Today’s Business: 2010-05-18
Tuesday, May 18th, 2010Today’s Activities
- Shower. DONE.
- Cat duty. DONE.
Log
08:45 AM: I’m up. The dark, gray clouds are back yet again! Could be another day of rain, though I’m hopeful that it will clear up this afternoon so I can get to the voting station without getting drenched in the process. 
10:25 AM: iPodded. Today’s repeater song: Ma Baker by Boney M, and the Keith Urban version of Jeans On. Songs like these make me glad I invested in my music collection as well as my iPods.
11:40 PM: Wrote 500 words into the piece inspired by audio journal episode AJE-2010-05-06-11-12. While writing, I played music in the background. Heretofore, I’d always shied away from distractions like this;fearing that my favorite songs would destroy my concentration and render the resulting prose low grade. But today, I found that listening to Kevin Lyttle’s hit Turn Me On actually had the opposite effect. I wrote more, and felt energized and not bored while typing. Sometimes, the words would even come out in lockstep with the music’s beat. Hmmmm. Perhaps this is another way to defeat writers’ block; by playing great tunes. The sense of monotony I sometimes experience while writing was absent during this session, and I wrote for over an hour, nonstop. Now, will this work again tomorrow? Sometimes when I think I’ve found a solution to writers’ woes that works once, I learn later that it’s good effects don’t last. Hopefully though, since I love music, this technique, or variations of it, will keep working; especially if I switch to different songs each day. We’ll see.
12:20 PM: Worked the Hard Drive Upgrades: 2010 project. The new 2 TB drives arrived this morning and I’m currently populating them.
01:30 PM: Heading up to the poling things place to vote.
02:45 PM: Just got home. Unfortunately, I could not vote, as the location of our voting station has moved to the Pine Croft fire hall, whch is not within safe walking distance of here. 
03:00 PM Nap time.
04:00 PM: We’re back up again. [Jack] called to talk to [Emmy], and they’re on the phone right now.
04:45 PM: I’m beginning supper cooking.
05:30 PM: supper’s done. Pretty good too, alth0ugh the chicken breasts need more wing sauce. No problem. We have an extra bottle.
06:00 PM: Supper’s done and all is cleaned up and put away; or at least, the dirty dishes have been rinsed and placed in the dishwasher to await the next run.
07:30 PM: Followed the election returns here in PA on CNN and local news channels.
09:00 PM: Watched today’s episodes of The Young and the Restless and NBC’s Nightly News.
10:00 PM: [Emmy] watched today’s episode of Pittsburgh Today Live from KDKA TV, and I blogged in here and occasionally viewed the show with her.
11:00 PM: Watched CNN’s AC 360 tonight, where they covered today’s primary election returns as well as continued the story about white bias among young children. In this installment, they focused on black kids and how even they tend to associate good character traits with lighter skinned children and not so great traits with darker skinned children.
11:15 PM: Bed time. Catch you again tomorrow.
Received Mail and Shipments
- Weekly coupon mailer.
- Sewage bill.
- Analog Science Fiction magazine; the 2010-05 issue.