Urgh. 3:30am – we’re never going to be friends.
I use a clock radio as an alarm. I had the radio set to one of those popular music of the last several decades stations but in November it went to all Christmas music so I switched it. Right now it’s on a station that sounds like contemporary music but I never recognize a single song. And true, I’m not super up-to-date on the current hits but I’m not oblivious. This is like a radio portal to music that exists somewhere else.
I’m frittering away my last day of winter break fricking around with this stupid website. I need to move on so this is going to be it.
#1 — You might have noticed I didn’t end up doing much Photoshop or even start Illustrator. I prioritized writing instead. More on that in a different item below. So no fancy new tricks for awhile. Probably.
#2 — Insomnia is my friend again. And by my friend, I mean, not my friend. I wake up every night between midnight and 4am and what happens next is anyone’s guess. About every third night I get back to sleep so things aren’t dire at the moment but when I get back to my regular work schedule we’ll see what happens.
#3 — I’m going to skip what I had for #3 and move writing from #4 to #3.
Every January since 2009 I have decided to that I would get serious and do a first draft of my manuscript. Every year real life has intervened. I’ve decided that this year is going to be different only because I can’t seem to quit this stupid idea.
This guy said many of the things I end up thinking. Here’s a quick sample:
Very slowly, I’m figuring out I probably should not waste any more time on writing. It seems increasingly passive and banal, the whole exercise. There’s real stuff that needs doing!
But I’m going to waste more time on writing.
This is the first year I didn’t have “just one other thing” that I wanted to finish before I get started. I’m in it. Last fall I got in the habit of going to work a little bit earlier so I can have an hour to write before work. We’re going to try to keep this momentum going. I also had a piece of the story that I couldn’t figure out and I think I finally figured it out.
I just spent a ridiculous amount of time and patience trying to figure out how to put a progress counter in the right hand column but I give up. And probably for the better because while my intention is to keep me motivated, I suspect it would lead to despair.
Here’s where I’m at now. For my finished product I’m aiming around 90K, the first draft will most likely end up much shorter. If there’s anything more insufferable than people talking about doing yoga it’s talking about their novel. I’m going to try not to be insufferable but I’ll update the word count every once in awhile.
This photo is from last year. No snow out there now or in the forecast.
Yesterday was my birthday and the age is a secret although if you were here last year and have a grasp of basic math, I’m sure you can figure it out.
I got so much incredible birthday love this year. It was great – thank you everyone!
I celebrated my favorite way which included writing, reading, eating a nice dinner and going to the movies. The movie was Birdman and mixed reviews. (Mom, if you’re reading this, Dad would not like this movie.) We both really liked the acting and filmmaking but found the story a little uneven. I would definitely recommend to people who like challenging movies.
Starting in the fall I decided to get more serious about writing again but wasn’t really successful at that until November. The past two months have been productive for me. Which is my explanation why a bunch of other stuff has fallen away including the incredible content and spectacular artwork that you have come to expect from me. ahem.
I’m just going to keep plodding around, doing whatever I manage to do and we’ll see how it all works out. I still have one short story floating out in the world and hopefully you’ll get to see it soon.
Happy New Year.
For some stupid reason I decided to do xmas cards this year. I ordered them over 2 weeks ago and they sat here for a while. Then I did a few here and a few there. Then I lost interest again. Then I did a bunch and figured it was good enough. Then Bob used up all the rest.
Then we realized we’d left out some people so I bought some more. Then I couldn’t remember who I’d already sent them to.
So if you know us you can expect between 0 and 2 xmas cards from Pam and Bob.
I have had no concept of the date all week and was surprised to learn that tomorrow is xmas eve. I have one thing left to wrap, otherwise I’m ready.
I’ve only had time to do a couple of Photoshop tutorials this week. Learning composite images.
In the lessons the photos are always easy like replacing a photo of just sky and clouds into a photo that’s plain sky and a yellow flower. I was trying to do some funny ones but they were too complex so we only have these two sad ones. Although I think the cat is pretty funny.
This morning my spouse was stomping around the house. “Did you lose something?” I asked. “My pants,” he said.
He was wearing pants at the time so I wasn’t completely clear what the problem was at first although I guessed he couldn’t find his pants from the night before and needed his wallet and keys that were in the pockets. This was correct.
I was waiting in the car because we we were running errands and he finally joined me.
Turns out last night he couldn’t find his tote bag with his iPad because it was in the back seat instead of the trunk. But then he finally found it in the back seat and apparently put down the pants he was carrying in order to bring his iPad in the house.
I can’t wait until we get really old and dotty.
You know this funny hedge thing that I do every year and show before and after? Well since I so royally tweaked my shoulder working on the hedge last spring, I decided maybe it was time to pay someone to work on the hedge. I’m talking about the big hedge, photos below. But I also asked if they could do this little hedge.
Look how amazing it looks. I was all impressed and raving and the landscaper was like, aw shucks. We have lots of practice.
This is what it looked like last time I did it. I told him how terrible it looked when I do it and how I can’t reach the top and he said they used a ladder so they could make the top look right. He and his crew are my new heroes. I wished I had baked some cookies to give them.
Here’s the side. When the landscaper looked at it he went: WOW.
Here’s a close up of how out of control it was.
He suggested we whack it back more regularly. Like maybe annually. He told me if we do it more regularly they can make it look better.
And after: amazing!
This is what I look out at from my window. I have so much more light now. There is still some major growth on the neighbor’s side of the fence.
And here’s the backyard. Before. I considered asking them to take out that giant yellow thing. But I don’t want to deal right now. Maybe next year.
And after. Beautiful.
He seemed apologetic about how much he had to charge us. I thought it was completely reasonable. And there was a crew so it didn’t take too long. My yard has never looked better on this side.
***
We had a big wind storm and my compost bin blew over so I ran out to take a photo. The wind tore my glasses off. I looked around but it was blowing so hard the wind was groaning. I realized I could turn into one of those sad public service announcement stories about how not to wander around outside in a major wind storm so I went back inside.
The next day I found a piece of someone’s roof in our backyard and all the leaves were gone but no glasses. I’ll probably find them this summer. Or maybe my neighbor will.
I did this last night in a big hurry. This morning when I looked at it I realized I forgot the stem when I worked on this photo so it looks like the flower is randomly floating in space. Enjoy!
I’ve been doing lots of things but I couldn’t tell you what they are. Well, I could but, who cares?
Today it wasn’t raining so I did some more clean up in the backyard. I scooped up a large bag of animal poop. A lot of it was good sized so it’s a dog or something bigger.
That last bit is a joke because what would be bigger in my yard? There is one corner where I think the poop is raccoon but today’s poop was mostly dog. Where is this dog (dogs?) coming from? It’s a mystery I’d love to solve but I can’t bear to waste any time on it.
Good news: Lufthansa paid up. Or rather, refunded my money. Meanwhile, I found out that Verizon was still charging us for the global data plan we added for Montreal. When they insisted over and over that it only would be for one month. I should have looked at the bill more closely. They refunded me $14 for 3 months worth of screwage. We’re going to call it good. How much is my time an energy worth.
When I sat down I had something worthwhile to talk about but it’s gone from my mind and I have chores to do.
As I explained, I dug up what was left of the garden last week. Since then I’ve seen a squirrel (squirrels? They all look the same) wearing a panicked expression bouncing from one side of the dirt pile to the other and frantically digging. If squirrels have expressions. I’m sure they’ll survive.
The weekend before Thanksgiving I bought a giant car load of groceries hoping we could make it two weeks without going back to the store. We’re almost there but getting thin in a few spots. Bob is going to take his Mom to buy groceries today so he’s going to pick up a few extra things for us.
We still have about 15 containers each with a tiny serving of leftovers. I was considering scraping them all into one dish and grating some cheese on top, sprinkling some bread crumbs and throwing in the over for an hour. Bob would love it.
But instead I’m making Turkey Tetrazzini for him tonight. He loves it and it makes a ton so we’ll have it for a couple of days and for lunches.
I don’t think I explained that this year I only made a turkey and a pie. We got the rest of the meal from a store. While this was a big success in terms of me not being bummed out about cooking a giant meal all by myself, all the food I make is a million times better. So next year I am going to suck-up and do all the cooking again. Lesson learned.
And that completes 30 days of posts. I want to work on more advanced Photoshop next month so possibly more photo oriented stuff in December.
Frog killed in road by car.
I’ve had an idea for a CSI post forever but I always wanted to wait until I had time to do it right. Forget it. I’m just going to do it really half-assed like everything else around here.
You get what you pay for.
The first time I ever watched an episode of Crime Scene Investigation was in 2005 when Quentin Tarantino directed an episode. This was a Las Vegas one. It has never been one of my regular shows but every season I watch at least a couple of episodes. I’ve seen a few of the New York ones and I watched one Miami one time and thought it was comically wretched. The Internet says Miami was on for 10 seasons so apparently a lot of people disagreed with me.
The thing that fascinates me about this show is I don’t think it’s very good, but it’s very satisfying. A problem is introduced at the beginning and by the end it is solved, generally without a lot of surprise or drama. The character emotions remain flat. They rarely run into major obstacles. Problems are solved often by tedious procedure, which doesn’t bother us because we just see the time elapse. Or else a miraculous piece of technology fills in the critical data. Or else some person comes forward with the exact piece of information they need.
I would love to watch this show with a real police detective sometime because I know nothing about police work but it’s hard to believe some of this stuff isn’t far-fetched. It’s a giant team of people who are rigorously competent and cooperative. There is nothing they can’t figure out. Like they find a teeny tiny carpet fiber and they put it into a machine that tells them where and when it was manufactured which will somehow lead to a list of people in possession of the carpet fiber.
Or there will be an anonymous phone call but a machine will be able to enhance the background sounds and via some other amazingly unearthed tidbit they can triangulate the location where the phone call was made and then police cars can zoom across town in minutes (no traffic in crime shows!) to rescue the orphans who were minutes from death. I guess I’m veering away from just CSI to any crime shows. I will admit to watching other crime shows.
Another one of my favorites was when a character was exposed to some terrible virus but another person on the team was able to contact a government agency to get one of the only 3 doses of medication in the country speed delivered to CSI that same day.
Have you ever even gotten a government official on the phone, much less to do anything, that fast?
I also love that due to the nature of the show they have to say all sorts of ridiculous things. Like a supporting character will have to go to the lead, who is the detective and explain that they ran the partial license plate that turned up three trucks that match the description of the getaway vehicle. Then the detective says: Good work, go track those down.
It would be like if I went to colleague and said: I found a Supreme Court case that is totally relevant to the work we’re doing. And he said: Read it and tell me what it says.
Or on CSI they explain the fancy process: “We’re painting the parachute with an porko-phenbolical solution,” Then some supporting detective will do ah-ha face and say, “Which when draped on the transpectrometer will show the pattern of the poison used on our victim!” Then they will smile and high-five at their cleverness.
I’m making fun of these shows but going back to what I said at the beginning, they are a nice escape because by the end the problem is solved. And you can jump in any time because while there is a tiny bit of ongoing story involving the main characters, you don’t need to keep up with it.
I’m going to break my rule about embedding Youtube clips because I have a terrible earworm and I want to share it with you:
This song was on the radio alarm clock one morning last week. I remember when it was a hit on the radio. I don’t dislike the song but I don’t want it playing my head all the time.
It looks like our next door neighbor moved out. I’ve written about the rental house next door a number of times. (e.g. 2013, 2011 and 2009).
My big takeaway is that it’s a pain in the butt to own a rental because I think only one tenant has lasted longer than 2 years.
We’re always nervous when this happens since you never know what you’re going to get. We didn’t get to know these tenants very well but when we saw them they were nice enough and they didn’t do anything terrible like crank death metal at 3am. We’ll see what happens.
