Oh hey, I didn’t see you there.
In fact, I think I forgot all about you. My last post said I moved over to medium.com, but I’m not posting there anymore either. Back in March 2017 I went back to wordpress.com and… well… I forgot to come here and share a link.
Better late than never? Maybe?
Gee, I hope you weren’t sitting here waiting for me to come back. Ummm… sorry.
Go away. I’m (probably temporarily) done here. New posts (for the time being at least) are here. So don’t keep hanging around here, there won’t be anything new (for now).
I feel like such a nerd. I should just stop this stupid blogging garbage all together.
I’m not saying I’m done here, but the last two posts I’ve made haven’t been here.
It was 9:30. I thought to myself, I wonder what the score of the Red Sox game is right now. Then I remembered that they are in Seattle and the game doesn’t start until 10:10.
I hate west coast games so much.
November 2008 to December 2012. Four years. That’s how long I used Blogger before I got tired of it and wanted something different.
December 2012 to August 2016. Almost four years. That’s how long I’ve used WordPress.com and I’m really starting to get tired of it and want something new.
I want something different, but I don’t know what, and I’m starting to think there is nothing out there that is going to get me excited about all of this again. I tried ghost.org today and their editor absolutely RULES. Unfortunately it’s a paid service and their cheapest tier is $29/month. Yeah, thanks but no thanks. I want a personal blog, not a full blown business site. Give me a break.
I like medium.com a lot. It’s just… I don’t know. It’s more like creating a magazine than just a goofy ideas blog. For some reason it seems really wrong to me to just post a photo, even though they look so good on medium. I feel like anything smaller than an essay that takes 5+ minutes to read is missing the point. I hate to say it, but if I want free hosting and a bit of social interaction, and I’m through with both blogger and WordPress.com, then tumblr might be the only viable option left. I’ll be damned though if I’m going to put any more of my eggs in a yahoo basket. Or should I say, a Verizon basket. Ugh. I am already up to my eyeballs in Flickr. Marisa Meyer, I had such faith in you. Now look at things. What a mess. No, I’m not moving my stuff over to tumblr. That ship has very much sailed.
What else is there? What other options do I have? I don’t want to write a platform myself, I just want to post goofy shit. Do I need to go back in time to the late 90s and use live journal? What was the other one, typepad? I don’t know what to do. Maybe I should just give it up. The whole idea of a personal blog is ancient history anyway. This sucks.
This morning I experienced two things for the first time ever. I will now share, because that’s what oversharing nerds like me do.
First: It was really muggy in the house this morning. The temperature was okay (low 70’s) but the humidity was off the scale. There I was, trying to get dressed but sweating so much I couldn’t stay dry. I did what I usually do on days like this. I cranked the air conditioner and stood in front of a vent until I could get dressed. We have a new thermostat that is internet connected. It has a function that lets you set a low temp and a high temp and it tries to keep the temp in the house in between. It was set with a low of 70 and a high of 73. I wanted lots of cold air so I changed the range to a low of 64 and a high of 67. It worked. The cold air came out in full force.
Then I left for work without changing it back. DAMN IT! I was at the gas station filling up the Nissan when I remembered. I tried using the new Apple Watch app but it wasn’t working. I was standing at the pump and my phone was inside the car and the connection was kinda weak so I wasn’t able to fix anything. Once I got in the car I used the iPhone app and set the range back to 70-73.
I set the thermostat in my living room while I was at a gas station half a mile from home. Yeah, that’s a first for me. Welcome to the 21st century!
Second: If the thermostat is a 21st century thing, then this is more like a 1920’s thing. It wasn’t anything I did, just something I saw.
Traffic on route 93 South was a little slow today, but not too bad. Once I hit route 128 South though it gummed up pretty bad. For those of you who don’t live in the Glorious Land of Eastern Massachusetts, when I say MA route 128 I am referring to what the rest of the East Coast calls US 95. You know, the road that runs all the way from Maine to Florida.
The junction between US 93 and MA 128/US 95 is a little north of Boston. Ten miles or so, give or take. As I was getting to the end of the ramp onto 128 I saw something that I have never seen before. It was like something out of a Life Magazine from the Great Depression. There was a guy standing in the breakdown lane. He was holding a piece of cardboard, probably torn off of a box, with “New York” written on it. I kid you not, there was a guy standing on the side of the biggest highway on the East coast trying to bum a ride from Boston to New York. That’s better than 200 miles.
Seeing a hitchhiker is pretty rare these days. Seeing one on an Interstate highway with a sign denoting his destination is so rare that I am sure I’ve never seen it. When I was a kid I knew a couple of guys who would hitchhike from their homes in South Tewksbury all the way to the bowling alley near the Lowell line (near where the Home Depot is today). I thought bumming a ride that far was a death wish. This dude today put that to shame!
Last night was the first band practice since the July 1st show. We didn’t plan on taking a whole month off, it just sort of happened. We planned on learning a bunch of new songs. One went okay. The others were weaker than usual. We also tried learning something at the practice. Not sure how that worked out. I can say that one of the new songs is a Beatles song, so hopefully my beloved wife will be happier out our next show. (love you sweetie!)
None of that is out of the ordinary. One other thing was. It was weird. Very weird. I brought my Strat. Every now and then I feel the need to bring it to practice to sort of justify the fact that I payed money for it. You know, see wallet? I’m using it with the band. It wasn’t a waste of money. The weird thing was how it felt. It felt… good. It almost felt natural. I’ve always said, since the day I bought the thing, that it is so different than the two Gibsons that it never really felt right to me. Last night though… it felt good. The action is still a little high, and the bridge is much harder to mute with the palm of my hand, but otherwise. It felt good playing it. I can’t believe I’m saying it, but playing a Fender Stratocaster felt good.
What’s wrong with me?
I was going to post this before work this morning. It’s still fitting after the Red Sox had their very quiet, Chris Sale free trade deadline at 4pm today.
Getting it out of my system today. Back to Gibson reality starting tomorrow.
Well then… I just learned that I’ve used 86% of my free storage for my wordpress.com account. Hmmm… might be moving on to something new soon.
Inside the Red Head's Head 