It’s 10:00pm and I am going to bed.
Tomorrow is a vacation day and I am planning to spend as much time as I can working on the RPM Challenge. Call it a music day. There will be singing, there will be guitar playing, there will be music and lyric writing, and there may even be some saxophone playing. A crazy day is in store.
For now though… I’m dead on my feet. It’s time for bed.
Hello and welcome to the annual December 26th edition of the “What the hell is Boxing Day, anyway?” post.
That’s rhetorical, of course. As someone from Massachusetts I have no experience of knowledge of what Boxing Day may or may not be and I do not really want to know, I just like speculating. The rest of the English speaking world (well… the UK and Canada… anyone else?) celebrates Boxing Day on the day after xmas. Why? Who? What? This year I chose to assume that it has something to do with Guy Fawkes (another English story that I have no clue about) and maybe boxing up little pieces of whatever he was going to use to blow up Parliament. Yeah, that works for clueless old Robbie.
I took today off from work, which is nice given that I still have a cold. I am a little bit better over the last two days, but it’s still pretty bad. Boo, and stuff. It’s cold. I overslept (and I really, really needed it). Now I have nothing on my agenda outside of hitting the grocery store.
Well… that and buying a new guitar. HA!
Happy Boxing Day to the world that celebrates and to those of us in the former US happy nothing special day that happens to be the day after xmas.
It’s 2:15pm. Lunch is about to end (I started my break a little later than normal today). I have a vacation day booked for tomorrow, then the following two days are off for Thanksgiving, then the weekend. That’s right, folks. I have a five day weekend coming and it is just a bit more than three hours away. I have one more meeting on my schedule this afternoon and I have a few email threads that need updating. Other than that, we’re just riding out this fine Tuesday in the office.
So before Covid shut everything down I was a regular user of Audible, the audiobook subscription service. I forget how but at some point I came into a whole bunch of credits and blew them all on a number of books that I never got around to listening to. Back in March when my company upped our in-the-office requirement from once a week to twice a week I reopened my account and all of those unread books were still there. One was a biography of Syd Barrett. I’m listening to it now and while many of the events and facts the author describes are clearly incorrect, and many others are trying to show Barrett as some poetic legend on a level that is infinitely greater than his catalog demonstrates, it is a good read. I have been listening to a lot of his music over the last week.
The National Solo Album Month (nasoalmo) rules allow for one cover song. While adding another song does not fit my personal theme for this month’s project, I am wondering if I should record a cover of Dominoes. I’m thinking about it.
So the plan for tomorrow, a sort of random vacation day in the middle of the week.
We have a ton of stuff that we bought for the kitchen remodel that we didn’t end up needing. Some from Home Depot, some from Lowe’s, and some from Wal-Mart. I plan on spending a nice chunk of the morning returning as much of that crap as I can. I thought about going to IKEA to return some of the mountain of leftover stuff we need to bring back but the receipts are all confused. We have to work it all out before we bring stuff back.
When I get home it will be about time to head to the airport. Both kids should be here by the time we need to leave. One, Harry, is here already. The other, Bellana, will be cutting it close but there should be enough time. It’s going to work out so that I can drive them both into the city at the same time. Originally I thought I would be playing Robbie the Airport Shuttle Guy twice, but now it looks like we can consolidate the two down to one. Nice.
After that I will go home again and make dinner for the love of my life and then hang out, missing the kids, until bed time.
Busy day on tap, yes it is. It should be fun.
Good morning everyone. How was your weekend. Did you do anything fun?
I didn’t do any of my exercising yesterday until after 10:00pm. I then did this morning’s exercising at a little after 8:00am. I suspect that is going to result in some issues throughout the day today. I also failed to do any weight training over the weekend. Let’s say that today is the day it starts for real.
Jen and I finished Stranger Things last night. The last episode is about 2.5 hours long. For a TV show, that is looooong. We’re up to date now though. Harry still has to run that particular episode marathon, but once that’s done we’ll all be up to date. The show is now clear to start working on season five (I think they’ve already started without my approval).
I have decided that, after season five is over, I want to see a spin off series that is just Nancy and Robin in the X-Files. I think I smell a hit. Steve can show up and be their muscle from time to time, and the rest of the cast can make cameos (except Mike, he’s kind of a douche). Oh! Now that I think of it, Will and Dustin and Lucas can be the guys from The Lone Gunmen! This show is going to rule!
I tried out the new toaster oven/air fryer last night by trying to air fry some potatoes. The results were less than stellar, but I don’t know if it was my fault or the oven’s fault. I think it was a combination of the two. The potatoes were one part bland (my fault) and one part… squishy? I guess? That’s probably the oven’s fault. I want another crack at it tonight (with maybe some broccoli too?) but we ran out of olive oil so we need to hit the store for a resupply. Challenge accepted.
I brought up the idea of maybe Jen and me taking a day off on a day when Harry doesn’t have to work so that we can all have an extra shot at doing something fun together before he goes back to school. There isn’t a whole lot of time left with him this summer and I feel like we need to do something to take advantage of what time we have. We also need to get up to Vermont to visit Bellana and steal some additional time with her as well.
Okay, Robert. Back to work with you.
I took the day off from work today for my appointment with the dietician. I’ve done a few chores, and a few other things, but mostly I’ve worked on the RPM Challenge. I hope to get a lot more done before the day is over, but I told someone at work that I would pop in for a few minutes today and it’s almost time for that so I’m taking a musical break.
What have I done so far?
Car music. Yesterday I wrote lyrics for five songs and today I put vocals on all of them. I was lucky I finished the fifth and final song when I did (there are more songs to work on, but none had vocals parts written at the time… and that is foreshadowing). I told Jen when I left the house that I would stay out as long as my bladder would let me. As I was finishing up that fifth song my bladder declared in no uncertain terms that it was time to go home. Yup, lucky it worked out the way it did.
Once I got home I spent an hour and half or so freaking out about weight loss surgery, then I went to my appointment. After that I wrote the melody and lyrics for two songs. At the time, those were the only two songs left (foreshadowing again). They are all set for a repeat car music tomorrow.
At that point I thought I would start mixing one of the three songs that are ready to go. I haven’t touched them yet. Instead I added another song. I kept saying I wanted 20 and I was stuck on 19, so now I have 20. It has bass and drums and a MIDI guide for guitar. It also has a melody and lyrics. I hope to get some time after dinner tonight to add real guitars but if I don’t I should still be able to include it in the car music tomorrow.
So what’s left for today? First, pop into work for a bit. Then cook dinner for Jen. Also drink lots of water but not 15 minutes before or 60 minutes after eating. Then, I have three songs to mix. I have one song that needs rhythm guitars, and I have a whopping 13 that need lead guitar. Only five more days after today. I need to start picking those off. I also have to start mixing the songs that are ready. There’s a ton of work to choose from.
Jen just mentioned going to a store in Cambridge tonight. That cuts down on time but it won’t be a problem. I still have a weekend at my disposal too.
In closing, the view from my “studio” this morning…
I’m off work tomorrow. I don’t have anything planned, I just needed to take a day off to get my accrued PTO below a certain number to stop the accrual from maxing out. It’s a long story.
I booked it a few weeks ago without knowing that it would end up being a bad day to be out. I might stealthily pop in and make sure everything is okay. Maybe.
What else should I do? Car music in the morning is a given. Mixing a tune or two is also pretty much guaranteed. What else? There aren’t any tv shows that I’m not caught up on. At least I don’t think there are… are there?
I might play some hockey on the PS4. Maybe find a first person shooter with lots of cheat codes? Something like that?
Who knows. Maybe I’ll just rewatch Loki or season two of The Mandalorian.
The nerdy possibilities are endless.
It’s 8:53am. Time to punch into work, so I think I’ll go over to Netflix and pop on a show.
HA!
I’m off today!
Some music, some TV, some cleaning, some stressing over Bellana flying to The Netherlands, some cat stress due to needing to take her to the vet.
I have a full day ahead, he said sarcastically. I think I’ll go get some breakfast.
Note: While I am being all gloaty and stuff today. Rest assured I’ll be paying for it with stress tomorrow. What goes around comes around and all that.
I took Friday off this week, not to extend the long weekend but because there was talk of possibly going to VT and I wanted to be free to go. Now we are not going so I am left with a mostly unplanned four day weekend. Such is life, I guess.
The good news is I’ll be able to stay up late Thursday night if game one of the Red Sox/Rays series requires it. Bonus!
I haven’t played my guitar in the month of October yet. That is bad, mental healthily speaking. Friday might get some serious therapy time. We will see.
I’m really tired right now but I feel the need to overshare some personal life shit. Okay, here goes: I trimmed my toe nails today. Really, what other sites give you this much detail? You’re welcome.
Okay, good night everyone.
We watched Into the Spiderverse tonight, after we had a video chat with my brother and sister and their families, which was after we played Trivial Pursuit.
So when all was said and done, I did make pretty good use of my vacation day today.
Inside the Red Head's Head 