Thursday’s Theme Music
It’s Thursday, June 22, 2023, according to most reliable data. We’re still sliding into summer mode in Ashlandia. 64 F now, the weather thinkers claim 84 F will be seen in Ashlandia. Last night at the beer ‘bibing, sitting outside, several men complained that the sun was too hot and changed seats to be in the shade. It was 78 F then. It was a wonderfully sun to me. I had no prob basking in its warmth. Maybe I’m part cat. Or part floof. Call me floofman. Sounds like the first line of a novel.
Our house floofs are certainly pleased that the sun’s heat made a comeback. Popping out the door into the backyard after eating, they sat in sunny pools, licking their lips and washing, pausing to look for a noise source or to eye a passing jay. It’s a sight like a calming tonic, seeing them in those relaxed activities. Sip some coffee and watch the cats while enjoying sunshine and relative quiet — distant machiney sounds — cars, trucks, lawnmowers and leaf blowers — crack the absolute stillness — is a fine way to launch a day.
The Neurons wadded up “Have A Nice Day” by the Ramones (1995) in the morning mental music stream. There’s some argument about when it was first used. In the last century, many people found it so trite and overused that it was empty. That’s exactly the Ramones’ point. The lyrics talk about hearing it after all kinds of bad things happen to him. Each time something happened, someone told the secret, “Have a nice day.”
Stay pos. Coffee help sustains me in that effort. Some days need more than others. Here’s the tune. Cheers
Thursday’s Theme Music
Summer’s prelude to summer in Ashlandia has settled into a new weather routine. Blue sky. Plentiful sunshine. Cool, 50s to 60s F, in the morning. Rising to high 70s, low 80s by mid-afternoon. Roll in some clouds. Cue the thunder. Spark some lightning. Now, turn on the rain. Repeat for a few hours.
This is Thursday, June 8, 2023. Yesterday afternoon and evening on the storms squatting on Ashlandia. The climax was a twenty minute deluge of big drops, dense, falling fast and hard. What’s striking about all this lightning (couldn’t resist), thunder, and rain is that it’s so rare for Ashlandia, especially of this intensity, duration, and repetition. But it’s been a growing trend in the last several years. It could be part of a larger cycle and we all just don’t live long enough to experience it, so it strikes us as odd. But it’s also a continuation of an odd weather year.
The cats aren’t pleased. The weather even brought Tucker in, who is usually indifferent to these things. Papi, though, decided the best place to be was with us in a lit room, awakening, waiting, ready to run, and willing to be comforted. Tucker decided that he’d be wherever Papi was.
We’re seeing a lot of deer on our street this week. Two bucks strolling up the street the other evening. Three or four deer — or maybe the same few again and again — wandering around our house and across the street at the neighbors. Well, no recent cougar sightings in our vicinity, so maybe that has something to do with it.
I stood in the front doorway last night, protected by the porch, to watch the rain. Not just watch, but breathe in the fresh petrichor, and enjoy the sounds. Lightning frequently flashed to enliven the experience. As I stood there, The Neurons fired up a 1981 song by The Rolling Stones, “Waiting On A Friend”. Song is still in the morning mental music stream. The Neurons made a good choice. The storm broke me out of my normal routines. The smells and sounds also made me nostalgic for similar times experienced around the world from different phases of life where I was waiting for a friend to arrive as part of our plans to go off somewhere.
Stay positive, and enjoy Thursday as only you can. I have coffee, so I’m pleased for the moment, sipping hot brew, windows breathing in cool air on my back, sunshine slinking around the house, cats wandering in and out to give news updates. Here’s the tune. Love the video’s end, when the band gets up to play in that tiny, tiny space. Cheers
Monday’s Wandering Thought
A customer was ahead of him in the coffee shop. As he waited for his turn, he began writing in his head. Phantom writing, some call it. The main character had apparently awakened and had a lot to say about who he was and what was going on.
“Hi, what can I get for you?” the barista asked.
Panic. Where was he? Oh, yeah, coffee shop. What did he want? Coffee! He stammered out his order and then apologized, explaining, “Sorry, I was off in another world.”
That comment cracked him up.
Wonder if the baristas think him a little odd?
Monday’s Theme Music
Spring has reclaimed Ashlandia. Clouds and blue sky out there mixing it up. 50 F now, 70 is possible, weather guides say with crossed fingers and a wink. Yesterday began damn chilly. Made me rethink my attire. So I dressed for an indoor concert, headed down the road ten miles, and voila, it’s 76, sunny, warm, and I’m overdressed.
Today I’m thinking I’ll dress for the blend. Shorts, polo shirt, light fleece. That’ll work. I can always change if it doesn’t. Talking with others about the projected temperature of 70 F, many proclaimed it as perfect weather. I like 72 F, myself.
Put my underwear on backwards yesterday. Didn’t realize it until a few hours into the day when a bathroom urge rose. Then, huh, WT…who dressed me this morning?
The concert yesterday was entertaining. Rogue Valley Symphony. We were special guests and given special access, etc., and munches, meeting with the band members and talking to them about their musical life and instruments. Makes you want to play, you know? Can’t say that too loud around them because they immediately offer to teach you how to play. Someone asked me what I did. Write, I answered, and ended up talking about that for fifteen minutes as musicians gathered to ask questions and listen. I had to gracefully extricate myself and turn the focus back onto music.
Papi has a new nickname. I often call him my little buddy, which is what the skipper of the SS Minnow used to call his mate, Gilligan. So I now sometimes refer to the ginger wonder as Gilligan. He’s picked up on it. Gave me a little tail swish in response. Might have been laughing, swearing, or shrugging.
Today’s music arrives via coffee thoughts. I was thinking about it and applied coffee to an old favorite song, “Cocaine”.
If you wanna hang out you’ve got to take her out
Coffee
If you wanna get down, down on the ground
Coffee
She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie
Coffee
If you got bad news, you wanna kick the blues
Coffee
When your day is done and you wanna ride on
Coffee
Been singing that for decades, amusing myself, annoying others. Found a video of Eric Clapton playing it in 1988, backed by Mark Knopfler, Phil Collins, and Elton John. Hope you find it as satisfying as me.
We watched Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves last night at home on Paramount +. We enjoyed it and would recommend it. Fun, light fair, engaging, a little campy sometimes but nothing felt overplayed or overdone. Some small twists although most were visible a bit ahead of the scene, and several laugh out loud moments.
Here’s my coffee and the music. Stay pos and rule your Monday as best as you can. Never easy being in charge, especially when you’re trying to be in charge of yourself.
Here we go. Cheers
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Delicious weather in Ashlandia today. Spring at its best. 67 F at the mo, 75% humidity. 88 F expected later, and thunderstorms. Yesterday was delightful, too, relaxing, comforting, an invitation to sit and enjoy yourself for a while. It’s so floofriendly. Tucker has settled but open doors and happy weather invites Papi to prance in and out. He steals up to me, stares up, gets an ear rub from moi, then dashes out, only to return. Sometimes I chase and hide, which he loves doing.
The election is over. We await the outcome. 15-214, which absorbed our attention and discussion, is predictably tight but votes are still being counted.
Today’s music fell into my lap. I’d been sent a video link about tiny computers a teacher was asking my beer group to buy for their class. This video was off to the right. “Two of Us” from 1969 is by the Beatles. The song is pretty lazy but I enjoyed the footage of the lads from Liverpool and others laughing, joking, talking. Nostalgia caught The Neurons, so here we are.
And the coffee has arrived to great cheering from the body and its various elements. Most vociferous cheering is heard from the brain, where neurons are stamping their feet, chanting, “Coffee, coffee, coffee.” The foot stamping is off-putting to the ears, who are gesturing with annoyance at the brain. But in general, it’s a festive air.
Stay pos. Assess, adjust, advance. Here’s the tune. Cheers
Wednesday’s Wandering Thought
We’re such individuals. Not just from one another but from what we were when we were younger.
I used to be aghast that someone didn’t like chocolate. Or ‘don’t care for sweets’. Dad is one of those.
I could understand why people didn’t like coffee, beer, or alcohol generally, between flavors and effects. Now I see, as I age, how my taste buds and preferences have morphed through my decades. I still enjoy chocolate, beer, coffee, etc., but things taste sweeter or saltier to me.
Life. Takes so long to learn and understand, and then things change.
Sunday’s Theme Music
Hearing the pursuit, we ran hard. “In here,” Pretzel shouted on my left. I twisted, planted my foot and made the cut, following him into a small path.
We crowded in panting like the sprinters we’d been. “What is this?” Maylie asked.
“I think it’s a time machine,” C-Jean said.
Don’t know about the rest but I did a mental, oh shit. “Don’t touch anything. We got to get out of here.”
“Oops,” Pharslei said.
The machine vibrated for two seconds. Ping, it said, like we were a done nuked meal.
“Where are we?” Maylie asked.
“Not where,” Pretzel said. “When. Time machine, itz. When are we?”
Sunday, April 23, 2016, it said. “Shit,” someone said.
The numbers blinked. April 20, 1623. Still Sunday. “I’m going to go see,” Pretzel announced.
“No,” I said, “Hold up.” That was the last I saw of him, though, going out that door.
Last I saw of any of them. Machine now said, April 16, 2023.
I left the booth. It vanished behind me. Tepid sunshine washed my face. Mostly I saw cloud layering like stacked grays. Still seemed like Ashlandia’s green deep valley, at least.
The Neurons have filled the morning mental music stream with “Where Have All the Good Times Gone”. Went with the Kinks’ original song from ’65. Fit with my state of mind. Shopping this morning, it seemed like such a dirge. Everyone shopper I eyed semed to be thinking, “I wish I was anywhere else.” Shopping has never been a leisure pursuit for me but it kicked my thinking down a memory path which lodged up against the question, where have all the good times gone? Follow up was, what constituted a good time?
Stay pos. I know, sometimes it’s touch. Feels like the world is on your shoulders, and it’s putting on more weight every second. Coffee helps me. Coffee; it’s what’s for breakfast.
Here’s the music. Cheers
Friday’s Theme Music
Good mornin’. It’s Friday again, March 24, 2023, for the first time, we think.
Shakers of snow have spilled in several places. Tiny flakes laze from a pewter sky. Sun arrived a while again but the clouds have the numbers. 34 F now, the weather lizards explained with great showmanship it will reach 44 F.
Snow earned the cats’ disapproval. Tucker ate and found a warm space. Papi checked the front, back, front, back, front, back, front, back, and finally accepted that no comforting levels of sunshine could be found. Whiskers drooping in disapproval, he’s lounging on the sofa.
Meanwhile, I’ve retreated to the office with a cuppa coffee. With little solar energy feeding me, I needed a brew stat. Musically, The Neurons have imposed some Green Day in the morning mental music stream. I’m listening to “Holiday” (2005). Written in the aftermath of 9/11 and the retaliatory war started by Dubya’s administration, the songwriter was pissed and let fly his feelings. I shared them, because we were warned about WMD even though just months before, Colin Powell was reassuring us they weren’t there. Cheney had a different feel for it and added by Curveball, pushed for the war. They said it was gonna be a cake walk. Said it would pay for itself. Sure. Yeah, it was all dressed up very pretty in patriotism and UN resolutions, but it never made sense. Still does not.
Here’s the music. I wish you all a happy Friday. Stay pos. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 