Category: memories

Thursday’s Theme Music

Good afternoon, fellow humans. Today is Veteran’s Day in America, 11/11/2021, a Thursday, as it happens. I’m late posting today because I was off on an early morning shopping trek. Just three stores. Fascinating to watch people in this era. Many seemed sluggish, vague, absent minded. Was like shopping among zombies bent on a good deal.

We spun into the sun zone this morning at 6:56 AM and will turn away from Sol at 4:53 PM. Sol is warm and friendly today, taking us up to a face-warming 65 degrees F, maybe higher, if we’re good. Pleasant change from yesterday’s drizzled-challenged landscape — or the heat and smoke of the last few years. I’m happy with it.

I heard today’s song on a television show the other day. It’d been such a long time since I’d heard it. Recalling the band’s name required serious and repeated deep dives into useless information residing on my brain’s bottom. I couldn’t remember the year and needed to look that up. The brain just wasn’t up to it that day. I suspect the neurons were suffering a coffee shortage. Anyway, the song is by an Australian group, the Easybeats. It came out in 1967. As I was eleven then, I embrace this era of pop rock more than other periods. It was all fresh, different, unique, then, and I scarfed it up like a dog taking in bacon. The song is “Friday on My Mind”, which is suitable theme music for Thursday, don’tcha think? It’s a light ditty, with innocuous lyrics focused on rhyming.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and booster when you can. Here’s the music. Listen to it while I go hunt down a cuppa coffee. Back soon. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Come aboard my friends to the show that never ends, the water’s rough but the music is fine. Tis Wednesday, November 10, 2021, a gray bannered day in this realm. Sun and blue are trying to break through but the mean ol’ clouds keep denying them time. The world’s spin brought the sun’s presence up at 6:55 AM and it’ll be spun away from us at 4:55 PM. Meanwhile, chill is the word for the air. 42 F now, 53 and rain in the near future hours. Grab some rain gear or be wet if you’re going walking.

Had a banging walk yesterday. Pushed myself further, harder, faster against a soft, gloomy wind and a tranquil gray and blue sky. Wound up sweat drenched. Always feels good to sweat like that, hear the muscles say, “Hello, what’s going on.”

A raft of dreams carried me through the night. Documented a few from that nocturnal journey. Left me on the bedside this AM, thinking, life is a riddle. My brain added, “I’m really stumped.” I then said, hmmm, and remembered those are lyrics from something. Wasn’t until ten, fifteen minutes, while in the can, that the lyrics were fit to a melody and group, emerging, self-assembled, as “Gotta Get Away” by The Offspring, 1995. That was the year of my military retirement, and the sentiment, gotta get away, was strong by the time I put my papers in. This was after turning down some assignments. One was plum, the other sucked, and the third was bizarre. Ergo, gotta get away.

Some lyrics reminder from the song:

I tell you, something just ain’t right
My head is on loose but my shoes are tight
Avoiding my friends ’cause they all bug
Life is like a riddle and I’m really stumped
If you reason, don’t you know
Your own preoccupation is where you’ll go
Being followed, I look around
It’s only my shadow creeping on the ground

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Stay positron, test negatron, wear a mask as needed to protect yourself and others, and get the vax and booster when you can for the same reasons. Here’s my coffee and the music. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

“Life is the essence. The essence is rock and roll. Rock and roll is life.” – Dead Smokers’ Society

Ahoy. How are my fellow travelers this day? For further reference, this day shall be defined as Monday, November 8, 2021. Not many days are left to this hallow year. The countdown has commenced; the end is nigh. Fake Christmas trees are being advertised as on sale on television, discounted up to 50%. What a bargain.

Sunrise was a pleasant diffusion to night at 6:52 AM, rolling in louder and bolder through a sky unwrinkled by clouds and their threats. Sunset cometh at 4:59 PM. With that short period and the tilt, we expect highs in the low fifties F and lows in the thirties. It’s 39 F at the moment. BTW, a strong wind advisory has been issued for this afternoon and evening. Batten down the light stuff and bring the domestic beasts in.

Two of our housecats have taken to the change in time without issue. They just seem to accept the time change. The problems anticipated from them didn’t materialize. The old man, however, arose at his usual hour, visited my face, then went down to the bedroom entrance and grumbled his annoyance. “It’s breakfast time. Where is my food? What’s the matter with you? Why aren’t you getting my food for me? What have I done to you that you treat me in this callous manner?”

Yes is dominating the morning mental music stream with a 1983 song, “Changes”. Specific lyrics inspired its rise:

Change changing places
Changes
Root yourself to the ground
Word to the wise – Well you get what’s coming
One word – One word can bring you round
Changes

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Remember, let’s stay positive out there. Test negative. Wear a mask as needed. Get the vax and booster when you can. Here’s the music. Carpe diem. I’m gonna go seize a cuppa coffee. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

It’s gonna be a bright, bright, bright, sunny day, if the opening hours are to judge. Got cold last night — 33 degrees F, so not freezing, but cold — cold enough for the cats to decline their nocturnal outings (“Are you crazy? I’m not going out there.”) — and the sun broke through with a fierce come back at the early time of 5:51 AM. While it’s clear, a cold front cleared out the clouds, so we’ll be seeing a high of only 51 F. Maybe 53. We’ll see. Sunset will take over at 4:58 PM.

h/t to That Oregon Life on Facebook.

Today is Sunday, November 7, 2021. A disco fever song is burning the morning mental music stream. “Stayin’ Alive” by the Bee Gees came out in 1978. After that, there was no escapin’ the song, or the Bee Gees. Bee Gee music and this particular song seemed to be everywhere, mostly because the music was from Saturday Night Fever, a movie with tsunami-like cultural impact on the U.S. I thought, given the environmental response to the pandemic — wear a mask, socially distance, stay true to your pod, isolate and quarantine when necessary — that it’s a good song for this era.

Now it’s time for my first coffee of the new time period. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and booster when you can. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Hello feckless fellow philosophers! Welcome to funky foggy Friday, where a moderate portion of fog is being served this AM. It’s the last Friday before…dun dun dun…We Turn Back The Clocks in the United States. People have been trying to turn back the calendar for several years. I wouldn’t mind turning back the calendar on my body. But all we get is an hour back. And we must give it back next spring.

Today is November 5, 2021. It’s 47 degrees F outside and only expected to climb give degrees from here. That fog and cloud cover contributes. It’s a good soup day but I don’t think we have soup planned. The valley experienced an anemic sunrise at 7:49 AM, a grudging lifting of night’s curtain. Night will fall on us again at 6 PM. Meanwhile, we’ll scramble to run errands, clean, work, go to school, eat, have fun, bath, rush to the hospital, fight to breath, battle COVID-19, endure endless stupidity…well, you know the agenda. Your agenda may vary. Especially if you’re below the equator, where it’s getting warmer, sunnier, and brighter. Of course, some areas are probably like our area, worrying about wildfire and smoke as summer comes upon them. It’s our cycle of existence.

I have U2 with “New Year’s Day” (1983) circulating in the morning mental music stream. It’s a dream byproduct. I’ve been dreaming more frequently, or remembering more. Or maybe I’m just imagining that I’m dreaming and/or remembering more. I can’t say.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed by the situation, get the vax and booster when you can. We spent hours on the telephone and computers yesterday trying to get a vax. Nothing in my town. Only one place offering them. The earliest appointments are at the end of the month, up the highway. The mobile vax van doesn’t come our way. So, we must get in our cars and ride, fellas. Now I’m gonna ride into the kitchen (actually, I’ll be walking) to the coffee maker. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Salutations to the inhabitants of Gaia. We’re continuing a new theme of calling days this month ‘November’ and numbering them. Today is Wednesday, November 3, 2021. Sunrise kicked in like a toddler at 7:46 AM and will waddle out at 6:02. While it’s battleship gray this AM, with sunlight relegated to the level of a dim bar at happy hour, we expect the temperature to go from its current realm in the low fifties to the upper sixties. I’m meeting with friends at a brewery. We’re all vaxxed and we’ll be sitting outside at a picnic table. There, we were enjoy a local brew. Maybe two.

With rain and it being November, you’d think I’d be thinking of “November Rain”, but I didn’t. Instead, trudging up a steep, steep hill during yesterday’s constitutional, I told myself, gasp, “Breathe in, breathe out.” Quickly, my mental Alexa picked up on the words and introduced “Machinehead” by Bush from 1994. It’s one of the songs I frequently listened to on my short morning commute from NAS Moffett base housing where I lived over to Onizuka AS, where I worked in California during those years. The commute was just long enough to listen to one song, then done. I enjoyed remembering it, and introduce as today’s theme music.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, distance when necessary, and get the vax and boosters when ye can. Here’s the music. There I go. Into the kitchen. That’s where the coffee is. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Hello, all you sentient beings. Welcome to November 2, 2021. It’s officially a Tuesday for everyone scoring at home.

It’s another dullish, fallish day in the southern Oregon valley where I reside. Rain dribbled throughout the night in sufficient quantities to wet the land and irk the cats. The sun made a feeble entrance at 7:45 AM and will slip away at 6:03 PM. Despite heavy clouds, wet clouds, and Winter’s determined effort to take over, the temperature is 52 degrees F and a high of 61 F is hoped for. Tomorrow is expected to be warmer, 67 degrees, with light rain, so that’s something to look forward to.

You’d think that with all this rain, rain songs would be in heavy rotation in my morning mental music stream. I mean, outside of love, there seems to be a gajillion songs about rain. Most of the rain songs deal with depression, heartbreak, and insanity. Perhaps my enjoyment of this rain is holding such songs out of my mental Alexa’s playlist. I’m instead preoccupied with a 1968 song by Blood, Sweat, & Tears called “Spinning Wheel”. It’s one line of lyrics playing foremost within me:

Talkin' 'bout your troubles and you, you never learn
Ride a painted pony let the spinnin' wheel turn

h/t to Lyrics.com

See, what I was thinking about was the inability for many to learn. We’re still neck deep with COVID-19 deniers and anti-vaxxers here in the U.S. People who don’t trust the medical community, then rush to them when COVID-19 strikes them down, and then demands that the medical community treat them using treatments that they’ve read about on the net, instead of the medical professions’ proven protocols and procedures for the best outcome. It’s crazy how it spreads over the net — this was on a nurses’ forum — that patients are telling one another that when nurses remove you from ventilation is when they kill you. It’s all a great big conspiracy of crazy.

So, they never learn. They jump on that painted pony. Then the fates spin the result.

Not saying that following everything — vax, social distancing, masks, and the medical procedures for COVID-19 — is a perfect cure-all. No. It’s not. Underlying conditions and health issues will exacerbate treatment and recovery, as will age, race, and sex, given the collected data. Sadly, these deniers are not capable of learning this. Not a question of intelligence; it seems to be more about indoctrination. Frustrating for the rest of us, but it’s not new. Nor is it unusual.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, socially distance, and get the vax and boosters when you can, if you can. Coffee time again. Here’s the music. Hope you enjoy it. Cheers.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Yep, turn the page. Start a new leaf. Begin anew, again. November is upon us, a continuation of the autumn months for those of us above the equator. We’re like a ship sailing toward winter. Clouds grow darker and heavier. Sunshine thins and fades, surrendering us to increasingly cold air. We hover around warm spots, watching the horizons for signs of snow, awaiting the next phase.

Or we shrug and press on. Or gather winter sports equipment, put on warmer coats, and head for the hills. Who cares what season it is? Well, we care, but each season brings it personality in. We can usually find things to love and admire in each season. The cats, though, are definitive summer folk. They’re already going out only to dart back in with complaints. “Where is the sun? Turn off the wind. Make it warmer.” So they go until they find a faintly suitable place and curl up, gradually replacing their mutterings with snores.

Today is Monday, November 1, 2021, the first Monday in November. So, we’ll have five Mondays in this month, along with five Tuesdays. The sunshine shifted into the valley with meager offerings at 7:44 AM. The sun will fade away at 6:05 PM. Temperatures will stay chilly with rainfall and winds contributing, giving us a high of 56 degrees F. But the air is clear and absent any signs of wildfire smoke.

For reasons that aren’t in focus for me, a 1973 Marvin Gaye song is playing in the morning mental music stream. Yes, Marvin is singing, “Let’s Get It On”, a smooth, lovely song, evocative of hopeful young love and sex. Hearing the song conjures scenes of dark houses with slow dancing, making out on furniture, quiet pairings of couples who sneak away for some privacy. All this goes with the Halloween period because growing up in the western Pennsylvania area as a teen, that early darkness in alignment with parents’ work hours afforded some unique opportunities to visit with friends in their houses. We were usually outside in the summer and spring, see, while winter brought freezing air and heavy snow that made such visiting difficult. Also, reaching into November, you were a month, almost two, into the new school year. Got to reacquaint yourself you hadn’t seen for a while, rekindling affection and interest. I guess I untied the knot about why the song is hovering around my mind this morning.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters when you can. Here’s the music, there’s my coffee, and here we go, galloping on into November. Onward, he cried from the rear. Let’s go. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

The deciduous trees were so lovely recently in golds and yellows, scarlets and reds, oranges, yellow-green, russet and brown. A few windy days and the leaves lay heavy on the ground as naked skeletal branches wave toward the sky. Blue sky holds today, a few clouds trickling in, high and away, as if they’re spying on us from lofty perches. They might be winter’s advance guard. I think I hear them whispering, “Winter is coming.” Whether they’ll bring the ice king, we’ll see.

Today is October’s last day, the 31st. We’re galloping through 2021’s final quarter, racing toward Thanksgiving in the U.S., and dashing toward the December holiday season. Sunrise cameth at 7:42 AM. So late, right? But next Sunday, Nov. 7, DST ends and we turn the clocks back. By then, the sunrise will be about 8 AM, so we’ll roll it back to 7 AM. But we’ll suffer on the day’s posterior end. Sunset today comes at 6:10 PM. That’ll dial back to before six next week, so we’ll be looking at sunsets before 5 PM after next Sunday. And we’ll still be moving toward the longest night in December.

Today, though, it’s 51 degrees F. High today will only be 61 degrees but right now, it’s a soft, gorgeous day. The cats and I went out together. I paused for a deep inhale. Was so clear and invigorating, I hung around and repeated deep breaths for several minutes. Stress, frustrations, anxieties all washed out. Into the morning mental music stream came The Hollies’s 1974 cover of “The Air That I Breathe”. Works for me on October’s final day.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters as needed. Speaking of needs, I’m heading into the kitchen for some coffee. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Sunrise crept in like a drunk husband trying not to awaken his wife at 7:41 AM this morning. Barely lifted the gloom it seems. Shortly before sunrise, rumbling like metal wheels across broken cement awoke me. As I puzzled through the loud sound, it came again, confirming for my surprised being, why, that’s thunder. Thunder just rolled around the valley again like a marble in a roulette wheel, and rain is drumming its fingers over the rough. We call it stormy Saturday, October 30, 2021.

The rain and clouds are gonna keep it cool, you bet. The current temperature is 54 degrees F. Some say that it will reach 56 F today; others are claiming 61. We’ll see how warm it gets before the sun takes its contribution from us at 6:07 PM.

Feeding the cats inspired the occupant of my morning mental music stream today. The song is by Kiss, “I Was Made for Lovin’ You”, from 1979. Only, me being sleepy because it was half past dark still and the little flooftators were acting hangry, stumbled out of bed and told them, “Yes, please let me feed you. I was made for feeding you kitties. That’s all I live for.” That’s certainly what it felt like at that moment when my crankmeter was up high because I wanted sleep. Anyway, the song remained in my head after I flushed my dreams and made breakfast, so, lucky you! Here you go. My choice for Saturday’s theme music. It’s a bit o’rock and disco with a large dollop of glam. Like those shoes. Oh, those shoes.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed by the situation, and get the vax and booster when you can. Let’s be careful out there. On to coffee. Cheers

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