What Am I Doing?

What am I doing? I don’t know. I feel like the universe is in a weird place right now (yes, I know that mathematically that sentence does not make sense). I don’t know.

I had the opportunity to play my guitar tonight and I sat on my ass on the couch watching TV. I watched an episode of Torchwood. I’m trying to get back into that. While I was on the AppleTV app formerly known as HBO Max I figured I’d maybe start watching The Leftovers again. I watched the first episode. I’ll go to my grave saying that the second season of that show is television perfection. The first and third seasons are great too. The first season is just so soul crushingly depressing though. It is tough to get through and I suspect that watching one episode is part of the reason why I feel like I am in a screwy state of mind right now.

The point of all of this though is that I could have played guitar tonight and I did not. Ugh.

I had two slices of a small pizza for dinner tonight. The second one came back for another view. Oh yeah, TMI Alert here. Yeah. It went down, but it didn’t stay down. Shit. I ate too much too fast and paid the price.

I’m on the youtubes right now watching a photography channel. It’s a pro photographer telling me I should use Aperture Priority instead of Manual Mode. But what if I want to use Manual Mode? I use Aperture Priority a lot with one of my film cameras. The term Aperture Priority wasn’t invented yet when the camera was built, it’s called Auto on the camera, but it’s the same thing.. I use it because the light meter inside the view finder is often hard to read. I like using Manual though. It makes me feel like I know what I am doing even though I don’t really know what I’m doing. The video also says to keep the aperture away from the extremes. Don’t use f2.0 or f16, use f5.6 or f8. You don’t get the blurry background as much as you do with f2, but you get some which is more than f16 gives. The video says the images will be clearer in the middle ground apertures. I think I had figured that one out on my own and was starting to come around to this way of thinking. Then again… I really dig all that blurry background.

Miss Robin Sparkles says hello.

It’s Monday night, just about bed time. Almost 10:00pm. At this time four days from now we’ll be about seven hours into our road trip to Florida. That’s the main reason why I am in such a weird headspace tonight. I just want to go. I want to leave now. I don’t want to worry about work or anything outside of travel. I just want to go. I have a shit load of stuff to do before we go, but I just want to go.

Ugh… I should just go to bed.

Looking ahead to tomorrow. There is likely going to be an NHL predictions post for the third round. I am hoping the Edmonton Oilers will win their game seven tonight against Vancouver. If that happens there will be exactly one team that I kinda like in the Conference Finals. If they lose, there will be three teams I hate one one team I don’t care about. My heart is officially no longer in the NHL playoffs at all.

Also, expect lots of posts where I talk about how I just want to jump in the car with Jen, my wife, and head out on our trip. I have vacation-itis right now. Big time.

Prep Work

Jen and I have spent a nice portion of today watching Disney World youtube channels to get up to date on all of the latest DW dirt.

We’re not leaving until the end of the week, but we’re both ready to go RIGHT NOW.

The hype is real, folks. It is real. I want to go on vacation RIGHT NOW.

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Digital
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Film
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Digital
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Film
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Digital (and blurry)
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Film
133/365
Bonus digital, because I don’t have a similar shot on film.

Busy

Bit of a mentally challenging day today. Nothing major, just lots of administrative stuff at work. Meetings and meetings and meetings. There is hardly anyone here in the office today but weirdly all of the conference rooms are booked. What’s going on with that?

I have a doctors appointment tomorrow morning so I am only working a half day. Next week I have another half day on Friday. That one is so Jen and I can jump in the car and get an early start on our drive to Florida. Yeah, we’re driving again. Road trip, babie! Seven business days left before vacation, and two of those are half days. It’s too far away to start suffering from vacation-itis, but we’re getting there.

I tried to take a photo a day picture this morning while I was jogging (pronounced yogging, with a soft j) in place and they came out blurry. Duh. Of course they did, you putz. I took another one after I finished. It’s meant to guilt me into playing the damn guitar this weekend. Come on, Robert. You’re about to go on a trip. You need to play the guitar a ton before you go. Get on with it, Red Head!

258/365
258/365

Northern Lights

Apparently you could see the Northern Lights from near my house last night. Did I look outside? Nope. I was simultaneously watching what is arguably the greatest movie ever made, The Godfather, and watching my hockey team get smoked for the second playoff game in a row.

Insert the sound of a frustrated sigh here.

The plan for my immediate future is to go to a department store to buy some clothing for our upcoming Florida trip. I don’t like wearing shorts. I’m a jeans guy. Khakis work in a pinch, but I feel most comfortable, the most like me, in jeans. I don’t own a pair of shorts. The last time I bought shorts for myself was also in preparation for a trip to Florida, but at that time I weighed about 240 pounds more than I weigh today. I need to go buy me some Florida-weather-appropriate garments. Blah.

I might go shopping for a bird feeder that doesn’t suck too, but that would require making two stops and I don’t think I have that in me today. We’ll see.

I missed the Northern Lights. What a puke head. Ugh. Dumbass.

Rain

190 miles, give or take, from our kids to our home…

And it poured rain the entire drive.

The.

Entire.

Drive.

248/365

We are home at last and the visit we had with the kids today was wonderful. One of them has a new significant other as well, and we met that person for the first time. No spoilers though.

Here’s hoping we get more chances to hear Bellana sing with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra in the near future. They are playing Stravinski’s The Firebird in the fall. Does that have a chorus section in it? I freakin’ hope so. (I once was quite the Stravinski guy, but it’s been a while)

The next road trip on our agenda will take us quite a bit more than 190 miles. Florida, here we come!

Entering Vermont

We have arrived at the hotel. Now what? Bellana’s concert doesn’t start for a few hours and both kids are super busy. We will just hang out and eat a protein bar and hope my stomach continues to play nicely. It’s been a good boy so far today.