Tag: pop

Sunday’s Theme Music

The Neurons stuck “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?” by Chicago into the morning mental music stream. I think the group may have been the Chicago Transit Authority when the song was recorded. It’s from 1970, when I was fourteen, instilling thoughts about what year it is and how old I am. The song was delivered when I looked to my wrist to check my Fitbit for the time. ‘Lo, it wasn’t there. Apparently, the FB faked me into believing all was well. Then its symptoms returned. I charged it and charged it again but had to remove it from my wrist because it was going off every three seconds — notification — which becomes v — notification — intrusive to m — notification — processes.

Yes, the Fitbit is no more. I thought about searching for DIY repairs. Had done that tentatively. Maybe later. Maybe I’ll purchase a new one. I don’t know. It’s too early to talk about replacing it. Plus, there’s the irritating issue of how to dispose of this technology piece without contributing to further environmental damage. Yes, it’s small, but it all adds up.

Sunday, July 31, 2022, finds us shrouded by smoke, sent to us by the McKinney fire a few miles away on the California and Oregon border. Truly nasty smell. You can’t breathe it, so keep the pets in and close up everything. Mask up when you’re outside or suffer the consequences.

The cats were very cool about being kept in. When I responded to their request to go outside with an explanation about what was going on with the heat and smoke, they replied, “Oh, that is very distressing to hear. Thank you for your concerns about our health, Michael. We appreciate it.” Then they groomed themselves and went to sleep.

What do you think we should call that fairy tale? Because that’s what that story was.

No, the cats took being kept inside like Mel Gibson screaming for freedom, constantly and persistently, hour after hour. OMG. The floof people insisted that they’re free animals, meant to roam the outdoors except for eating, having bowel movements, drinking water, and snuggling with humans. Oh, and playing with toys. Oh, yeah and catnip — mustn’t forget catnip — and looking out the window, observing people like a spies following troop movements.

Today’s sunrise was at 6:03 AM and sunset is at 8:31 PM. It’s presently 26 C outside. The high will ‘only’ be 99 F, which is much closer to our usual average. It’s supposed to cool for the rest of the week, dropping to 90 at one point. Of course, the hot weather has generated thunderstorms galore, adding to the wildfire threat, given the looonnnggg drought and the dried-out land that we’re enduring.

Stay positive and test negative and take care of yourself and your people and animals. I’ll try to do the same. Coffee? Yes, stat. Enjoy the music. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Just after sunrise at 6:02 AM, the sun began clearing the mountains and threw unmistakable blood-orange light through the windows. Smoke hazes and clots the air. Wildfires are burning somewhere. We can smell it. Our AQI has jumped to 90 around our part of town, 117 downtown, two miles away. Either the fire is nearby, or the winds and terrains are lifting and channeling it in our direction.

Good morning! Today is Saturday, July 30, 2022. One more day and then July is history. On to August.

Yesterday reached 112 F at our house. That was my home weather station’s reading. The net claimed 109. Alexa agreed. At 8:30 AM, it’s 81 F. The humidity has gone up. It’s only 39% but it feels heavier. Today’s high is expected to reach 106 F before sunset @ 8:32 this evening. The overnight low was 75 F last night.

That overnight low staying so high hurt. We kept waiting for the air to cool down outside so we could open doors and windows. It finally dropped below 90 at 11 PM. Yes, some relief. Then a skunk struck. Maybe two. The house was re-sealed for an hour while the winds scrubbed the odor away.

The heat affected our big black and white cat, Tucker. He’s older, and older cats struggle to deal with extreme heat. I brought him in, dampened a washcloth with cold water, and rubbed him down a few times. He really enjoyed it and is quite energetic this morning, with a strong appetite. Now, he’s resting by my right hand, providing editorial guidance. Papi, of course, is all, “It’s cool. I’m good.” I keep an eye on him. He appears to be telling the truth.

The Neurons are playing “Lovesong” by The Cure in the morning mental music stream. They’d started with “Friday I’m In Love” and then segued into “Just Like Heaven” before launching “Lovesong”. I asked them, “What’s with the medley? What do you know that I don’t?” They, sipping their espressos, snickered and replied, “Ho, ho, a lot.”

“Lovesong” came out in 1989. I was still in the military, in Germany, then, and found I really enjoyed the song’s moodiness. Hope you enjoy it on this July Saturday, 2022.

Stay positive, test negative, and take care of yourself, yeah? Sure. Back to reading. Back to writing. Back to a cup of coffee. Then, things to do. It’s Saturday, you know. Cheers

3

Friday’s Theme Music

The door is thrown open, and there it is. Everyone walks in, looking and whispering in awed tones. Friday, revamped and new, was open to the public. Speculation about what to expect from this new Friday had been traveling mouth to ear for months. Now that it was here…well, first, they were excited. Then they were deflated.

Officially, Friday was July 29, 2022. “It’s just like yesterday,” one woman was heard to complain. “Hot and miserable. I waited all week for this?”

The heat is the thing in our area. Currently, 8:30 AM, it’s 26 C. Yesterday, Thursday, reached 106 F at my house, according to my ancient home weather system, with the forecast calling for a high of 108 F. The car claimed it was 111 F at one point. Today’s forecast says the high will be 110 F. Tomorrow, it’s expected to cool off to 107 F, and then drop back below 100 by Monday. We keep our eyes on the skies as thunderboomer clouds build, checking apps for reports of lightning strikes and fire. Knock on wood, we’ve been spared, and the fires have been found and put out fast.

Sunrise came after six this morning, 6:01, and sunset will be at 8:34 PM.

I have “Cold As Ice” by Foreigner in the morning mental music stream. This 1977 song is a deliberate choice as I pursue a ‘mind over environment’ angle for handling the day.

Hope your weather is good, and your day’s experience is great. I know with so much going on that those hopes aren’t always achievable, but let’s make the effort to believe and try to improve our lives. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and vax as needed. Coffee? What, it’s 80 F outside right now. What are you waiting for? Pour.

Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

It’s your choice. Will you stay with what you have or will you trade it for what’s behind one of these three doors?

They’re going for door number three. Let’s see what’s behind door number one and two first.

Door number one is…Monday, May 1, 2028. So that would have been a small trip into the future for you. And door number two is…a slip to the past, Friday, August 16, 1996. Have you experienced that year yet?

Okay, let’s see what they won. Let’s open door number three. Good luck.

Today is Thursday, July 28, 2022. Today’s high temperature for Ashland in southern Oregon is 108 F or 42 C. 108 is pretty high and I’m dubious we’ll hit it. Only touched 103 F at my house yesterday. Right now it’s 74 F (23 C). Sunrise was at 6 AM exactly. Expect the daylight selection of our day to finish at fourteen hours and thirty-four minutes later.

The felines have been loving the heat. Go into a torpor in shade for the day. They don’t eat or move much during the high heat portion. Come night, they turn into homicidal psycho jungle cats (a phrase borrowed from Bill Watterson), prowling and pouncing, muttering and munching.

In news —

No, let’s skip the news portion. Speaking of 1996, The Neurons plucked a song out of that portion of the memory puzzle, I mean palace, and slotted it into the morning mental music stream. See, I was writing in my head as I went about feeding beasts and prepping my breakfast, following up on what was written yesterday, dipping into where I want to go today, addressing a character and what they’d believed and what they now believed, which meant they needed to do this — well, you know the chains. Out of that, The Neurons plucked “Stupid Girl” by Garbage. Took a long several minutes to get more than, “all you had you wasted,” but I could clearly hear the voice and supporting music for that slender segment. More would not come. Just as I drifted away with the attendant thought, it’ll come later, pop, The Neurons released more and the song and band were fully recalled. Yea, go neurons, go!

Stay positive and test negative, and so on. Three friends have announced they’re COVID free while another announced he just tested positive. So it goes. I’m going for coffee before it gets too warm. Here’s the tune. As a bonus, you get it performed on “The Late Show with David Letterman”. Cheers

2

Wednesday’s Theme Music

The rumor of a breeze circulated at ten o’clock last night. The temperature had plummeted to 91 F by then, still a little warm for opening the doors and windows to cool the house. Although we have central A/C, I dislike its effects on my sinuses, environment, and energy bill, and avoid using it as much as possible. I really wanted to open the doors and such, and it was hard to hear the insects and bugs’ tiny rapping and requests to come in and escape the heat. I eventually yielded at eleven, when it was 81 outside and 86 in the house. The air, still warm, barely stirred.

A few clouds and haze mar the sky’s true color today. This Wednesday, the final of July, 2022, the 27, for those seeking more, will reach 104 they say. We officially reached only 100 in Ashland yesterday, although my house said it was 103.5 as the high experienced. Sunset will be at 8:36 PM. Sunrise today was at 5:59 AM. It might be the last time for a sunrise before six in the morning, unless it happens again when we ‘fall back’ with the clock later this year.

“Janie’s Got A Gun” by Aerosmith (1989) inhabits the morning mental music stream. The song is about parents and others raping, abusing, and molesting children and Janie getting a gun to stop it. Rape was removed from the radio version. And yeah, it came up as a song as I read more sickening news of the world. Not going into it any further. Many people frequently promote an idea for using a gun to shoot and kill people with state permission as soon as their crime is discovered. I’m not for that for many reasons, among them being an orderly and intelligent system of justice. I know it fails often but throwing it out isn’t a solution; its shortcomings need to be addressed and fixed. That’s difficult in today’s political environment but I stand by the belief.

Stay positive and test negative. Wear masks and get vaxes as needed. Good luck and stay safe. Coffee? Why, thank you, I think I will.

Cheers

1

Tuesday’s Theme Music

The dice have been tossed. Rolling to a stop, they come up Tuesday, July 26, 2022.

106 F is today’s magic number for our valley. We hit 103.5 F yesterday. Only cooled to 22 C overnight. Already 24 C this morning.

The sun peeled back the night at 5:58 AM. Night will reclaim the valley upon the sun’s setting at 8:37 PM. Them’s the rules.

All this warm weather has the cats in an interesting zone. During the day, they staked out cool shade and slept. One took up the front door and the other guarded the back. This morning’s cool air turned the house into a grand prix circuit as the cats exercised some zoomies, accelerating down hallways, blasting around corners, obliterating toy mice and throw rugs encountered along the way. The FIA should check out it as a new race venue: the Clay Street Grand Prix. Seating will be limited so they’ll need to turn to television to keep their lofty revenues up.

Today’s music came from eavesdropping on two young women. I’d bet on them being twenty-somethings. One was encouraging the other in some enterprise and told her, “Your day will come.”

Well, The Neurons leaped right on that, popping “Our Day Will Come” into the mental music stream where it remained this morning. The original hit that I knew, from a year I couldn’t remember, was by Ruby and the Romantics. A 45’s label is burned into memory as it was loaded on a pink and gray little portable record machine. Where, who, when are blanks. Covers and other variations of the song were encountered throughout my life but I always enjoyed the one with the organ solo in the middle.

BTW, I just love that expression, “eavesdropping”. Hearing it conjures a person hanging upside down from eaves outside people’s windows.

Well, here we go. Stay safe, test negative, exercise some critical thinking, and remain positive. Coffee time now, before the heat becomes oppressive.

Here’s the music. Cheers

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Monday’s Theme Music

105 F is today’s magic number. Ashland’s forecast high temperature, keep it in mind as you plan and pursue activities. Cooling shelters have been set up around town at churches, community centers, and the library.

The house system says it’s 66 F outside. Alexa claims it’s 21 C in Ashland, where I reside. The net says it’s 74. It all makes sense because they’re all correct. Depends on where you live, the mountains’ shadows, and the sun’s reach, yeah? Hope the weather is kind to you wherever you are. If it’s not, then I hope you’re in a safe place.

Another week has begun. This is Monday, July 25, 2022. July has entered the final stretch. 2022 is halfway through summer in the northern hemisphere.

Old Tucker was active last night. The big guy was feeling it. I opened the back door just after midnight to let in some cooling air and check upon them. When I flicked on the light, I saw Tucker dash out into the yard. He seemed to be after something. Well, the light was bad so I dropped back for a flashlight. When I illuminated the scene, I saw a young raccoon facing off with my cat. The raccoon was a little larger than my boy but Tucker goes aggro with animals. I called for him to come back. The raccoon tried to make an escape. Tucker gave chase, but the raccoon made it into a bush. Tucker sat there to ensure the critter didn’t leave. I went out an coaxed Tucker back, allowing the other to make their escape.

Meanwhile, the orange menace known as Papi, aka Meep, had watched all this from the patio’s safety. Once Tucker returned and the raccoon was gone, Papi went over there and laid down in front of the bush where rocky raccoon had taken refuge. He just grinned at my efforts to get him back in.

“Everyday Is a Winding Road” by Sheryl Crow (1996) has settled into the morning mental music stream. The Neurons riffed on my thought upon reading some news and thinking, “Well, anything goes these days.” The Neurons promptly launched the song, homing in on the lyrics, “Everybody gets high, everybody gets low, these are the days when anything goes.” Like almost every song residing in my mental juke box, the song has a story attached, although it’s just a regular tale of hearing the melody during my Silicon Valley commutes, passing the time as we motor slowly through the webs of interchanges clotted with cars.

Stay pos, etc. It’s still cool so I’ll refresh with a little hot java, yeah? Yeah. Have a better one.

Later, gator.

1

Saturday’s Theme Music

July 23 of 2022 turned out to be a Saturday. Sunrise took place while I still prowled dreamland at 5:55 AM. More likely to witness sunset at 8:39 PM. July is preparing to conduct a peaceful transfer of power to August.

Sunshine rules again, giving us some hot air. 90 F will be our high while it’s a pleasant and comfortable 19 C at the moment. Lovely to stand out in the sun with hot coffee, watching the feline masters grooming as cool hair bathes me.

World news scans gave a bleak assessment of life in 2022. Disasters, death, and killing fill the stories. Guess those are a significant part of life. I wanted something lighter in my mind. The damn Neurons didn’t comply. I just reading a novel called Fools and Mortals about William and Richard Shakespeare and the plays Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The primary story focused on Richard Shakespeare, a player in Shakespeare’s company, his love life and poverty, his relationship with his brother, stolen manuscripts, and politics. Perhaps the novel’s story still circulated around the neural pathways as The Neurons filled the morning mental music stream with “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper” from 1976 by Blue Oyster Cult. The song has lyrics which go, “Romeo and Juliet are together for eternity.” The way my neurons go about business, of course the song would need to be brought up after reading a book mentioning them, of course! It’s as natural an order as sunrise and sunset, a thought which cues The Neurons to begin “Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof.

Let’s get out of here. Stay positive and test negative, masking as needed, etc. I’ve already procured and consumed some coffee, so here’s the music. Enjoy.

More cowbell. Peace out.

0

Friday’s Theme Music

We’ve cooled some more here in southern Oregon. Hope the rest of the world can cool off. Today’s temperature finds us at 17 C now with a high of 88 F being bandied around. No clouds on my horizons now. Faint clouds were in the midnight skies. But what a night sky it otherwise was, rich with diamonds – galaxies, planets, stars, and satellites, prodding my mind to beg for details about how this all works together.

It’s Friday, July 22, 2022. Sunset and sunrise are 8:40 PM and 5:54 AM.

The Neurons are playing “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming” by Judas Priest. Are you familiar with this 1982 song? It’s a heavy metal rocker. I’m more of a progressive rock fan with my intro to heavy metal coming via a co-worker, Bob. He made me a mixed tape of heavy songs that he thought I needed to know, and here we are. This would’ve been in 1986 at a little place called Shaw AFB in South Carolina, my stop in the U.S. between Japan and Germany. In reflection, I left the U.S. in 1981, came back in 1985, left in 1986, and returned in 1991.

Stay positive and test negative, etc. Coffee has touched down in the kitchen. One small sip for mankind. Cheers

2

Thursday’s Theme Music

Yesterday nicked 99 to a 100 F locally. The high temp experienced is a spectrum dictated by microvariables. Today is cooling, touching 95 to 97. An hour ago, it was 19 C. Now it’s up to 22 C.

Sunrise on this day, Thursday, 7/21/22, was 5:53 AM. Sunset has drawn down to 8:41. Was it a month ago where I noted that sunset was 8:51 day after day?

Our heat isn’t as bad as other regions. Wildfire stories are growing, of course, as Texas, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Alaska, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Idaho, and other places fight the flames. Extreme heat shut down data centers in several countries. Roads and runways were reported melted. Droughts are spreading, threatening food supplies. Yes, and numerous people around the world have succumbed to the high heat.

Deep breath. Hang on, I need coffee to continue.

The Neurons are singing a 1972 Rod Stewart song called, “You Wear It Well”. Why? You ask them. They won’t give the reasons to me. Not a bad choice by any means. I like the mellow and folksy rock sound delivered with down-to-earth lyrics about time, love, and the past.

Here’s the music. Need to see a man about a garage door. He’s just arrived to put in a strut to solve the bowing issue. Fingers crossed, etc. I would’ve done it but couldn’t find an appropriate sixteen feet strut and didn’t have a vehicle to transport said strut. Bummer; I like the DIY challenge.

Peace out.

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