Recent Posts

• March 05, 2021

  A Personal History of Bright Eyes

  At some point in or around the year 2001, my friend Liz gave me a burned CD copy of Bright Eyes’ Fevers & Mirrors. I only realise now looking at Wikipedia that it was more or less new at the time (and also that Saddle Creek was founded by Conor Oberst’s brother, huh). It starts with the typical Bright Eyes first track, mostly long meandering bullshit that you listen to once to see if it’s worth coming back to (and it isn’t, with the exception of I’m Wide Awake, but more on that later) and then generally consider the album to start on track 2. I really got into it, listened to it a lot. Something Vague made it into my teenage band’s live set a few times, to some extent because it was the easiest one to play and had a fun shouty bit. What I actually wanted to play was The Calendar Hung Itself but I could never master the strum pattern and singing at the same time, so there we were.

• February 26, 2021

  Sleep Routine

  The baby is now almost five months old. He is still a large boy, surpassing the bigger cat fairly quickly. He still sleeps reasonably well, though of late he’s been waking in the hour or two after being put to bed with this enraged shrieking that vibrates the walls and my skull with the same resonance. It’s loud, is what I’m saying. His being in my bedroom adds a new step to my everyday (everynight) routine. Now, instead of sleeping peacefully through the night in my own bed, I get woken up by an abrupt, upset spluttering noise somewhere in the region of 2am. When this happens, I change a nappy and shuffle out to the living room couch to try and get enough sleep to be a functioning human for work the next day. Once there, I am at the whims of its feline residents: Jones and Ripley. If they are already asleep on the couch, I basically have to accommodate them, fold it out and sleep on the edge. If I try and assert my human superiority by, for example, picking them up and moving them out of the way, they will retaliate by wandering around the room for hours, aggressively licking themselves next to my head, or straight up jumping onto me from the nearest height. Not worth it. If they’re sleeping on some other piece of furniture, I’m generally safe until they decide it’s time for breakfast, usually circa 6:30am. They let me know this by wandering around the room, aggressively licking etc. All the stuff I mentioned before except this time louder and at high speed. If I don’t get up and feed them sharpish, they inevitably wake the three-year-old, who is then terminally up, and haunts the corridors until I concede that my day is no longer upcoming, and in fact started a half hour previously.

• December 31, 2020

  On to 2021

  Alright then, what do I want to do in 2021? Here’s the first batch of things: go to a pub, go to the cinema, eat at a restaurant, play board games with friends. God help me I even want to go into the office once or twice to see what it looks like. Maybe complete a work day without changing a nappy or initiating a nap (for someone other than myself). Let’s do the numbered list though, so I can check it off at the end of ‘21.

• December 30, 2020

  Bye bye 2020

  I made some resolutions at the beginning of this year. It was a weird year, how did that go?

• June 19, 2020

  Three Months of Remote Work

  I’ve been working on my living room table for three months now. Mostly there. My back started to cave in on itself after a month or so, so I got a standing desk to put on the kitchen counter. The employer picked up half the cost so I got a nice wooden one. I’ve been cycling through those locations, moving when my watch vibrates because I haven’t moved for two hours, or when I sit at slightly the wrong angle and get shooting pains. That second one might be ageing. Standing is better for my posture, but being in the kitchen puts me very close to multiple bread products, so it’s not perfect.