s place and what the hell, bro? I already listened to that Loki Episode 2 podcast, I don’t want to listen to it again, and I was halfway through this other Loki Episode 2 podcast so why are you starting from the beginning again? Also, where the hell are the new episodes of podcasts I subscribe to? They aren’t all a day late, are they? Come on, Apple. You want to lose to some crap fest like Stitcher? Or, heaven forbid, Spotify? Crud, babie. Crud. Get your podcast catching ass in gear, okay?

So, Loki… are they going to pull a fast one on us and have the TVA end up as the bad guys? If you think that’s a spoiler, read the title of this post again. No spoilers here, unless we’re talking about Fear the Walking Dead. I’ll spoil the shit out of that dumpster fire (no I won’t). Those of us who are still watching deserve it. Masochism, babie. Masochism.

I need to play guitar this weekend. I need to cut the grass, but I need to play guitar. Do you get where I’m coming from? While I need to watch the new Rick and Morty episode this weekend, I need to play guitar. Yeah, you’re picking up what I’m putting down.

Okay then. Back to work, fat boy. Back to work.

Best Interview Ever

Best interview ever

Best podcast episode ever

Best episode of anything ever