Where were we?
A brief check in...
My Dell is effectively a wreck, especially the fucked up charging jack, which has been repaired multiple times. It’s still got a lot of my writing, my ITunes, my downloaded Karaoke tracks and the software I use to rip and burn Karaoke discs. It’s also for Zoom meetings due to an ancient and decrepit (not unlike myself) camera. I look like a gray ghost.
The HP I inherited from my deceased sister-in-law is functional for downloads, Yoga classes on Zoom, 12 step meetings on Zoom, email, watching video, but has very little bandwidth and can go seriously wonky if I try to any serious typing on it. Also I don’t have Word on the HP, I have it on the Dell, so I generally have to revert to Google docs.
At some point, both of those are going to go completely tits up, so I need to off my arse and get everything I care about (especially the QI’s that have long since been taken off YouTube, if they were ever there) onto some Flash drives.
There’s the IPhone of course. I’m still holding on to my big, clunky 6 for dear life, including getting a new battery during early lock-down, if I recall correctly, but I know I’m fighting the march of planned obsolescence.
I’m currently abstaining from YouTube on my phone, or even recreational clip binges on the laptop or IPad. I’m just that much of a fucking addict. I had to give up all the monologues (Colbert, Kimmel, Seth Myers, Bill Maher, Jon Oliver, James Corden, Trevor Noah.) I can’t watch news and apparently I can no longer even watch people joking about news. I had to give up “Dodo” videos of dogs being rescued.
The last vestige of digital distraction addiction is FaceBook. I’m paring the list of who and what I follow down to the bone and even then I can lose hours or catch myself and then have to basically rat myself out and report that I am putting the phone down.
So today’s post is coming to you from the new-ish iPad. No, I can’t afford an IPad. I cashed out the “rewards” that Amex gives out periodically as pats on the back. (Think green stamps, if you’re old enough for that to mean anything.) I’m not loving the mobile app version of LJ at all, so I’m using regular old LJ on an IPad with my dinky little blue-tooth keyboard, so I have the affection of actually typing.
We celebrated 31 wonderful years in September. I haven’t killed him….yet.
Back in October 2020, I posted about the chess obsession. That’s died down a bit.
Just a few of the things he’s taken up since then (all entailing some kind of purchase)
Blues harmonica, a re-interest in Ukulele, causing him to buy an INCREDIBLY expensive ukulele and thereby resulting in a trip to Hawaii to pick it up, an expensive calculator (to do what exactly, I have no idea) and as of two weeks ago…..BIRD WATCHING. He’s already bought an insanely expensive camera for this and I’m home right now on a PTO day waiting for his new binoculars to be delivered so that they won’t wake him up by ringing the bell while he’s sleeping. (Did I mention the microscope, terrarium, Trike, etc last time?) He’s also growing his hair out, using minoxidil, and studying multiple languages on Duo Lingo.
This is all basically Covid crazy. They tried to re-start his Irish music sessions on Sunday nights at the Chieftain, but there’s no way to do with the current restrictions. You can’t play flute in a mask.
So he’s lost his major form of social interaction and is less inclined to want to practice when there’s no idea when the sessions might start up again.
I was always more worried about him going stir-crazy than myself…well I was more worried about me being along at home with food, but I have my program and Zoom meetings are a thing.
Turned 57 on October 23. Still not binging. Still working for Amex at the Centurion Lounge.
Still practicing Yoga. It looks the physical Laughing Lotus studio is NOT going to re-open. I’m gutted, but there is Zoom. I won’t start looking for a new studio until physical classes without masks are a thing.
***Here comes the offensive part.****I hate masks. I have to wear it for work and I wear it where there’s no getting in without it, but I don’t wear it when and wherever possible. I’m double vaxxed and boostered with not a single side effect on any occasion. My feeling is get the trucks out and forcibly vaccinate. Fuck these people. No, really. If this is a Gaia Hypothesis situation, we need to get everyone vaccinated or dead ASAP. I want my life back. *******End of offensive part.
In the meantime, Zoom 12 step meetings. Zoom yoga. Lots of walking. Some run/walking. Chanting. Still practicing my Harmonium and trying to learn Ukulele
Karaoke is sort of back. Mint opens at five. Masks required for singing, not for sitting at the bar.
I sang unmasked at Delirium last Monday and unmasked, but with Plexiglass in Honolulu.
Great trip by the way. Lot’s of food negotiation, but I didn’t binge (MIRACLE!) and I didn’t get sunburned. That’s about as much as I can ask of Hawaii. And Karaoke. :)
Got to see
chocolate_frapp at the Mint a few weeks back (maybe months at this point) and had a meetup for the first time in freaking YEARS with hllangel on Saturday. I’m grateful not to have alienated every single person I came in contact with both in real life on LJ in those years. (No doubt there are still amends to be made.)
Not writing for
yuletide this year, unless one of the Pinch Hits strikes a chord with me or my dentist…even then it would be a treat, not a pinch-hit assignment. (I am still getting kudos for last years sock-produced treat, which is nice.)
I did do Book Swap and received The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, which I’m super excited to read.
Current “fandoms.”
Vera
Shetland (Shipping Jimmy/Duncan)
Taskmaster (OMG!)
All of Michael Portillo’s travel shows, mostly so I can gape in horror at the color combinations. (And cringe at the dancing and Empire Apologism.)
Anything presented by Lucy Worsely
Mallorca Files
Death In Paradise
Brokenwood Mysteries
And of course all my panel shows, especially QI
Enjoyed, but not enough to be fannish
Detectorists
All of Susan Calman’s travel shows
Tried and couldn’t finish or finished, but couldn’t care or like
Shakespeare and Hathaway
Vexed
Rake
Marcella
Mystery Road
Loch Ness
Dublin Murders
Given those two lists….Should I try “Line of Duty?”
Not sure what category to put Jay’s Pub Quiz in. He can be a dork and we hate the way he phrases some of the questions, but Jimmy Carr, Ivor Graham and a bunch of others who started trivia games/pub quiz videos during lock-down are gone and Jay is still doing it, so we watch obsessively and do the happy dance when we get the connection right, even if we’re also yelling vituperation at the screen the whole time.
Podcast obsessions
Cocaine and Rhinestones
Beyond Yacht Rock
Griefcast
Your Favorite Band Sucks
Under The Skin with Russell Brand
Blind Boy Podcast
And of course-No Such Thing as a Fish.
My Dell is effectively a wreck, especially the fucked up charging jack, which has been repaired multiple times. It’s still got a lot of my writing, my ITunes, my downloaded Karaoke tracks and the software I use to rip and burn Karaoke discs. It’s also for Zoom meetings due to an ancient and decrepit (not unlike myself) camera. I look like a gray ghost.
The HP I inherited from my deceased sister-in-law is functional for downloads, Yoga classes on Zoom, 12 step meetings on Zoom, email, watching video, but has very little bandwidth and can go seriously wonky if I try to any serious typing on it. Also I don’t have Word on the HP, I have it on the Dell, so I generally have to revert to Google docs.
At some point, both of those are going to go completely tits up, so I need to off my arse and get everything I care about (especially the QI’s that have long since been taken off YouTube, if they were ever there) onto some Flash drives.
There’s the IPhone of course. I’m still holding on to my big, clunky 6 for dear life, including getting a new battery during early lock-down, if I recall correctly, but I know I’m fighting the march of planned obsolescence.
I’m currently abstaining from YouTube on my phone, or even recreational clip binges on the laptop or IPad. I’m just that much of a fucking addict. I had to give up all the monologues (Colbert, Kimmel, Seth Myers, Bill Maher, Jon Oliver, James Corden, Trevor Noah.) I can’t watch news and apparently I can no longer even watch people joking about news. I had to give up “Dodo” videos of dogs being rescued.
The last vestige of digital distraction addiction is FaceBook. I’m paring the list of who and what I follow down to the bone and even then I can lose hours or catch myself and then have to basically rat myself out and report that I am putting the phone down.
So today’s post is coming to you from the new-ish iPad. No, I can’t afford an IPad. I cashed out the “rewards” that Amex gives out periodically as pats on the back. (Think green stamps, if you’re old enough for that to mean anything.) I’m not loving the mobile app version of LJ at all, so I’m using regular old LJ on an IPad with my dinky little blue-tooth keyboard, so I have the affection of actually typing.
We celebrated 31 wonderful years in September. I haven’t killed him….yet.
Back in October 2020, I posted about the chess obsession. That’s died down a bit.
Just a few of the things he’s taken up since then (all entailing some kind of purchase)
Blues harmonica, a re-interest in Ukulele, causing him to buy an INCREDIBLY expensive ukulele and thereby resulting in a trip to Hawaii to pick it up, an expensive calculator (to do what exactly, I have no idea) and as of two weeks ago…..BIRD WATCHING. He’s already bought an insanely expensive camera for this and I’m home right now on a PTO day waiting for his new binoculars to be delivered so that they won’t wake him up by ringing the bell while he’s sleeping. (Did I mention the microscope, terrarium, Trike, etc last time?) He’s also growing his hair out, using minoxidil, and studying multiple languages on Duo Lingo.
This is all basically Covid crazy. They tried to re-start his Irish music sessions on Sunday nights at the Chieftain, but there’s no way to do with the current restrictions. You can’t play flute in a mask.
So he’s lost his major form of social interaction and is less inclined to want to practice when there’s no idea when the sessions might start up again.
I was always more worried about him going stir-crazy than myself…well I was more worried about me being along at home with food, but I have my program and Zoom meetings are a thing.
Turned 57 on October 23. Still not binging. Still working for Amex at the Centurion Lounge.
Still practicing Yoga. It looks the physical Laughing Lotus studio is NOT going to re-open. I’m gutted, but there is Zoom. I won’t start looking for a new studio until physical classes without masks are a thing.
***Here comes the offensive part.****I hate masks. I have to wear it for work and I wear it where there’s no getting in without it, but I don’t wear it when and wherever possible. I’m double vaxxed and boostered with not a single side effect on any occasion. My feeling is get the trucks out and forcibly vaccinate. Fuck these people. No, really. If this is a Gaia Hypothesis situation, we need to get everyone vaccinated or dead ASAP. I want my life back. *******End of offensive part.
In the meantime, Zoom 12 step meetings. Zoom yoga. Lots of walking. Some run/walking. Chanting. Still practicing my Harmonium and trying to learn Ukulele
Karaoke is sort of back. Mint opens at five. Masks required for singing, not for sitting at the bar.
I sang unmasked at Delirium last Monday and unmasked, but with Plexiglass in Honolulu.
Great trip by the way. Lot’s of food negotiation, but I didn’t binge (MIRACLE!) and I didn’t get sunburned. That’s about as much as I can ask of Hawaii. And Karaoke. :)
Got to see
chocolate_frapp at the Mint a few weeks back (maybe months at this point) and had a meetup for the first time in freaking YEARS with hllangel on Saturday. I’m grateful not to have alienated every single person I came in contact with both in real life on LJ in those years. (No doubt there are still amends to be made.)Not writing for
yuletide this year, unless one of the Pinch Hits strikes a chord with me or my dentist…even then it would be a treat, not a pinch-hit assignment. (I am still getting kudos for last years sock-produced treat, which is nice.) I did do Book Swap and received The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman, which I’m super excited to read.
Current “fandoms.”
Vera
Shetland (Shipping Jimmy/Duncan)
Taskmaster (OMG!)
All of Michael Portillo’s travel shows, mostly so I can gape in horror at the color combinations. (And cringe at the dancing and Empire Apologism.)
Anything presented by Lucy Worsely
Mallorca Files
Death In Paradise
Brokenwood Mysteries
And of course all my panel shows, especially QI
Enjoyed, but not enough to be fannish
Detectorists
All of Susan Calman’s travel shows
Tried and couldn’t finish or finished, but couldn’t care or like
Shakespeare and Hathaway
Vexed
Rake
Marcella
Mystery Road
Loch Ness
Dublin Murders
Given those two lists….Should I try “Line of Duty?”
Not sure what category to put Jay’s Pub Quiz in. He can be a dork and we hate the way he phrases some of the questions, but Jimmy Carr, Ivor Graham and a bunch of others who started trivia games/pub quiz videos during lock-down are gone and Jay is still doing it, so we watch obsessively and do the happy dance when we get the connection right, even if we’re also yelling vituperation at the screen the whole time.
Podcast obsessions
Cocaine and Rhinestones
Beyond Yacht Rock
Griefcast
Your Favorite Band Sucks
Under The Skin with Russell Brand
Blind Boy Podcast
And of course-No Such Thing as a Fish.