Tag: pop

Thursday’s Theme Music

I woke up thinking, this feels like Saturday. I knew it was Thursday and sacrificed about ten minutes thinking about why this Thursday felt like a Saturday. Only thing that emerged was that I had no reason to leap out of bed. No structure of rushing off to work, or hurrying somewhere to meet someone. No urgency to leave the house and go to a coffee shop and write. Yeah, we’re still under COVID-19 restrictions. I haven’t gotten the booster, and my wife has underlying issues. Well, I have some, too. Underlying issues is part of the aging gift package for many of us.

Anyway, today is Thursday, November 21, 2021. Lackluster weather. A bit of sunshine burst through and fired some joy through my synapses. Seeing this, a heavy cloud hurried over and blocked the sunshine. The temperature is 52 F and there’s no indication that it’ll get any warmer than 56 F. Sunrise came at 7:47 AM and sunset will launch at 6:01 PM. Basically, we’re coming down to eight hours of sunshine per day.

I’m a little aggro this morning. Feel like I’m on the precipice of my monthly trough, sliding down toward the dark waves. The cats didn’t help this AM. Opened one of their favorite foods. They all chowed down but one returned, asking for more. I fed him and he gobbled away. Then, as I was preparing my brekkie, he walked in and puked at my feet. Three facets then emerge: why did he puke? Just eating too much too fast? Two, damn it, there’s a mess to clean. Three, damn it, I’m hungry and I need to clean this up before I can eat my oatmeal. Bah.

Trying to get the vax booster is also agitating me. Websites are all, we have the boosters! Make an appointment. But. They then ask about which vaccine I’ve had. I received the J&J. These websites — RiteAid, Fred Meyers, Costco, the three primary sources for COVID-19 shots in our area — all then direct me to get a J&J booster. Which I don’t want; I desire a Moderna. This is per CDC guidance. All their websites say that as a J&J recipient, I can have whichever shot I prefer. Yet their appointment form won’t let that happen.

I complained to my friends last night about it. They clearly weren’t paying deep attention, telling me, “Just go to the Fred Meyers website, just go to the Costco website, just go to the RiteAid website.” Exasperating, n’est pas?

Other acquaintances relate that they made appointments only to show up and discover either the vaccine of the people to administer it wasn’t available. But others made appointments and got the shots, no prob. Seems like a dice game when it comes to getting the booster, just as it was back when we were trying to get the vax.

Oddly, perhaps, all this angst and irritation stems from having strong writing sessions. I get immersed in the writing; pulling out to participate in real world activity requires a major energy shift. I don’t want to give it many times. Just let me keep writing, damn it world.

I had “Sister Golden Hair” flowing through the morning mental music stream. A Rush song, “Show Don’t Tell” from 1989, supplanted it.

How many times do you hear it?
It goes on all day long
Everyone knows everything
And no one’s ever wrong
Until later

Who can you believe?
It’s hard to play it safe
But apart from a few good friends
We don’t take anything on faith
Until later

h/t to songlyrics.com

Ah, good music for this Thursday for me. Stay positive — hard some days, innit? — test negative, wear a mask as the situation requires, and get the vax and booster when you can. Now, excuse me, but a cuppa coffee is screaming my name. Here’s the music. Cheers.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Salutations to the inhabitants of Gaia. We’re continuing a new theme of calling days this month ‘November’ and numbering them. Today is Wednesday, November 3, 2021. Sunrise kicked in like a toddler at 7:46 AM and will waddle out at 6:02. While it’s battleship gray this AM, with sunlight relegated to the level of a dim bar at happy hour, we expect the temperature to go from its current realm in the low fifties to the upper sixties. I’m meeting with friends at a brewery. We’re all vaxxed and we’ll be sitting outside at a picnic table. There, we were enjoy a local brew. Maybe two.

With rain and it being November, you’d think I’d be thinking of “November Rain”, but I didn’t. Instead, trudging up a steep, steep hill during yesterday’s constitutional, I told myself, gasp, “Breathe in, breathe out.” Quickly, my mental Alexa picked up on the words and introduced “Machinehead” by Bush from 1994. It’s one of the songs I frequently listened to on my short morning commute from NAS Moffett base housing where I lived over to Onizuka AS, where I worked in California during those years. The commute was just long enough to listen to one song, then done. I enjoyed remembering it, and introduce as today’s theme music.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, distance when necessary, and get the vax and boosters when ye can. Here’s the music. There I go. Into the kitchen. That’s where the coffee is. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Hello, all you sentient beings. Welcome to November 2, 2021. It’s officially a Tuesday for everyone scoring at home.

It’s another dullish, fallish day in the southern Oregon valley where I reside. Rain dribbled throughout the night in sufficient quantities to wet the land and irk the cats. The sun made a feeble entrance at 7:45 AM and will slip away at 6:03 PM. Despite heavy clouds, wet clouds, and Winter’s determined effort to take over, the temperature is 52 degrees F and a high of 61 F is hoped for. Tomorrow is expected to be warmer, 67 degrees, with light rain, so that’s something to look forward to.

You’d think that with all this rain, rain songs would be in heavy rotation in my morning mental music stream. I mean, outside of love, there seems to be a gajillion songs about rain. Most of the rain songs deal with depression, heartbreak, and insanity. Perhaps my enjoyment of this rain is holding such songs out of my mental Alexa’s playlist. I’m instead preoccupied with a 1968 song by Blood, Sweat, & Tears called “Spinning Wheel”. It’s one line of lyrics playing foremost within me:

Talkin' 'bout your troubles and you, you never learn
Ride a painted pony let the spinnin' wheel turn

h/t to Lyrics.com

See, what I was thinking about was the inability for many to learn. We’re still neck deep with COVID-19 deniers and anti-vaxxers here in the U.S. People who don’t trust the medical community, then rush to them when COVID-19 strikes them down, and then demands that the medical community treat them using treatments that they’ve read about on the net, instead of the medical professions’ proven protocols and procedures for the best outcome. It’s crazy how it spreads over the net — this was on a nurses’ forum — that patients are telling one another that when nurses remove you from ventilation is when they kill you. It’s all a great big conspiracy of crazy.

So, they never learn. They jump on that painted pony. Then the fates spin the result.

Not saying that following everything — vax, social distancing, masks, and the medical procedures for COVID-19 — is a perfect cure-all. No. It’s not. Underlying conditions and health issues will exacerbate treatment and recovery, as will age, race, and sex, given the collected data. Sadly, these deniers are not capable of learning this. Not a question of intelligence; it seems to be more about indoctrination. Frustrating for the rest of us, but it’s not new. Nor is it unusual.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, socially distance, and get the vax and boosters when you can, if you can. Coffee time again. Here’s the music. Hope you enjoy it. Cheers.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Yep, turn the page. Start a new leaf. Begin anew, again. November is upon us, a continuation of the autumn months for those of us above the equator. We’re like a ship sailing toward winter. Clouds grow darker and heavier. Sunshine thins and fades, surrendering us to increasingly cold air. We hover around warm spots, watching the horizons for signs of snow, awaiting the next phase.

Or we shrug and press on. Or gather winter sports equipment, put on warmer coats, and head for the hills. Who cares what season it is? Well, we care, but each season brings it personality in. We can usually find things to love and admire in each season. The cats, though, are definitive summer folk. They’re already going out only to dart back in with complaints. “Where is the sun? Turn off the wind. Make it warmer.” So they go until they find a faintly suitable place and curl up, gradually replacing their mutterings with snores.

Today is Monday, November 1, 2021, the first Monday in November. So, we’ll have five Mondays in this month, along with five Tuesdays. The sunshine shifted into the valley with meager offerings at 7:44 AM. The sun will fade away at 6:05 PM. Temperatures will stay chilly with rainfall and winds contributing, giving us a high of 56 degrees F. But the air is clear and absent any signs of wildfire smoke.

For reasons that aren’t in focus for me, a 1973 Marvin Gaye song is playing in the morning mental music stream. Yes, Marvin is singing, “Let’s Get It On”, a smooth, lovely song, evocative of hopeful young love and sex. Hearing the song conjures scenes of dark houses with slow dancing, making out on furniture, quiet pairings of couples who sneak away for some privacy. All this goes with the Halloween period because growing up in the western Pennsylvania area as a teen, that early darkness in alignment with parents’ work hours afforded some unique opportunities to visit with friends in their houses. We were usually outside in the summer and spring, see, while winter brought freezing air and heavy snow that made such visiting difficult. Also, reaching into November, you were a month, almost two, into the new school year. Got to reacquaint yourself you hadn’t seen for a while, rekindling affection and interest. I guess I untied the knot about why the song is hovering around my mind this morning.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters when you can. Here’s the music, there’s my coffee, and here we go, galloping on into November. Onward, he cried from the rear. Let’s go. Cheers

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Sunday’s Theme Music

The deciduous trees were so lovely recently in golds and yellows, scarlets and reds, oranges, yellow-green, russet and brown. A few windy days and the leaves lay heavy on the ground as naked skeletal branches wave toward the sky. Blue sky holds today, a few clouds trickling in, high and away, as if they’re spying on us from lofty perches. They might be winter’s advance guard. I think I hear them whispering, “Winter is coming.” Whether they’ll bring the ice king, we’ll see.

Today is October’s last day, the 31st. We’re galloping through 2021’s final quarter, racing toward Thanksgiving in the U.S., and dashing toward the December holiday season. Sunrise cameth at 7:42 AM. So late, right? But next Sunday, Nov. 7, DST ends and we turn the clocks back. By then, the sunrise will be about 8 AM, so we’ll roll it back to 7 AM. But we’ll suffer on the day’s posterior end. Sunset today comes at 6:10 PM. That’ll dial back to before six next week, so we’ll be looking at sunsets before 5 PM after next Sunday. And we’ll still be moving toward the longest night in December.

Today, though, it’s 51 degrees F. High today will only be 61 degrees but right now, it’s a soft, gorgeous day. The cats and I went out together. I paused for a deep inhale. Was so clear and invigorating, I hung around and repeated deep breaths for several minutes. Stress, frustrations, anxieties all washed out. Into the morning mental music stream came The Hollies’s 1974 cover of “The Air That I Breathe”. Works for me on October’s final day.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters as needed. Speaking of needs, I’m heading into the kitchen for some coffee. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Sunrise crept in like a drunk husband trying not to awaken his wife at 7:41 AM this morning. Barely lifted the gloom it seems. Shortly before sunrise, rumbling like metal wheels across broken cement awoke me. As I puzzled through the loud sound, it came again, confirming for my surprised being, why, that’s thunder. Thunder just rolled around the valley again like a marble in a roulette wheel, and rain is drumming its fingers over the rough. We call it stormy Saturday, October 30, 2021.

The rain and clouds are gonna keep it cool, you bet. The current temperature is 54 degrees F. Some say that it will reach 56 F today; others are claiming 61. We’ll see how warm it gets before the sun takes its contribution from us at 6:07 PM.

Feeding the cats inspired the occupant of my morning mental music stream today. The song is by Kiss, “I Was Made for Lovin’ You”, from 1979. Only, me being sleepy because it was half past dark still and the little flooftators were acting hangry, stumbled out of bed and told them, “Yes, please let me feed you. I was made for feeding you kitties. That’s all I live for.” That’s certainly what it felt like at that moment when my crankmeter was up high because I wanted sleep. Anyway, the song remained in my head after I flushed my dreams and made breakfast, so, lucky you! Here you go. My choice for Saturday’s theme music. It’s a bit o’rock and disco with a large dollop of glam. Like those shoes. Oh, those shoes.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed by the situation, and get the vax and booster when you can. Let’s be careful out there. On to coffee. Cheers

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Friday’s Theme Music

A bitter chill haunts the morning air. Sunlight blighted by gray clouds wearies its way through the windows, casting dull shadows from the partially nude trees. Welcome to Friday, October 29, 2021.

The temperature hovers around 61 degrees F right now but my skin whispers, it’s not that warm. The high today between sunrise at 7:40 AM and sunset at 6:09 PM is just forecast for three degrees more. Like the sun is saying, “It’s Friday, and I don’t feel like giving as much today.” Beautiful colors that burst into the leaves are all acting spent, fading by the hour, dropping from the trees, filling streets and lawns, turning to brown and crumbling.

Today’s theme music was inspired by food. Truthfully, it was a food pick-up. Called in an order to a local establishment, then ‘ran out’ to get it by getting into the car and driving over there. But my wife said, “Why don’t you run out and get it,” and I totally understood it would involve the car.

So I was taking food on the go, which my brain shifted to say, on the run, and voilà, I was thinking that I’d take food on the run, which led to REO Speedwagon’s 1981 song, “Take It on the Run”, to slip into the mental music stream, where it still resided this morning. I like the song’s rising guitar sound and embellishments as the tempo increases before it crashes back down to a soft note, and a final outro, “Heard it from a friend who, heard it from a friend who, heard it from another, you been messin’ around.”

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and booster when you can. I’m gonna listen to the song again and sip my coffee. Here’s to ya. Cheers

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Thursday’s Theme Music

I stepped onto the chilly back patio with the cats this morning. They looked around for intruders or prey, and I looked up. Sunshine was outlining our trees’ gold and red leaves against a blue sky that didn’t have a hair of a cloud showing.

Today is Thursday, October 28, 2021. Sunrise came at 7:39AM and sunset is due at 6:10 PM. Clear skies will have an impact as we’ll hope from our current 53 degrees F all the way up to 74. No wind is blowing. All this is a brief respite from more rain expected. We’ll take the rain, although it does slam places that suffered wildfire damage, often causing heavy erosion and landslides.

I was reading about the Netherlands today in an article titled, “When will the Netherlands disappear?”. While many right wing political parties around the world, including the GOP in the U.S., the Dutch are undertaking serious measures to mitigate the rising seas and the loss of land. The sad assessment explains the many ways that the world is changing from a warming atmosphere to melting ice caps to encroaching seas and, with the lowlands of the Netherlands, the disappearance of a land and nation. But let’s keep pretending it ain’t happening, because you know, money. Which is the bottom line of the GOP argument: it would cause money to cope with climate change, eat into profits, and diminish executive bonuses. Meanwhile, we’ll build sea walls, as they’re doing in Florida, even though the feted dikes of Netherland show that sea walls can only do so much.

Naturally, money spoke to my mental Alexa, who ordered a recall of “Moneytalks” by AC/DC from 1991 to the morning mental music stream. Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed by the situation, and get the vax and booster when you can. Here’s the music. There’s my coffee. We good. Cheers

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

Hello, my fellow homo sapiens. Today is Wednesday, October 27, 2021. A dreary day in the valley of my home. Clouds blustering about rain. Winds whispering about storms. And the sun, quietly hanging back after its 7:38 AM, is a wallflower on this dance. A mild 52 F degrees now, we expect some of these clouds to skate away and leave us in the upper sixties before sunset takes over at 6:43 PM.

I was feeling philosophical last night. A power outage of five hours changed the day’s dynamics. It was a bit of a release, a staycation, as my other and I sat and chatted for most of those hours. I walked later, admiring the gowns the trees brought out for their fall collection. Russets have sprung into many, but there are mild browns, deep scarlet, brilliant red, and most impressively, lemon yellows that still your sight. Some of these leaves, especially on maples going red, seem like they’re lit with an inner light. Before that, I was enduring the monthly dark funk that likes to shroud me once a month for a day or two, spooning bitterness and weariness into me while maligning my energy channels. The walk helped reversed most of that, refortifying shaky defenses and infusing new determination back into my spine.

Out of that came a 1989 Indigo Girls song, “Closer to Fine”. Closer to fine is a good place to be. Not perfect but better than before.

Stay positive, test negative, don a mask as needed for the situation, and get the vax and boosters when you can. Here’s the tunes. Listen while I head off to the kitchen for my coffee. Cheers

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

A little late with my typical posts. Power was out for over five hours today. Just back on line. Here we go.

The wheel has turned. We’ve all landed on Earth on October 26, 2021, a Tuesday. Speaking for my planetary sliver, it was a rainy night. Hungover rain clouds still drift aimlessly around, like they’re ready to go but don’t know where they’re going. A mild wind blows. It’s a cold 46 degrees F right now. The sun’s presence between now and sunset at 6:13 PM should add another ten degrees, giving us a high of 56 F. Sunrise, mild as an infant’s burp, arrived at 7:36 AM.

Our power is off. Yes, a power outage. Been out for half an hour now. Rare in our area. We had one a year ago, I think. They typically last one to three hours for us. The city has its own electric company, so there’s no outside company to blame. Like most, the questions of what happened and when will it end are foremost in our mind, with attendant worries about what it’ll do to our plans. I’m typing this in Word. Once power returns, I’ll connect to the net and post this, at which time, the power will be on. Follow?

I have “Heavy Fuel”, a 1991 song by Dire Straits, in the morning mental music stream on this Tuesday. BO – Before Outage – I’d a busy day planned. As I made and ate breakfast BO, I didn’t make my coffee but thought I’d do so soon because I’d need heavy fuel for the busy day. So I’m without coffee at the mo. I do have some Starbucks Via – think that’s what it’s called – instant stuff, and a gas stove, so I can boil some water and make do if I need. (Edit: which I did.) That’s why that instant coffee is on hand. It’s part of my emergency evacuation go bag. Meanwhile, I’ll go work on the novel until power is restored. Before the laptop’s battery dies. I replaced the battery a few months ago. The laptop is charged and says that it can give me another two hours. We’ll see.

Stay positive, test negative, wear a mask as needed, and get the vax and boosters when you can. Here’s the music. Cheers

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