Good mornin’! It’s Sunda, February 9, 2025. Sunshine is crowding the window, pressing its rays up against the glass. We started the AM at 25 F in my locale but the sun soon had us soaring past 33 F. ‘They’ tell us 43 is possible. Don’t know if their fingers were crossed behind their backs.
The sun has been working its magic. Trees and bushes are pushing their heavy lids of snow back and stretching and flexing into their normal postures. Seeing sunshine, both floofs clamored to escape the house. Checking on them later, the two sat, eyes closed, soaking up rays on the patio’s sun-warmed cement. After being sun-doused, they returned to the house. One is now napping on a bed while the other is in a chair in sunshine snoozing.
What a night of dreams. Another military dream was among them. Classic of these dreams, I’m in the military again, and again coping with a uniform malfunction. In other words, I was out of compliance and trying to solve that. It’s my version of being pantless in school. But a twist arrived when an officer accosted me and asked, “What are you doing?” I figured he was going to ladle grief on me for my uniform. I whipped out an explanation and told him I was trying to rectify it. “Why?” he responded, surprising me. Then he added, “You retired.”
Oh, yeah.
That sunshine had me thinking, I hunger for a bouncy, energetic song. Something as an antitdote to PINO Trusk’s destruction. Drifting back into time, The Neurons surfaced with a Who offering from 1972. Although the video is silly with them miming playing their instruments and singing, the infectious blending of instruments stirred the kind of hope I felt when I was sixteen. That — and coffee — is just what my spirit ordered.
Coffee saved me again. Brekkie is done, cats are fed. Time to gen up other activities. Hope your day serves you well. Cheers
We’ve clocked into Friedaz, February 7, 2024. Snowfall greeted me when I checked the weather. A couple more inches had been added during night’s rule. Now 30 F, more was piling up.
Or was it? The temperature crept up to 31. 32. 32.3. 32.4.
Papi the ginger blade, aka, ginger butt, had a vet appointment. 10 AM. I’d made it three weeks ago. He was suffering fur loss, ravenous appetite and some weight loss. Hyperactive thyroid was suspected by us. We’d seen the same in Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah). In fact, based on that, we’d started sharing Tucker’s medicine with Papi. Stopped it on Monday so we could get it out of his system and see the test results.
After strapping chains onto the tires and putting a complaining Papi into a kennel, I made the drive under heavy snowfall.
Turned out that chains were only needed for our driveway and street. The city’s main roads were plowed. As we traveled west and north, the temperature rose. Snow became rain. Precipitation ceased by the time we reached the vet.
That’s okay. Little inconvenienced. Important thing is to get Papi checked and healthy. Yeah, blood work shows hyperactive thyroid. Five hundred clams later, she prescribed the same med that Tucker is getting. Wants to check him in a month.
BTW, I researched why we call money ‘clams’. Turns out that it’s an old joke, based on settlers observing natives using clams for cash. Actually, I made that up. Figure that in this era of fake news, what’s a little more?
I have a 1974 Procol Harum song, “Pandora’s Box”, in the morning mental music stream. Procol Harum often brought interesting music to the scene. This is one I knew from their albums but I don’t believe I ever heard it played on the radio. Funny enough, Aerosmith had a song with the same title in the year before. That caused some confusion among some of us. The two songs sound nothing at all alike, with vastly different intentions presented by the lyrics. I later bet a friend about who performed the song, cleverly inserting the year as part of the bet. I won but he accused me of being underhanded and taking advantage of him. Guilty! But the bet was just a beer, come on. It was at the NCO club and was five dollars for a pitcher. Of course, it was American lager…Miller Lite, I think.
Coffee has resuscitated my energy levels again. Time to get on the day and ride. Hope your day fills your needs.
Hey, look, the snow has stopped and the sun is out.
By the way, I thought I’d utilize the original spelling used today, Friedaz. In doing research, I learned that ‘day’ was actually ‘daz’ almost universally until it became Anglicized. And the prefix, Fri, was originally Frig or Frigga, after a Nordic Goddess. Those rebelling against Nordic influence because they were chaffing from looting done during Viking raids in Europe, changed it to Frie. That spelling upset Christians, as Frigga day or Frieday was a day of fasting. People thought that calling it Friedaz gave them permission to eat fried food. Hence, they started eating fried fish on Friedaz, giving rise to the Catholic rule of eating fish on Friday. The spelling was changed to try to stop people from eating fried foods on Friedaz, but it had became too embedded. Even so, a last ditch attempt was made by religious authorities: they changed the spelling to Friday. And that’s why we have that spelling.
Naw, I made that up, too. Blame the coffee. It’s always forcing me to write and say crazy things.
I purchased my first computer when I came back to the United States. I was in the military, and my wife and I were stationed on Okinawa in May of 1981, returning to the U.S. in January of 1985. After settling into our new assignment at Shaw Air Force Base in South Carolina, we went out and dropped about 2 grand on a Kaypro II. That was a huge chunk of cash for us. Looking like a portable sewing machine when it was closed, the heavy blue computer had a small green screen, 64K of ram and two 5 1/4 floppy drives. Running at 4.77 megahertz, the machine’s operating system was CPM 87.
Not my machine.
My primary software was MicroPro Wordstar on a floppy.
In 1987, I replaced the Kaypro with a Zenith 100, which could use PC Dos, MS Dos, and IBM DOS. Still ran at 4.77, but the monitor was a big separate RGB monitor. I later added a 10 Meg hard drive, changed the processors, and added more RAM. 10 Meg, we thought, wow, would I ever use that much?
Friday morning, December 20, 2024, has arrived. It crowned us with fog, wind, and surprisingly warm temps. While weather services claim our temp is 46 F, my system say 56 F. I went out there to check and agree with my system. Meanwhile, in the space to think and type that, I turned around and the fog was gone. A white slate has been dropped onto the valley. Sunshine squeezes through where and when it can.
We went around town doing stuff yesterday. People were frequently overheard or encountered remarking about the short day. We’re all eager for the solstice to arrive so more sunshine will fill our days. Just a few more nights to endure.
So much news to digest and comment upon but my brain is warning, no, slow down. Back away from that toxic stuff. But watching the Musk call the shots for the inept GOP as they try to game the system to favor PINO Trump threatens to plant a permanent scowl on my mien.
Meanwhile, a fellow blogger reminded me of The Specials, and a terrific ditty they wrote back in 1982. “The Lunatics Have Taken Over the Asylum” is gleefully playing in the morning mental music stream (Trademark sedated). A Canadian in the U.S. military who was a dozen years older than me introduced me to group and this song. The of us, along with a third, and the four children — two boys and two girls — were camping out at Okuma on Okinawa. End of a good day, a fire going as the Pacific lapped at the beach a few hundred yards away, sipping cognac, he played this on the boombox. It’s the perfect song for now. While it’s a mellow, lazy bouncy flow, the words are ideal. To wit:
The Cowboy has told us to go nuclear,
who am I to disagree?
Remember, back when they wrote this, Ronnie Reagan was the Power. Now with PINO Trump, we have a perfect crowning line:
Cuz when the madman flips the switch,
the nuclear will go for me.
Between Ronnie back then and Putin and Trump now, that’s a real fear. Putin doesn’t give a shit and PINO Trump is too empty-headed to understand the consequences of going nuclear. But the song goes on to capture capitalism’s insanity in another verse:
I’ve seen the faces of starvation,
but I just cannot see the point.
Cuz there’s so much food here today
that no one wants to take away.
Yes, there is so much wasted food in the world, often because people are overeating in restaurants or it’s prohibitively priced, goes unsold, and gets tossed. Meanwhile, people starve and beg around the corner.
Gotta move on. I introduced coffee to my neurons today, and they’re getting along well. Here’s the music, and I hope you enjoy. Here we go. Cheers
December 1! Here at last. Turn the page and count down the days until your holiday of choice and the end of this year as the majority reckon it here in ‘Merica.
That cold front from out of the Arctic is still dominating. Sunday, it’s 32 F out there. Cold air throws our valley. See, that doesn’t work there, does it? Although through is a synonym for blanket, it only works in that capacity as a noun, not a verb. No wonder we’re so often confused.
While it’s 32 F now, that’s up froom the 18 that greeted me at dawn’s start a few hours back. 56 is the whispered high. We’ll see. Yesterday’s projected high was never approached. I think we topped out at 40 F. We have a stagnant air alert going on, and that always affects the temperature’s dance moves.
From a dream comes today’s theme music, “Beat It”. The 1983 Michael Jackson hit is in my morning mental music stream (Trademark icy) after a dream began playing it when the dream faded out. No credits were rolled for the dream, though. I have no idea who produced or directed it. I did star in it but I don’t know the other stars. They weren’t recognized. That’s not to say that they’re not stars in their own rights; I only have access to my dreams. They may have starred in other dreams which were only released to the individual having them.
“Beat It” came out when I was living on Okinawa, an island that’s part of Japan, and site of a major Pacific battle in dubya dubya two. I was there for almost four years as part of my military service. My neighbor, Carol, was so excited about this song and its video. In retrospect, she was a Michael Jackson fan girl. I was okay with the song. Has some interesting vocal and musical elements and tones. I don’t know why it was chosen for the dream’s closing sequence. It didn’t seem at all related to the dream’s context and action. I queried The Neurons about it but they’re as transparent as brick.
Hope your Sunday is a good one and a fine start to December. Coffee and I have renewed our vows and I’m sipping in bliss. Here’s the music. This video shows Slash from GNR standing in to interpret Van Halen’s original solo guitar. Hope you enjoy it. Cheers
Football and parades are on television. Dawn cracked open a blue sky this morning. Sunshine spilled out across 28 degrees F. It’s 43 and feels like 53, with a high of 48 projected. It gets windy, driving Papi to floofishly beat on the front door window for immediate entrance. His tail highpoints in salute as I let him in. Tucker (pronounced Tuck-ah) gives the ginger blade an askance look of pity as Papi passes him.
Thanksgiving memories erupt. Going to my paternal grandparents on cold and gray Pittsburgh days. Greeting cousins, aunts, and uncles seen only four times a year. Sitting at one of several children tables. Warm house, laughter, cigarette smoke, beer, and whiskey sodas. The children are herded into the cellar to contain noise. The problem: there’s nothing to do in that cellar except mill around. One by one, we quietly sneak back upstairs.
Mom and Dad separate and divorce. Mom remarries and becomes host and cook, but man, she can cook. Thanksgiving meals are always delicious feasts around traditional offerings. We play card games after the meal and gorge on leftovers for days.
Basic training saw me in San Antonio. Luckily, I had Uncle Paul and his family there to host me for Thanksgiving. Danny White led the Dallas Cowboys to victory. Later, I’m stationed in the San Antonio area. Uncle Paul’s family still lives there and my wife and I visit them for Thanksgiving.
A Thanksgiving follows in the Philippines, where my crew invites me into their house for an American-Filipino Thanksgiving. We play a new electronic game called Pong on television.
Our tour in Okinawa is broken into two phases: pre- and post-base housing. In the pre-phase, food prep is shared between several houses. We barely fit into one of the small apartments to eat. Once we’re in base housing, we’re in a large, comfortable space where my wife plays cook and hostess in Germany. As we return to America, Thanksgiving gets more complicated. We’re alone sometimes, or I’m on shift working. Later as I become more senior in rank, we become host for young co-workers and friends. We do the same after being assigned to California.
Out of the military and tired of hosting, we go out for dinner on Thanksgiving for a year or two in Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Palo Alto, California. My wife has become a vegetarian. An awful attempt with tofurkey is made. Stuffed acorn squash. We end up buying turkey breasts and having much smaller meals. Thanksgiving transitions to Friendsgiving. Friends host others like us and we collect at their homes. The meals feel like the ones I enjoyed as a child. I’ve gone full circle.
I’m going with “Alice’s Restaurant” by Arlo Guthrie for today’s theme music. It’s a staple of my existence, and The Neurons are okay with it. Alice Brock, the Alice in the song, passed away earlier this month. RIP. It plays in the background of my morning mental music stream (Trademark roasted) as I go about preparing to go to Friendsgiving at our friends’ farm. We prepared our food contributions yesterday. Corn souffle, prepared with my wife carefully watching me, is my contribution.
Coffee and I continue renewing our daily relationship. The house weather system says its 50 F out. Plentiful sunshine baths the street. Hope you have a memorable Thanksgiving if you’re participating, and a great day no matter where you are.
It’s a stillish fall morning outside the windows. Rain’s been falling from darkly loaded clouds. They’ve overtaken the blue and sun today.
It’s Thursday, October 17, 2024. Chilly with that rain, the high will be 61 and the low will be 37 F. Freeze warnings are in effect for tomorrow morning’s early hours. On the bright side of matters, our air quality is excellent, just single digits.
Got a call this morning from the county emergency system. Today is the great shake-out. They wanted us to pretend an earthquake was underway and practice surviving it. I’ve been through a few smaller quakes so I easily imagined the shaking.
The situation provoked some pre-coffee thinking. When I was a child in Wilkinsburg, PA, I remember us doing a duck and cover under my desk, in case the commies launched their nukes. Then, in the military, we were always practicing surviving war and natural disasters. There were fake NBC attacks. Fake unexploded ordinance to deal with. And of course, nukes and EMP. What would happen if we lost our telecommunications; how would we survive? We practiced decoding messages which would send us to war, and other exercises to receive notification hostilities were over. My career’s final years saw me fighting simulated space wars. Throughout, I was engaged in war planning, getting ready to deploy equipment to some theater’s front lines, etc., and reporting on our efforts to get ready and be ready, briefing the general who was our commander five days a week at one assignment, and getting ready to brief him.
Naturally, here in southern Oregon, we stay ready for wildfires. We have checklists and go-bags for evacuation. I’m fairly prepared in that regard, as I wrote local plans, checklists, and guidance for evacuating bases for wherver I was, and trained others in executing that stuff.
Seems like a lot of my life has been about getting ready. I was getting ready to be an adult as a teen. Beyond getting ready for war and natural disasters during, I was constantly getting ready for flu season, to move to another assignment, and I was getting ready for retirement.
Now I’m getting ready for my foot surgery. Getting ready for Mom and Dad to pass. That could be my life motto: “Get ready.”
Of course, as I reflect on my needs to get ready as a child and adult, I think it’s better than the active shooter drills so many children now go through to get ready for the real deal. Their need is driven by people with guns walking into schools and committing mass murder. My need to get ready was much more abstract and distant.
I have a pre-op appointment for my foot surgery next Wednesday. It’s to get me ready for the surgery. Actual surgery takes place the following Wednesday. The pre-op appointment came out of the blue. No phone call or coordination about what time works best for me; just a sudden message through Mychart telling me that the appointment was made. Poor communication, to me, and sort of arrogant, and annoying. Like, hey, what if I was out of town that day? Fortunately, I’m not, but still…
Today’s music comes via Tom MacInnes’s website. I enjoy Tom’s posts about music history, along with his experiences as a teacher and a father, particularly his stories about reading with his daughter and his students. Yesterday’s post was “The Great Canadian Road Trip…Song #76/250: Sk8er Boi by Avril Lavigne”. I ended up with “Sk83r Boi” in my morning mental music stream (Trademark bopping). It’s a lively, energetic song, and completely free and clear of political nuances, so I latched onto that. I need a political break from scanning news on either side of the schism, and tales of polls, rumors, innuendoes, and courts. Just give me some simple teenage offering.
I’m pretty pleased with it as a song choice. The Neurons had been offering “The Monkey’s Uncle” from the Disney movie with the same title. I don’t know why the hell The Neurons chose that song. Never saw the movie, but I knew of its elements, and obviously that song and some of the other songs the movie offered. That was from an era of beach movies. I never dug ’em.
Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue in 2024. Coffee has been introduced to my systems once again and I believe I have a pulse. Here’s the music. Get ready for the election.
Clouds and sky share uneven, uneasy streaks. Blue and white. A muted sun brings light but not much fresh heat. Shadows barely break out of the ground at the sun’s touch, faded dreams of being on the grass and asphalt. A smoky nuance curses the air’s freshness. I don’t know where the fire is but I suspect someone has their fireplace going.
This is autumn. This is fall.
It’s Friday, October 12, 2024. While we’ll see a high of 77 F, right now it’s 52 and feels more like 48.
Those shadow thoughts, along with dream remnants brought up a song by Joy Division. Joy Division was a group of hugh promise and potential in my eyes. I heard them while stationed at Brooks AFB in San Antonio, Texas, after returning from my Philippines assignment. San Antonio had a terrific rock FM station where I’d hear music way different from the chart busting rotation of the more commercialized stations.
“Shadowplay” from 1976 is circulating in the morning mental music stream (Trademark faded). Don’t think I’ve ever heard it on any venue outside of a movie once or twice. I didn’t have any Joy Division albums that I recall but many years later, when stationed in Germany, a friend had the album which featured this song. We listened to it and reminisced.
Stay positive, be strong, and vote blue in 2024. I’m working out some coffee now, testing how it fits in with my taste buds, see if it’s a keeper. Here’s the music. Cheers
I’d been working. In the military, it seemed like from clues, but it was never clearly presented. Staying in some manner of mixed work, play, sleep compound. Very modern. Enormously wide hallways. Well lit.
I’d been going to and fro, doing work and receiving instructions, sometimes passing guidance along, when suddenly, I was asleep. Yep, asleep in my dream. And I couldn’t wake up. And I knew this. I new that I wanted and needed to wake up. But my head was heavy with exhaustion and my eyes felt glued shut.
Someone came by and spoke with me. Don’t know what they said. I replied, “I need to wake up but I can’t. I must get up.”
Somehow, I did manage to get up. “Water,” I told myself. “Drink some water. That will help.”
Feeling my way about, I came to a sink and turned on the water. Using my hand to catch water, I guzzled a bit.
It wasn’t working. “Put water on your face,” I told myself. “Splash your eyes.”
Right; yes. That worked enough that at last I could open my eyes. “Food and coffee will help,” I said to myself. “Go find some.”
Dream end. Early sunlight was petering in around the closed blinds. The dream felt so real that I went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water and then went to a mirror to see if my eyes were open. Very strange.
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.
Michael Seidel, writer 