Earlier this afternoon I had to do something that I have never had to do before. I went into the living room, where Harry was hanging out, and casually asked him if he knew what the procedure was for tornadoes.
His answer: Go to the cellar.
Correct.
There was a tornado warning for north eastern Massachusetts, specifically the North Shore. The tornado warning I read mentioned a funnel cloud touching down in Revere, but I can’t find any reports of that now, so I must have misread it. The sun was actually out over my house by the time the warning timed out, so I don’t think we were ever really involved. Still… I needed to make sure my soon-to-be-college-kid new the score. Jen was in her office on a phone call so I couldn’t interrupt her and by the time she was off the storm was gone.
So if you did have a tornado hit your house today then I hope everything is all right. Also, good to know Harry’s in the tornado know. Not that I ever doubted it. He’s a smart guy, he knows the deal.
It’s been raining all day. I went to the cellar an hour ago to check on the water status. Lake Asshole is confined to the storage area, which is where I think the water is coming in though I can’t tell exactly where, and it was not out in the cellar proper. It’s there, but the water level is low enough to downgrade Lake Asshole to Pond Asshole.
I emptied the dehumidifier (in the tub upstairs. I can do that with the little dehumidifier, but not with the huge-ish wetvac) and started vacuuming up some of the pond. I stopped when the wetvac reached full. I was in the middle of the work day so I let the dehumidifier run and figured I’d dump the wetvac outside during lunch.
That’s when the tropical storm remnant that drown the state of North Carolina hit for real. It is pouring like the end of the world out there. I’m positive the dehumidifier won’t be able to keep up, and I am going to get drenched when I empty the vacuum because irony is clearly dead.
The upside here is that I don’t go to my parents until tomorrow night, so I can keep up with this after work and all day tomorrow. I’m optimistic that it won’t get too bad. I’m also convinced that this whole water in the basement thing is just the universe kicking me when I’m down and trying to bring me to new “heights” of massive depression.
Things stayed quiet last night, other than the 3:30-4:00am bathroom experience I mentioned in the last post. Outside of that it was okay. I failed to hit the five hours of sleep mark, but only because I was awake for that half hour. I only came up short by a few minutes. My SleepWatch numbers weren’t great, my heartrate dip was only 11%, but I am feeling okay right now. We’ll see how I feel around 3:00pm today. I’m guessing I will be a bit of a mess.
My parents are okay, dad is still asleep. I have 20 minutes to go until I have to give them their meds, and the home health help should be here around the same time. None of that is the story today.
No, the story today is the weather. Specifically the heat and humidity. It was still 80 degrees out at midnight last night. It’s 77 right now, but the humidity… There is so much moisture in the air that just sitting here has me drenched in sweat. There are two air conditioners in the house, one in my mother’s bedroom and a huge one in the living room. Neither of my parents like to have them on. I don’t even know why I put them into the windows this year. The big one displays the air temperature in the room and my father doesn’t like to turn it on unless the room temperature is above 80. Yes, you read that right… 80 degrees.
I have my little desk fan, which is pretty much the hero of 2021, and someone also brought a bigger, yet still small enough to keep on the desk, fan that I have on the floor blowing straight up at me. Those two things together will hopefully keep me from overheating or literally drowning in my own sweat. The forecast is calling for mid nineties with humidity in the high nineties (it’s 96% right now) and a heat index (whatever that is) that should make it feel about 10 degrees hotter than it is.
Yippee.
Should be an exciting day. Duck and cover and stay cool, folks.
There was a little bit of water on the cellar floor when I went to bed last night. We were in the midst of our first four consecutive rain-free days since April and it seemed like things might be on the mend down stairs.
Then it poured over night last night. Again. There was more water in the cellar this morning, though still not the worst it’s been. Clean up complete. Wet vac and dehumidifier emptied yet again, though unlike the last few times it is currently raining in Methuen, Massachusetts, though it’s just a drizzle.
Just add it to the growing list of things that are pissing me off these days.
I feel like a fucking yo-yo. I was optimistic three days ago, absolutely crushed two days ago, a little sort of bordering on optimistic yesterday, and just miserable again today.
Who would have imagined that I would look back over the recent past and see something other than 2020 as the low point of human existence. I am actually feeling a little nostalgic for the high point of the global pandemic that locked down the civilized world and killed millions of humans. Not really, but in a self centered way? Yeah, a little.
Happy August 1st, everyone! August doesn’t have a national holiday so this year I am going to try and make it feel better by acting like every day is an extra big deal. No I’m not. I’m just so happy that July and its constant rain is over. Granted, August might get constant rain too, likely will thanks to climate change, but for this one, sweet, shining morning, August is dry and I am happy about it.
I wore a mask at my mother’s house yesterday. Not all the time, just when I knew she was near me. We are both vaccinated, but she ain’t catching jack shit from me. The MA department of public health is recommending vaccinated people wear masks when they are indoors with other people around because we can’t tell who the morons who aren’t vaccinated are and if they aren’t going to do anything to protect their own health, then we the vaccinated have to do it for them. Because they are stupid. Because they are morons.
Thanks to the never ending pandemic of the unvaccinated we are still using instacart for groceries and they screwed up big time today. We had to go back for a second round. All in all I am happy for the service, they are right a crazy high percentage of the time, but every once in a while… We asked for hamburger patties and got pumpernickel bread. Riiiiight.
What else is going on on this fine Sunday morning in August that hasn’t seen any rain yet? I broke the music mold a smidgen today. We slept kinda late. Not super late, I was up at about 8:15, but for me that’s pretty late. I wanted to do some car music but the aforementioned instacart delivery was on its way, and I had some things I wanted to do before I left so I didn’t get into the car until almost 10:00. I do my car music in a movie theater parking lot, and due to the idiotic decision to re-open the state despite the never ending pandemic mentioned in the previous paragraph, the movie theater was going to be open at 10:00. I rolled the dice. I park in the back parking lot so hopefully anyone going in early to catch the delta variant and a movie would probably park in the front. My risk paid off.
I did park in a different area of the lot though. I recorded four songs. There were two technical problems but neither stopped me. First, I use Trello to track my progress. The songs I needed to work on are on a list called Complete Lyrics/Melody on a board called 2021 50/90. My normal workflow is to bring up the Trello app on my iPhone and use that to let me know which songs to work on. The last couple of times I’ve done this though, the iOS app wouldn’t refresh. It’s showing me the board from about two weeks ago. Nothing is up to date. I had to turn my iPhone hot spot on and bring it up on the Mac. That is annoying as all hell.
The second technical problem wasn’t a problem but I would have had I kept going. The temperature outside was in the mid-70’s but the sun was out and shining bright and damn if it didn’t get roasting hot in that car. I’d open the windows but then people would be able to hear me “singing” and ain’t no way that’s happening. About halfway through my little “session” the Mac’s fan kicked on and it never shut off. I don’t know how much longer I would have been able to go before it started to overheat but “fortunately” my voice ran out of gas after about an hour and I had to stop.
I did manage to finish four songs. That’s one more than I had planned. I had three songs with the guitars finished and I wanted to pick those off. I also had six songs with lyrics and melodies already written that don’t have guitars yet. A couple of those have MIDI guitar tracks acting as place holders. I did one of those.
So the plans for the rest of today include, but are not limited to, cutting some grass, recording some guitar parts, having a cookout for dinner (weather permitting, of course, though July is over so the weather will be glorious), and hanging out with my step son who only has a few weeks left before he moves to college.
Of course, as I type out that to do list I am sitting at my computer reading twitter, making fun of creationists, and thinking that it would be really nice to just sit and watch movies with Harry and Jen all day. That might be the better to do list.
Welcome to August, may it stay sunny and dry. Good luck, folks!
Here I am at my parents house again. Another Nana Sitting Shift. Today was a bit of a crazy day. I failed to complete either of the top two items on my to do list at work, but I managed to earn a save on another issue, and two of my staff members were able to show off a bit in front of a larger audience. It turned out to be a pretty good day.
My mother is dealing with some pain tonight but as of right now she’s managing. Pain meds are still about 40 minutes away. We’re trying to make it that long without any approved supplemental meds. Fingers crossed.
I was thinking about watching the Red Sox tonight. I can’t though because they are in a rain delay. Why? Because we live in a region whose climate has become rain twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. I thought climate change was going to raise the sea level high enough to drown us, but instead it’s just going to be rain that offs us.
I would like to mix a song or two tonight if I can, but I might just search Netflix for a movie or something. I’m still undecided. I’ll wait until after the 8:00pm meds.
I’m on my lunch break. I started a little late today due to a conference call. No big deal. All good news. The last few days at work have felt a little like I am stuck in a time loop. My own personal Groundhog’s Day, if you will. It’s weird. I feel like I am getting the same questions and looking at the same functionality over and over again. We wrap it all up at the end of the day and then are asked to work on it again the next day. It’s very weird.
What else is going on?
Stanley Cup Final game #3 tonight. They are playing in the lion’s den for the first time. Montreal. The home of the most evil hockey team in all of hockey. Tampa Bay cannot take their foot off of the metaphorical gas. The universe demands Tampa Bay win, and the universe is optimistic that they will win in a sweep. I don’t know if I am going to be able to watch any of it tonight. We’ll see. I will definitely be following the score.
We’ve had a ton of rain over the last couple of days. We have a little water in the cellar. Not much. Just a little. I still haven’t shared our basement 2020/21 nightmare yet, and I probably won’t at this point, but suffice to say that getting a little water in the cellar is triggering me like you wouldn’t believe. It’s not PTSD, as I would never insult someone who actually experiences PTSD by equating my current state with theirs, but seeing that water on the floor was a kick in the pants, believe me.
One final question before I get back to work. Would you consider people who work at amusement parks to be carnies? I’m not talking about a traveling fair or anything like that. I’m talking about a stationary amusement park. I don’t think you would call people in that profession carnies, but the 15 seconds worth of Googling I did failed to give me a definite answer. It failed to give me any answer.
Inside the Red Head's Head 