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by M. J. Young

An Off Day Off

January 20, 2008 in Blogs

I think I’ve been struggling with the schedule changes of the past year. Rising at six to get the youngest on the bus was already a struggle, particularly since I was always still up to provide supper for my wife whenever she got home, which was seldom before one and often meant serving food closer to three; now the six o’clock alarm has been pushed back to five, as the houseguest son of the absented houseguest becomes my responsibility, and his bus is most of an hour earlier. Thus I am not only not good at mornings, I’m starting to lose afternoons.

I say that I take Saturday off; that’s not quite an accurate statement. I have church on Saturday mornings (Seventh Day Baptist, thank you), but I’m usually late, and later when I’m more tired. I made it in ample time to hear an excellent sermon this weekend, but it was a drag-yourself-out-of-bed effort to get there. Thus Sunday morning is the only day on which I am usually able to sleep in, and today I did so well into the afternoon. I then had disruptions dropped into my lap, and only now am preparing supper as the calendar is preparing to change. I’ve much to do, and do not relish being up late doing it. In my favor, though, there are no school buses in the morning.

I’m not going to complain about not accomplishing anything during my time off; it is, after all, time off. I stumbled upon the DVD copy of Sliding Doors, which has been missing since New Year’s Eve, but could not have been where I found it. I did a bit of Romans editing while waiting for a son who was browsing video games at Walmart, looking for a way to spend his money. I made a recording of one of the Collision songs, because I wanted one of the drummers to hear it, and because I think Brittany will have a better shot at learning the very difficult contrapuntal vocal instrumental duet if she has a good recording of it. I’m not saying this is a good recording, but it is at least an accurate rendering of what I expect of the song.

So I did a bit more than nothing, and I’m making a push at getting through the rest of today’s work tonight.

–M. J. Young

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by M. J. Young

Kudos Captured

January 18, 2008 in Blogs

Today’s mail included the notification that someone had posted to my blog–the other blog, the Harry Potter blog connected to my MySpace (which is here, if–in fact, whether or not–anyone cares). She read my predictions, and posted to the final entry, Spoiler Scorecard, to congratulate me on my predictions.

I attempted to post a reply comment, but the system wouldn’t take my comment in reply, so I messaged her instead to thank her. Apparently she found me through the Temporal Anomalies site, I presume because of the Prisoner of Azkaban analysis and not as part of the recent inrush of Terminator fans inspired by The Sarah Conner Chronicles.

Did I mention that last night’s Collision rehearsal went really well? We got through the first three songs decently (not fabulously), and then took the fourth from “nobody knows nothing” to playing it beginning to end with minimal problems, in less than an hour. I was pleased.

I’ll be even more pleased if I can get some sleep tonight and make it to church this weekend, so let me stop dawdling here and move ahead.

–M. J. Young

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by M. J. Young

Snow Delays

January 17, 2008 in Blogs

I’d like to say that I accomplished much last night, but in truth once I got through the work and the dinner I pretty much collapsed into mindless recovery for too many hours. I didn’t even sleep until after getting the morning crowd started.

Nor do I hold much hope for accomplishing aught today. It is nearly time to begin working on supper, and in three hours there will be a Collision rehearsal–if I can get people here in the snow, but even if not I will work with Adam on the bass parts. The snow will also be a factor in taking my son back to his brother’s place so he can get to work tomorrow (although it worries me, because he’ll probably have to walk to work in the snow along what is really a state highway). There’s not a lot of hope for getting more accomplished.

So let me accomplish what I can.

–M. J. Young

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by M. J. Young

Direct Accomplishments

January 16, 2008 in Blogs

I did have some time to spare last night, but apart from taking a turn at the dishes and making sure everyone got supper, I put most of it into business matters: I attended to polishing the meeting minutes for the two recent directors meetings which the secretary missed. I also had to run an errand which had me sitting somewhere long enough to do a bit of editing on the Romans exegesis.

This morning I managed to complete the overly complicated registration process for IMDB board to post concerning The Sarah Conner Chronicles–a show I did not watch and have not decided to watch, but for which I’ve already been contacted and questioned. I posted there in response to a thread in which my Terminator temporal anomalies page was mentioned.

I’m hoping to get a bit of extra time today also, but we’ll see how that goes.

–M. J. Young

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by M. J. Young

Clipping Along

January 15, 2008 in Blogs

I feel like I’m ahead of things today.

I probably have no practical basis for that feeling. After all, it is Tuesday, and I am supposed to be here pretty early on Tuesdays, as most of my Tuesday work is slated to follow. On the other hand, in recent weeks and in recent days I have been so far behind schedule that I have been going to bed after three, even after four, and pulling myself back into action at five, trying to stay awake until around seven (and last night was not different). However, I am awake, I am functioning, and I am progressing. I have even e-mailed one of our Collision songs to the drummer.

What will I do, being so far ahead of things? I will remember not to enumerate the total quantity of barnyard foul during their period of incubation, and focus on what I am actually doing instead of what I might do if somehow I wind up with time to do more.

–M. J. Young

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by M. J. Young

I Think I Made It

January 14, 2008 in Blogs

This was a busier Monday than usual, as my afternoon was tapped for dealing with some important matters related to the son of a houseguest. I still had to take my mother-in-law to the store, but with the afternoon shot and supper to do it was nine at night before I reached her. Then on the way home I picked up my son from his brother–which is not really on the way, but completely the opposite direction, but still a lot less driving to pick him up while I’m there already than to make a separate trip for him.

I squeezed in the e-mail while making supper, which thanks to the premier of The Sarah Connor Chronicles (which I did not watch) had several letters concerning the Temporal Anomalies site, one of which was calling my attention to a special forum for it at the IMDB web site. I have begun the process of registering for that site so I can see that forum.

I ate supper while my computer was rebooting, which is a commentary both on how fast I wolf down my meals and on how slowly my computer functions, and now I’m trying to finish here and get some sleep before tomorrow arrives officially.

Oh, I’ve also sent a couple of music files to the drummer, so he can begin to get some idea of what I am hoping Collision will sound like. He did hear the one that is on the web, Holocaust, but I don’t know whether he got either of the ones I e-mailed him. Even so, I am going to attempt to e-mail another tomorrow, and am working on getting more of the music files converted to mp3 format (something I have not been able to accomplish on my computer, for reasons I have not been able to determine) so I can send him more.

–M. J. Young

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by M. J. Young

A List of Apologies

January 13, 2008 in Blogs

I will begin to apologize here; I will have more apologies to make on the forum. I had planned to take a son’s girlfriend home, and while that far from here visit an old friend to talk about Collision, music, and drummers, then return home to finish my work Friday night. Part of the derailment was due to the fact that wives always retain the prerogative to rewrite all plans to suit themselves; part of it was that it took longer to do some of the steps than anyone anticipated. Oh, and the part about making the wrong turn on Route 46 and going fifteen or twenty minutes in the wrong direction when we had been not more than a few blocks from our destination also helped. In any case, it was almost dawn by the time I got to bed, and I did not get my visit, although the girl was delivered to her abode sometime after one in the morning, and I do not wish even to consider how far after one that might have been.

I had intended then to go to church, take the trash to the dump, and do the grocery shopping, and including in the cracks the delivery and retrieval of our dialysis patient to the hospital. I did not make it to church, and each of those tasks ran either long or late, and there was a phone call interrupting the process at a point that did not need interrupting. By the time I sat down to do my Saturday morning study in Corinthians, I fell asleep in front of the computer; I gave up attempting even to make dinner, bought pizza, did some Romans editing while waiting, and attempted to get some sleep. Even this was derailed, as once I got to my bed I became absorbed in an episode of House I had never seen, followed by the Hitchhiker’s movie which despite being a disappointment to fans of the BBC miniseries was still worth watching, and then I was rousted a few times for various reasons ranging from being offered ice cream to needing to track down someone’s buzzing alarm clock.

There was a directors meeting today, so that again set me back; but business is part of the job, and it was a reasonably productive meeting.

Now I’ve got to go offer apologies to people on the forum, and try to finish my work at a decent hour. I’ve been warned that tomorrow is not going to run on schedule, so I’ll need to get some sleep tonight if I’m going to function through the day.

–M. J. Young

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by M. J. Young

Moving Target

January 10, 2008 in Blogs

When I went to bed this morning, there was still a lot of debate about how we were going to get everyone where they were supposed to be when they needed to be there today; when I awoke this afternoon, it had all changed, because one person’s plans shifted completely and everything else had to be rearranged around that.

On the bright side, it probably gave me an extra hour or two that will not be consumed by delivering people, even though I still have at least four to five hours of delivering ahead.

I also have a Collision rehearsal, the first with four of us at once in quite a while; it will be early this evening, and we have a lot to discuss including one of the most unusual problems I have ever had with drummers–we seem to have too many of them, and we need to resolve what to do about that.

I’ve got other things to prepare, though, so let me slip away and slip back, and maybe we can put everything in place in time.

–M. J. Young

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by M. J. Young

Song Recovery

January 9, 2008 in Blogs

I never did get the call to make another trip to the hospital last night; I do not know the circumstances.

I am finding it difficult to adjust to the shifts in schedules–being up late, getting up early, going back to bed. Looking at the clock, I’m not certain why it is so late as it is (after seven thirty) and I am only now arriving here. Of course, my e-mail has been completed, and there were a couple of notes requiring extended attention, but even so I feel like I’m being pushed later.

A friend has managed to strip the twelve songs off my first home-made CD, and has e-mailed them to me as MP3s; five arrived. Now I have to consider whether to resume posting these to the web site–if I can remember which songs have already been posted, now a couple years after that was disrupted. Even so, I’m glad to have the MP3 versions, as I’ve been unable to pull songs off the CDs myself, and people have wanted to hear some of these.

Now if I can remember who wanted what songs, I’ll be in good shape.

–M. J. Young

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by M. J. Young

Medically Amergent

January 8, 2008 in Blogs

Our dialysis-supported houseguest needed support today; he cannot really drive himself to dialysis (or rather, he cannot drive himself back from it, which comes to the same problem), and he had no alternate transportation. It thus fell to me to deliver him there early this afternoon and retrieve him early this evening–which I would do without complaint.

So why am I complaining? Well, I drove right past the bank on the first trip, and completely forgot that I had a check in my pocket which definitely needed to be in the account and could not really wait for evening, so after I got home from the first trip I had to go out again–which is, of course, entirely my fault. Then when I got home again I was informed that one of our other houseguests was going to need transportation to the hospital, too, and I needed to talk to him about it. I took care of a few other things, then asked if he wanted to catch a ride with me when I picked up the dialysis patient. Apparently that would be too soon–this emergency was not so emergent that the patient couldn’t wait for an important phone call first.

So here I am starting my work late on a Tuesday, usually the heaviest day of online work, and I’m expecting to be interrupted to make yet another trip to the hospital, and either stay for hours (I have my Romans editing ready) or come home and go back again yet later. Days like this cause me to hesitate to start anything until I know when the interruptions are going to happen, but I can’t know that so there’s no point worrying about it.

Let’s get something done, anyway.

–M. J. Young

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