Category: memories

Sunday’s Theme Music

We turned on the fire yesterday. Yeah, we have a gas fireplace. I turned on the gas and ignited the pilot light. All done because it was a cold, wet day. A friend went hiking this morning — yes, she and her husband are both crazy like that, hiking at dawn around 7:33 this morning — and sent back photos of light snow covering the pines and ground up on a ridge a few thousand feet up. None of my local upper ridges show any snow.

Today is Sunday, October 23, 2022. Sunshine and rain/snow clouds are waltz across the sky. Bright sunshine rules one minute before clouds close the gaps and threaten precipitation in the next. It’s 6 degrees C outside, keeping the felines inside slumbering in their usual winter spaces. Guess that’s the key. Leaves are changing and we’re racing toward winter. High temperature today will 51 F.

I was thinking about waiting this morning, as I was waiting — again — which made me go into a lap of ‘poor me’ self-pity because I’m so put upon, often treated as something stepped in that assaults the nose with a nasty reek after an animal does their business somewhere. Once the lap was done and I was over myself, The Neurons came in with The Black Keys and their song, “Lonely Boy”, from 2011, because, you know, the song has ‘waiting’ in it. What I remember more about this song was the video. I love this guy dancing and lip-syncing the song. He did a sensational song IMO. I read about him on Wikipedia today. His name is Derrick T. Tuggle. Wikipedia called him, “actor, musician and part-time security guard”. Hope you watch it and enjoy it as I have, as much as he seems to be doing.

Hope you have your positive energy shield up and your negative test armor on. I’m adding some coffee protection. Don’t know if you’ve heard of this magical brew and its amazing properties…

Here’s Tuggle and the music. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

If this is Friday, it must be October 21, 2022. Maybe it’s the other way around.

Sunshine broke the night’s hold a little before the official 7:30 AM time, kicking some heat into the 45 degrees F morning. Mists rose, giving a slow reveal of leaves reveling in their new brilliant finery.

We’re to see 72 F today, they say, before sunset ends the show at 6:20 PM.

I spent the morning helping my wife and her friends setting up a 75th birthday celebration for their exercise instruction, who coincidentally is celebrating forty-five years as an instruction with the same organization. My music comes from standing in a line today, waiting to do some things. Without prompting, I began humming the start to “By The Way” by The Red Hot Chili Peppers. The Neurons quickly joined in, and the next thing I knew, the song was settled into the morning mental music stream. I was in Atlanta shortly after the song came out, visiting the corporate headquarters. I’d heard the song on FM and then caught the video while working in my hotel room. After seeing the video, the song’s tempo change made more sense to me.

Coffee has arrived. Exercise a positive attitude. Try to remain negative with your test results for COVID and the flu. I wish you well this Friday. Here is the video. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Looks like autumn is making progress in the area. More trees are choosing to change their leaves, as is their right. Their trunk, their leaves, their colors.

A mellow Tuesday morning has settled in the valley. The week is shaping up to be cooler. Rain is in the weekend forecast with high temperatures in the upper fifties. The air’s shimmer itself seems to have shifted at last, shaking off its summery flavors for autumnal accoutrements. Today, though, will be 80 F and it’s already 56. With that rich blue sky crowning trees becoming wealthy with golds, yellows, orange, and scarlets, it’ll be a fine day to take in the outside world.

Sunrise kicked off the daylight portion of October 18, 2022, aka as ‘today’, at 7:27 AM and will close out at 6:24 this evening.

My morning mental music stream is empty. Yeah, The Neutrons have let me down. Well, “Born to Be Wild” by Steppenwolf was in there. I’d decided to make coffee before sitting down to the ‘puter and started singing, “Got your coffee brewing, and then make your breakfast,” all to the tune of BTBW. So you need to know the song for it to make sense. But I’ve featured the rebellion anthem a few times already and didn’t want to repeat it. So what to do instead, Neurons?

Crickets.

“The Crickets,” The Neurons instantly shouted. “We know The Crickets.”

“Yes, I know,” I answered. “That wasn’t an invitation, guys.”

But they were off. Before I’d even begun my reply, they’d kicked “Peggy Sue” into the morning mental music stream.

While I know the song, I needed to look up the year it was released. Yep, 1957, when I was one. It was an AM pop familiar for a looonnng time. Don’t hear it much any longer unless you’re on a ‘golden oldie’ station, it seems.

Well, I have my coffee and ate my breakfast, so all that’s left is to enjoy the song. Be like a proton and stay positive. Test negative like an electron. Sorry, that’s all I got. I would blame a lack of coffee but I’ve had some. Must just be Bad Neurons.

Here’s The Crickets. Oh, yeah, and Buddy Holly. He got all the credit for the song, but if, as Paul Harvey used to say, you know the rest of the story…

Good day.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Coffee has arrived. The first two sips of the gorgeously hot brew invigorate my senses and awakens my palette. Here we go, The Neurons sing.

Today is Friday, October 14 of the common era year 2022. I skim headlines and press on to other matters before the news blunts my energy and takes my soul. 57 and chilly under a pristine blue sky, sunshine began its daily visit at 7:22 ante meridiem. Sunshine will linger until 6:38 post meridiem. Temperatures are again foretold to have a high in the upper eighties. After a windshift yesterday, the smoke cleared and we struck 86 F around my house, a wonderfully warm, comfortable day, with a faint breeze and mild humidity. Our leaves haven’t done much turning in this area, nor are they dropping yet, a huge contrast to where I stayed in Penn Hills, PA. during the move from September to October. Guess the trees decided to wait for my return before launching their fall show. Gracious of them, innit?

For theme music, given that it’s Friday, The Neurons loaded that golden oldie, “Friday Friday”. I grew up on those lyrics. “Friday, Friday, how I love that day. Out of school and work at last, and free to play.” Nipping on that song’s heels comes a familiar favorite, “Black Friday” by Steely Dan.

Yes, Friday is on my mind. Instead of those songs, though, The Neurons re-introduce me to “Slide” by the Goo Goo Dolls. Released two or three lifetimes ago, which can be calculated as 1998, it’s another song in the catalogue created as I commuted to and from home to shop and work in the SF Bay Area and peninsula at the end of the last century. Why that song, I query The Neurons. It’s about a pregnant girl and her boyfriend debating choices about what to do. Jimmy Neuron answers, “It’s just those words, I’ll do anything ever dreamed to be complete, or something like that.” Oh, I answer. Oh. It’s about the dreams and the quests, huh? I see.

Test negative and stay positive, or as The Neurons call it, negapos. So be negapos. Sorry, that’s the coffee. It’s taken over The Neurons. Here’s the music. Hope you own Friday and it doesn’t end up owning you.

Cheers


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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Sunshine skirts the trees and licks the sky into fresh blue shades. Familiars remind me that I’m home. People say, oh, you made it, as though the standing in lines and sitting in seats that frame commercial air travel in this era was a slog. The slog is behind the scenes, where they’re building and maintaining the machines and coordinating the actions. I’m just a passenger on that plane, just as I’m a passenger on starship Earth.

Sunrise in Ashland today came over us at 7:20 AM. Cool mountain air, measured at 54 F, put a shiver in my body. Gonna be 88 F, the weather wizards say. Smoky haze covered the valley from the Cedar Creek fire further west in the state. Not heavy smoke but enough for you to see it’s there, a reminder of the fire’s existence. Sunset, they tell me, will be 6:34 PM.

Being home is a comfort. Having my wife chatting about all she’s done and is doing and is to do brought me into the groove. Tucker and Papi did their feline duties, purring welcomes, permitting me to show my affections through liberal scratches of their ears, heads, and backs.

Traveling was the mix of fun, weariness, anticipation, and frustration that I’ve come to expect. Being in flight, taking off before sunrise and then having the sun chase us down over the Rocky Mountains delivered plenty of thought fodder. As you know, many sings exist about traveling, aircraft, flight, and sunrise. Plenty for The Neurons to say, oh, there’s a theme song and stick it in my mental music stream. But I found myself watching people, splitting time between clothes, shoes, body language, and faces. Out of watching faces, The Neurons pulled up “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” by Pearl Jam. A song released six million years ago or more, it tells of a woman struggling to remember another’s name, wishing to say hello, and failing. The Neurons were right to pick it up off of the organic reflections generated from my visit home, to places that were and now aren’t, and faces filling with aging’s shifts.

So here we are. Cats are fed, breakfast is eaten, coffee was brewed, its scent inhaled, its pleasant bitterness introduced to my tongue as another fresh experience. Stay pos and test neg, and do the vaccines needed to overcome and move on. I’m with you there.

Here’s the tune. Hope you can enjoy your Wednesday and build on it. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

Monday sprang into action, moving with balletic grace, like River Tam going after reavers.

Yes, it’s Monday! October 10, 2022, for those checking schedules and appointments, the day of the week generally engraved with a moment to see what we have going on in the coming days. I take air travel for a thousand, Alex.

Pittsburgh’s fall finds another cool morning, 45 degrees F with broad and full sunshine. The morning has been building its structure since sunrise kissed the area at 7:26 AM. Temperatures will kick up into the 60s. No rain today. Planetary rotation will shut down daylight at 6:46 PM. Back at home, it’ll be 84 degrees and smokey.

Yesterday’s morning delivered a pleasant interlude. It’s my daily habit to take a cuppa hot joe onto the front porch in the early AM to breathe the air and admire the world. When I stepped out yesterday, a grazing doe across the street raised her head and greeted me. Two chipmunks and a squirrel dashed away, and a ground hog scurried for safety. I regretted interrupting their moments, but the deer returned to her business and the rest drifted back a short while later. Later, the squirrels and chipmunks had some kind of race going on in the backyard. Don’t know if they were the same characters that I saw in the morning, though.

Mom pulled The Neuron’s attention. She was talking about what music she’d like at her service after her demise. One of the songs is “I Call Your Name” by The Mamas and the Papas. She’s been having Alexa play it at least once a day, singing along with it. Naturally, The Neurons became enthralled with it. Mom and I talked about the song. We both remembered watching it on The Ed Sullivan Show. So The Neurons pushed it into my morning mental music stream, fitting, since it’s my last day here. That show episode is available on Youtube, so here it is.

Mom would have been in her early thirties back then, less than half of my current age.

Stay pos, test neg. Yes, I need coffee, how ’bout you? Mom’s home is a decaf zone. My BIL bought me this coffee when I was COVID isolating. I’m brewing the very last grounds today. Perfect timing, right?

Here’s the music. Have a fine one. Cheers

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Sunday’s Wandering Thought

He remembers teachers and things they taught him in school. It was eight grade when Mr. Dakin, a gym teacher, said, “A team is only as strong as its weakest parts, so you need to fix the weakest parts to become better. It’s the same with your body.”

That same year, a sociology teacher, Mrs. Rubenstein, said, “A nation is only as strong as its weakest people. That’s why we should take care of our weakest people. That will make us stronger as a nation.”

He hadn’t thought of those things in years but being back in the area and driving past the place where the school used to be, resurrected those memories, along with others.

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Sunday’s Theme Music

The wheels on the world go round and round…

Today is Sunday, October 9, 2022. Beautiful and chilly fall morning in the Pittsburgh suburb where I’m staying. It’s 45 F now but it was down by 38 earlier. Perhaps that restrained the animals from rising and taking care of business. Or, they’re like me and said, hey, a little coffee before I face the world.

Shift from night to day was languid, almost tentative, even though physics say, nope, that’s your imagination. Just seemed like it took a while after its initial 7:25 AM showing for the sun to fully exert its presence, like a star who shows up but stays by the wall before moving forward and letting herself be known. We’re looking for a heady high of 15 C. Meanwhile, back in Ashland where I’ll return this week, it’ll be in the 80s F today. Sunset will be at 6:50 this evening.

“Driver’s Seat” by Sniff ‘n’ the Tears is in the morning mental music stream. This came about because it was playing on the radio as I was driving to meet my sister and her hubby for dinner last night. The Neurons said, “We haven’t heard this song in a hair’s age.” I asked them what a hair’s age was. Titters were issued as answer.

“Driver’s Seat” came out in 1978, charted as a hit, but didn’t greatly impact the pop culture landscape. What I always thought about with this song was, that lead singer sometimes reminds me of Gerry Rafferty at places in this song. Also, is Sniff one of the bandmembers? How long have they had that name and what were the circumstances behind it? More likely, it was a novelty approach. Nobody was called sniff. The band liked the word play. Bet they often heard the question, which of you is sniff? Kind of like Pink Floyd being asked, which one is Pink?

The coffee is singing my name. Sounds a lot like David Bowie in his later years. Stay positive, test negative, and endure. Here is the flashback music. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Here we go again, here we go. Saturday arrived, light as a feather, drifting through the dimensions before catching a solar wave to Earth. Some remember this Saturday, 10/8/22. Others will find it a new experience. More than a few will not know it this time around, as it’s still in their future past.

Daylight coiled through the valley as the Earth’s turn again delivered the sun to view at 7:23 AM. A timid affair, sunlight barely raised the temperature but we were grateful for the light. Diaphanous clouds treated in blues and grays, trimmed with silver, were sailing the sky. It’s 5 degrees C this morning but will breech the fifties, maybe hitting 54 F.

The Neurons pulled up another 1990s musical vehicle. I was thinking about some things being said and wondered, why do they need to be this way? The Neurons said, “What you want is some En Vogue.” What The Neurons meant was there are lines in the song, “Free Your Mind” that ask, “Why must you be this way?” Cranking it up, The Neurons jumped into another stanza where the group sings, “Free your mind and the rest will follow.” I’ve always enjoyed the song as an interesting, edgy hybrid of different genres. Hope you like it, too. This is the first time that I’ve seen the video. Nothing else comes to mind when I hear this song, although it sometimes feels like it has Prince and Lenny Kravitz flavors.

Stay pos, test neg, get vaxes as needed, yeah? I’m going to say yes to a cup of coffee now. You be good, right? Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

We’re rocking October’s first week of ’22 in the Steel City. Yesterday delivered a gorgeous day of 70 and a mildly cloudy sky. Will today to the same?

A bright sunshine unveiled clear skies and a calendar-worthy autumn dawn at 7:22 this morning. Sunset will be at 6:53 PM. Meanwhile, it’s 47 degrees F with a high of 19 degrees C in the forecast. Among the trees’ greenery, leaves are shimmering with reds, blazing with yellows, stirring in gold and orange. Today is Thursday, October 6, 2022.

Animal activies have waned in the yard since autumn throttled summer and declare its intentions. One deer in the past three days. Chipmunks are busy, the red squirrel and gray squirrels aren’t seen as much, and the ground hog only made one appearance. More birds are active and present. I wonder if this is part of their staging to head south.

I’m suffering computer constipation problems. Things don’t want to load. Small messages in the corner announce things like “Waiting for google analytics” as the little thing at the top spins like a clothes dryer drum with a heavy, wet load. Tedious beginning to the day. Haven’t had my morning cuppa coffee so my brain cries out, “Alas, alas, why me, cruel world, why me?”

Musically, The Neurons loaded “Movin’ On” by Bad Company from 1974 onto the pathways. Sis and I were driving around on errands yesterday. Familiars from my past ferreted their way into the moment. Like, hey, I know this road. So-and-so lived up there. This street looks familiar. Oh, yeah, and there’s where that guy jumped John. Well, we were driving from town to town, and although The Neurons also loaded a few other songs in response to the memory cycle, “Movin’ On” won the morning mental music loop.

Now I must get coffee, ‘kay? Stay pos and so on, ‘kay? Here’s the tune. Close your eyes and relive the seventies for a mo’.

Cheers

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