Tag: 2021

Saturday’s Theme Music

Scintillating sunshine sprawls across Ashlandia. I’m out of bed with the thought, must be after eight with all this sunshine. No, it’s seven. That’ll change tomorrow.

I ask Alexa for Ashlandia’s weather. “Thirty-six with fog,” she tells me. “Rain showers throughout the day.” I study the clear blue sky as she finished, “High of 56.” I see no fog anywhere in the valley or the hills and mountains. Machine is smoking something again.

Sunrise was at 6:30 this morning. Sunset will be at 6:13. It’s Saturday, March 11, 2023.

We took a friend shopping yesterday. Macular degeneration stops her from driving herself and her husband is extremely limited with multiple health issues, including COPD. He’s always on O2. Took her to Target, Trader Joe’s, Costco. She tipped us with a nine pack of Charmin from the package bought at Costco.

Also stopped at the latest sensation, Crumbs, a cookie place. Bought a five-dollar gourmet. Good cookie, tasty and quality, but not worth five dollars. Also not the most expensive cookie I’ve ever eaten.

With all that sunshine surrounding them, The Neurons came up with “Sunshine”, a 2021 song from OneRepublic. It’s a bouncy tune about sunshine and good vibes and making efforts to change things and be pos.

[Chorus]
Runnin’ through this strange life
Chasin’ all them green lights
Throwin’ off the shade for a little bit of sunshine
Hit me with them good vibes
Pictures on my phone like
Everything is so fine
A little bit of sunshine

[Verse 1]
Crazy lately I’m confirmin’
Tryna write myself a sermon
You just tryna get a word in, life is not fair
I been workin’ on my tunnel vision
Tryna get a new prescription
Takin’ swings and even missin’ but I don’t care

[Pre-Chorus]
I’m dancin’ more just a little bit
Breathin’ more just a little bit
Care a little less just a little bit
Like life is woo-hoo!
I’m makin’ more just a littlе bit
Spend a little more to gеt rid of it
Smile a little more and I’m into it

h/t Genius.com

That’ll work for today’s theme music. Like the song urges, smile a little more, care a little less. Be pos. Coffee is served. Here we go.

Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Warning: this is Tuesday. It is no longer Monday. Nor is it yet Wednesday. It’s certainly not Friday. Also, it’s January. And it’s the year 2023. Oh, wait, it’s 2022. My bad. And it’s the eighteenth. In a way, the date is like sandwich ingredients; you put it all together and see what you have.

Sunrise overtook our valley slot at 7:36 AM and will pass on at 5:08 PM. First light found the temperature to be 31 F. It’s climbed ten degrees since then and expects to climb another twelve before we fall back into shadow.

I heard Lil Nas X and his song “That’s What I Want” from 2021 on the radio the other day and took up singing it to my cats this morning. It’s a good song about desire, hope, and loneliness. I felt it was useful to sing to the cats. They were gathered, waiting for food. I know what they wanted. But I was being perverse.

These days I’m way too lonely
I’m missing out, I know
These days I’m way too alone
And I’m known for giving love away but

I want
Someone to love me
I need
Someone who needs me
‘Cause it don’t feel right when it’s late at night
And it’s just me in my dreams
So I want
Someone to love
That’s what I fucking want

h/t AZLyrics.com

Love the video, don’t you? Football teams in pink and blue uniforms, same sex athletes making out in the locker room.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the jabs as needed. I’m off for coffee. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

Zounds. It’s already Friday again — Friday, December 17, 2021, to use its fully nomenclature. I’m staggered that it’s already Friday. What happened to the week? And, just two weeks remain in the month. Just two weeks remain in 2021. We are bolting toward 2022.

Okay, many respond. That’s how calendars work. How we hooman beasts track time for physical needs, work, and play. Why are you surprised that all this has transpired, Michael? Have you not been paying attention?

Nah, I think I pay too much attention. Maybe I need to let go about.

Ah, it’s sunshine streaming through blue skies obscured with filmy white ribbons. Fog is struggling to establish control, attaining some success among the trees in the mountain’s folds. Snow still reigns over the peaks and ridges, presenting them with a friendlier white majesty. Sunrise kicked in at 7:34 AM and is due to kick out at 4:40 PM. The temperature has climbed to 31 F. Should reach 44 F, which is about where we went yesterday, and is all in accordance with average expectations.

I was watching a small bird threading on and off a tree’s naked branches, a little sparrow beast. Neurons said, “I appreciate what that expression, ‘free as a bird’, means.” Because he was just going wherever, flitting about. Of course, he — or she — couldn’t see the sex from where I was — was in the elements, looking for food, a-flying and a-flittin’ to remain alive.

All that neural activity prompted a song to jump into the morning mental music stream. “Play ‘Free Bird’,” is a shout parodied in movies, but my neurons started jumping up and down, shouting, “Play ‘Free Bird’.” “Free Bird” is a song by Lynyrd Skynyrd that came out in 1974. 1974 is my high school graduation year, so this rocking song was my theme music for that year.

Keep rockin’, stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vaxes and boosters when ye can. I have my coffee, so if you’ll excuse me, destiny awaits. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I hear raining ratatattating on windows and roofs but it’s a sound held only in my mind. Dawn has broken. 6:29 AM. A slow ascent of mothy light. Shows the smoky particles off well. Gives the sun that fine burnished red tone as it streams past curling tree leaves, through windows.

Drum roll. Today is Wednesday, August 25, 2021. Sunset will be at 7:56 PM. Daylight’s shortening period is accelerating. Minutes are sliced away on either end.

Our air quality ranges around 123 in some parts of town, 250 in other sections. Varies with elements. Wildfires rage around us, miles away, pushing their presence through smoky sunrises and sunsets, terrible air quality. Encountered a woman the other day who’d fled, evacuated. Lost her house from a fire down in California. Only two houses remain in her neighborhood. Enduring the smoke doesn’t seem as bad after hearing that. Still sucks, though.

Dreams aplenty last night. Kept my mind buzzy. From one came a string of CCR songs. “Long As I Can See the Light” led the string. “Stuck in Lodi” followed. “Lookin’ out My Back Door” closed the set. Other songs mingled after I rose and tended the feline gods. Reading news, reflecting upon attitudes and politics, I end up with a 2005 Audioslave song, “Be Yourself” in mind. I enjoy how the song splinters responses to the same situation, shows how different people function (or fail) in parallel during life. One minute is one person’s happiest; it’s also another person’s worse. We’re all living in Schrodinger’s box. We are alive or dead, happy and sad, alert and inert by the second. At least that’s how it feels until I get some coffee in me. Lyrics sample:

Someone finds salvation in everyone, another only pain
Someone tries to hide himself, down inside himself he prays
Someone swears his true love until the end of time, another runs away
Separate or united, healthy or insane

h/t to good ol’ Genius.com

Had a little coffee. Need a lot more. Be posi. Test negy. Wear the masky as needed. Get the vaxy. Enjoy the tune. Be yourself is all that you can do.

Cheese. I mean, cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

20:16 – 06:13. Sunset, sunrise. I complete the math in my head. Daylight minutes are falling back. Sunrise is later. Sunset is earlier. An annual thing. Recurring. Yet, I let it dominate morning thoughts like the end is nigh. Probably a product of circumstance. Outside activity is limited. Another high dome is settling on us. Back up to 101-105. No humidity. The drought deepens. Its pervasive effects suck out life. Air quality is unhealthy as wildfire smoke curls up in the valley. Better the smoke than the fire, I remind myself with some weariness. Trying to be positive. COVID-19 cases are also setting new area records. ICUs are overrun. Hospital staff have contracted COVID-19. Then there are personal matters I don’t put in posts.

Good morning, and a happy Tuesday to you, too! Today is Tuesday, August 10, 2021. 2021 is hurrying by as a year but it’s gonna leave a mark.

For music, I’ve been sucked into a song by The Calling, “Wherever You Will Go” (2001). This was a cat issue. Tucker insisted upon being my bodyfloof, right there at my heels as I walked down the hall, jumping up on the desk when I sat to type, etc. I processed the usual requests – “Are you hungry? Do you want a treat?” Petted and brushed him. Gave him some nip. But he hung with me. Guess that’s what he wanted. Which prompted the song.

Stay positive. Yes, it’s hard, innit? Is for me. Life can be a wearying business. Especially if you’re like me, staring at the smoke, contemplating COVID-19, struggling to write, pondering the imponderables. But stay positive. Rant a bit. Let it go, if you can. Test negative. Wear the mask when it’s needed. Get the vaccination, please.

Here’s the music. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

After peeking in through windows at 5:38 AM in Ashland with shy pale goldens, the sun boldly shouldered in, shouting, “We got your sunshine. We got your daylight.” Such a bold sun plans to put out browning, sweat-inducing heat, don’t you know. Temperatures will hunt the lower nineties before the sun, still in its place, disappears from the valley at 20:39.

Got the darkness trying to throttle me. It’s a debilitating but brief trough experienced when I ponder what’s the use of all this nonsense? I was walking as it struck, like a bolt into my soul, just before sunset last night. Because a wildfire is being fought and people evacuated, I was thinking about wildfires and water shortages. Many new homes are being built in Ashland. Development is the daily cry as the trucks lumber in with supplies and workers busy with foundations and walls. We were already being told to conserve water. Now there is less water to be divided among more households.

Dev is good but with that shrinking water base, we also have an expanding wildfire season. Before COVID-19 shut down activities, wildfire smoke did the same, cratering the local economy becoming an annual thing. The first time it happened, businesses dismissed it as a one off. Second time, some pulled the plug. Third time, dark mutterings about what are we going to do were heard.

City council lacks the leadership to move out of this mess. Frankly, the mess is bigger than them. Is it climate change? By the time sufficient data is collected, we probably won’t be around to know. Meanwhile, the new houses being built are closer together as land becomes a precious commodity. Streets are narrower. Traffic density rises. Did I mention that a two-lane state highway longitudinally bisects the town? Only one way in and out, not a reassuring realization for planning evacuations. Every street feeds into it.

With the darkness and these bleak realizations colliding, on came an old song by the Smiths. Here are the lines.

This town has dragged you down
And everybody’s got to live their life
And God knows I’ve got to live mine
God knows I’ve got to live mine

h/t to Genius.com

The 1984 song is called, “William, It Was Really Nothing”. Yes, it’s really nothing; just a little darkness nibbling the psyche. Stay positive (you know, like me!), test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

The welcoming committee began tentative sounds a few minutes after five thirty this morning. 5:39 AM came, and with it, the sun’s first official appearance of May 28, 2021, in Ashland. Clouds departed. Cool mountain air muted the sun’s efforts, but warmth of around seventy-eight degrees F is anticipated before the closing ceremony begins, ushering the sun away at 8:37 PM.

Today finds me hooked on a 1968 anti-war song, “Sky Pilot”, by Eric Burdon and the Animals. Out walking, I heard a small airplane passing overhead. Studying it brought “Sky Pilot” to mind. This is pretty ironic; “Sky Pilot” isn’t about aircraft. It was that chorus that ricocheted through me: “You can never, never, never, reach the sky.”

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as required, and get the vax. Speaking of the mask, the whole approach has unraveled around here since the CDC made their new mask policy announcement a few weeks back. Witnesses attest to people entering stores with a mask on, per the stores’ signs and policies, and then promptly removing them. Pretty undermines the spirit and intent, doesn’t it? Store managers report they’ve been directed by their corporate law offices to pretty much leave it alone.

Here’s the music. Cheers

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Self Portrait 2021

Looking into the future. Apparently not too happy. Lot of Dad showing up in my face, along with sagging jowls, wrinkled flesh, receding hair, and graying beard. Like how the light catches my scars on my forehead from my halo device. Damn this thing called aging, anyway. Pass me another beer, please.

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Friday’s Theme Music

Here it is, Friday, the first in the merry, merry, month of May. It’s Friday, May 7, 2021. It’s Mother’s Day this Sunday in the U.S. My card has been sent off, the notes prepared for the call on Sunday to Mom. I don’t think she’ll be doing anything special for Mom’s Day. Three of my sisters live in Mom’s region and generally celebrate holidays together. All of them are moms, and two are grand-moms, and Mom is a great-grandmother. But this is 2021, where COVID-19 continues its reign. They used to all go out to brunch somewhere together for this holiday. I suspect that Mom’s daughters, grand children, and great-grands, will bring food and flowers by for Mom and will visit with her a few at a time.

Clouds moved in yesterday, delivering chilly overnight temperatures but no rain. The sun’s first showing was at 5:59 AM, but did little to warm us, so far. We’ll see what happens between now and 8:17 PM, when Sol announces, “See you tomorrow,” but general consensus is that the highs will be in the low to mid-sixties.

Alarming news came out regarding rain and water for our area. We’re in an extreme drought. Weather conservation and curtailment actions have yet to be enacted locally. They always take a ‘wait and see’ approach until it’s a crises, which serves no one. The area depends heavily on the TID, and the city has been told it’s not getting as much TID as last year. Forty percent has been cut from one contract, while one hundred percent has been cut from the second. Local reservoirs and dams are at bleak levels. I’m breaking out my rain stick. It scares the hell out of the cats, but anything that can help must be done.

Of course, this might be the wrong way to go about it. “Wrong Way” is today’s music choice. At its core, the 1997 Sublime song is about a fourteen-year-old prostitute whose only family is ‘her seven horny brothers and drunk-ass Dad’. The is song is rife with references to doing things the wrong way as the singer rescues her but then mistreats her, himself.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask, and get the vax. That seems to be the right way. Time for my coffee. Cheers

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