Another Crazy Day

Hope you are all having a happy, fascism-free Tuesday.

I was having a calm, yet somewhat productive day today. The minute I finished lunch all hell broke loose. It became a crazy, hectic, tense, productive day. You know how it is.

Now I am about 20 minutes away from the end of my work day and hopefully things are calming down. Everything seems covered at the moment. Breath in, breath out. You’ve got this, Robert.

I have half a personal day booked for tomorrow. Robin the Cat has a vet appointment. Just her annual check up. I have meetings booked all afternoon though, so it’s going to be busy tomorrow too. At least I’ll have three episodes of Star Wars Andor to plow through before the work day starts. They come out at 9:00 Eastern time tonight. I am ready. There was a new episodes of The Handmaids Tale over night last night. I watched it while doing my morning exercise today. It was excellent. Here’s hoping Andor holds serve on the which-show-about-people-fighting-fascism-is-more-awesome sweepstakes. At this point it’s anyone’s game.

Oh good. 10 minutes away from quitting time and it just started to rain. It’s freakin’ pouring out. Good, good.

Meetings

File this one under first world problems.

I just want to have some lunch. I usually break at 1:00pm but I was added to a meeting at that time. I punted lunch to 2:00pm but when the 1:00 ended I was added to a 2:00. I tried to reschedule my 3:00pm but I needed to keep it in place.

Dude… I just want to go to lunch. Why can’t I go to lunch? It is 5:00pm now and still no lunch. At least I will be able to have dinner soon.

What a day! Here’s a cat.

234/365

Coming to the Close

The work day is almost over. About 10 minutes from now there will be another Monday in the books. Also, I will be 50% of the way through my 40% in the office mandate for this week. That’s nice. It’s also probably confusing if you don’t know what I am talking about but I do know what I am talking about so it is not confusing to me which is why I wrote this epic run on sentence about it.

Here is a picture of a cat that I took this morning before I left for work. She was confused and upset because I made the bed and messed up her hiding/napping spot/plans. Sorry, cat.

What else can I write about before the work day ends? A Red Sox win tonight and a Yankees loss will move the Red Sox into first place in the AL East. Yes it is only the 11th game of the season, but after the last few years of baseball futility combined with the Bruins suck fest of late, I will take a first place moment with a smile on my face. The Yankees and Tigers are playing right now. In the bottom of the eighth inning in Detroit, the Tiggers are up 6-2. Thanks, Detroit.

What else… I haven’t worked on anything musical since the RPM Challenge wrapped up at the end of February. I am a failure at musical life. Just saying.

Okay, I got distracted by something at work and now the 10 minutes have passed and it’s quitting time. Wish me luck on my evening commute home. Jen picked up something nice for dinner tonight. We have dinner together whenever humanly possible and I always love it. I love her, I can’t help it. The heart wants what the heart wants and my heart wants silly little domestic time with the woman of my dreams. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. Civilization coming to a crashing, idiotic, tariffed end doesn’t change the way I feel.

The Frustration Continues

I am starting to wonder if this particular contractor just likes our house or something and wants to keep coming over. I’m kidding, of course, but sheesh.

The project that was supposed to happen today uncovered an issue that required us to push to another day as well as make some changes before it can happen. Which means we’re going to have to schedule another day for them to come back once they find the parts they need. It’s routine maintenance that just never seems to end, somehow.

Insert yet another frustrated sigh here.

On the plus side, since I’m only working half a day today, my work day only has two hours and 12 minutes remaining instead of six hours and 42 minutes. Nice.

Busy Monday Morning

I woke up at 5:30am, did my exercise, ate a quick breakfast, went outside to do some car music, put vocals onto five RPM Challenge songs even though “singing” made my throat really sore, came home and took the fastest shower in human history, logged into work while I was still trying to get dressed, and hit the ground running at 9:00am. It’s almost 11:30 now and I’ve been super busy at work the whole time.

Happy Monday, everyone. Hope you’re having fun.

I’m Tired

I am tired today. I’m wrapping up my lunch break on this fine(?) Monday afternoon and I am tired. Over night last night I woke up at about 1:00am with hunger pains. Lovely. I had a bite to eat and felt better and fortunately it held me over until morning. I overslept a little and thought I was going to be late to work but fortunately the morning after the super bowl (superb owl) lead to light traffic and I got to my desk with plenty of time to spare.

I had no interest in the super bowl (superb owl) at all yesterday. Knowing that the fat nazi fuck face of a president was going to be in the stands meant that you couldn’t have paid me to watch. Not in a million, billion years. Fuck that fat nazi fuck. I read an article today that reported the US TV broadcasts included audio of applauding crowds as the scumbag was introduced, while the same moment on foreign TV broadcasts could clearly hear a resounding round of boos. Thanks, fascist collaborating TV networks. Fuck you too. I swear, the entire US media industry is currently made up of a bunch of fucking Neville Chamberlains. Fuck them all.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, I am tired. It’s 2:30pm. I have three hours left in my work day. I wanna go home. I wanna go home, give my wife a great big hug and a great big smooch and then fall asleep until morning. That would really hit the spot.

In closing, fuck that fat stupid nazi loser fucking fuck.

It is Going to Be a Long Day

It is about 7:30am. My work day starts at 9:00am. My vacation kicks off 8.5 hours later at 5:30pm.

It is going to be a long day. A really… really… long… day.

After that? I have to pack. I have to make a stash of protein bars to get me through the first couple of days in Florida. I have to figure out the camera situation… charge up the Z5 and put on the 40mm lens, fill up a bag with rolls of film, load a roll into Dad’s Pentax K1000. I’ve decided that Dad’s camera is coming with me this time. Normally I would take my Nikon FG-20, but this time I think I want to take the camera that hurled me down the film rabbit hole a few years ago. Yeah. I am weird.

Anyway. Yesterday I bitched about how the Bruins suck now. Last night they beat Ottawa and jumped three places in the standings. Not only are they back in a playoff spot, but they above the wild card spots and back into third in the division. What a world, huh? We’ll see how long this lasts. The standings are pretty tight these days.

Okay. Time to get the ball rolling on this Friday. Vacation is less than 10 hours away.

Tough Day Ahead

Today is going to be long and difficult. It’s 9:28am and I am already exhausted. Yippee, right?

I got home at about 12:20am this morning. I had a glass of water and went to sleep a little before 1:00. I woke up about 5:30. Yeah, I’m tired.

The show was fun. I think for the first time I may have seen Iron Maiden showing its age a little. We know the drummer had a minor stroke not long ago, and he’s let it be known that there are things that he used to be able to do that he is no longer physically able to do. Was that why the set was somewhat lacking in classics? Maybe. Was that why the band was… and I mean this in the most respectful way possible… somewhat less than tight? Probably not. I mean, as great as a live band as they are let us be frank with ourselves and admit that they were never really that tight. They always had their moments where things would lock in and the results would be spectacular, but over all? Yeah, they could be sloppy. Rhythmically, mostly. Tempos were always a little weird. Guitar leads and vocals would slide in and out of time here and there. These aren’t criticisms at all. Not at all. It’s just how they play. Always has been. It’s just that last night those moments seemed maybe a little more frequent and maybe a little more obvious. Vocally there were some struggles. Timing wise for the most part, but pitch wise too. Bruce is 66 years old. Over all he was amazing, as usual… he just wasn’t quite as perfect as he used to be.

Again, these are not complaints at all. Not even a little bit. They are just observations from a picky music school nerd who clearly loved every second of the show… and I clearly loved every second of the show. It was great.

The highlight for me was Fear of the Dark. I used to think I was the only one around who really dug that song, but the crowd went berserk when they played it. We were in the back row of the middle level and couldn’t see the stage at all if we stood up. Still, when Fear of the Dark started half of the people in front of us stood up and went nuts. I guess I’m not the only one who loves that particular song.

They only hit the first record (still my favorite) once. They played Iron Maiden… the song from the album of the same name from the band of the same name. It was one of those moments where the tempo was alarmingly slow, and Bruce let the crowd sing a lot of it. Totally understandable, but the second that Dave Murray started playing it, your humble narrator here was on cloud nine.

Now if he can also just get through the work day so he can get himself a little more sleep. Hang in there, tired people!

Hectic Morning

I messed myself up this morning. I overslept a little and then made it worse by not getting into my morning routine for about half an hour after I got out of bed. Ooops. I’ve been all out of whack ever since.

It actually started last night around 11:00pm. I went to bed really late and didn’t fall asleep for about an hour. I made a plan to do some guitar work after finishing my morning exercise. I picked two songs from the list of things I want to re-record and listened through them to remind myself what needs to be done. Then I had a snack and went down a small youtube rabbit hole (videos about Lord of the Rings back stories). (Oooops)

Then I got a really late start and didn’t have time for any guitar. I did open a box that FedEx delivered yesterday. It had some dishes in it that came from IKEA. Almost 50% of the items in the box arrived broken. Damn it. Then I punched into work and it’s been seriously hectic so far. It’s almost 12:30 now and the morning was colored by lots of urgent issues. I actually had a pretty long to-do list for today and I haven’t gotten to any of it yet. Here’s hoping the afternoon calms down.

I had to have a snack at about 11:30 and I over did it. Now I need to wait until my stomach empties out a little (no bad issues, I am just a little too full) before I can have any lunch.

We don’t have any plans in place for the weekend yet. I am still on the fence as to whether or not a leaf peeping drive to the mountains would be worth it or not. Maybe I’ll just take Dad’s camera and a roll of black and white film out and be faux artsy around town. Maybe.

Five hours to go until the weekend. Duck and cover and get through it, folks. Good luck.

Long Day

At work, my group has a quick check in meeting every day at 10:30am. As today’s meeting was wrapping up I almost said, “happy Friday, everyone.” (Pause while Robert stands up to flip the record*) I stopped myself just in time. At the last possible second I realized that today is Thursday, not Friday. Shit.

I do that a lot. I can’t tell if I’m doing it more often now or if I just feel the heartbreak more acutely or what. I don’t know.

Today hasn’t been the longest work day in history, but maybe it’s in the top 10? Nothing bad happened (except for my calendar snafu) but it’s just been… long.

28 minutes until my shift ends. We started watching Goodfellas last night. I don’t know if we’ll finish it tonight, but either way we will be sure to constantly stir the gravy.


*We’ve spun a couple of Rush records today, some Yes, some Genesis, some Pink Floyd, some Cream, some Jeff Beck, some Jimmy Page with and without Led Zeppelin (I forgot I found the Death Wish II soundtrack at a used record store at some point in the distant past and I don’t think I had listened to it prior to this afternoon). Currently we’re listening to Blind Faith. When I flipped the record it was from side one to side two (obviously) which means “Sea of Joy.” Good! It also means “Do What You Like.” Not so good. Oh well.