Category: weather

Monday’s Theme Music

The calendars bring us around to another Monday again. Has little to do with the earth’s movement and the sun and the stars. These were our decisions what to call what day, done to standardize taxes and activities.

In another move, the results of long-ago decisions and mechanisms, this is October, 24, 2022. Trees still wear their new fall outfits, although some are showing some daring naked trunk and branches. Sunshine, according to the chronometers, was at 7:34 AM, but rain dampened the experience. As it was a chilly 41 F, too, attendance to witness it was low. Also, it seems like people who work and rush around are less enamored with sunrise these days. Feels like most just want to see sunrises and sunsets when they’re on vacation. Although, I feel compelled to do an aside that two sisters and one sister-in-law often photograph sunsets using their phones and post them on social media. Our sunset, by the way, will be at 6:15 PM, in case you want to get out there and get some snaps in. Our high temperature, so you can dress right, will be 55 F. Rain might be falling. I know it won’t be climbing.

BTW, I just imagining telling my grandfather that people take photos of sunsets with their phones. Grandpa Paul died back in 1975, but he was the guy with a Polaroid camera in the sixties, taking photos of everything. I appreciate his efforts because I know exactly what I wore on different holidays for several years. I think he would have gone with the flow and used a phone himself. He liked adopting new technology.

Musically, the song today has roots in my novel in progress. Well, not really roots, because the song was out long ago. Now I’m going off topic. Just let me go on.

I’d come to a chapter that was leaving me flummoxed. I’d written it several ways, found one I liked, and edited it a bit, but still remained dissatisfied. A “Eureka!” moment struck last night. That might put an end to the issue, but maybe not. I find that as a writer, sometimes I’m satisfied at the moment but later demand to know who wrote that crap and put it in my file.

But the internal debate encouraged The Neurons to pull out a Lovin’ Spoonful song from 1966 called “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind?” Written by John Sebastian, it’s a playful melody about choosing which girlfriend you want. You probably see the connections which Les Neurons made.

Keep engaging your mind’s positive vibes, man, and pour oil on that negative energy. I hear oil will calm negative energy and keep it from growing. No word on what kind of oil. Feel free to experiment and report your results. I’m getting coffee to pour down my throat where, I believe, it’ll drown my negative energy and lift the positive vibes. At least, that’s the hope, right?

Here’s the song. Cheers

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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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Saturday’s Theme Music

Yesterday had us in bee mode, going from event to event. Slowly today, with only one thing on schedule.

It’s Saturday. Claim you prize at the window if you guessed correctly. Don’t know what the prize is. You’ll need to talk to the director about that. It’s also Oct. 22, 2022, if you’re going for the perfecta.

Rain began last night at tennish, got serious about it around midnight, calmed itself down for part of the night, and then stormed back at five. Lot of rain sounds. Some wind joined in to move a few things. We’ve needed rain, so yea, and now need snow. Fortunately, snow is forecast for the area above 5,000 feet. We’re below two, so we shouldn’t need to deal. More rain is due from above today (I know, where else did I think it would come from?), with most forecasts proclaiming it’s going to rain from early afternoon to almost midnight.

It’s currently 45 F in our area. 10 to 11 degrees C is posted as expectations for our high. We have a plan to go to the Japanese Garden opening in Lithia Park. Two plus years in the making, they tore up some stuff and built a wall, so ambivalence is greeting the park’s appearance. They’re also talking about perhaps charging an entrance fee in the future, anathema to Ashland’s attitude toward parks. They’re supposed to be free recreation areas for the people, yo. We’ll see what happens when the future arrives.

Dawn had an underwhelming arrival, with clouds and rain dictating light and visibility. Sunrise came at 7:32 AM. On daylight’s other end — dare I say, its rear end? — sunset will be at 6:18.

We were at Empty Bowls last night, the fundraiser for feeding the homeless and struggling. My wife is part of the setup committee. We met with other friends there, catching up on news from the COVID era. Too much of it was about bad health. Three friends, not seen in a while, we learned had died. Another had a massive heart attack and was going in for triple bypass surgery on Monday. But there were also sunny faces sharing happy tales about how well they and their families were doing.

This is a transition day for me vis-à-vis clothing options. I’ve been in shorts in Oregon since spring, other than a few special events. Now it’s time to dig out jeans, long shirts and sweaters, and raincoats. That had me thinking about yesterday, which was a magnet for The Neurons. They came out with 30 Seconds to Mars and “From Yesterday”. It took me a while to put that together as I had the refrains about a map of the world on his face going on. In fact, I often incorrectly think that the 2007 song’s title is “Map of the World”. But as the song went through my head, the title was corrected.

The cats are also transitioning. Tucker was out, moving around the yard seeking solar patches, but Papi, the young feline, said, “Screw this,” and mostly stayed in the house. Of course, the night of rain arrived, and the situation reversed. Now, though, both cats are declared themselves indoor pets. Tucker slumbers on the desk left of my computer while ever a contrarian, Papi naps on the living room sofa.

Well, stay pos, test neg. I’m up for coffee and an orange cranberry scone. Can I get you anything? Here’s the music while you think about it. I couldn’t find the short version so here’s medium version. The actual song begins about halfway through.

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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Thursday’s Theme Music

We have a new and improved Wednesday at our fingertips. Never sullied by human behavior before, this Wednesday is an ideal gift for Mom or Dad, big brother or little sister, or even —

Excuse me, just a moment. The Neurons are clamoring for my attention.

What? It’s not. Oh. Well.

Sorry for the typo. This is a new and improved Thursday.

Aw, forget it. The magic is gone, the spirit is ruined.

This is Thursday, October 20, 2022, brand new, etc.

Sunshine unveiled itself in our valley at 7:29 AM and will illuminate our life until it’s turned away at 6:21. It’s 57 F now but 86 F is foretold for this afternoon. But the plants are whispering, “Rain is coming.” Not today, but it’s coming.

I have “livin'” on my mind as part of song titles, like “Livin’ on A Prayer”, “Livin’ on A Wing”, “Livin’ on A Hill”, and “Livin’ in a Can”. Don’t know which of those is an actual song, except I’m sure the first one is a Bon Jovi tune. Rising to the moment, The Neurons have thrust “Feels Like the First Time” by Foreigner (1977) into the morning mental music stream. They explain that it fits right in with the fact that this day is a brand-new day. (Side bar: couldn’t they have just used Sting’s “Brand New Day”?) They explain that in the Foreigner song are the words, “Never will again, never again,” which, The Neurons think, makes sense for a brand-new day: it’ll never be again, so make the most of it.

I’ll give them that since I lack the coffee energy to debate them. Stay positive, test negative, etc. Here’s the music. Enjoy it. Also enjoy your brand-new day if you can. We’ll hopefully get another one tomorrow. Now it’s coffee for me.

Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Dawn light cracked the night’s eastern flank apart at 7:28 AM. With sunlight alleviating the cold, we soon saw temperatures rise to the mid-fifties. Temperatures are expected to prance on up to 86 F today before night closes in at sunset, predicted to be at 6:23 this evening.

It’s Wednesday. Mid-week for many. Beer night for me. We celebrate Ron’s 75th birthday tonight. Per the beer group’s tradition, the individual reaching the milestone buys pizza and beer. Salute.

It’s also October 19, 2022. Just a normal day for me, but many will be celebrating, like Ron. To you, salud.

The Neurons are being cheeky today. I was out admiring the sky, breathing in and out, not thinking about anything specific. Cats were with me, checking it out. Tucker, our black and white long-haired enigma, was busy grooming. Papi the ginger blade was pretending to see things that he might attack. He rarely pulls the claw on his planned attacks; they go on in his mind, I imagine.

As I turned to head back in, The Neurons brought up a song called “Sky High”. While I knew the lyrics and melody – they’re quite simple and straightforward – I was like, who, when? I knew somewhere from the early seventies. Wikipedia fed me what seems like the correct answers: 1975 and Jigsaw. I don’t recall hearing any other music by Jigsaw. Watched the video after that and yeah, I’ve never seen the group. Thank you for the music, guys. I do appreciate it. In another surprise, I learned that the song was for a movie, The Man from Hong Kong, which my memory denies knowing. The movie starred George Lazenby, an actor who once played James Bond.

Here’s the music. I have coffee at hand. Maintain your positive attitude and do your best to test negative as COVID and other viruses and illnesses spread. Other than that, I encourage you to drink deeply and prosper.

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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Monday’s Theme Music

Monday muscled into the morning, declaring, “Ready or not, I am here.”

It’s October 17, 2022. Half of October has fled under the bridge and over the horizon of the past. But they tell us the past doesn’t really exist once it’s done; really, all the previous days have evaporated, except for what we hold in our minds.

After reaching 95 F yesterday, half a dozen degrees higher than prepared for, today will drop into the upper seventies, maybe striking 80 (26 C). It’s a clear enough sky for it. Nothing but blue from my vantage. Trees have at last begun shifting colors here. Local leaves are mostly going gold or yellow.

Monday’s sunrise tiptoed in at 7:26 this morning like it had a hangover. Sunset will come at 6:26 this evening, just eleven hours later. Next Sunday, we ‘fall back’ in most of the U.S., resetting our clocks to be an hour later, part of a hugely debated bi-annual ritual adopted as law last century.

The Neurons were spying on me this morning. No surprise, right? The tiny peckerheads often do. Going about the usuals needed to void my body and begin to re-assume form and manners for being among humans, I found myself examining a memory about meeting a man. After carefully checking it to see where it came from, I realized it was from a dream – ‘we’d met each other in a dream.’ Case closed, I decided, but the dream was suddenly so vivid.

Well, The Neurons heard ‘we’d me each other in a dream’ and called up Heart and “Magic Man” (1976) for the morning mental music stream. It’s been going over and over in an endless loop, kind of like how phone calls and meetings take place on Monday. Chuckle, chuckle.

So that’s the theme music for this October Monday. Stay positively oriented and negatively tested when it comes to COVID and its variants and the flu. It is definitely coffee time for me. I’m positive about it. Here’s Ann and Nancy and the band with their song. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

If you guessed the temperature in my area would be around 60 degrees F, plus or minus one or two, you’ve been paying attention to the recent posts from me. That’s the temperature now. It’s supposed to again reach 89 F. It actually struck 92 F yesterday. I was so surprised seeing that on my home system. With doubt riding high, I checked several net weather stations. All agreed within a degree either direction.

Riding starlight, Sunday sailed in last night after sunset and took up position, greeting everyone as sunrise joined her at 7:24 this morning. Sunrise was polite, a little sedate but gracious, flowing evenly out from across the eastern horizon in a pale gold-white frock with apricot fluting before shapeshifting into daylight. Sunday is expected to stay until midnight. Daylight will only stay until 6:28 PM. I would say that a better union is responsible for the sun’s shorter hours but must hasten to point out that the sun must do this every day, whereas Sunday is on a seven-day rotation.

I suppose the day and month, 16 and October, and year, have the best gigs. 2022 will pull a one-year tour before declining into memory, but then will never need to work again. The sixteenth shows up every month, every year, while October is working twenty-four/seven for thirty-one days straight, but then takes eleven months off. Don’t know which schedule I’d prefer. I mean, imagine the coffee it would take to go back to work after being off for eleven months. I guess that’s exactly what many felt as the pandemic loosened its hold so they could return to work.

Acting upon something they think they heard, the Neurons have ferreted a song out of my dusty memory. “Kickstart My Heart” by Mötley Crüe (1989) was introduced to the morning mental music stream after I thought, I need some coffee to kickstart my brain. Yeah, the heart could use it as well. See if the pulse could find a little more speed. The Neurons thought that the perfect theme music. I told them that they need to quit being so literal.

Anyway, here’s that music. Keep up a positive charge, and do the things needed to have a negative test result, and then, if that fails you, do the tasks needed to get better quickly and fully. Like bedrest and fluids, and whatever else. You know what I’m talking about. (Funny but The Neurons immediately pulled in that line from ZZ Top and “La Grange”. Those cheeky brain boogerheads.)

Seriously, I’m stepping out for coffee now. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

We’re under a blue egg sky this morning. A half-moon that seems almost translucent studies us from a perch above the western horizon’s trees. It is Saturday. Looks like we made it.

October 15, 2022, the Gregorian calendar system employed in most of the world declares. I appreciate the decisions made way back in the 1500s and further back, in the third and fourth centuries about how calendars work. Saves me the headache of doing it myself. I’d need a Youtube video for that. The current calendar is built on the back of other calendars, like the Julian. We owe some of our current calendar use to Pope Gregory XIII. I learned these things back in junior high but that’s all I can share without a dose of coffee. The Neurons have ordered a work stoppage until said coffee arrives.

I can still type, though, and note that it’s Saturday, either the end of the week or next to last day of the week, depending on whether you think the week starts on Sunday or Monday. I lean toward Sunday as the week’s beginning, making Saturday the end of my week, but I recall a family argument about when the week begins. Boy, was that a crazy morning.

It’s 61 F right now. Weather analysts tell us that 32 C is possible by late afternoon. No doubt it has a chance. The sun is strong, clouds have slipped away for a long weekend (probably at Cumulopalooza 22), and windshifts are moving the Cedar Creek fire’s particles away from our faces. Located in a steep, rugged area, the fire jumped containment five days ago and is forty percent contained as of today.

Sunset will come at 6:23 PM while the heavenly mechanics brought the sun back into our valley at 7:23 this morning.

The Neurons have seeded the morning mental music stream with “19th Nervous Breakdown”. Doya know the song? Released between fifty and sixty years ago, it was a hit single for this Brit band called The Rolling Stones. This tune was selected, The Neurons inform me, because I went outside, and then told myself to stop and look around. I was enjoying the morning air, breathing deep, letting the sun bathe my face with warm light, and planning my yardwork. The Neurons, of course, carried it off in on a whole other track. But now it’s here, and I must abide by The Neurons.

Coffee is also here, a welcome jumpstart to my taste buds and energy. Stay posimatic and be a negabot. Also take care of yourself. You’re worth it, to steal a commercial line about hair products, don’t you think?

Here’s the music. Cheers

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