Let’s see if I’m awake enough to write. I’m working the polls on Tuesday; that means being there from 5 AM to about 10 PM. I’m planning on waking up around 4:15, that is much closer to when I usually go to sleep. I decided to spend the weekend shifting my internal clock. Usually I wake up at 8 AM, by chance yesterday I woke up at 7:30. I set my alarm this morning for 7:00 but then I didn’t get to sleep until after 1 AM so I figured I’d start the adjustment tomorrow. Instead, I woke up 6:30. I did fall back asleep in my chair after doing my morning computer rituals but that’s not the same. I will try and go to sleep by 11 tonight to wake up at 6:00. If the World Series game is close that won’t happen. That’s the problem, I want to watch all the games. I’d rather go out that watch baseball on TV, but I’d rather watch the World Series on TV than watch anything else on TV or sleep.
I had tentative plans for Sunday night, the Halloween party at The Porch but the friend I was planning on going with has a family emergency. I’m not thrilled with going alone but on the other hand Mark and Beth the owners know how to do Halloween and I can be home in half an hour If I leave at 10, I can be home by 10:30. I could still get 6 hours of sleep. I don’t have a costume prepared but maybe I can come up with something. I work well under pressure. It’s probably better if I go. There’s a high variance of possible outcomes. I could end up having fun listening to music and talking to people which is great, or I could find myself alone in a group of people which is the loneliest kind of lonely.
I had in person therapy yesterday which is great for my physical health, why? It means walking 6.13 miles. It could have been farther, but I was running a bit late and knew that I could catch the inbound train from Botanical Gardens and take it one stop to Fordham where I catch the train to Fordham, the train trip is less than two minutes but saves me two thirds of the walk. The problem is that the line that stops at the New Haven line I take to therapy is the only one whose tickets are not valid on the other two lines. That’s because it crosses out of New York State, so the fares have to be shared with Connecticut even though I don’t go to Connecticut. The odds of the conductor coming and taking my ticket in that minute and a half is minute; of course, that’s what happened. I was getting out of the train when she came but insisted on seeing and scanning the ticket on my phone. The onboard MetroNorth personnel are great. This wasn’t her being hard-nosed. It’s caught on camera, and she is doing the right thing. I was at fault. I showed her my ticket, she scanned it, and it came up invalid. She explained about the different lines and let me go. Is this me exercising white privilege? I have no idea. It might be how they always handle it, or it might at least be the way she always handles it. In any case I won’t do it again. I won’t rely on rules not being enforced. Mea Culpa.
I knew that therapy would be interesting because he first thing I had to do was tell her that I want to switch psychiatrists because mine is not vaccinated and doesn’t plan on ever getting vaxxed. My official excuse is that I’m immunocompromised, which is true and a consideration, but even if I weren’t I’d want to switch because I can’t trust the medical judgment of a doctor that refuses to get vaccinated. My therapist immediately entered my request and the reason into the hospital system. She thinks the only valid excuses are medical and religious. If his reason were medical, I’m sure he’d have said that he can’t get the shot, not that he doesn’t intend to. I like him and don’t want to get him in trouble, but if he’s not vaccinated, he should not be seeing patients. That is not fair to his patients and society.
I have next week’s Gord’s Gold and I’m working on the week after that as I write this; how? I’m playing my entire music collection on shuffle. That’s a great way of keeping the show diverse. There are three ways I choose music for the show;
- New Music comes in over the transom. I’ll generally play two cuts from new albums over two weeks.
- Songs that I love that come up in the shuffle or other sources I’m don’t control and haven’t played before.
- Songs that relate to songs that come up for the first two reasons. This is where the artists I know well have an advantage. One song by Fred Smith led to a seven-song set on War and Peace
There are also occasional sets I create around outside events like Halloween. But in this case, it’s because of a video that Alice Hasen posted. Every week Amazon Unlimited creates a Discovery Set for me which lives up to it’s name. I tag the songs I love, check out other songs by the artists, and then write the artists and ask them to send me the digital album. They don’t all respond but enough do to keep me in business.
The weather cleared and I should go food shopping. It’s already later than I like to leave. I have to check what I need so whether to go to Aldi or Stop & Shop. I need from both, but as I don’t have a car to leave things in, I have to do them in separate trips. I have added 12 songs to my queue today. That’s almost a full show’s worth. My queue is growing not shrinking. I add more songs than I play.
How do I sum this entry up? The common bond is that it’s all about the way my mind works. How I handle waking up early, decide whether to go to a party, deal with an unvaccinated doctor, and programming Gord’s Gold. That reminds me I never posted last week’s show, the one I’m particularly proud of.
Wise Madness 