Category: Life

  • Getting Ready for Tomorrow…

    Just a reminder that some of us might need a Leslie Jones at our house…

  • Last Day of Work Before Vacation

    There are a couple of things that I miss about working. I was lucky enough to have a couple of office experiences with some really great people, so to camaraderie of working with stealer people is one thing I miss. The other was working on a day before vacation starts. It was such a wasted day, and also a day that felt the closest to what the last day of school was like. (And for that matter, the feeling of the last day of school is the greatest feeling that I wish desperately that I could experience again… but alas… that is a story for another blog.) Sitting in an office, talking to co-workers about the pending holiday that we would all be off for, and just watching the minutes tick by was such a slow burn of boredom and anticipation wrapped in one. I don’t think I spilling the beans on the fact that in an office, no one, and I mean no one, works on the last day before vacation.

    There were so many times in the office, before Thanksgiving, or Christmas, or 4th of July, when we would spend the whole day just taking, swapping stories about families, and crazy things uncles and aunts would do after a bourbon or two. Bad Christmas gifts from siblings was a popular topic as well. A few times, I think before Christmas vacation, the office would head out to a bar and hang out for a couple drinks. Christmas lights and martini’s is a state of mind during the Holiday Season.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Yippie Dog, The Week of Black Friday, and a Movie Marathon

    (But I wanted a torta…)

    We have a new neighbor in our building, and they moved into the “Bermuda Triangle” apartment. That’s the unit no one stays very long in, maybe six months – tops. Anyway, they moved in, and I have only seen the person once. They seemed friendly and we exchanged pleasantries. But they brought something else with them; a little yippie dog. Oh, how that little dog likes to bark its yippie little bark. Day, night, walking by their door, and sneezing too loud. Yip! Yip! Yip! At first my dog was annoyed at the yipping, but of late, she seems to have resigned herself to ignoring it. We can block it out, and it’s more of a novelty of an annoyance than an actual annoying thing. Yet, I still have to wonder what it’s like in that apartment, as that dog yips and yips and yips day and night. Yip!

    So… “Black Friday” is a week-long thing now. When did that happen? I don’t really care that there is now a week of shopping deals – whatever needs to happen to sell TVs is fine. It’s the use of “Black Friday” to represent an entire week, and in some commercials, the whole month. It feels like this is the first year of the week- and month-long Black Friday title’s use, but I can also see retailers gaslighting me, saying that it’s always been like this. And I should be shopping more. Do I need a new TV? I should get a new TV.  

    As we are closing in on Thanksgiving, and I am a huge MST3k fan, this would be the time to start thinking about watching a marathon of awful movies while on vacation. Sadly, I don’t think I can get the wife and kid on board to watch a bunch of old Joel episodes, let alone actually look for some bad movies in general. (Maybe Rob Hill over at Bad Movie Bible should put out a list of suggestion awful movies to marathon through for Thanksgiving?) No, I think if I want to make this happen, I have to actually be rather creative in my movie selection. We have done all the Star Wars movies, and Harry Potter, and even did all the Marvel movies once upon a Covid. I think I might have to sub-genera it, like all the Spiderman movies. Or, maybe all the different versions of Fantastic Four? Or all the Marvel films? How about Bill Murray movies he later regretted making? Or Gene Hackman “paycheck” movies? This could be fun, come to think of it.

  • French Café Music

    Every now and then, I get semi-obsessed with music. Either a band, song, composer, or genera. The last time I was taken in was when I discovered the works of Erik Satie, which caused me to listen to as much of his music as I could, and also find out as much about him as possible. I don’t think I’m alone in having these waves of obsession when it comes to music. It’s like short little love affairs, or infatuations.

    So, and follow me on this, I was looking up new egg recipes the other day. My goal was to find a new egg breakfast dish to make on the weekends for my family; something a little fancy, but also easy. (You know, just like me.) And I came across this video for oeufs cocotte. It was that background music that I got obsessed over. It’s “Valse de la Rose” and I think its performed by Les Petits Parisians. I could be wrong on that, but according to Spotify, it sounds pretty damn close.

    Besides deciding that oeufs cocotte would be my next culinary challenge, as I don’t cook many French inspired foods, that café music was playing on repeat in my head. After a couple of days, I got on my Spotify account and typed in “French café music” and sure enough, there is a playlist for that. I can only listen to so much of this style of music. Not that I get tired of it, but my wife and daughter do, and there are limits to my small obsessions that my family can endure.

    But today, I have to task of making mushroom stock, as it is needed for our Thanksgiving dinner, and the music is doing a nice job of underscoring the work that I need to do in the kitchen today. Sure, it’s a little silly and hokey, but still feels a little appropriate.

  • Day Two with a Sick Kid (Random Stuff)

    To answer the question from yesterday’s blog, yes I am using my sick kid to procrastinate. Half the day has gone by, and only now am I getting around to do the stuff I need to do.

    I started the day on the right foot, though. I was up on time, and sat down on the couch and got about twenty good minutes writing in my journal. I hashed out all the stuff that had happened yesterday; sick kid, pediatrician visit, lack of production, and also I got stuck in a death spiral of thinking about all the mistakes I made five years ago, and how much of an idiot I was  and why I just can’t let that shit go, you know.

    Then the kid got up. She didn’t look good; low fever, headache, sick to her stomach. We sent her back to bed with some children’s Tylenol. In the quiet two hours that followed, I could have got some work done, but again, I found myself on my phone. I did the dishes, but honestly, that was another delay tactic on my behalf.

    A minute ago, we sat down and did her homework together. I mean, I was sitting next to her while she did it. It was more like overseeing homework. If she wanted some screen time, then I said she needed to get the majority of her work done, which she did. We only have to do thirty minutes of reading, and I intend to read the latest New Yorker short story.

    But I want to make chicken stock, so I have the base to make potato leek soup for dinner tonight. And I haven’t sketched in a while, so it would be nice to tackle that today was well. And that one flash story got rejected from another magazine – that would be the piece that I have been trying to rewrite for a week now. Yeah, I think this is the sign that I need to do the rewrite.

    Let’s see how much I can get done.