Tag: 2004

Mundaz’s Theme Music

Feb. 10, 2025, is a wintry Mundaz in Ashlandia. White sky holds no promises. White sky offers no sun. White sky offers no solace.

No precipitation is falling but we’re hovering at a toasty 23 F, ten degrees below our average low for this calendar date. Snow that fell last week still has a meaty white presence on the ground. The pine trees have finally shed that winter weight. Last week’s snow and ice had many pines bent to half of their height.

As for today, ‘they’ tell us that the sunshine will overcome the white sky and take us to 43 F, ten degrees below our normal average high.

Sorry that KC Chiefs were so dominated by the Philly Eagles in the SB yesterday. Unfortunately, PINO Trump predicted they’d win. That doomed them. As we’ve seen repeatedly demonstrated, Trump bestows the kiss of death on everything.

The Neurons surprised me with today’s music. It started as a tangent off some floofcourse between me and my felines. I asked them, “What’s wrong now?” Their answer came as pouty stares and circling watchfulness, which just dumped Les Neurons into bafflement. As I shifted to news reports with growing, heavier sighs, I thought, “Too many problems.”

A song began in my morning mental music stream. “What’s wrong, what’s wrong now? Too many problems.” As it pulled up volume and melody, I hunted the who, what, whens behind it. Unable to answer those myself, I turned to the net. It educated me that the song was “Nobody’s Home” by Avril Lavigne from 2004. I guess I heard it in the car. Back in that decade, I moved to Ashlandia and began doing regular I-5 commutes from my place in southern Oregon to visit with my team in Mountain View, between SF and SJ on the peninsula. Guess I heard it then.

Hope you can get positive that something good will come about and it won’t take a miracle from some deity or an eternity to happen. Coffee and I have embraced again. Off we go, into the wild white yonder, a fresh start on another day.

Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Mood: Rainflective

Today is May 10, 2024. Sis’s 70 bday is tomorrow.

It’s spring with a wintry flush in Pennhillia, PA. The air is cold and wet. Last night’s rain lowered the temperatures, and clouds keep them down. I don’t know where this front came from but it feels like it was overnighting with winter somewhere.

Light rain is dripping down on us. Temperature is 53 F, which is about our day’s high.

Mother’s Day Cookout planning is ongoing. How many people? How many and what desserts? What about side-dishes, meats, buns and breads and salads, oh my.

Good weather isn’t a call we can make. Sunday is expected to be rainy and chilly, rising into the low 60s F by the mid afternoon. Little sister Gina is hosting us. Besides her husband, children and grandchildren, two other sisters with their husbands, children and grandchildren will be there, along with Mom, me, and Mom’s beau. Fingers crossed and knock on wood that we’ll have a good time.

Today’s music is Avril Lavigne’s “My Happy Ending” out of 2004. The Neurons parked it into my morning mental music stream (Trademark drifting) after my early AM cogitations. Besides dream surveying, I was out on the porch, tasting the cold air, listening to the rain, sucking down coffee and reviewing our family history. Highlights and lowlights came like breaking waves. I remembered this and then that.

2004 became mired in my mind. Mom was my current age in that year. I was but 48. So young, so young. Only two of the many the grands were born. Mom’s beau was justing coming into the picture. She was a healthy, energetic 68 year-old. No evidence of what was to come with all of us, but then how often do the harbingers of what’s to be appear to present a head’s up?

Anyway, from that came the 2004 song, “My Happy Ending”, a succinct song about what was tried and how it failed.

Stay positive, be strong, and Vote Blue in 2024. I have coffee, thanks, and I’m sucking it down like it’s the elixir of the gods. Here’s the music video. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

Back at the homestead. Something is barking outside. Sounds like a sea lion barking up a storm. Understandable, as he’s in the mountains. Probably asking directions for the coast.

It’s Thursday, Jun 29, 2023. Folks are active outside on this cool 62 F morning in Ashlandia today, where the seniors are busy and the coffee shops are crowded. We’re lookin’ fer 90, 92 F, sumpin’ in that area, today. Protect your skin, and hydrate. It’s a no-cloud zone for now.

Coffee drinking has commenced. The cats have been in and out, tickled by their space, entertained by a jay’s activities, soothed by a breeze, warmed by the sun. The jay is always out there doing things — well, dusk to dawn — sorry for the hyperbole — an epitome of energy. Depressing to watch their busy self. Makes me feel like a sloth in comp.

In sad news, sunrise has backed up to 5:37 AM. A moment of silence for the lost minutes. Next thing you know, it’ll be November and the sunrise won’t be comin’ ’round till after seven.

Has been a fast year. I always think that it’s just me feelin’ so but my wife said to me, “It feels like it’s too soon for the fourth of July.” I agree. Feels like we’re shooting through 2023 like a slick uncooked turkey through buttered fingers.

After I began ruminating about time, The Neurons just took off runnin’ with it. Don’t know ’bout you, but that’s how my neurons do. Then people are asking, “You look like you were thinking about something.” You reply, “I think I might have been but I don’t know what it was.” Anyway, The Neurons reacted with “Time Is Running Out” by Muse (2004). I enjoyed the video back when it was released, just under a year before we moved from California to Oregon. Liked those military folks around the table, oblivious and yet doing things as a synchronized act. After my military career, that felt right to me.

Stay pos, and don’t let the bedbugs bite. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Happy National Cheese Day! Yes, it’s Sunday, June 4, 2023, which, as all know in the US, is National Cheese Day. Yes, America’s founders, Washington, Adams, Franklin, and the like, loved cheese. They regularly ate cheese while working with Jefferson on the founding documents. Jefferson practically lived on cheese during those days. Whenever he got stuck, someone would say, “Get Tommy some cheddar.” One of the reasons why we have problems with the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights was because of the Great American Cheese Shortage. They were trying to come up with the right words but ran out of cheese. Quoting T.J., he wrote in his journal, “I can’t think without my cheese. I crave colby so deeply that it plagues my dreams. Damn it all, when will we get more cheese?” Today’s conversations about gun rights may have been much different if they hadn’t run out of cheese. That’s also when the expression, “Cut the cheese”, was originated when someone passed gas.

I hope that cheesy tale didn’t curdle your spirit. Mozzarella with you, can’t stand a little weird humor? I know, calling it humor might be slicing it thin. Remember, just brieth and move on.

Yesterday went so well with the weather, we’re doing it again today. 60 F now, we have expectations to pop into the mid 80s F, a lovely summer prelude. More yardwork on the agenda. With all the late rain we had, the bushes and trees went nuts and need trimmed back.

Jimmy Eat World is in the morning mental music stream. I was taking in an eyeful of luscious full moon last night, recalling how, during cheese shortages, people looked up at the moon and saw cheese. “Oh, if only we could reach it,” they’d tell one another. “We’d have all the cheese we want.” Sometimes they built great edifices, like towers and pyramids, in an attempt to reach the cheesy moon, or climb the highest mountains. They’d come down from the mountains and people would greet them and ask, “Did you get some cheese?” But no; they usually came down empty handed, except one guy, who came back with some tablets. People were furious with him. “Tablets? We can’t eat those. We want cheese.”

Anyway, while taking in the moon, the night’s beauty took my breath away. From that, The Neurons began feeding different songs with the phrase, ‘take my breath away’, in it. There are a few, and my mind busied itself, eventually branching out to songs about breathing or with the word breath in them. Eventually, The Neurons rediscovered “Pain” by Jimmy Eat World from 2004. The song landed in the morning mental music stream and has been going ’round and around in it until now, when I free myself by offering it to others. Don’t know why, but that’s how it works.

Stay pos and carpe Sunday. Time for more coffee, don’t you think? Yes, The Neurons agree, it is. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Hello to all you deceivers and believers, along with the in-betweeners. That’s something Willie Nelson sang about.

Despite everything that happened in everyone’s lives, at least in this reality, the world has continued spinning, bringing us to Saturday, April 8, 2023. Despite those pronouncements about day and date, nature and the world outside of humanity goes about its business. Date and day and time doesn’t matter to it. We’re the believers, deceivers, and in-betweeners worrying about it.

The sun lightened the sky at 6:42 this morning. The world will spin Ashlandia into darkness at 1944, as far as we know. It’s 45 F now but 66 is possible, the weather goobers tell us. Mind the rain, it’ll be in and out all day, dismaying the cats, who were counting on sunshine.

Today’s song comes from getting out of bed. As the light in the room grew louder, I said to myself, get up, get up. That shifted to rise up, but memory of a dream was preoccupying my energy. Toward the end of that contemplation, The Neurons slipped “Run” by Snow Patrol out of 2004 into the morning mental music stream. “Light up, light up, as if you have a choice.” That brought a chuckle up. Staying in bed isn’t an option. Words to write and books to read were waiting, along with coffee and feed.

Then there are the cats, talking about me as if I was dead, conversing with one another, “Is he alive?”

“I don’t know. I’m gonna put a claw to his cheek and see what he does. Oh, yes, he’s alive.”

I guess I owe getting up to the cats. Well, they’ve been fed and released to the backyard where the hunt for sun entertains them.’re Stay pos. Coffee is ready so I’m gonna rise up and get a cup. There’s also vegan blueberry scones. Home made by my SO, who remains on a baking kick. I’m the beneficiary. Care for one? They go well with coffee. If you’re not a scone’r , she also made vegan chocolate chip muffins, which also go well with coffee. Plenty here and I assure you, they’re terrific.

Here’s Snow Patrol’s power ballad. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

We have safely reached the familiar territory called ‘Friday’. Of less familiarity is the date, April 7, 2023. April has been logged in the past, so we have some expectations sunk into us. 2023 has been going long enough to see how the pattern might be shifting. But humans, you know. They make things change.

It’s 44 today in Ashlandia, with rain expected off and on throughout the day. Clouds have been assembled to make it so. Daylight hours are from 6:43 to 7:43, AM/PM respectively, Ashlandia Time. High temperature will find the thermometer licking the mid fifties.

Much U.S. news is about the different elections held across the nation this week and their results, and what’s it all mean, along with former POTUS Trump’s arrest, and what it means, and Supreme Court Justice Thomas and the gifts he received from a wealthy conservative donor, and what it means. Some columnists and talking heads are suggesting that if the former president is convicted, President Biden should pardon him. One columnist cites former President Ford’s comments about impeached President Nixon:

“Our nation is under the severest of challenges now to employ its full energies and efforts in the pursuit of a sound and growing economy at home and a stable and peaceful world around us. We would needlessly be diverted from meeting those challenges if we as a people were to remain sharply divided over whether to indict, bring to trial, and punish a former president.”

A noble thought. I’m not sure it’s the wisest idea. First, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and other countries flexing their military muscle, I don’t know that I’d call the world stable and peaceful, though was it when President Ford pardoned the former president? Richard Nixon didn’t have a base threatening violence while flying NAZI and Confederate flags and pursuing a fascist agenda. Nor was the Republican Party of that era busy stripping the government of regulatory oversight in multiple areas, trying to remain in power through gerrymandering and limiting voting to favor their ranks and candidates. The cultural rollback which the GOP fronts is not supported by the nation’s majority, but they are determined to do it.

Coffee shop eavesdropping once again — Writer 101 — found two young women speaking with an older women. Young = twentyish, older = fortyish. Had me wondering about relationships as I often do watching people meet in the coffee place. They were within my immediate circle, ten feet away. Like everyone, they were noticed, catalogued, and then dismissed as full-bore writing mood was engaged. Their voices were loud, reminding me of one family group we have who have booming stage voices employed non-stop, and a like friend, who was always attracting attention (and counseling at work) because of her loud voice. Two of these women were loud voiced, and their statements kept puncturing the writing barrier. As part of that, one said, “Well, the reason is you.”

Oh, damn. The Neurons immediately dialed up Hobostank with their 2004 song, “The Reason”, because their main refrain is, “The reason is you.” The song gained strength when I was walking later, and now occupies the morning mental music stream. I believe sharing is needed to dislodge it. Here you are. I find this recorded ‘live’ version very engaging.

Stay pos, and storm Friday like it’s a pivotal day for you, because it could be. I’m gonna storm a cup of coffee now. Here’s ‘stank and their tune. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

The wheel has turned. We’re on Wednesday, 3.15.2023. May be a repeat for all I know. Could be a single, moi on his own repeating the day, or a mass repeat — a group, region, tribe, nation, world, see if the outcome changes. We won’t know. Not at our level.

After the rain became snow yesterday, it snowed for nine hours without relief. With temperatures flexing between 33 and 36 F, the very wet snow layered but accumulation ended up as a few thin inches. Rows of slush developed on the roads. I worried about them freezing in place. Even though the temperature drooped to 28 F, the problems didn’t emerge. Now the snow has iced over, sketching patterns on the roads where vehicles traveled.

Several interesting factoids emerged about yesterday’s snowstorm. Mid-afternoon, we queried Alexa about when the snow would stop. She claimed that it was “39 degrees and mostly cloudy. It might rain.” Fifteen miles up the road, friends reported it rained but they didn’t have any snow. Traffic cams confirmed it.

This was all part of an atmospheric river that came to us from down south in California. Watching the radar, the storm shifted east northeast and fragmented.

Sunrise was 7:24, buttery with warming light. Sunset will be at 7:16 PM. 31 F now, a high of 37 F with freezing fog is the forecast. The cats are out, checking. Young Papi trotted on out. Tucker approached the open door and stopped to stare outside. As I began closing the door, Tucker moved to see something, a motion that shouted, “Wait, wait, what’s that?” I saw nothing and figured it was probably sleight of floof to keep me from closing the door.

The Neurons tossed “Spin You Around” by Puddle of Mudd (2004) into the morning mental music stream, a response to my wife and I talking, and her comment about the weather spinning us around.

Coffee is consumed, black, no sugar, French roast. Stay pos. If this is a do-over, try to do your best to shift us toward a more positive direction. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

We’ve shifted back into standard Ashlandia winter mode. Dropping into the twenties at night, forties to fifties, all Fahrenheit, during the day.

It’s Friday. It’s Feb. 24, 2023. Sunshine broke in at 6:54 this morning, lighting up two fresh inches of snow. Was 29 F then. Now we’re up to 34 and the snow is melting. I saw the snow falling and accumulating as Papi made his usual declarations about being an outdoor animal and needing to leave the house, then changing his mind and demanding to come back in because he’s domesticated. The weather wizards inform us that we’ll see 46 F before the sun whisks away over the horizon at 5:55 PM.

Up north in Portland, friends share videos of heavier dumps, like ten inches. Meanwhile, a buddy down in Santa Cruz shows photos of several inches in his area. February is made for snow this year.

I had words in the head sometime in the last twenty-four heures that went, “Bring it on, here we are, win or lose.” I was contemplating the snow and drought and snowpack, and the associated variables that accumulate into our annual regional water concerns. Hearing my thoughts, The Neurons said, “Hey, we know that song,” and inundated my morning mental music stream with Float On by Modest Mouse from 2004. Jeremiah Green, the Modest drummer, passed away on the last day of 2022, cancer, 45 years old. I think of him because I enjoyed his drumming in this song. Reminders of our mortality are everywhere.

Stay positive. Carpes Friday. I’ll do the same after chugging some strong black roasted bean water. Here’s the tune. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

Happy Hanukkah to those who celebrate it. The observance begins today, Sunday, November 28, 2021, and goes to December 6. Our friend makes terrific latkes, and she shared them with us as part of her Festival of Lights. She moved a few hundred miles away so we won’t have them this year. Sad face.

The sun showed its light at 7:16 AM, which revealed a foggy valley. Temperature is 53 F now, and will climb to 65 today. I’m treating an apparent head cold so I probably won’t be out there enjoying the day. Felt it arriving yesterday after my walk. Coughing woke me at five thirtyish. A sore throat announced its presence, and the energy level was a no-show. Stoppered nose. Teary eyes. Planned some yard work before the sun sets at 4:41 PM, so I’m bummed.

Anastacia with “Sick and Tired” (2004) is bubbling through the morning mental music stream. Her song was about a relationship gone wrong and broken hearts, but I like her vocal style and the song’s grittiness.

Hope you’re doing better. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and booster when you can. Gonna medicate with a cuppa coffee. See it that can summon some energy for writing. Cheers

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