Tag: things to do

Friday at Last

Work has been good this week. No disasters, no scary moments. I did get a call from a customer (service programmers, like me, are not supposed to get calls directly from customers) but I was able to help the guy and it actually felt pretty good. Nope, this past week was a good week at work.

It was the rest of civilization that blew chunks. My wife and I agreed when we discussed it last night that this week has been the longest six months of our lives.

I need to do something creative this weekend. I NEED TO. Photography. Let’s go out and snap some pictures! Let’s play with the new long lens I bought a few months ago. Let’s play with the 120 film camera I bought a few months ago. Let’s go to the ocean and watch the sunrise and shoot all sorts of good stuff. Of course we should check the weather first… snow and rain today and tomorrow and rain on Sunday. Well you can just bite me, mother nature.

Music it is then! Guitar! I will play guitar this weekend if it kills me! I don’t know if we’re going to have a band practice or not. I’ll post something to our messenger thread later today (when it’s not pre-8:00am so that the other three guys don’t think I am weird and obsessed or anything) and see what’s up. If not then I need to find something else to do.

I do not want this weekend to be spent doom scrolling news sites and reading stories about the collapse of american democracy that will build up inside of me until I have a stroke. No. That would be bad, even if it is more or less inevitable. I must play guitar! I! Must! Play! Guitar!

Do the Right Thing?

I don’t want to go into details but here’s the deal.

I have something to do tomorrow and I don’t want to do it. Originally, the plan was for my wife and I to do it together. It involves driving for an hour and a half, doing something that may not take a lot of time, and then driving home for an hour and a half. As of now though, my beloved bride needs to work tomorrow so if this happens it will be me doing it alone.

So there are two options. One, I do the right thing and I go and do this task. Two, I don’t do it and I stay home and run errands for my wife and just be here with her, which is absolutely what I want to do.

Frustrated sigh… If I do this then it will help someone out and if I believed in karma (which I absolutely do not) then it would be a good thing for everyone, karmically speaking (is karmically a word?). I just selfishly do not want to do it because it is going to take up the entire afternoon and most of the evening and I really just want to spend time with my wife.

I am probably going to do it. Like I said, it’s the right thing. The other person involved has already done a similar thing for me. It’s only right and proper for me to do the same in return. I just don’t want to spend three hours in the car round trip.

Ugh… I didn’t expect this post to feel so negative. I really just thought it would be an unemotional stating of the two sides of the coin and instead I feel like this reads like I am pissed off and defeated by the situation. It’s not that big a deal. For me, it’s not that big a deal. For the other folks involved it is, but me being involved is a microscopic piece of it. Ugh… I don’t know what I am saying anymore. I’ll shut up now.

On the upside, the Boston Bruins appear to be putting an end to their 10 game losing streak by beating the shit out of the Whalers tonight. Too bad it’s WAY too late to have any meaning. Ugh. The Red Sox got rained out today so they are going to play a double header tomorrow. Maybe things will go well and we’ll get to spank St Louis twice in one Sunday. That’d be nice.

Sunday To Do List

My agenda for today:

  • Wake up – Done
  • Do my daily exercise – Done
  • Put together a little thing we’re going to use as a shoe rack in the bedroom
  • Hang a coat hanger thingie in the bedroom
  • Put new strings onto one of the guitars (still haven’t decided which, but probably the Les Paul Standard)
  • Go to band practice for the first time in 10000 years (I hope)
  • Drop of a bag of clothes at a donation center somewhere
  • Come home and… I don’t know what. We’ll think of something
  • Sleep

Let’s get crackin’ Robert!

The Day So Far

The car has new breaks and new tires.

A couch has been purchased and a delivery has been scheduled.

My step son is home safe and sound even though I’d much rather he were still here with us. The nest is empty once again. Boo.

All that remains is to go grocery shopping and to cook dinner. I think I’ll get started on that now.

Lost

I had my whole weekend planned out but now that it is here I just feel lost. I need to vote, I need to go grocery shopping, I need to carve the pumpkin I bought last week, I need to see if I can fix the fret buzz on one of my guitars (though the more I read up on possible causes and solutions the more terrified I am to start tweaking a 35 year old instrument).

I mean, my to do list is nice and full… why do I feel lost today? I was hoping a good nights sleep would straighten out my brain but that didn’t help at all. I’m sure it’s nothing and once I get the ball rolling today I will be out of this fog.

I don’t know. We’ll see. Happy Saturday to all of you, and may your personal to do list be full of things that make you happy while being easily achievable. Let’s all have a day full of completed goals, what do you say!

Weekend: So Close

It is 2:25pm on Friday afternoon. I just finished lunch and am about to get back to work. I have been having a very productive day at work so far. I am pleased. Of course I probably just jinxed myself and the proverbial shit is going to hit the theoretical fan any minute. For now though, I feel like today has been a good day on the job.

The weekend starts in three hours (approximately) though and I don’t know what the plans are. We are going to do some family stuff on Sunday. There is a birthday. There is also a birthday today that I have to send off a happy birthday text message for. Very important. Outside of those two things? No clue.

After failing to get sunrise pics last weekend I am thinking about trying again tomorrow. The weather forecast looks excellent, though too cold for my taste. I wanted to grab the sunrise on the beach in my usual spot, then drive North up the coast a bit and get some ocean pics from the hills overlooking the coast. Then I could stop at a few of the usual spots on the way home. I would like to do that, but it all depends on how much sleep I get tonight. Well… that and the clouds, of course. I learned that the hard way last weekend.

I have yet to play my guitar during the month of October. Today is the 11th. I’ve taken pictures of guitars, case in point…..

41/365

(that is today’s photo a day picture)

…..but I haven’t actually played at all. I have a bunch of old songs I was working on re-recording a few months ago. There are a lot of things left to do for that little project, and I also picked a bunch of this summer’s project songs that I want to see if I can improve on. Maybe I’ll get back to it this weekend.

I don’t see us going to the mountains for fall foliage this weekend. It is definitely THE weekend to go, but the traffic is often nightmarish and I don’t think we have the oomph to deal with it. Maybe we can day trip/road trip somewhere down South here in Massachusetts. Go someplace interesting before the weather gets too cold and the ice starts piling up.

Maybe I’ll just stay home and watch the Bruins tomorrow at 1:00pm when they play the L.A. Kings.

Film

All right, red head. It’s time to get off your ass and shoot some film. Enough procrastinating. Enough saying you’re going to do stuff and then don’t. Damn it!

I have four rolls of film ready to develop. Most of it is from our Disney trip back in May/June. There are a couple of shots that are actually from Fathers Day and they are likely the last pictures I will ever have of my dad. It’s time to get the friggin’ things developed.

But…

I have a roll in my Nikon that is nearly finished. I should shoot the rest of that first and then get five rolls developed, right? I also have a roll in my Pentax. I should shoot through that and then get all six developed, right? Right?

Damn it! I am procrastinating around my procrastination! Get off your faux-photographer ass, red head!

Sunrise at the ocean tomorrow is 6:47am and the forecast calls for mostly clear skies. That does it. I’m going pitcher shootin’ tomorrow. Go to the ocean, bang out the roll in the Nikon, take some digitals, come down the coast to the usual places like the Plum Island light house and bang through the roll in the Pentax along with some more digitals. Then if I still have film left, hit a few places in my town and work through the rest of it.

I am working in the office on Monday so I won’t be able to get to the post office. Tuesday I am working at home though, so by Tuesday morning we’ll have an order placed at some photo lab and I’ll drop everything off for shipping before work.

I have spoken. Make it so. This is the way.

In closing, here’s a shot of the Spicket Falls Damn in Methuen that I shot on Kentmere 100 film with my Nikon FG-20. Just because film is cool in a nerdy retro faux artistic bullshit way.

191006760020_###

Planning

We went over some plans for the funeral service. We also wrote out an obituary. For the service it feels like there are more things to do than we have people to do them. It’s frustrating. As always, I want to make everyone happy and I just can’t.

There was some talk of my father’s will tonight. that weirded me out in a major way. I’m sure there will be more to come, but it’s something I never wanted to think about and now that it has begun, I want it even less.

Miss Robin tried to make me feel better. She’s fluffy and cute so that’s something she’s good at.

As for tomorrow? No idea. I want to spend time with my wife. I want to spend time with music. I want to go grocery shopping. I want to jump into the car with Jen and run away and not come back for days. So… the usual Saturday thinking.

To Do List Recap

I posted a to do list for this evening earlier. How did I do?

  • Approximately 90 more minutes of work – DONE
  • Top off the cat’s food bowl – DONE
  • Cook dinner – DONE
  • Eat dinner while hanging out with my wife in front of the tube – DONE
  • Shovel the 4-5 inches of snow we got today off of the drive way so that I can drive to the office tomorrow – DONE
  • Bring the trash barrel out to the street once there is a path shoveled to get it there – DONE
  • Finish today’s exercise and close the last ring in the Apple Watch’s activity app – DONE
  • Pack up my work laptop along with a bunch of things to put onto my new desk, which officially becomes my desk tomorrow – DONE
  • Keel over from exhaustion and sleep – IN PROGRESS

Well what do you know? I had a pretty productive night. The only thing left to do is sleep. I need to finish an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine first (season seven episode 22, I’m almost done with the full rewatch!) while I wait for my Apple Watch to charge and then it’s lights out, babie.

Nice work, Robert.

Labor Day Weekend: Saturday Recap

We took a road trip up to Rochester, NH today and had lunch with Jen’s mother and step father. I went grocery shopping, cleaned the living room, cooked dinner on the grill for me and the Mrs, started song idea #40, closed all three activity rings, and watched a handful of Doctor Who episodes.

All in all, a good day.

What’s on the agenda for tomorrow? Tentative plans include getting up early and taking the cameras out for some morning golden hour shootin’. I don’t know where yet. Not even the faintest clue. After that? Play some guitar, write a few lyrics, come up with a few song ideas, pet the cats, go on another road trip maybe?

We will have to wait and see what happens, but I am willing to bet that the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, 2023 is going to be a good day.