Just home from the gym and feeling it.  I went in feeling pretty beat and came out even beater.  But there's one thing that keeps my mind off of the fact that I don't actually want to be at the gym, and that's music.  Here's the playlist for today's workout:

Anyone who knows me knows I'm a major music nerd.  Major.  I have my iPod on from the time I get up in the morning until I get home from work and even then, I usually have a couple more hours of listening before bedtime.  Last Christmas I got a new computer.  The first thing I did was transfer over my music library from the old computer to this one.  All my music is stored in iTunes (and on a second back up drive).  The one downside of moving the music is the play counts on all my tracks got reset.  That kind of annoyed me because I made a point of going through and making sure everything had been played at least once since being added to the iTunes library.  Now I had 85,000 songs with a big fat ZERO in the plays column.  So naturally, being the OCD kind of guy I can be, I set out to listen to everything again.  I set up all new playlists.  I made one for each genre.  I made one for each decade. I made one for each year.  I wanted to make sure I had a good representation of music on my iPod at all times.  A couple of months ago I got an idea.  I wanted to start listening to everything in chronological order. So I started with my year by year playlists and began listening to the earliest one.  And I've been going through, one year at a time, listening to the gradual evolution of popular music.  Now I don't listen to stuff like this every single day.  That could get pretty boring pretty quickly, but at least two or three days a week I do.  I started listening to 1930s stuff and have managed to work my way up to 1973, which is what I'm currently listening to (Diana Ross' album FIRST TIME I SAW HIM, to be specific).  It's been fascinating listening to stuff this way.  A few weeks ago I noticed a definite shift in style.  The year was 1971 and there was a definite line drawn separating stuff that's considered Oldies from the beginnings of the modern easy listening radio format.  

Something else I've noticed as I've been progressing through the years is back in the 50s and 60s, it wasn't uncommon for someone to release two or even three albums in a single year.  As time is going on via my iPod, I'm noticing the frequency is getting a little further apart.  It's still not uncommon to see two releases from an artist (for example, Diana Ross' FIRST TIME I SAW HIM was one of two albums she had out that year), but it's more likely they'd be putting out one in one year and following up the next year.  Nowadays it's almost unheard of two put two albums out in back to back years, let alone in the same year.  

I'm having a blast making my way through time.  I'm edging closer and closer to the disco era.  A few more weeks and I'll be there.  And before you know it, I'll be firmly entrenched into the New Wave era, something I'm seriously looking forward to.  That's the stuff from my high school years and stuff that I've never tired of.

I haven't really had too much on my mind lately, and therefore really haven't had a whole lot to say.  I had an idea earlier today for a blog post, but now as I sit here at the computer, overfull from eating way too much today, all I can think about is going upstairs, grabbing a book and climbing into bed.  Ollie, my needy boy cat, has an uncanny internal clock.  Almost every morning at around 3:45 is when he wakes up and needs to get in my business to start kneading and licking my face.  I think that's finally caught up with me tonight.  So maybe if I can keep my eyes open tomorrow...? 

I really am rather dull.

I'll admit that this was going to be another "boo hoo hoo I miss my Mom" post, but that's not really where my head is right now.  And it's a welcome relief.  I've been spending too much time focused on that and only that and it's exhausting.

Part of the reason my head isn't there is I had a happy distraction this weekend.  My good friends George and Steve came up from NYC for the weekend.  They were having their apartment painted and needed to vacate the premises and we've got plenty of room.  It's been a while since we've had any good one on one time with them.  They were here for our wedding in June (but we had a houseful of people) and last month we saw them briefly (as in for five minutes) in Woodstock.  The Woodstock story was kind of funny, actually.  To me at least.  Ken and I headed down (it's just under an hour south of where we live) for the afternoon.  Ken had a banner made up for my Dad.  He sets up a table of his handmade toys at the Woodstock Flea Market every weekend.  Ken decided he needed a banner and had one made.  So we brought it down to him, spent a little time at his table and then wandered away for lunch.  We were going to go to a place called Oriole 9, which has fantastic food, but sometimes it's not very cool in there.  And this was a hot Saturday, so we skipped the place.  Instead, we went to Joshua's, a restaurant about six doors down.  While there, I checked in via Facebook.  About five minutes after I did that, I got a text message from Steve saying that they were in Woodstock and they were at Oriole 9.  I nearly crapped my pants.  We stopped in when we finished lunch to say "hi."  They were in town visiting some of their friends from the city who have a weekend home in the area.  Too funny.

But we had house guests and it was great.  And since it's a three day weekend, I got my day of beauty today.  I didn't do much of anything.  I got my grocery shopping done right after George & Steve left yesterday.  Today was all about lounging.  Except for my trip to the gym.  I ate like the old, fat Walt over the weekend and the scale agreed.  Friday morning I was 188.8 lbs.  This morning I was 165.1 lbs.  I managed to bring it down to 193.5 after the gym, though.  I was very happy with that, but then I fucked it all up again tonight.  We went out for Mexican when we should have just stayed in (where I can control my eating habits.)  My Kryptonite is the tortilla chip basket(s).  Twice this weekend I ate my weight in chips.  Ken hasn't been to the gym in three or four days and I think he had no intention of going tonight, but I kept gently prodding him into it.  I went with him just to walk off a mouthful or two of guac.  I'm dreading what kind of profanity the scale has learning when I step on it tomorrow.

I've got great friends.  That's all I need to say.