Marv’s Midlife Meanderings

  Tuesday December the 29th 2020 After less than four hours sleep, I woke at around 10:30am, but I kept nodding in the afternoon. At around ten past four I went for an half hour nap, that ended up being a bit more than an hour. During that day we caught up with some Christmas viewing that saw us watching Blackadder’s Christmas Carol, National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, and Christmas With The Kranks. I also caught up with a couple of episodes from season five of Agents Of SHIELD.    I’ll be watching The Mandalorian at some point soon as well, which I’m looking forward to from all of the good reviews I’ve heard. Wednesday December the 30th 2020 I woke up just before 7:30 in the morning, after going to sleep after 2 o’clock.    I had to do something, as I needed to completely change my whole system because of doing day shifts on Thursday and Friday, seeing me waking up at 3 o’clock in the morning, or perhaps 3:30 at the latest, with the intention of getting to work at 4:30 for a 5 o’cl

Monday December the 28th 2020 I had a better sleep than I’ve had for a while. Probably a little more than six hours all told, which is a lot for more when compared to the nine months or so! I’ve not slept well since the first lockdown started if truth be told. I’m not one hundred percent sure why that is, but it’s true. Maybe I’m just worried about people, since I’m not visiting them, or have much contact? Anyway, I was relatively well rested for work, which makes a change. At a little after seven in the evening, a guard rang from a site where we have a vehicle there for patrols, because it’s a huge site!    Two punctures, one slow and one that couldn’t be pumped up in any way. I suggested pumping up the slow puncture and replacing the one that couldn’t be pumped for the spare. “It’s minus two outside, and I don’t change wheels!” My response was “well we change our own wheels on mobile, no matter the weather!” It took around two hours to get it sorted out, because the guard is an absol

  December the 26th 2020 Boxing Day - I’m trying to remember what time I got in from work... I think it was probably around 5:30 in the morning that I got in from work.    I don’t think that I got a good sleep for some reason. Well, I say that, but I’ll get to that one later. It took me an age to get to sleep, and I probably ended up with about five hours or less all told. I woke up at some point in the afternoon, I don’t know when, but there was very little time to do anything before getting up and ready for work. Work again... All these people that get time off for the Christmas season.    Even after getting Christmas off last year, I’m still fed up of working during the season! I can’t remember what work was like, but it was probably boring.    I listened to Christmas music all night again - Sting - If On A Winter’s Night She & Him - Christmas Party Aimee Mann - One More Drifter In The Snow Elvis Presley - Elvis’ Christmas Album Jethro Tull - Christmas Album  A Prog Rock Christm

  Thursday December the 24th 2020 So, I woke up at 7:45 in the morning for some reason.    I didn’t want to get up that early, what with being on nights that night, but I was awake. Perhaps it’s because of me falling asleep for about three or four hours the previous evening? I must have been rested from that, so it didn’t take much to catch up. I fetched the laundry, got some bits from a few places towards Louise’s presents, just to add to the main presents.   I’d already given her a few bits before Christmas (including a tablet), as I always do, but there were other things book wise, etc.    The “bits” though would be highlighter pens, notepads, body wash, etc. I saw an Amazon Fire Stick on sale on Amazon and because the Blu-ray player we used to stream directly to the tv was problematic, I thought “why not!” I connected it to the tv, then to the internet, and got some services linked to the already existing accounts (Netflix, BBC iPlayer, My5, Amazon Prime, and Disney Plus), with the

  Wednesday December the 23rd 2020 So, as I said in the previous post, I woke at about a quarter to nine, got me and Louise a drink each, and I had a bowl of cereal. I didn’t really do much of anything, other than thinking about the fact that I’ve got to somehow afford a new laptop before recording or even editing any more episodes of the show. I wish that I could condone spending over a grand on a decent machine, but I can’t condone that, much as it would be incredibly useful when coming to doing the show and recording music! I wrote the previous blog while I was waiting for Louise to get ready. Finally we got our flu jab, which was free this year because of being fifty. A sign of getting older, but it’s free, unlike previous years. We then went into town, both for haircuts, looked in WH Smith’s (bought nothing), Works (bought Louise some cookie cutters), and then got us both a hot chocolate each at Costa. We then went home, before I moved my car, where I took the chance to get milk,

  Tuesday December the 22nd 2020 I got in from work at about ten past eight, and had a message telling me to expect a package from DPD between 10:43 and 11:43, which they would leave on the doorstep if I don’t answer the door! That’s absolutely ridiculous, because then people could just steal it from the doorstep before you get down for it! I went to sleep at about a quarter to nine, and woke up just over an hour later at ten o’clock.  I stayed up, and did a few things... I took some bits to the launderette on Barnbygate, along with a card and a box of special biscuits as a gift for them.    I’ll see them again on Thursday to pick up my bits. From there I went to Asda to book a flu jab that they had recently got in, after running out from high demand. We always have a flu jab, but normally towards the end of October into the middle of November! After that I parked me car in Morrison’s near to where we live, because there was nowhere to park up again.    I moved it about two hours later

  Monday December the 21st 2020 For a Monday morning, I got in very late from work. I think it was about five to seven or so when I got home, as it took bloody ages to clean the work van, and I felt awful because I couldn’t fuel the damn thing up! Garages were either closed or had run out of diesel. I got up relatively late, and got out both mine and Louise’s laptops. The basic idea was to copy stuff over from my laptop to an external hard drive, and then onto Louise’s laptop... Not as easy as I thought it would be! I had to open up the work I had done on my laptop, export that to wav, copy to the external drive, as well as copy over the music files, but after I did something else - I added sleigh bells and a glockenspiel to the end theme of the show. It turns out that in under an hour I got the editing finished by having to edit here and there where footage was lost, to try and make it sound coherent. I also cut out around an hour of footage outside of the show, which I was originally

  Saturday December the 19th 2020 Now I’m writing this on Tuesday, and I’m not sure what I remember about Saturday... I do know that I was busy doing two sets of mobiles because of problems at work. My podcast listening - 1 This Week In Marvel - catching up! 2 The Ray Harryhausen Podcast - with so many podcasts now in my feed, I couldn’t see that there were new episodes for some shows, and this was one of those! 3 The Gerry Anderson Podcast - another that I was behind on! 4 Reelblend - it’s strange to listen to a show that is talking about films coming to the cinema, when they’re all closed over here, with no sign of any change to that soon! 5 The Calm Christmas Podcast - continuing to catch up on this sweet bite size podcast from author Beth Kempton. 6 Adam & Craig’s Guilty Pleasure Cinema - talking about the Kevin Bacon & Fred Ward starring 1990 film Tremors about worm type animals killing people. I’ve seen it once, but obviously remember very little. Sunday December the 20th

  Friday December the 18th 2020 So, got in from work at about 8:30 if memory serves me right - it’s terrible that I can’t remember what happened the day before I’m writing my blog! It’s the day of release for the album McCartney III by Paul McCartney, and I was expecting so many different versions of the album to appear in the post, because not only where there copies for myself, but some American friends had asked me to get them bits that were only available in the U.K.  So there I was going to bed expecting copies from Amazon, HMV, and Paul’s own web store, which meant having to wake up on a day where I have around eight hours between getting in from work and leaving for the next shift. I had a message from Royal Mail telling me about a delivery, and used the link therein to try and redirect the delivery, but that’s easier said than done! The option was about where to deliver if I didn’t answer the door, so I chose the local post office. I thought that I could just ignore the doorbel

  Thursday December the 17th 2020 night shift I don’t know but for some reason it was a bit of a long and boring night, and there was very little listening done. I didn’t post up about it, but I did listen to the latest episode of my podcast, because I wanted to make sure that it flowed, and all I had done was to piece it together. It seemed to work, and I’m glad that I kept the humour and fun in there! Other than that, it was a pretty boring night, but I did get the rota for the next three weeks, covering the shifts from December 21st to January 8th. December 22nd, 23rd, 29th, and 30th, and January 5th and 6th off. Podcast listening - Punky Radio Out Of The Blank x 2 Ray Harryhausen Podcast Betamax Video Club - I love the film Lethal Weapon, and completely understand why Shane Black writes most of his scripts so that they are around Christmas, because he says that it raises the stakes. Take care and stay safe.

  Wednesday 16th of December 2020 So, more editing of the general chat episode between me, Dave & Gill, plus we watched a few bits, most importantly The Santa Claus starring Tim Allen, which I couldn’t be bothered to dig out the DVD boxset for, so booted up Disney Plus on my laptop, connected it by HDMI to the TV, and then watched it on there. My Sony Blu-ray player doesn’t have the ability to add a Disney+ app to it, which is the device that we use to stream on the television, which really “grinds my gears” as Peter Griffin says in Family Guy! One of these days I’ll splurge on a decent Smart TV, but that’s a minefield in itself, because you have to buy one that lets you add apps from a store or something, which apparently isn’t something that you can do on all Smart devices! WTF?!?!?! I went to bed really late again, at about seven in the morning or so, with the intention of getting up after about four hours sleep, and grabbing an hour between 4:30 and 5:30. That didn’t happen...

  Tuesday December 15th 2020 I didn’t get in from work until about half past eight, into bed around ten in the morning, and slept past my midday alarm! I’ll not say when I woke up, as that’s embarrassing, but then again I do work five night shifts a week, so obviously I’m used to that after about four years with no day shifts - I’m still worried about the two day shifts on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day! So, I woke up late, and had very little preparation time before a six o’clock show recording, all about Christmas Films.  I started the zoom call at about ten to six, and it started with just myself and Ethan from Cineflek, until he apologised for having to go half an hour into the call. I asked Ethan some questions about his show that I may use for a future show with him. Twenty minutes into the call both Adam & Craig from Adam & Craig’s Guilty Pleasure Cinema joined the conversation... I asked them a few questions about their show that I though I could use for a later show