It’s raining abundant sunshine down on us on this, Twosda, January 21, 2022. Temperature is up to 30 F after landing at 26 F overnight. ‘They’ inform me that today’s high will exceed 50 F. It’s all possible, from the general appearance, and we did do it yesterday.
All this is better than my sister’s world back in Pennsylvania. She texted me that it was either snowing heavily or the wind was blowing the existing snow around. Either way, there was a lot of white stuff obscuring vision. She was at work on her midday when she reported this to me. She reported that the temperature was 5 degrees F. That’s barking cold, brothers and sisters.
Today’s music came from a mental exercise. I was on a news blackout yesterday. So I was unleashed in my net surfing. I soon hooked a clickline about the 50 greatest one-hit wonders. I decided to brainstorm and see how many I came up with. About half was the reckoning. Guess I needed more coffee. One song that I missed was “Criminal” by Fiona Apple. Weird thinking of her as a one-hit wonder, because I know a few other songs she released which were hits, but here we are. Naturally, after seeing it on the list, The Neurons carried it into the morning mental music stream, where they’ve released it on a loop. So I share with you to free myself.
Coffee has offered to pour into my mouth and invade my system and kick my energy into a higher gear. I gladly accepted. Here’s the music. Let’s light the fuse on the day. Cheers
We’ve slipped into foggy bottom or foggy bottom slipped over us. Fogda, Jan. 6, 2025. 40 degrees F, sunshine has taken some time away, apparently, giving us over to clouds and rain. 56 F is the projected high. An air stagnation advisory has been slapped on us.
Yesterday turned into fine, sunshiny day. Of course, we were slightly out of town for most of the afternoon, and in a slighter higher elevation, visiting our friends for a party. Good cast of characters, and the house is beautiful. The owner joked that it was a two-bedroom five two hundred square foot home with five fireplaces. Main house had a beautiful small living room and a large living room which used to be the original owner’s home movie theater. That was a natural for that original owner as he owned a chain of movie theaters. Finances crashed and he quit using the house during COVID. The owner related that everything had quit working and they needed to repair and replace multiple things when they bought the home. But they did the job and it showed. There’s also a .5 acre fishing pond, heated pool, a separate artist studio, two-bedroom guest house with a two-car garage, and an RV parking garage with space for three RVs, which cracks up the current owner. “Definitely something we don’t need,” he said. It’s about eight minutes out of Ashlandia. A hallway off the foyer has his and hers coat closets, along with a guest closet.
Papi continues losing fur at a startling rate. He’s not going bald or anything; fur keeps growing in to replace it. We don’t know what’s going on. His appetite is good, he’s as perky and conversant as ever, and he looks good. We keep thinking, must be the weather, but he’s never done this before. We eye him for signs of things going amiss. If it’s there, we’re missing it.
Today’s song was born out of texts swapped between Mom, me, and a sis in the Pittsburgh, PA, region. They had snow coming down, impeding traffic, limiting outdoor options. The Neurons took the opportunity to start “Snow (Hey Oh)” by Red Hot Chili Peppers in the morning mental music stream (Trademark blizzard). The 2005 song is about getting a fresh start. Hey, it’s kinda still a new year, new month, new day, and a new government administration in the U.S. Okay, I kind of choked on that last one. I’ve always enjoyed this hard rocker. Easy to follow and sing along. And hey, it’s also about surviving, so there we go.
Be chill and don’t thrill. Coffee and I ran into each in the kitchen and swapped some spit. Hey ho, listen to what I say yo, it’s a fresh new day. Here’s the music. Cheers
This is it, 2024’s final day. Twosday, December 31. Seems ordinary in every way when I just look out the window.
Winter has descended. Our temperature is muscling to 30 F. The high will be 42 F. Sun shimmers through fog’s pearly teeth. Frost crisps grass blades into white shoestrings. No snow or rain falling. While walking in late afternoon yesterday, though, I looked across the valley. A fog line huddled against the mountains at about three thousand feet. Above the fog, a snowy mountain ridge turned apricot by the setting sun stood sentry. Now that, I thought, looks cold.
My Neurons took to quizzing me as I took care of brekkie duties, asking me who starred in different televsion shows and movies. Yes, I agree, it’s an odd thing to be doing. Then they pivoted, “Okay, who sang the ‘Friends’ theme music?” Easy peasy, the Rembrandts, right? “Now name the Supreme Court Justices, smart guy,” The Neurons returned. Before coffee? I protested. That’s hardly fair.
Today’s music was brought in by The Neurons when my wife and I were driving home from a shopping expedition yesterday. The radio played Luke Combs’s version of Tracy Chapman’s song, “Fast Car”. My wife commented that it revitalized her sales, especially after the Grammies, when Combs and Chapman performed the song together. We then talked about how good her first album was. That resulted in The Neurons installing another song from the album, “For My Lover”, in the morning mental music stream (Trademark tariff protected).
Coffee is now approaching The Neurons with a peace offering. Yes, it’s caffeine. Usually sufficiently mollifies The Neurons into being more companionable. Hope your final day of 2024 is memorable for you in good ways. Here’s the music. Cheers
G’ mornin’, peeps of the online written word. It’s 2024’s final Monday, December 20, 2024. To celebrate, my other and I will go out for brekkie after she returns from her exercise class. Then we’ll do some groc shopping. Breakfast will be had at Crackin & Stackin in downtown Medford, I think.
It’s 33 F outside. Sunshine and clouds war again. Blue sky wins as the sun prevails. The ground is wet but drying for the moment after a few days of rain on a heavier scale and flooding in other parts of the county. No rain is forecast for the next two days. Today’s high will be 43 F.
I experienced vigorous, positive dreams last night and that’s put me in a solidly upbeat mood. Seeing sunshine reinforced it. Also contributing is that my foot/ankle are happier, and I had a lengthy solid if interesting writing outing yesterday.
Spoke with Mom on the phone last night. Says she’s feelin’ tired. Not surprising. Holidays always sap. Like many, it pushes her out of her comfortable returns. Now at 89, with several major health issues as part of her history, her energy is low, and every day is a new exploration of something in her body contending for attention. Her other, Frank, is doing great, she said. He’ll be 95 next month.
However, one of my younger sisters now has the flu. She is the Trumper who has had COVID three times. Believe she vaccinated before but she reportedly has underlying lung issues. She won’t tell anyone deets so we rumble about what it is. Her husband, a year younger than moi, went through open heart surgery a few years ago and is now dealing with kidney stones.
One of my other younger sister’s boyfriend lost his brother. But 66 years old, the man had a stroke and then a heart attack. Home alone while his wife was away visiting family in another state for the holidays, he was found on the kitchen floor after a day. Rushed to the hospital, he was pronounced dead and was removed from life support. He passed away yesterday morning.
Meanwhile, the boyfriend himself went into the hospital Friday for some scans after he complained about feeling ill and not breathing right. Turns out that he was experiencing congestive heart failure a 56 years old, astonishing us all. He’s 56 and is a regular runner. Those who saw him on Christmas thought he looked healthy and fit. It’s the way of life, I guess.
All that news and subsequent thinking gave permissions to The Neurons to introduce Joni Mitchell into the morning mental music stream (Trademark aging) with “The Circle Game”. A simple song, very poetic.
Coffee downed, here we go, putting another Monday into the books. Have the best you can, right? Don’t know how the next day will change your expectations.
Today is Thursday, December 26, 2024. Five more days to the year. A year stamped with historic and personal significance. Wonder how 2025 will compare at this time next year.
Gray. Rainy. Chilly. Call it 44 F. Light rain. This is winter in Ashlandia. Snow hugs things above three or four thousand feet, looks like at a glance. Down here, we’re stuck in the gray. Sunshine muted through gray clouds from mountain to mountain to mountain. Gray clouds as far as I can see, looking down into the valley. And rain.
Yes, I’m complaining.
The cats are not, however. After a night of howling wind and incessant rain, Papi dragged in his wet Butter Butt and found a warm space to sleep off the day. Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) had already set the example, staying in, finding a comfy zone, nodding into slumber.
Late post as I spent the morning writing. One of those days when the muses arrived early. The house was quiet and the coffee was hot, so. Seated myself at the laptop and added 2,500 words. Excited by the twist added. See if it stands revision, editing, and further thinking.
Today’s music selection was made by The Neurons after a friend’s comment yesterday. A decade older than moi, she’s not known for her colorful language. But there she was making a risque, off-color comment at the Christmas bash. As we reacted and laughed, she turned as red as Santa’s outfit. Net result: The Neurons have “Dirty Mind” by the brilliant Prince playing in the morning mental music stream (Trademark filthy).
Well, deep breath. Dredge up some positive energy. Here we go again. Let’s start with the music. Cheers
The calendar declares that winter has officially entered the stage. Still feels more like a good fall rather than early winter in Ashlandia, where Teslas are found around every corner. A riled up wind is carousing around the neighborhood, stirring things up. Doesn’t sit well with our floofs. Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) says, “Merci, non.” But Papi the ginger blade insists on thinking, “Maybe it’s different now,” every fifteen minutes. Temperature isn’t bad at 49 F on this winter day, Sinda, December 22, 2024. Light rain and a high of 52 F are expected. Visuals say, yeah, that can be done. Clouds in varying densities from sheers to cotton layers in heather, oatmeal, off-white, and charcoal, pleasingly illuminated with eastern rising sunshine, set off against brittle blue sky, parade along the sky walk.
Today’s song is “Boys Don’t Cry” by the Cure. I don’t know why it’s in the morning mental music stream (Trademark blustery). I only remember one dream and it seems wholly unrelated to its tale of databases, strawberries, and fried food. Just in the kitchen, bustling about with floof feeding activities as Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) asks again about when he’s going to have his order delivered. Click, clink, bonk, the song is playing in the mmms and I’m humming along.
Done with the morning cuppa. Went down well. Brekkie is finished. Dressing’s final touches of shoes, socks, coat are needed, then I’m off to the coffee shop to cavort with muses and do the keyboard finger dance. Hope your day gives sublime satisfaction, no matter which season or weather elements are encountered.
Today is Thursday, December 19, 2024. A temptation to change Thursday to Throughsday almost conquered my fingers. ‘Throughsday’ because the week is almost finished. I didn’t change it, as I’m disinclined toward misinformation and confusing people.
In other morning news, a crowd of zombies went through our town. Ha, ha, just kidding. It wasn’t a crowd. Just a couple.
Our weather today looks as if someone delivered elements of fog, clouds, sunshine, and rain. All were tossed together in a big blue bowl. Now they’re up there, waiting to be mixed and blended.
Just after observing and writing all of that, Papi the ginger blade floof, returned with a scouting report. He didn’t need to say anything. Fog had shut down the sunshine, clouds, and blue skies. 46 F out there, it ‘feels like 38’, with a high of 57 dangling over us.
I met with my beer buddies last night. Two new members joined us. She is a retired teacher and physician’s assistant. He is a retired electrical engineer. They have a daughter who works for NASA, and he was a big science fiction fan when he was a kid. Others told him that I sometimes write science fiction. He shifted over to sit by me later in the night and discuss the genre. Lot of fun remembering the novels we had in common which influenced us.
Today’s theme music arrives on the shoulders of a conversation I had with several women last night. They expressed deep disappointment and frustration that more women didn’t turn out to vote in the 2024 election. I didn’t have any insights into that and they couldn’t cite any stats. Young me from several different groups were the dissappointing difference to me. I read interviews with and stories about young black men, for example, who thought Trump would be better for the economy. That still makes me shake my head.
Anyway, after returning home with that conversation in mind, “American Woman” by the Guess Who from 1970 rose into the morning mental music stream (Trademark peeling) today. I always thought the song was about the United States, represented by a woman, seducing countries to be like the United States. The singer was resisting because the United States was a war machine filled with ghettos. The ‘colored lights’ referred to in the song was Hollywood glamor. Remember, the Vietnam War was underway and protests were taking place in the U.S. In light of that backdrop, my interpretation made sense to me. But different interviews with the Guess Who band members painted a different story. The songwriter and vocalist, Burton Cummings, said it was just a comparison of women from the U.S. and Canada.
“What was on my mind was that girls in the States seemed to get older quicker than our girls and that made them, well, dangerous. When I said ‘American woman, stay away from me,’ I really meant ‘Canadian woman, I prefer you.’ It was all a happy accident.”
I became fourteen around the time of the song’s release. It’s uptempo beat, rich bass, unique riffs, lead guitar, lyrics, and vocals all worked for me. Cummings sang it with an angry, contemptuous sneer in my opinion. That spoke to my own burgeoning contempt for how our world and society works. Ah, to be young and idealistic.
Coffee and I have negotiated arrangements and I’m taking advantage of that to warm my throat. Time to light the candle on another day. Here’s the music. Cheers
There’s been a weather shift. From nowhere predictable (or, shall we say, it wasn’t predicted), sunshine and blue sky burst in on Ashlandia. Clouds flee like birds chased off by a cat.
Woo hoo, sunshine! Its warmth pushes the digits to 56 F. 56! I stand in a blaze, face up, sucking in fresh air and imagining sunblessed vitamin D pouring into me. Although…
The sun is the sun, even if it’s winter, almost solstice. I used moisterizer on my face. (Excuse me, I’m not a barbarian.) But does that moisterizer have any SPF rating?
Unable to recall my moisterizer’s nuances and protection, I hasten out of the sun.
Just tired today, you know? Like I’m an inflatable man with a slow leak. Bent over as I sit, air seeping out, growing smaller, more flaccid, more bent.
Haven’t had coffee and brekkie yet. That might change the self-impression.
It’s Wednesday. December 18, 2024. Almost 50 F out, a wind mutters and sings like it doesn’t know all of the words. Sometimes it remembers most of the chorus. It rained in the early morning. It’s to begin raining and keep raining for most of the afternoon. A sun is been pasted into the sky among the pillows of unwashed clouds. Peeks of blue sky skittishly open and close, an amateur fan dance. Gonna get to 53 F. Not bad for the verge of winter.
Some news begins like an ugly joke. Hear the one about the bear falling on the hunter? But it’s not a joke. It’s a stupid slash of life. Bear was treed. Had been shot by the hunter and another hunter. And it fell on the hunter, who died. I’m happy for the hunter, who after all, died doing what he loved: killing other creatures. Lester Clayton Harvey Jr.
The friend turned out to be a son, and there was a group, hunting and chasing that bear. And the son, yes, says, Dad died happy.
“Dad was doing what he loved most, bear hunting with me and some of his good friends when he was injured,” his son wrote in a post on his Facebook page Dec. 11. The post included photos of the group hunting, with a bear in some of the shots.
They don’t mention if the bear died in the story. That omission speaks volumes as they praise the hunter. Caption showing a picture of the bear accompanying the article says, “A black bear climbs up a tree. A 58-year-old Virginia man is dead after a bear fell out of tree and struck him during what appears to be a hunting accident in Lunenburg County Dec. 9, 2024.”
Which isn’t what happened. Look at they shade that tale. The man died when he shot a bear in a tree after he and a group chased the bear into the tree. Reacting to its wounds, the bear fell out of the tree, killing the man.
I notice my computer is slow today. As if it’s affected by the same low-key blahs afflicting moi. Maybe it’s a December thing. The Neurons have picked up some cosmic playing which eventually unfolds and refolds into Cream playing “Crossroads” in the morning mental music stream (Trademark pending). Ah, that’ll do.
Off to make coffee and brekkie. Find something for my spirit and body. Have a better one. I believe I’m sinking down. Cheers
All systems indicate with uniform agreement, this is Thursday, December 12, 2024, as expected.
What to expect from the weather is something else. The winds have abated. Rain heralded the morning hours. But the off-white canvas that stretched overhead from valley end to end at dawn is shredding and tearing. Blue sky and sunshine are poking through. As the cloud cover shreds, the curls turn dark and mean looking. A few coalesce into hulking, brooding bodies…but they sail on, leaving my field of vision.
It’s 41 F out, just four small degrees of separation from the projected high. It will be some variation of a late fall, early winter day. Details are still collecting.
Just saw a headline announcing that Meta — Facebook’s overlord — donated $1,000,000 to Trump’s inauguration fund. They didn’t contribute to President Biden nor Trump’s first inauguration campaign. This confirms the slide I’ve witnessed in my perspective of their ‘community standards’ enforcement. There’s a nasty authoritarian, fascist stench coming from that site. It’s also getting more sucky in its content, with ads and clickbait becoming its overwhelming offerings.
Saw my surgeon in a post-op follow up regarding my ankle surgery yesterday. He lifted movement and activity restrictions off me. Yes, some swelling is still evident, and yeah, edema swelling has caused some complication, but the general trend is going up. I’ll take that.
Heavy mental fog surrounds the morning mental music stream’s current occupant. “The Man Who Sold the World” is a David Bowie composition. Came out in 1970. The song resides on several Bowie albums in my music collection. The cover in my head was done by Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, and was released in 1995. In both, the enigmatic words are influenced by Bowie and Cobain’s vocal deliveries. Always gives me pause to consider what’s being said and fuels a search for meaning. Can’t say I always achieve that. As to why it’s in today’s mmms (Trademark sold), it might be just a general response running through my mind that so much of the world is simply selling out, so the Neurons countered with music about not selling out.
Side thought that comes with writing about Cobain and Bowie that it’s dissatisfying that both passed away. But the duality of life remains: they had great gifts and shared them with us. Of course, the full stop finish to the reflection is, this is life. We live and die. The difference is made in the gap between the beginning and end.
Let’s get positive and move through this winter of disappointment and on to a brighter spring. Coffee has planted its energy seeds in me. Time to move it, move it, move it. Here’s the music. Cheers
Michael Seidel, writer 