Tag: life

Winday’s Theme Music

Mood: windulated

It’s a windy beast out there this morning. Definitely a creature of autumn. Trees are shimmying and waving branches like they’re cheering on the University of Oregon Ducks football team.

It’s technically a Sattyday, or Saturday as they call it in some parts of the U.S., samedi in some other places. October 12, 2024. 64 with a lovely balminess riffing. Most of the sun action is obscured behind a cloudy gray monolith. Our air will tiptoe into the low to mid sevenities this day.

The cats are out there, trying to make out like they’re happy with the weather’s shape. But their dismayed whiskers reveal their truths, that this wind is disturbing their sleep, mussing their fur, and annoying them with its sounds. Whenever I go by a door or window and look out, they eye the house like they want back in. I will go back and see if that’s true. Both will probably come in. Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) will stay but Papi will go back out. He has a short memory when weather is introduced as the topic.

You know who else doesn’t like the wind? DJ Trump dislikes the wind. The former President said some stuff about the wind at one of his rallies last week as part of his magic weave. This is lifted from a Huffpost article shared on Yahoo:

“The wind, the wind, it sounds so wonderful. The wind, the wind, the wind is, the wind is bullshit, I’ll tell you,” he said.

The crowed roared.

“It’s horrible, so expensive. Just too expensive. It doesn’t work. All of that to do y’know one tenth of one percent, I mean the whole thing is crazy,” he said.

Trump complained that wind power means people can’t watch television on days with no breeze.

He is right; the whole thing is crazy.

Speaking of wind, it’s a mess down in Florida after Hurricane Milton finished with them. Millions without power. Massive flooding. Sixteen dead, but people left homeless. Gas stations lack gas and alligators are swimming freely as a threat. President Biden has asked Congress to return to pass more funding for FEMA. Let’s see how the GOP reacts.

Moving on.

I have a friend with a fruitful fig tree, and she’s generous with its produce. After receiving pint after pint after pint of fresh, ripe figs, my wife baked a fig cake with a mix of almond and white flour. Excellent with coffee. I theorize it’d go well warm with a scope of vanilla bean ice cream as a dessert. But I’m having it this morning, cold with my coffee. Still fine riding on the taste buds.

All this wind thinking lends itself to songs about wind. I ended up with Kansas singing in the morning mental music stream (Trademark blown away). The Neurons agreed with the choice (although they did campaign for “Against the Wind” by Bob Seger and The Scorpions’ windy offering, “Wind of Change”. So here is “Dust in the Wind”, the 1977 progressive rock offering.

Stay strong, be positive, and vote blue in 2024. Rock on with your day. I’ve been rocking mine with coffee. Here’s the music. Cheers

Update: both cats came in and stayed.

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Tuesday’s Wandering Thoughts

It was a weird juxtaposition.

I parked in the coffee shop’s lot. A silver SUV battle scar from its travels had the front passenger door open. I glanced that way. It seemed like the SUV was someone’s home. A woman was in the seat, her foot sticking out the open door, as she painted her toenails pink.

I thought of multiple things associated with painting nails. To feel and look attractive. Or maybe to fit in. To seem normal to others. You know, norms, values, mores, judgements. Or carrying forward from the past, trying to remain that person they were.

Then again, I could be all wrong. Might be that they’re not living in their car. They could just be a traveler, pausing to get coffee, taking advantage of a break in their schedule to do their nails.

It’s the kind of scene that inspires questions and thinking about our life and society.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: waitinitis

Tuesday has slid in safe on October 8, 2024. Autmer continues holding the skies. Temp now feels like it’s 65 F but it’s only 56 F. What kind of madness is the weather doing to us, making the temperature feel so different from its actual temp? Makes me suspicious of the weather. Next thing you know, it’ll be raining but will feel like snow. Or it’ll be snowing or it’ll feel like sun.

The high will reach for the upper seventies and maybe get to the low eighties. Depends on its reach. Who knows what it’ll feel like? I think it’ll feel pretty good, no matter what the final temp. That range is ideal to me. Sky is again solidly blue. Yellow and red leaves are drifting from trees. The mood is shifting toward fall. People are decorating their houses for Halloween. So really get into it, but we’re more circumspect.

The price of candy is shocking us. My wife pointed it out at BiMart the other day: 5 pounds of candy for almost $40. Wow! Costco has 30 candy bars on sale for $32. Like, those are crazy prices to the boy who first began buying candy bars as a nickel treat. A nickel now won’t get you within smelling distance of the wrapper.

But this is change’s nature. Older friends talk in amazed tones about how the housing prices have changed. One was offered the chance to buy 6 acres for $50 grand decades ago. The deal outraged him. “Are you crazy?” he asked his friend. “I thought you were giving me a deal.”

“That is a deal,” the friend replied.

My buddy eventually bought a decade later for much, much more. Divided into quarter acre lots, those lots were now going $20 to $50 grand each. Things change, and prices are part of it.

Since I’m on my box and ranting, used to be that I got a haircut for one dollar. One dollar! Now I exit $25 to $30 lighter.

Housing, of course, is center stage in the price debate. Out here, ‘affordable housing’ is jumping over $200 to $300 K. Solution: built more housing. Problem: land. Water. Infrastructure. Rising costs of building more getting pushed further up by the rising need to build more.

Like many, I’m watching Hurricane Milton ploughing toward Florida. Was a cat 5 but has weakened to a 4 and may be a 3 before it hits, thank goodness. Fingers crossed.

Forgot to mention the SOU Pride Parade which took place the other day. I was kept from attending by other plans but I hear it went well. Here’s a link to the Ashland.news coverage with some pix. We also didn’t attend the OSF Gala but we heard from friends who didn’t attend that it was fun and raised $750 K for the festival’s 100 year celebration coming up.

We’re down to 28 days until election day. 28 days. We could make a movie about it. Call it “28 Days” or “28 Days Later”.

Thinking of that gap from here to there and the waiting, news, campaigning and hyperbole which must be endured encouraged The Neurons to fire up Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. “The Waiting” from 1981 is rolling through the morning mental music stream (Trademark delayed). Wikipedia’s entry quotes Petty as being inspired by something Janis Jopin said.

Frontman Tom Petty explained that the song’s title was inspired by a quote from fellow musician Janis Joplin, who once said of touring, “I love being onstage and everything else is just waiting.”[4] He recalled:

That’s where I think I got it from … [Roger] McGuinn swears that he said it to me. Maybe he did. I don’t think so. I think I got it from the Janis Joplin quote. That’s where it stuck in my mind. I don’t think she said, ‘The waiting is the hardest part,’ but it was something to that effect: ‘Everything else is just waiting.’ And so that’s where that came from.

Got me to thinking…imagine Tom Petty and Janis Joplin performing live together. Would that have been cool or what?

Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue in 2024. Coffee has cast its magic in me. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Someday’s Theme Music

Mood: irasperanky

Awoke with a nostalgia for change and thought, someday. The Neurons filled in the date as Someday, October 6, 2024. Sounds like a potential novel title.

Someday is another autmer day, kicking off in the low fifties. Building on sunshine and blue skies, the final temperature measurement should sing at about 86 degrees F. Air quality is good, two, single digits to double digits surfing the teens and low twenties. Sweet air.

Less than 30 days until Election Day 2024. Vote blue.

So much news to potentially write about that I shun writing about any of it. Sumovit is so damn depressing that it pulls my thoughts down into some deep mud and I just don’t wanna be there today. Weary of the effort for now. Turning attention to other things. Like a requirement to attend another’s seventieth birthday party.

Sounds like a good thing, right? A party, yea! Cake, snacks, all that. Starts at 2 PM. Right in the afternoon’s meat.

But. The cranky bug bit me in the ass today. Think it might have happened when I was sitting on the can doing the daily. A cranky infection has spread, affecting my spirit. Gotta grit my teeth to go fete my casual friend. I have many other things I want or should be doing. As always, a balance between the do’s — must, will, want, can’t do — must be struck. Then you ride the wave of the day best you can. Fall off, get back up, start riding again.

Today’s music is “I Will Follow” by U2. Came out in 1980. Entered the morning mental music stream (Trademark someday) today. Once again, cats caused The Neuron’s choices. Talking to my floofs, I was urging them to follow me if they want their breakfast. Papi the ginger blade was eagerly willing — “Let’s go let’s go let’s go” were his reaction — but Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) seemed to be collecting flies. Finally, with some mild irritation and exasperation — let’s call it irasperation — Tucker did a slow roll stroll another direction. “Okay,” I said. “I will follow you.” And that’s when U2 kicked off with their 1980 rocker in my head.

Stay positive. Stay up on your vaccination against the cranky bug. Crankiness can spread faster than the flu. Coffee has made its grand entrance. Here’s the music. Walk away, walk away, I will follow. Cheers

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

Play the taps. It’s that time. Another tee shirt is being retired.

The apparel in focus is a black tee shirt with Michael Schumacher in an F1 Ferrari in the rain at Spa. Bought in 1996. Not so much that I’m a Ferrari or Schumacher fan — I was rooting for Damon Hill in the Williams — but I liked the shirt’s colors and action. Its style.

I wore it for playing racquetball. Used to play three or four times a week back in the you know. Then it became part of casual Friday work clothes while toiling for start-ups. Spent the last ten years as yard work uniform and then sleepwear.

I’ve gotten my use out of it.

One underarm yawns with a huge hole. Otherwise fine. The hole appalls my wife, who is sensitive about worn clothing.

I won’t throw the tee away. Sentimental attachment. It’ll join a few other aged worn tees in my bottom drawer. Let ’em toss ’em after the flames feast on my body.

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Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts

Thinking about my coffee evolution today in honor of National Coffee Day.

I began drinking coffee when I was around twelve. Maxwell House. *shudder*. Only drank a cup at a friend’s house once in a while, loaded with sugar and cream. I stopped doing that before I was fifteen and didn’t resume drinking coffee until after I was twenty. Leaving the military after my first enlistment was up, I bought a restaurant and ran it while going to college, so I drank coffee, but not much. I remained indifferent to it.

I re-entered the military. Working night shifts, I would nuke the leftover cold coffee from the huge office urn and doctor it with sugar. Nasty stuff.

Wasn’t until my NCOIC, Bob Totten, and my buddy, Jeff, at Kadena AB, Okinawa, Japan, that I really became a coffee drinker. I was working as a back-office warrior by then as the Command Post training NCO. Bob would invite Jeff and me to informal staff meetings at the Base Exchange cafeteria upstairs. Even then, I didn’t think much of coffee. But I was going to school and evolved into drinking it at home as I geared up for evening classes.

Then I discovered ‘good’ coffee. I found that I like French and Italian roasts best. I didn’t like cream or sugar in my coffee. I bought my beans and ground them myself. I only made sufficient coffee for my needs and only drink fresh coffee.

Of course, by then, I couldn’t stand our military office coffee. Too weak and American for me.

At subsequent assignments, I would take over our office ‘coffee fund’. Darker roasts, better coffee markers, and better brands were my requirements. I levied that on the rest. My offices in Germany and California became known as a good place to get decent coffee.

Field conditions were horrible for coffee, of course. Weren’t no good brands out there. Gird my loins and quaff the evil brews available to fight the cold off or endure the heat. Bad coffee, bad food, bad sleeping arrangements, and nasty latrines – holes in plywood in tents.

Retiring from the Air Force, it was the same sort of thing as I went to work for civilians. Except I ended up working with an engineer, Janet, who liked yet stronger coffee. She used to complain that my coffee was too weak! I was appalled. By then, I was in the SF Bay Area, purchasing Peet’s coffee and bringing it in, making my own pot. Of course, people other than Janet liked my coffee, so there were often several brews going besides decaf.

Eventually, I was working for IBM, but remote, working from home. My wife and I saw a Keurig at Costco and purchased it. For a while, I continued making my coffee using beans, a grinder, and a drip style coffee maker as I didn’t like any of the pods that I tried. But then I tried the Costco SF Bay French roast pod.

That worked, and that’s where I’m at now, drinking that at home in the morning. When I was going out to write at The Beanery for several years, it was a different story. I drank a nonfat double Mexican mocha for my writing. Alas, The Beanery went away. Now, I order Americanos wherever I go. I like espressos but they’re consumed too fast. The Americano works.

And that’s my coffee tale. It’s been a grind. Happy Coffee Day.

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A Dream of Two Me’s

Weird one, where I had myself and another me. We were identical in every aspect, from age and size to clothes being worn. But, we were in two different locations.

We were much younger, like in our late twenties. Wearing off-white cargo shorts with a light blue button-down shirt. Brown hair military short.

‘I’ was supposed to be doing something to pave the way for the other me to arrive. But, panic in dream land! I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing. Wasn’t there something about pressing buttons and changing settings and selections? Yes, I was half-sure that was right, but what was I supposed to be setting? Was it the printer, television, home computer network?

None of that sounded correct and time was running out. Looking out across time and space, I saw my other self entering the room where he was supposed to be. Oh, no, but I’d not done anything yet. What was going to happen?

I awoke looking for the answers in the room. But this wasn’t the right room? What was this room?

Why, it was my bedroom. But was that where I was supposed to be? I didn’t think that was right. I was supposed to be doing something, setting things up for my other self…

As anxiety unspooled and seeped out, I calmed and remembered, oh, that was just a dream. A very real feeling friggin’ dream.

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Friday’s Wandering Thoughts

My wife chastised me for ‘using too much soap’ when I was cleaning the cat’s bowls.

I apologized, having been unaware the restriction existed. Ignorance is not a defense, of course. I await my sentencing.

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