The Stir Crazy Files – Episode 51

This one can be subtitled: M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E.

Or, it can be subtitled: Mouse Day.

Or, alternative to the alternative, it could be subtitled: Ewww, Gross!

Jen and I both took vacation days today. At first the plan was for me to do music and her to do… work. I know, it doesn’t seem logical, but when you’re as high up on the management food chain as she is, sometimes telling people you’re on vacation is the best way to get a lot of work done.

That plan didn’t last long though. As I was finishing up the mix on the song in the previous post, Jen asked if we could just take a drive to get out of the house. That sounded like a great idea to me so we loaded up the car with face masks and rubber gloves and hand sanitizer and off we went.

Something in the Kia smelled funny. I smelled it last week when I was doing car music, but despite the gigantic honker on the end of my face, my sense of smell is pretty wimpy. I smelled something when I got in the car, but by the time I started the engine it was gone.

Jen does not suffer from my weak sense of smell. She’s the opposite. Nothing gets past her. She smells it all. When she got into the car it turned her stomach a little. Something back there smelled bad. I got out and started investigating. I found some old juice boxes in the trunk. Was that it? Probably not. There were some candy wrappers and some empty drink bottles AND A DEAD MOUSE!

Yup, that was the problem. A little dead mouse in the back seat, passenger side foot well. Just lying there all dead like. I removed the poor bastard and gave him a proper burial. After that the smell was gone. I didn’t actually touch the corpse but let’s just say that a significant chunk of that little bottle of hand sanitizer was put to emphatic use.

The question everyone is asking now is, why does this rate as a stir crazy file?

Simple. The reason that mouse was allowed to somehow crawl into the back seat of our car and die is because we never use the cars anymore. Well, let’s say rarely instead of never. There’s no way this would have happened if we were driving to work and back each day. Mickey wouldn’t have had the time to find a way into the cabin and probably would have been killed by the motor somewhere or other while trying.

So when push comes to shove, COVID-19 killed that mouse. We need to add one to the count for today. Bastard.

Monday Morning, Again

The bad news is, it’s Monday again. The good news is, thanks to Independence Day it’s only a four day work week. Bliss.

I did some car singing today. June Music is done, 50/90 doesn’t start until Saturday. What did I do? The Great Re-Recording Project. Actually, in my mind I still think of it as The Great 2015 Re-Recording Project because that’s what I originally called it. The old name doesn’t quite work anymore.

Anyway, I worked on vocals for two songs. I spent a little more than an hour. When I do album in a month or demo projects like I’ve been doing I don’t mind copying and pasting vocal tracks. If a song has two choruses I sing it once and paste it everywhere else. I don’t want to do that on The Great Re-Recording Project so it takes a lot more time to finish a song. I want each note played by a human to be unique. I did copy and paste the MIDI instruments. Drums I can’t really help because it’s the GarageBand Session drummer. I might do a unique tweak to each section. Bass… I’m really thinking about redoing all of the bass parts so that I don’t copy or paste anything. We’ll see.

Anyway, I did two songs. They both sound a smidge better than the scratch tracks I already had, so it was worth it. It was, however, definitely stressful. There were a lot of people around. No one actually close, but I was most certainly not alone. I pulled into a spot at around 7:30 and there was a “work” crew two sections away. I put work in quotes because they weren’t actually working. They were just hanging out and they were pretty clearly watching me. Could they hear me? Doubtful, but I was belting as loud as my meager voice can get. Maybe? Doubtful. I think they were on the 8:00 shift with the grounds crew and were just early. There were a lot of additional people on the crew wandering around and there were cars and trucks (and a crane?) driving in and out.

A second work crew showed up at 8:00. Three cars, four or five people. They were in the same lot I was in, but on the opposite end. They were much closer than the not-working peanut gallery, but they only stayed outside for a few minutes before moving into the movie theater. Still too close for comfort though. There was probably enough time, battery, and bladder capacity for me to start working on a third song, but I bailed. There were just too many people. When I pulled out of my spot I saw a third cheering section. Two cats in an SUV only two rows behind me. Way too close for singing comfort. They were okay by social distance standards but what the hell guys, there’s a whole string of parking lots. Pick one of your own.

I’m thinking I need a new parking lot for morning singing. Either that or I have to leave the house 60-90 minutes earlier. On the way home I went to another spot to check it out. I drove up to the Tenney Castle grounds. It was mostly quiet (one jogger in the middle of the driveway with headphones on who couldn’t hear my nearly silent Hybrid car until I beeped. It was pretty funny), but I had actually forgotten that there isn’t a parking lot there. The driveway ends in a rotary. Bummer. Maybe early mornings at the library? They have a pretty remote overflow parking lot there. Maybe.

Anything else going on today? UPS? My amp is back in Out for Delivery Status with a date/time of today by 9:00pm. Should I hold my breath? Look at me. I’m totally holding my breath. Wow, I might actually turn blue from all of this holding my breath.

We did some minor furniture rearranging in some of the bed rooms last week. Over the weekend we spent some time planning for future changes as well. Nothing to report yet, but discussions are being had. Maybe the quarantinie life might lead to a slightly rearranged house. Maybe not. We’ll see. We did add a bunch of new smart light bulbs to a lot of the rooms. Most of the house already had some. Now we have more. The Internet of Things and all that. Groovy. Just don’t hack my lights, dude. M’kay?

Welp, it’s 9:00am on a Monday morning. Enough of my yappin’, let’s boogie… and by boogie I mean start the work day.

Talk to you all later.

COVID-19 Numbers

Here’s what I have for today:

Methuen, MA
- Total Cases: 990 (up 1 from yesterday)
- Deaths: 57
- Death Rate: 5.76%
Massachusetts
- Total Cases: 107,611 (up 172 from yesterday)
- Deaths: 7,938
- Death Rate: 7.38%
United States
- Total Cases: 2,366,961 (up 37,324 from yesterday)
- Deaths: 121,746
- Death Rate: 5.14%

There are two numbers that jump out at me here. One good, one unbelievably awful. First, the good.

Methuen has not had a COVID-19 death since June 15th. That’s nine days. That is incredible. We’ve had 16 new cases in that time but no fatalities. Excellent!

Now the terrible news. You’ve probably worked this one out for yourself. The United States had 37,324 new cases yesterday. We had been doing well enough for the daily increases to occasionally dip below 20,000, but now with states opening up like morons, we’ve topped 30k on four of the last six days. The level of stupidity in my country is utterly astounding.

It should also be noted that through most of the pandemic, Massachusetts has been the state with the forth highest case count. We got hit hard. Reports are now saying that we are the state with the lowest infection rate. That’s good news. In the last few days we’ve dropped to the sixth highest case count, as Texas and Florida have been skyrocketing. Jen and I were looking at the numbers by state a few days ago and we estimated at that time that it would probably take Florida another week to catch us. Nope, they blew past us today. It only took a few days.

….and yet… we’re still opening up for business. Their money is more important to the nation than your health, and even your life. Way to go, USA.

Mondays Suck

Hello and welcome to the start of Quarantine Work Week #15. I have been working from home for roughly 27.4% of a calendar year and I still for the life of me cannot keep my damn glasses clean.

(Pause to clean glasses, once again)

I’m tired, both literally and figuratively. I had two excellent nights sleep in a row followed by a less than stellar night last night. I’m probably going to need to pack it in early tonight. I’m starting to really feel like I need a get away. In a normal, non-COVID universe, I would pack up the wife and the kids and go spend a day or two in New York, or hiding in the mountains, or something. That’s not happening now. We tried driving over to the ocean this weekend but didn’t make it. We got detoured. We weren’t planning to get out of the car, but at least we were going to see it, you know? It was still great to go for a drive with all four of us.

Massachusetts is supposed to be opening up restaurants today. What phase is that? Two? Three? Whatever. New Hampshire was already there so it’s not a big change to those of us who live on the state line. We talked about it yesterday. None of us feel comfortable going out to eat. We don’t even feel comfortable picking up take out. Even ice cream stands are out. This sucks.

Yesterday was Fathers Day. I have a tough time with that. I find it uncomfortable celebrating a day like that when the kids I’m celebrating with are some other guy’s kids. I feel like I am stealing from him. I know that’s not really how it works, but in my gut that’s how it feels. I did better than most years though. I called my dad in the morning and after that felt really depressed. Like… I just laid down on the bed and didn’t want to get up. Patches came over to see if I was okay, but all she did was show me her butt and smack me with her tail. It didn’t help.

Then my wife and the kids made me breakfast and that helped. I did spend some time alone bashing on the guitar and that helps, but not quite in the same way. That’s therapy for something else, and I can’t even put my finger on what. I checked with the kids to make sure they wished their father a happy Fathers Day. They did. That made me feel better too. They are really excellent people, those step kids of mine. I don’t think I screwed them up too much. At least whatever ways I screwed them up they were able to outgrow it and recover.

For the record, Step Parents Day is September 16th. I’m all in favor of celebrating that one, even though I share it with their step mother. That’s 100% A-Okay with me.

For the first few months of lock down we did a really good job not blowing money. It seemed very important to be ridiculously frugal. In the last week and a half, Jen and I both bought something. Neither was too expensive, but still expensive enough to take note of. It was easy. Too easy. It made us both temporarily feel good. Again, it was too easy. We need to get back to being frugal. I should be able to distract myself with the new guitar amplifier that is being delivered today. See what I mean? Way too easy.

It’s Monday. The first day of week #15. Wash your hands. Wear your mask. Black Lives Matter. Keep your head down and do the right thing.

Good luck.

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