I haven't disappeared

I haven't disappeared again from my regular posts but I won't be around until the beginning of the year.

We were sitting around on Christmas day, talking about how last year we were heading to Florida and about how great of a trip was. Next thing you know, we were dreaming about how we should have gone this year. After about an hour or so of talking ourselves into it. We made plans to leave for Florida the next day.

So I've been in Saint Augustine for the last couple of days and will be for a few more.

Anyways, just wanted to update you and I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a happy and safe New Year.

Music Monday's #3

Anything & Everything

The majority of my listening comes from the playlist above. It currently sits at 3,564 songs, which is up 11 from last week. I believe I added a Christmas album from Colbie Caillet that I ran across.

jccsst1022

I averaged 68 songs a day, which is one for than last week. I'm sure next weeks will be down since I'm not working this week.

• Tuesday (89 songs)
• Wednesday (100 songs)
• Thursday (101 songs)
• Friday (60 songs)
• Saturday (23 songs)
• Sunday (59 songs)
• Monday (38 songs)

You only get my top 8 artists because there is 13 artists tied with 4 songs. As you can see by the ton of Taylor Swift songs, I've had my wife in the car with me a bunch.

I only had 1 song I heard twice this week, go figure it was a Taylor Swift song.

Last Song of the Day

• Tuesday - I Can Love You Like That by All-4-One
• Wednesday - Leaving Love Behind by Zac Brown Band
• Thursday - Cryin' Like a Bitch by Godsmack
• Friday - All These Things by Harry Connick Jr
• Saturday - Sister by the Nixons
• Sunday - So Happy by Theory of a Deadman
• Monday - Jane Says by Jane's Addiction

I'm off work this week and next so I'm sure my numbers will go way down for a couple of weeks.

Funny Friday #3

Just a quick of the funnies I posted this week on the FB page.

We'll start off with a little education.

Next up is also in the, it's funny because it's true.

Last but not least, this is something that I would do. 

You think they would have a range on how close you can be to the jukebox to use it.

Perfect!

If you knew me growing up, then you know, I never went to school. I skipped, all the time. My freshman year, I went 4 days a week. I bet I missed close to all of the Mondays. My mom always told me that it would reflect on my work record, my response was usually, if they paid me to go to school, I'd be there every day.

Well, like most things my mom said, she was right. I started working and I called in all the time. I never got fired for it because I was a good enough worker when I was there but I certainly couldn't have argued it if someone had fired me.

This post isn't about how stupid I was, this post is more about how far I've come. Today was my last day of work for the year. I have the next 2 weeks off. Paid at that because I was able to save enough vacation days and personal days to cover all 8 days that I wouldn't have gotten paid. I was able to save all those days because I had perfect attendance this year. No call ins, no tardies, no leaving early. PERFECT!

Now I realize I'm not the first person to do this, there's probably a ton of people who haven't missed in a couple of years, maybe even some of you. For me, this is a big deal. I'm proud of it. I was close the last couple of years. One year I got sick for a few days, another I had to have my gall bladder removed, not this year though, I was there, every single day.

Maybe it's because I accomplished something that I set out to do. Not saying I fail at every thing I try but more that I don't really set goals in my life. I prefer to just live it. The last goal I had was to buy a house and we did that 3 years ago. Maybe in another 3 years, I'll have another goal. For now, I'm bragging about this one.

Walking Wednesday #3

Just a quick post today.

Day 1081 - Lakehead, CA (3626.3 miles)

I passed my previous years mileage this past week. My highest in the last few years (since I've been keeping track) was last year at 1209.4 miles. I'm currently at 1238.1 for this year. I only have 2 more days of work this year which is where I get most of my mileage. We'll see if I do anything as far as exercise the 2 weeks I'm off. If I had to guess, I'd say no, but I have been contemplating doing some walking again. Lord knows my fat ass needs it. We'll see.

Music Monday #2

I'm a slacker and I missed Music Monday yesterday. I only had a couple of hours sleep the night before and ended up fighting sleep all night so I didn't do anything. I didn't even post a Last Song of the Day and I can pump one of those out pretty quick.

Anything & Everything

The majority of my listening comes from the playlist above. It currently has 3,553 songs on it, which is 10 higher than it was last week.

jccsst1022

The link above goes to my profile on Last.fm which is where these stats come from. You can follow what I listen to there.

I averaged 67 songs a day this past week. You can see on Saturday and Sunday my listening was up because I left the house.

• Wednesday - 65 songs
• Thursday - 80 songs
• Friday - 83 songs
• Saturday - 40 songs
• Sunday - 35 songs
• Monday - 78 songs
• Tuesday - 88 songs

You get the top 16 artists since the last 9 tied. I had 310 different artists this week compared to last weeks 280. My top 3 last week aren't even on this weeks list.

Last week I only had 1 song that played twice, this week I have 2. I love that I had 467 songs and I only heard 2 twice, that's a great week for me. Both of these songs were listed on new albums so I listened to them there and realized that I already have them on my playlist (I assume when they were released as singles). I like my music with variety.

Last Song of the Day

• Wednesday - Back 2 Good by Matchbox Twenty
• Thursday - Boulevard of Broken Dreams by Green Day
• Friday - Time Ta Jam by DC Talk
• Saturday - Hello Sunshine by Bruce Springsteen
• Sunday - Harvester of Sorrow by Metallica
• Monday - the Long Run by Eagles
• Tuesday - I Can Love You Like That by All-4-One

Funny Friday #2

I didn't really do much on my Facebook page so I don't have much to post today but I will tell you that I got bored last night so I was playing on my Alexa App and set up a few routines. So now, when I leave work, Alexa tells my wife that

"Your tired husband just left work and is coming home to relax. He'll see you in a little over half an hour from now."

Then when I pull into my neighborhood, she tells her

"This is your last chance to get your boyfriend out of the house."

Last but not least, when I pull in the garage, she announces

"The master of the house has returned." 

I don't think it amused my wife much but I thought it was pretty funny. I haven't deleted them so she'll eventually get tired of hearing them.

Anyways, the reason I'm here and it's a quicky because I only posted 1 thing this week.

It's funny because it's true.

TV Thursdays #2

Between the wife and I, we watch a ton of TV. We both record our own shows as well as stuff we watch together. She generally watches her shows while I'm at work and after I go to bed. When I'm home, we watch our shows and when we run out of those, she has to watch my shows. Here's everything we watched this week.

• All Rise
• Beat Shazam
• Black Lightning
• Blackish
• Bless This Mess
• Bob Hearts Abishola
• Carnival Row (Amazon Prime)
• Carol's Second Act
• Castle Rock (Hulu)
• Charmed
• Ellen
• Evil
• God Friended Me
• Hawaii Five-0
• Live PD x 2
• Live Rescue
• Madam Secretary
• Magnum PI
• Merry Happy Whatever x 8 (Netflix)
• Mixedish
• Mom
• Reprisal (Hulu)
• Saturday Night Live
• Schooled
• Shameless x 7 (Netflix)
• Single Parents
• Supernatural
• the Blacklist
• the Carbonaro Effect
• the Conner's
• the Dead Files
• the Mandalorian (Disney+)
• the Moody's x 4
• the Neighborhood
• the Rookie
• the Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon
• the Unicorn
• Treadstone
• Watchmen (HBO)

Ellen, Saturday Night Live and the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon are all my wife's shows, everything else is ours or mine. We just started Shameless and it's in its 9th season (I think) so since there are a ton of shows to catch up on, that's our go to when we have a lot of time and nothing to watch on the DVR. So you'll probably see that show come up a lot with a lot of the shows heading out until the beginning of the year.

• Brittany Runs A Marathon (Amazon Prime)
• Into the Dark: A Nasty Piece of Work (Hulu)
• Wonder Woman (On Demand)
• Solo: A Star Wars Story (Netflix)

We watched 3 of those movies in one day, just wasn't in the mood to watch regular TV. Into the Dark is technically like a show as they release one periodically (beginning of each month) but they are generally around an hour and a half so I consider them movies.

Wonder Woman we had seen before (in the theaters) but the TV ended up on part of it and we decided to find it somewhere and watch it with less commercials so we found it on demand.

I like Solo a lot more than I thought I would. I'm picky on the Star Wars movies and I didn't think I would care for it but I was wrong. Watching the Mandalorian each week had me in a Star Wars mood so I finally watched Solo.

• Syracuse Orangemen at Michigan Wolverines (Women's Basketball)
• Iowa Hawkeyes at Michigan Wolverines (Men's Basketball)
• Michigan Wolverines at Illinois Fighting Illini (Men's Basketball)

As you can tell, basketball season is upon us. We won the top 2 and lost the last game. I didn't realize the women were ranked at the time so they were better than I was was expecting. That was the first game this year of theirs that they broadcasted. The men spanked Iowa at home but then underperformed in Champagne and got beat.

There you have it for another week. We'll probably start binge watching more shows in the next week or so with the shows going on hiatus for the holidays. Maybe even some more movies.

Walking Wednesday #2

It's time for another walking post? Has it been a week?

Day 1074 - Mt. Shasta, CA (3596.4 miles)

For those that don't know, the above number reflects the last 3 years. Getting ready to start a 4th year in a couple of weeks.

I mentioned last week, I think, that I don't really walk to exercise anymore, that most of my steps come from work. Well, I'm thinking about changing that. I feel like I might be putting on some more weight and being as I'm just a touch south of 300 lbs, I really can't afford more weight. The problem with that is, unlike what it says above, I'm not in California. I'm in northern Indiana. When I went to work this morning, the wind chill was 1°, it has only supposed to get in the 20's today. While I need to start walking for exercise, I have no plans of freezing my ass off to do so.

Right now, the only thing I can come up with is hitting the mall on my way home (I drive right past it) and become a mall walker. Even if it's just one lap around it, it would be better then nothing. It's not an overly huge mall so I have no idea how far a lap would be. The hardest part about walking the wall will be smelling Ben's Pretzels when I go by.

I also have the option of stopping by my mom's and using her stationary bike. My knees don't do very well on a bike though so I'm not real keen on doing that either.

I found out today that we're working 10 hour days the rest of the week so we'll see if I feel like stopping. I might wait until next week to start. If I start at all, I know how I am. I really struggle with motivation.

The good news is, I'm only 1.2 miles off of what I walked last year so I should go past that tomorrow.

Music Mondays

Anything & Everything

If you want to see how I generally listen to music, check out the top of this post. The link above is to my A&E playlist, it currently has 3,543 songs on it. It's what I listen to most of the time.

jccsst1022

In case you don't know what the above link is, it's a website that tracks the music you listen to, which is where these stats all come from for the last week. The link goes to my profile.

Let's start with how many songs I listened to in the last week. It's hard to see the numbers so here you go.

• Tuesday - 61 songs
• Wednesday - 83 songs
• Thursday - 77 songs
• Friday - 102 songs
• Saturday - 27 songs
• Sunday - 9 songs
• Monday - 118 songs

I generally average 60-80 songs at work, depending on what I got going on, like meetings and such. Friday was higher because the line was short so I racked/unracked a bunch. Today was higher because the line was short again so I ran wastewater. As you can see, I don't usually listen to a bunch on the weekends unless I go somewhere.

Out of the 280 artists I listened to over the last week, these are the top 10, technically 14 because of the tie for 8th included so many artists. Brett Young is fairly new to the playlist so I'm guessing that's why his songs keep popping up. John Legend is on there for a bunch because I just added his Christmas album.

Out of the 476 songs I listened to, the above song is the only one that I listened to more than once and it was only twice, and that was a week apart. Tuesday last week and then again today. That's how I like it, I hate hearing the same songs over and over.

Last Song of the Day

If you've been around here before then you know the above blog is where I post the last song that I listened to. Here's links to the last weeks posts. I have 983 songs on the blog.

• Tuesday - Don't Fence Me In by Ella Fitzgerald
• Wednesday - How To Save A Life by the Fray
• Thursday - Tennessee by Arrested Development
• Friday - Lucy by Skillet
• Saturday - California Dreaming by Hollywood Undead
• Sunday - Lion by Hollywood Undead
• Monday - Angel Eyes by Love and Theft

That's it, a look into my life as far as the music goes. Follow me on last.fm and you can see everything that I listen to.

Funny Fridays

If you follow my Facebook page for this blog, then you've already seen these. If you don't, then enjoy this weeks humor.

This was actually over a week ago, but I found it way to hilarious to not share it here as well.

That's one way to look at it.

If you're an Avengers fan, you'll like what Thanos did to the Elf on the Shelf.

I'm that old, I should be taking Ibuprofen every day.

Not my dog, he's to good for that. Plus, he doesn't need to steal it, my wife will feed it to him.

So many people to make fun of here.

Most weeks there probably won't be this many items on the post, I only post a couple times a week on average there.

TV Thursdays

Music one day, walking another, so let's do TV as that's about all I do anymore anyways. I figured I'd show a little of my life on the boob tube.

Between the wife and I, we watch a ton of TV. We both record our own shows as well as stuff we watch together. She generally watches her shows while I'm at work and after I go to bed. When I'm home, we watch our shows and when we run out of those, she has to watch my shows. Here's everything we watched this week.

• 911
• All-American
• Almost Family x 2
• American Housewife
• Arrow
• Atypical x 10 (Netflix)
• Batwoman
• Black Lightning
• Castle Rock (Hulu)
• Live PD x 2
• Living With Yourself x 8 (Netflix)
• Madam Secretary
• Nightly Pop
• Prodigal Son
• Schooled
• Seal Team x 2
• Shameless x 6 (Netflix)
• Stumped
• SWAT
• the Dead Files
• the Flash
• the Goldbergs
• the Good Doctor
• the Kominsky Method x 8 (Netflix)
• the Man in the High Castle x 2 (Amazon Prime)
• the Mandalorian (Disney+)
• the Masked Singer
• the Purge
• the Rookie
• the Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon x 2
• Treadstone
• Van Helsing

I told you we watch a bunch. Remember, right now a lot of shows are on fall break so that's why you see some Amazon Prime and Netflix shows where we watched a bunch of episodes. We watched the whole season of Atypical, Living With Yourself and the Kominsky Method. I'm way behind on the Man in the High Castle (2nd season) and we just started Shameless so you'll see those shows here more. There's also some Hulu and Disney+ shows but they only do an episode a week so I can't binge them unless I wait. These are the shows that I watch (minus Jimmy Fallon and Nightly Pop), my wife's aren't listed. She watches a ton of reality TV and stuff on Investigation Discovery.

Get A Job (Prime Video)
Instant Family (Prime Video)
the Irishman (Netflix)

As I said, lots of shows are on break so we got a few movies in this week as well. Get a Job was meh! Instant Family was really good and I like the Irishman but my wife didn't care for it but I always liked those mobster type of movies.

You don't think I don't watch sports do you.

Detroit Tigers at Chicago White Sox
Chicago White Sox at Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
Ohio State Buckeyes at Michigan Wolverines
Michigan Wolverines vs North Carolina Tarheels
Michigan Wolverines vs Gonzaga Bulldogs
Michigan Wolverines at Louisville Cardinals

They replayed a couple of Sox games Thanksgiving Weekend so I rewatched them. One was an awesome come from behind victory, the other was the annoying game with Bill Walton doing the commentating. We won the game but he was just annoying to listen to it.

Technically, I didn't watch the Ohio/Michigan game on TV. I saw it live, regretfully, but I figured I'd list it since I was listing sports.

I did watch the Michigan basketball team beat North Carolina on Thanksgiving and then Gonzaga the next day. Which put us on a high for the letdown that was against Louisville on Tuesday. All 3 were ranked in the top 10 so I'll take a 2-1 record so far against top teams.

That's it since last Thursday. As I said before, I'll try to keep up with some more posts.

Walking Wednesdays

As I mentioned on Sunday's post, I'm trying to think of some weekly posts. This is one of those as well.

Day 1067 - Grenada, CA - (3571.3 miles)

If you followed me for awhile, you know I keep track of my steps and track them on a map. I've been doing this since the start of 2017. On the map, I started at home and headed towards Chicago. When I got there, I decided that I will "walk" by all the MLB stadiums, then I later added the Big Ten Stadiums and if I happen to go past others, I list them. I'm been traveling to the West coast so there was a long time with nothing. I'm on the West coast now, the last place I posted about was in Seattle. I'm heading South to hit the 5 MLB teams in California. I'm currently in Grenada, CA on my way to Oakland, CA.

To give you some stats because we all know I love my stats.

As you can see, I've gone up a little every year. This year, I'm on pace to do it again. I've been able to do that because I've been averaging more steps at work per day which has made up for the lack of steps on the weekends. In 2016-2018, I averaged 52 days of over 10,000 steps. This year, I'm currently sitting at 81 days with over 10,000 steps. Like I said, been getting more at work and less on the weekends. I'm certainly not going to blow away last years numbers, but I should bypass before we head out to Christmas break.

I know it's nothing terribly exciting, but I'm trying to get more out there. I have a couple more posts planned this week, we'll see if I keep it up.

November Music

I'm trying to think of posts that I can do periodically so I can at least show up here on occasion. I thought maybe on the 1st of the month, I'd do a music post. I'll explain why the 1st in a little bit but first, a little background.

In case you didn't know, I listen to a lot of music. The way I like to listen to music is a huge playlist, on random. 95% of the music I listen to, is either in my car or at work. I used to pretty much only listen to my Anything & Everything playlist, which currently sits at 3,543 songs, because I worked alone with no one around me most of the time. Either in my office or around the wastewater department. Now, with my promotion, I'm around people more and out on the line more. The people aren't necessarily an issue, but being out around the line makes it harder to listen to certain songs. So I created a playlist of Country & Rock songs because they tend to be louder and easier to hear over the noise of the line so I've been listening to it for the last week or so at work and will probably continue to do so.

On the way home from work, probably 80% of the time, I listen to the A&E playlist mentioned above. Occasionally I'll mix it up with My Favorites, Equinox or 30 playlist. Usually the Favorites or the 30 playlist but occasionally the Equinox playlist. My Favorites is 133 songs of all my Favorites from all genres. Equinox playlist is mainly Rap & Rock genre, it's all the songs I listen to louder on my stereo, it has 131 songs on it. The 30 playlist are songs that I love to crank up. It's titled 30 because it has 30 songs on it and I usually put my stereo volume at 30 when I play this list. For reference, my normal stereo volume in the car is 15 in the morning, maybe a couple higher during the day depending on my mood.

On the rare occasion that my wife is in the car with me, I also have an Our Favorites playlist. I took all the songs off of My Favorites and took off some songs that my wife doesn't like and then she added some songs she likes but she only added a few so I put all of Taylor Swifts and Blake Shelton songs on it. It has 255 songs on it.

With that being said, I started using Last.fm website to track my music. Since they post my stats (you all know I love stats) once a month for the previous month, I thought I transfer them over here, on the 1st. Next month I won't have the talking above, more just stats but I had to explain stuff.

A Scrobble is a song, I'm not sure why they just can't call them that. This graph shows I listened to 1,961 songs (it says new record because I joined in the middle of October so this was the first full month) which averaged out to 65 songs a day. You can see on the bar graph that I listen a lot less on the weekends which brings down the average. You can also see where I've had the last week off of work because the numbers were way down.

This shows that I listened to 653 different artists off of 1,163 albums and 1,623 different songs, no duplicates compared to the higher above number of songs I listened to. The percentile has to do with where I place amongst other last.fm users.

This is top 10 artists I listened to last month. I think the top 3 end up there just because of the amount of songs I have on the playlist. Those 3 have a ton of songs each.

These were the top songs I listened to. I heard each of these songs 3 times last month, that was the most out of the 1,961 songs. Most of them are Country & Rock so I would assume those are up there because of the new playlist I listen to while at work.

They also give you the top albums but I don't like that stat because a lot of the artists I added songs by hitting their greatest hits albums so I would have to go back and change each song on my playlist to the original album and I'm not doing that.

Here is the genre list, I'm not sure why on a report labeled as my November stats that it shows Octobers on this graph as well. The first half of the chart is from October, the last half from November.

I also find this interesting, according to this, only 60% of the music I listen to is mainstream. I suppose that's about right when you throw in all the different types of music I have on there.

I love this stuff, you may not but I find it very interesting. I check this site everyday and I will try to post it here at least once a month.