Friday’s Theme Music
Cats woke me up before sunrise. “I want cat food,” they cried. Sleepfeeding, I did their bidding.
It’s Friday, November 4, 2022, the last Friday with Daylight Savings Time in the U.S. That requires an asterisk to note that it’s not so everywhere. Nevertheless, it’s true in my little reality slice. Reality seems to be like pizza, a little different for everyone, even though it may look the same.
The sun skimmed into our southern Oregon valley at 7:46 this morning, limning dark clouds, autumn trees, and dark green pines on snowy mountains before climbing clear of them and claiming the day. It’s 41 degrees F now but air currents, sunshine, and fronts will take us to 18 C.
The Neurons are playing “I Want Candy” in the morning mental music stream. This is a floofmage to the cats’ early morning demands for food. Mind, they made this demand with three bowls of kibble available. “It’s not the same as fresh food from the can given by your loving hands,” they purred.
Well, I know BS when I smell it, even when it’s coming from a smiling black and white furry face, and a sweet ginger and cream furred visage. Still, doing their bidding bought another hour of sleep.
“I Want Candy” has been around for sixty years. I went with a later version, by Bow Wow Wow, released in the early 1980s. A female friend of mine loved dancing to this version. Part of our gang, she’d jump up and run off to the dance floor when it came on, if we were out clubbing. If it came on at someone’s home, she curtailed whatever she was doing to dance and sing. Fun when someone enjoys a song so much. I haven’t seen her since 1984. Wonder how she’s doing?
Stay positive, test negative, get vaccines when you can. Here’s the music. The magic brewing magic has stopped its gurgling sound; coffee is ready. Interesting that in a world of pinging, beeping, buzzing, and ringing devices to notify us of important and trivial matters, something as critical as the coffee is done brewing is not announced.
Cheers
Sathursday’s Theme Music
Welcome to Sathursday! As sometimes happens, you come across a day which is supposed to be one, say Thursday, but feels like another, say, Saturday. Does this happen to you? Scientists and philosophers can’t quite account for this entanglement yet. Artists have a better feel for it, chiding people for thinking or even needing every day to be specific and exact. Why can’t hybrid days exist? Well, they do, sayeth the artists and poets. When they come, use them as you would any other.
Today is November 3, 2022, according to my cosmic sources. Sunshine dazzles the day in every way wherever you look. This is much different than yesterday. Yesterday’s weather declared, be ready for anything but hot and dry. Snow fell. Rain, sleet, hail. Just keep your head up, your coat on, your gloves nearby.
But now, the clouds have thinned and relaxed. Pine trees on the heights wear snow hats. Snow capes swath the mountains. Blue skies peek out past wispy dingy white and charcoal veils. Yet red flames and gold tiaras still crown many trees.
It’s 32 now, that’s degrees in Fahrenheit, and we’re looking for 46 F as the high. But the sunshine streaming through those windows, lighting up the rooms, delights my mind and causes a world of difference. Sunrise overruled the night at 7:46 AM. The sun’s presence will lord over the skies until 6:02 PM.
Now, for music. After another tumultuous night of dreams, I awoke with “Mr Bojangles” in the morning mental music stream. Don’t know if you’re familiar with the tune. It’s over fifty years old. Even though it’s been in movies, was a hit, beloved my many, and performed by several notables, I don’t hear it on radio or television these days. But since it’s in my mind, The Neurons pulled it out and put it on play. Exactly why is as clear as the clouds.
The Neurons went with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band edition, which I fully understand. This was the one which marked me when I was a young teenager. Such matters aren’t easily displaced.
Stay pozzo, test nego, protect yourself as need be. If not for yourself, do it for others. Coffee has entered the cup and is steaming by my side. That doesn’t sound as poetic in typed words as it did within my mind, but we will go with it. It is Sathursday.
Here’s the music. Sing along, even dance to it, if it moves you. Cheers
Wednesday’s Theme Music
Wednesday’s first light on November 2, 2022, arrived about thirty minutes before sunrise at 7:45 AM, pulling the curtain back on snow falling on autumn leaves. The whitening backdrop emboldened the full red and golden leaves dominating our area. The temperature was 1 degree C. Hopes are that the digital mercury will find 45 F. Tonight will drop to 29 F. Winter seemed to be declaring, “I’m taking November.” Summer was off and didn’t care. I haven’t heard a word out of fall.
The snow stopped by 8:15. None stayed on the ground at our elevation. Running errands yesterday, though, the hills and crests surrounding our village was rich with the stuff.
I broke out of a dream while darkness still soaked the land. Not much of the dream stuck around. Memory of it amounted to me dressing a woman, telling her to wear pink because it’ll highlight her caramel complexion and raven hair. While she was nodding and dressing, I recalled for her how I’d build a model of a Corvette when I was a boy and painted the car hot pink on a whim.
The dream naturally titillated Les Neurons about their song ideas. They fired up Prince’s 1983 song, “Little Red Corvette”. “Pink, red,” The Neurons declared, “It’s just a difference of degrees.” I’ve already used the song before and recounted that it came out while I was stationed at Kadena Air Base, so that’s all I’ll say here.
Stay posso and test negative. Nothing is guaranteed but it might help you and your family and community. Coffee, as black as the snow is white — it’s falling again — snow, not coffee — (can you imagine that? “It’s coffeeing, it’s coffeeing.” People would be out there with their mouths open, catching the coffee flakes…) — is available. You know where I’m going with this, don’tcha?
Here’s Prince (or the guy who was formerly known as Prince but that’s a whole other story) with a recording of an acoustic version done at a concert. Cheers
Tuesday’s Wandering Thought
His top ten lists are flexible. Whether it’s books, songs, musical groups, or places, mood and season seem to cause fluctuation. About his only constants is that blueberries keep eking out a win over watermelon as the top front and coffee just beats water as his favorite drink. For the record, beer is consistently third on that list, followed by red wine. Also for the record, water remains at the top of the most needed drink.
Monday’s Wandering Thought
Taking his coffee with him into the bathroom to brush his teeth after breakfast, he mused, “I don’t know. It feels like something is wrong with this scene.”
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
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
Friday’s Theme Music
Coffee has arrived. The first two sips of the gorgeously hot brew invigorate my senses and awakens my palette. Here we go, The Neurons sing.
Today is Friday, October 14 of the common era year 2022. I skim headlines and press on to other matters before the news blunts my energy and takes my soul. 57 and chilly under a pristine blue sky, sunshine began its daily visit at 7:22 ante meridiem. Sunshine will linger until 6:38 post meridiem. Temperatures are again foretold to have a high in the upper eighties. After a windshift yesterday, the smoke cleared and we struck 86 F around my house, a wonderfully warm, comfortable day, with a faint breeze and mild humidity. Our leaves haven’t done much turning in this area, nor are they dropping yet, a huge contrast to where I stayed in Penn Hills, PA. during the move from September to October. Guess the trees decided to wait for my return before launching their fall show. Gracious of them, innit?
For theme music, given that it’s Friday, The Neurons loaded that golden oldie, “Friday Friday”. I grew up on those lyrics. “Friday, Friday, how I love that day. Out of school and work at last, and free to play.” Nipping on that song’s heels comes a familiar favorite, “Black Friday” by Steely Dan.
Yes, Friday is on my mind. Instead of those songs, though, The Neurons re-introduce me to “Slide” by the Goo Goo Dolls. Released two or three lifetimes ago, which can be calculated as 1998, it’s another song in the catalogue created as I commuted to and from home to shop and work in the SF Bay Area and peninsula at the end of the last century. Why that song, I query The Neurons. It’s about a pregnant girl and her boyfriend debating choices about what to do. Jimmy Neuron answers, “It’s just those words, I’ll do anything ever dreamed to be complete, or something like that.” Oh, I answer. Oh. It’s about the dreams and the quests, huh? I see.
Test negative and stay positive, or as The Neurons call it, negapos. So be negapos. Sorry, that’s the coffee. It’s taken over The Neurons. Here’s the music. Hope you own Friday and it doesn’t end up owning you.
Cheers
Friday’s Theme Music
Yesterday is past. Today is here.
Today is Friday, October 7, 2022. It’s gonna be a cool one here. A silky silvery layer insulates us from the sun and promises precipitation. Sunrise at 7:22 this morning was smooth and low-key, a gradual unveiling of the fall landscape. Sunset at 6:53 will surrender the land back to night. It’s 51 degrees F now, warmer than the week’s earlier offerings, but we’re only expecting a little beyond 13 C as the high. Meanwhile, my wife tells me our high back home was 91 F.
A dream that I was swimming through green water brought me The Neuron’s music choice. Not much of the dream remains except that the water was green but clear, with good visibility. I could see myself from an external perspective, breath held, bubbles sneaking out of me, panic rising as my air ran out. I struck for the surface and could see it far, far above me. I knew I wasn’t going to make it. Cheeks and lungs bursting, I let my air escape.
But then I discovered, oh, I can breath.
Anyway, thinking about that this morning, The Neurons said, oh, “Nightswimming” by R.E.M. from 1992 would be perfect. I dunno, I replied, because it’s a very mellow morning song. But I do like Michael Stipe’s vocal stylings, so here we are.
Stay positive and test negative. I’ve had my coffee, thanks. Loved that fresh brew smell tickling my nose and energizing anticipation. The first cup was taken out to the cool air on the back porch, where I could enjoy the woods and grass’s dark jade richness. Moments like those are salves on the soul, re-establishing my balance as I contemplate existence.
Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 