Glory Days...they'll pass you by...

I was casting about for something interesting to post about and, while looking for a different image, came across this. It's from the contact sheets for publicity pics for our band Metropolis; circa 1982 (?). Your humble bloghost is to the far left, apparently rating a "10". (smirk)

My colleague at the school job, Pat, is on the far right, sporting the super-tasty Gibson Thunderbird bass (an original, 1963 model). I'm holding my '66 Fender Musicmaster, which I'd modified with a hot humbucker in the bridge. It was a fun little guitar, but I mainly played my "big-boy" strats. Note the "flair" on my strap! That was a common feature for me back in the day, before I went all plain-jane. I'm wearing a girl's satin blouse that I'd dumpster-dived from the apartment complex I worked at-it had a matching scarf that I wore sometimes.

Next to me is my friend Tim, our keyboard player, and the only one in the pic that's still making his living as a musician-he does what he calls "the Geritol Tour", playing at retirement and nursing homes. It is apparently a going concern. The last character is our drummer, Don; last I heard, he was a cop! Funny story: to get Don, Pat and I, who were trying to create a new band, joined up with him and a couple of guys he'd been playing with for awhile. We didn't think too much of the other guys, but Don was a decent drummer and had a very good voice (singing drummers aren't exactly common!). We drafted Tim and had a six-man band, more than we really wanted; splitting our small wages 6 ways didn't exactly make anyone flush. One day before rehearsal, after we'd played about 4 jobs as a sextet, Pat, Tim and I managed to talk to Don alone. As we began to broach the subject of letting the other two guys go, Don looked at the ground and then looked up at us with a shit-eating grin and said "thank God you guys brought this up-I've been trying to think of how to propose the same thing to you!"

In true cheesy musician fashion, by the time the other guys showed up, we had most of our gear packed and just told them "this isn't really working out, we're gonna disband and sort things out for awhile." It was pretty awkward, with the other guys trying to persuade us to stick together, but we were firm. I even got a little prima-donna-ish, to try to help things move along. We helped them pack up their gear and load out, making mouth noises about maybe trying again a bit later, and kind of shuffled them off. Then we set up our gear again and started rehearsing the "new" band.

A couple of weeks later, I ran into the dismissed guitarist at a club, and he told me after they left, he and the other guy went to a bar and pretty much figured it all out. To their great credit, they didn't really feel that bad about it, or so he said. They could see we were working on a different level than their previous band, were more committed, more serious, and they knew we could've just told them "you're out!" instead of trying to preserve their "face".

I appreciated that more when, about 8 months later, I was "invited onward" by my bandmates; we'd come to some pretty serious differences in opinion, which I won't bore you with now. Another party had been added to the band, and by ousting me assumed much greater influence over the band's direction. Metropolis went on for several years after I left; for my part, I entered into the most lucrative and productive period of my life as a professional musician. As I was putting my next band together, I had a bizarre accident and lost the tip of my little finger on my left hand-my "neck" hand. I trashed that effort and spent a couple of months recuperating and figuring out how to adapt my playing from being a real four-finger player to being mostly a three-finger guy--and, while that was one of the most depressing times of my life, I discovered that a lot of folks in the STL musician community didn't care about my "handicap", and were interested to see if I wouldn't focus more on singing after the accident. I did, and that really transformed my career. In a way, good guitar players were a dime-a-dozen, but good guitar players who could sing well were more desireable. I got almost all my subsequent jobs on the basis of my singing, more than my playing.

And so your humble narrator was launched onto the road in a succession of lounge and Holiday Inn bands; I made a lot of money, and had a lot of fun, and really got to work thru my "I want to be a professional musician" angst. After several years of that, I realized the sacrifices to try to make it in the music biz were just more than I wanted to make, so I sought out and found a day-job and enrolled in college. I still played music, and indeed, had a sort-of second career running sound for friend's bands; I'm still a dedicated guitarist and spend a lot of my time tinkering with gear and playing. I'll always be a musician; I'll always be a guitarist. It's a big part of who I am.

And I'll always cherish those glory days.

Busy boy, busy boy!

Yes, I've been a busy busy boy. Refreshed enthusiasm from the school gig has had me working on a bunch of musical gear, and actually buying something, and actually fixing something, all too involved to talk about just now, except to say that's it's been fun. And the summer job, and the movie-rendering, and helping the roomie with his car; plus it's been absolutely unbearably hot and humid here in STL, so when I needed mental refreshing it was pretty much down to watching some movies or catching a nap.
I really need to put some thought into some cool posting but right now I'm, again, all shagged out after a long squawk. One more day of the phone-job and then it's a nice two-day network administration seminar for the school, a very pleasant break from sitting on the phone. I just hope I don't melt over the next couple of days-they're predicting 97+ with heat indices in the 100's; I am just not cut out for this!

Oh well, thank goodness we have a/c! I remember doing without, not all that long ago. Air-conditioning makes life bearable in the summer, when you live in St. Louis.

First Principles in writing

The first principle of writing is be in a peaceful state of mind. This seems counter-intuitive, since a good deal of good writing occurs in the heat of the moment, impassioned, as it were, by the exigencies of that immediate experience. The trick is, it seems to me, to hold onto that passion until one is prepared to write clearly and succinctly about whatever it is that is moving one to write.

I have an example here at hand; for yesterday afternoon I had a surprising emotional moment, the sudden passion of which might have easily roused me to write about it, except that I knew, in the heat of that remembrance, I would've probably failed miserably to relate that which I really wanted to say about it, and instead have devolved onto merely describing it, with no insight or reflection. The mechanics of the situation are this, and such that I expect many people will be able to relate to: I was listening to a song on a CD which I hadn't listened to for some time, and, suddenly, a song that was very closely identified to the end of my marriage came on. In a sudden rush, all my thoughts and feelings from that time came over me, like a flood, and as I was sitting my living room chair with my roommate next to me, watching a movie as I sat with the laptop and headphones, I decided to move to the deck to finish listening to the song.

It's not revealing too much to say that the song was "If I Ever Lose My Faith In You" from Sting's "Ten Summoner's Tales" album. In keeping with first principles, I can say that there are two parts to the significance of this song to me: the first, a temporal consideration, in that I had really gotten into this album around the first summer of my marriage, and, at the time I imprinted the devastating associations that follow it now, I was on vacation and had the house to myself, so I could totally crank up the stereo I had been building since my return from Detroit and had actually gotten married to the gal I'd pursued off and on for over 11 years. I was finally living in a mostly-happy home with someone I'd given my love to more than once, only to suffer from unfortunate break-ups.

The second aspect is a lot trickier to pin down, because of course, if you listen to the lyrics, there is a central theme of "if I lose my faith in you, there'd be nothing left for me to lose". This concept is quintessentially important here, because it's one of the things my wife said to me after we got back together after a 5 year break-"I can't believe you came back to me after all that." And I told her, "you should never lose your faith in me-if you'll just let me be there, I will be there for you." We had about four good years; then, her old problems, having never been resolved despite my support for that, resurged. After an evening of inexplicable, horrible recrimination that mostly had to do with things in her head and not on-the-ground reality, she demanded a divorce and I told her "I won't fight you to stay married to me." And so, eventually, we moved apart and I petitioned the state for, and recieved, a divorce.

And as I stood on the deck last night, listening to a song that at one time had expressed everything I felt about my happiness in finally having the woman and home that I'd always longed for, I started crying. Crying for that guy back then, so happy and thinking he'd found his place, crying for me now, much older, lonely, sure that all that aspect of my life is pretty much over forever, reminded of all the former loves who are all gone forever too, knowing full well that I just don't have it in me anymore to dive into that great pool of emotion and utter commitment, unbelieving that all my best was never enough, ever, anywhere, anytime.

I cried when I wrote this song; sue me if I play too long. Call me Deacon Blues.

And what does all of this have to do with First Principles in Writing, you ask?

Write what you know, and never fear to tell the whole, personal truth. No writing is better than that which unflinchingly reveals the writer's very soul.

For that, one must have great peace of mind.

11th Annual Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure draws over 66,000!

I've got some other images I might work on and post, but this is a view of the participants of the 11th annual Komen Race for the Cure against breast cancer here in STL. Looking west down Market Street, approaching 18th street.
I've been a supporter since the early days, but this is the first time I actually went down and did the walk with the masses; as a rule, I dislike being in crowds, but my friend Steve walked last year and really wanted someone to walk with him this year, so I thought, "what the heck." I was curious about a few things, not the least of which was how I would feel packed in with all those people, so Steve and I hooked up early and went downtown for the walk. Man! What a crowd! Now, I've been in some pretty big crowds in my day--I was actually working backstage artist services at the VP Fair Fourth of July when we had 1 MILLION people estimated in attendance! But that figure covered the entire downtown area and Laclede's Landing, a much larger area than the several blocks cordoned off of the race today--so the sheer mass of moving humanity seemed denser today, but I did okay. As we walked, when the pack got a little pressed, I just kicked it down a gear and moved into a clearer space.
Three miles is not much of a hike to me-I usually go 6-8 miles when I get out and really do some hiking. So the physical effort was pretty much inconsequential; two things surprised me in it all, however; the first, that 66,000 people could look like so many, and second, that after 48 years of life in St. Louis, and three hours spent in the mass, I didn't see a single soul I knew. Steve and I talked about that a bit on our walk-looking to see if anyone we knew would turn up-and it still surprises me that neither of us saw anyone. I realize there's just under one million people in the metro area, but still, I really would've thought I'd see SOMEONE I knew.
Anyway, they managed to raise around 3.2 million dollars for the cause, just a tad under what they did last year, and that's a really cool thing. I'm not a cancer-survivor, in fact, there's low-incidence of cancer in my family, as far as we know (medical records being rather unreliable more than 60 years back or so), so when participants asked who I was walking for, I just said "for everyone who can't be here to walk today."

And while I found out that I still dislike being in crowds, I really do like seeing all those people united in common cause, and as my eyes walked on the masses all around me, I was really glad I went. I intend to walk this walk again, next year, and hope to do so for as long as I'm around.

Scary depths, Scary breadths

So, I know going into this kind of reading I’m opening a whole can of worms for myself; I’m the kind of person who gets profoundly affected by things I read, and while I read a great variety of things, I do spend a fair bit of my reading time on books of real significance. When I began rereading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, I knew what to expect from myself. ZMM has always affected me very deeply, as has Pirsig’s follow-up, Lila. So even though I’ve been through these works before, and have been profoundly affected by them before, each rereading brings to the fore all the thoughts and reflections I had every time I read them before, and completely color my thinking for days, if not weeks, afterwards.

So, I’m deep into this now. I suppose it doesn’t help that I’m very busy reading this deep, reflective, introspective work at the same time I’m busy doing shallow, meaningless, inconsequential work in a call center that, thankfully, at least let’s me read when there’re no calls to be made. But all of that is really okay; Pirsig’s message of Quality and the nature of reality sort of help me accept that I’m doing this work because it will pay me to keep moving forward towards work with much higher value. And unfortunately I do feel competent enough in my own critical thinking that I find myself, yet again, working to integrate Pirsig’s ideas into everything else I know about philosophy, consciousness and the ultimate apprehension of reality. My own experience. There’s just so much to reconcile here; our personal experiences are so profoundly unique and yet, if we want to believe they are integrated into some sort of overarching, all-encompassing reality we have to try to reconcile the discrepancies between everything we’ve been taught to think and feel, and everything we DO think and feel. There’s many a slip betwixt the cup and lip.

Maybe I’m getting a bit deep here, but for myself, this is what I value most about putting these thoughts out there for whoever cares to read them. I really enjoy reading the blogs of my new-found friends and we all seem to keep it a bit on the lighter side, sort-of cheering each other along on our way, but I can’t help getting deeply reflective when I read works like ZMM. I know if folks don’t care to read or comment on these musings, it’s okay. Somehow, it just feels a bit better to think out loud about it.

Robin Meade skydives with GHW Bush

Now, I just gotta say this here-I've said it many times elsewhere-TANDEM SKYDIVING DOES NOT QUALIFY ONE TO SAY THEY'VE PARACHUTED! Granted, you do exit the plane, freefall, and land. But you are strapped to an experienced parachutist and are never in control of your dive.

As a veteran of 3 static-line dives, I think I know whereof I speak. In a static line deploy, while you do not pull your own ripcord or toss a pilot chute like experienced divers, you still have to get out of the plane, get stablized hanging onto the wing-strut, and then let go in a manner which will keep you level as the line goes taut and deploys your chute. After that, you are in complete control of your canopy and fall, completely responsible for your own navigation and landing. NOW THAT'S REAL SKYDIVING!

I suppose it still takes some nerve to exit a plane strapped to an instructor, but in my opinion it takes waaaayy more to get yourself in the door, on the step, all the way out, hang on the strut until you're cleared deploy, and GO. On my first dive, because of unpredictably shifting winds, my jump-mistress held me on the strut for about a minute-and-a-half; it seemed like days. My hands were perspiring freely and I was slowly getting blown off the plane! I was clinging by my fingertips when she finally gave me the thumbs-up. Letting go of that strut was one of the greatest sensations of my life...AT LAST!!

I would've kept skydiving but for the cost.

Anyway, good luck to Robin! GHWB, feh, whatever....

Zen and the Art of Time-Filling

One of the things I really love about this summer job is the time it gives me to read. Oddly enough, sitting at my desk with a book is not something the school particularly likes, but at the call-place it's something they greatly prefer to people surfing around. Some of that probably has to do with the fact that, when I'm killing time at school on a computer, it IS sort-of related to my work. At the summer job, there are data security issues so they really don't want people surfing around on the computers, but hey, reading a book is just hunky-dory. Last summer I revisited some really great books-since the reading is constantly interrupted, it's best to read books you've already read, and I'm a world-class rereader. There are books I've reread so many times, sometimes yearly or even more, that I can wholesale quote them, page after page. To me, it's something like admiring a painting you love, I just never get tired of examining it. Last summer, I was ongoingly entertained by things like Watership Down, The Making of the Atomic Bomb, The Name of the Rose, a lot of my favorites.

This summer I'm revisiting weightier fare; I'm almost done with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and will plunge right head-long into Lila. Robert Pirsig's first book really changed my life in many ways; his second book is the reason my cat is named Lila. I'm going to have to do a lot of thinking about this, because I would like to talk some about Pirsig and his philosophy, but maybe not right now.

Soon, though.

Say Hello to my Little Friend!

There are several principles which guide my life; "form follows function", "conserve your resources", "find the greatest utility at the least expense", "reduce, reuse, recycle", and, of course, "never invade Russia unless you can be in Moscow before winter sets in".
In the spirit of these guiding light principles, allow me to introduce my little friend. She's a Mac PowerBook G4-867 meg PowerPC, 256 megs RAM (fully populated!) and a 40 gig Fujitsu hard drive. In other words, she's not too smart, not too fast, and doesn't have an impressive memory (at least for these days). BUT! She possesses charms that might escape the notice of those determined to always be on the cutting, if not bleeding, edge; and, she has been so good to me, my little Steely Mac, that I can no longer resist extolling her virtues.

First, let me reiterate for any who might not already know, I'm NOT a Mac aficianado; I cut my teeth on TI-99-4A's and Amigas, finally bowing to the inevitable with my first (home-rolled) PC and hot on it's heels a Toshiba T-1000SE laptop (no hard drive!), all the while getting versed a bit on IBM mainframes and AS/400s and that ilk. When my school job required me to get reacquainted with the Mac family, I hadn't touched one since OS7, and even that exposure had been rather minimal. Needless to say, the last several months have been verrrry interrresting! Fortunately for me, my experience has been so all-over-the-boards that, for the most part, it's been more like learning a proprietary software than getting broken-into yet another platform.

When I started with the school, I was assigned a big-guns-full-bore Macbook to be my main computer--2 gig processor, over a gig of RAM, 180 gig hard-drive, etc etc. Quite a tasty little laptop, and I've enjoyed using it. After a couple of weeks dragging it home and back every day (after all, I was trying get totally immersed in the Mac environment) I started getting a bit tired of the effort, and my thoughts turned to looking for some sort of solution. Then, I found my little friend. She had been purchased years ago to travel around with a projector on a cart and, when the district rolled out laptops to all the teachers, became redundant and a bit outdated, and got shelved. When I first powered her up, she hadn't been turned on for about 2 years.

At first, I just kinda liked her look, and maybe felt a bit sorry for her, stuck in a drawer for a couple of years. So I powered her up, recharged her battery and updated the software, just fiddling around with her for my own amusement. And then I started noticing some things; for one, she was full-featured: a couple of USB 2 ports, Firewire, ethernet, DVI, heck she even had a 56k modem! And an airport card, and a CD read/write, DVD read-only drive. Not too shabby for a little laptop. She was trim, too--a good two inches narrower than the Macbook, which, while shaving down screen size, also made her fit my lap very nicely. She's not really proportionately lighter than the Macbook (that titanium case, after all!) but I really sorta liked the "steely" look. Being basically abandoned, after all, I couldn't resist taking her home for a weekend of playing-around. And that's when I discovered her real attributes!

I have been a writer my whole life. I learned how to type when I was 16, and since then, I've written on a host of typewriters, and, eventually, computers. I'm pretty picky about that tactile interface. In fact, I use a remote keyboard with the Macbook because I just cannot stand the little plastic tab keys they feature. BUT! Steely Mac has nicely contoured, edge-to-edge placed keys and I quickly found that I could write faster, more accurately, and more comfortably on this little laptop than any computer since my pobrecito Toshiba T-1000SE, which machine had, for me, previously defined comfort! I spent quite a few happy hours messing with her, and ultimately realized that I might have found my Mac-toting solution. I decided to make her mine.

First, I thought about her capacities and limitations. She could serve as a pretty good netbook; kinda slow on accessing videos, true, but just generally surfing the web she ran fine. While she didn't have a lot of memory, that was ameliorated by stripping off all but the really useful and generally used software. I recovered about half of the hard-drive space that way, so you can tell I still have a lot of useful software installed. What drive space persists I dedicate mostly to temporary file space, so any files I want to maintain long-term get moved off onto flash-drives or my big-guns PC. The software retained is optimized for interfacing with that platform; too, I've been busy over the last year exploring net-apps, to reduce the apparency of which platform I might be using at any given time. Since I set up an 802.11G wi-fi for my roommate, Steely Mac's airport logs right on and I have zero connectivity issues-except for that not-too-big RAM.

Finally, this little goomer fits in my lap perfectly. I can type for hours without getting fatigued, the screen is plenty big enough and pretty enough for my needs, I suppose my biggest complaint is the crummy audio output. Still, put the 'phones on and it's good enough. It gets surprising battery life-I've run it over four hours on the batts with no real issues, although I tend to leave it plugged in, even in the lap, unless I'm not sitting in my chair, but then again, that's where I mostly use it. Virtually all of my blogging and blog-responding goes on with the ever-capable assistance of my Steely Mac.

While there are plenty of reasons to call it out-of-date, it's certainly not without value! I really like my little friend, and, especially since it is so pleasant to sit and write on it, cannot envision when it will become so obsolete that I cannot do without replacing it.

That being said, I've been noticing those tasty little netbooks lately.........

Need old habits die?

The first two days in the new old job went well, though things are a little bit different than they were last summer; a bit more structured about breaks and such, more like the usual call-center than the relaxed place it was. They've changed the responsibilities of the position some, too, in ways making it easier, but those changes make it a bit duller, too. Oh well, it's not to be helped.

More troubling than anything is the change to my working hours-they've scheduled me 9:30 to 6 p.m., quite a change from what I'm accustomed to. I have the habit of rising very early, usually between 4 and 5 a.m., and therefore I tend to retire early, around 9 p.m. or so. Last week I tried to get my internal clock to reset, but it was a bit futile. A couple of days won't suffice, and as I thought about it this weekend, I began thinking, "why bother?" I'll only be in this job for about two months, and then I'll be going back to school. There, I go in around 6:30 a.m. and leave about 3 p.m., hours that suit me fine. And it's not like I have any kind of social life in the evenings; I suppose the only downside to keeping my early schedule is the tediousness of waiting around in the morning to go in to work. Once I'm there, it's just a matter of dealing with my readiness to call it a day around 3 p.m.

Back in my collegiate days I had to contend with a various and ever-changing schedule. Originally I worked nights, went to school during the day, and snatched what sleep I could whenever. My employer confounded things somewhat by changing my shift assignment periodically, throwing me onto first shift, requiring I change my classes to nights and weekends. Over the course of my degree work I got bounced from first to third and back again about 5 times; it always took a couple of weeks to get acclimated to new hours. I recall reading a study done about adjusting circadian rhythms and as I recall that week or two was about average for most folks to make a major adjustment in sleeping-waking cycles.

So, why try to kill my old habit of early-rising, when I would just need to start readjusting in a month or so? Perhaps I would be better served by trying to find things to keep me engaged in the empty morning hours until my shift begins?

Back in the saddle at the new old job

Spent my first day at the new old job; after a couple hours being acquainted with the new interface and getting some briefing on policy changes, I got to spend the afternoon pretty much doing the job, just like last summer. It was good; I like the gal they placed me with for refreshing, she was sharp and skillful. I guess the only frustration to manage now is waiting for IT to get me set up with my log-in, password, and get me a security i.d. so I can come and go. These things always take a bit of time.

It's cool, too, since I know this is only for so-long; and while I've always disliked transitions, this went really smooth, since I spent a few months there last summer, and some of my pals are still around. They were all really glad to see me and very friendly. I really look forward to catching up with them. I am, however, in a very different place than I was last time; I know I have somewhere I'll be returning to in not-too-many weeks, and while I really like these people, I can hardly wait to get back to school.

Ah, Life. It sure is an interesting proposition.

A sweet day for the ol' QMech

Happily I've reached the point where I'm digging into my VHS conversion project, and it's rolling along nicely. I've cataloged my MST3K's (80-ranging from early Joel to late Sci-Fi channel offerings) and I'm in the process of reviewing my bad sci-fi captures to weed out things that aren't of sufficient quality to convert...unfortunately, there are quite a few of those.

My criteria for conversion are:
-is it hard or impossible to find already on DVD?
-is the image worth the effort?
-are there ancillary qualities worth preserving (commercials, additional materials, some special quality?)
-just plain worthy of keeping?

I had a hoot yesterday, ripping and rendering my copy of "This Island Earth"; granted, it's available, but I have to mind my pennies these days. Too, I have a nice-looking copy sans commercials, AND it calls back for me the night I recorded it from broadcast, for personal reasons best not discussed here. However, we had some terrific thunderstorms moving through the area, which cut the power, which corrupted the project, which meant I ended up doing the whole thing three times before I had something I could burn! In the long run, I might've saved a lot of effort by just waiting until I could buy the thing.

Today, however, is my very favorite kind of day for this kind of project. It's a bit chilly, drizzly, a perfect day to make some chili (!) and dig through tapes. I've spent the morning making lists and reviewing tapes-an effort I will spend the rest of the day on-and putting the rendering studio through it's paces. It does a good job, for a suite of gear I have no investment in, and as I go through the process repeatedly it gets faster and easier.

In the background I'm reviewing tapes, while the suite is processing; hell, I've even finished scrubbing the shower-I'M ON FIRE! and tomorrow, I go back to work at the temp-job; at least, I'm supposed to-I'm still waiting for my agency rep to give me my hours, etc. I suppose I should just be "chill" but, dammit, I'd like to get on with it!

Oh yeah, gotta do some laundry (new work clothes!)...more later.

I Promise, one of these days I will Stop Procastinating!

Just as I've told myself 800 million times to stop exaggerating!

What can I say-procrastination is the final refuge of the able who just don't feel like doing that thing right this minute. It drove my ex-wife crazy, this habit of mine. She would concoct some project for me, present it, and expect immediate action. And then quietly fume while I approached the whole thing crab-wise, thinking about it, musing upon it, researching, studying, considering and reconsidering, sidling up to it in the way I best like to approach problems which do not require quick and immediate resolution.

Don't get me wrong, I'm capable of quick and decisive action and I'm good in a pinch; in fact, I do some of my best work when everything's on the line and a solution was needed 5 minutes ago. But in a sort of husbanding-of-my-resources way, things that don't require such immediacy often quietly tick away on idle as I slowly formulate my approach. She, on the other hand, rarely gave careful consideration before just diving into a project, often only to find that she didn't have the needed materials or tools or plan to complete whatever it was she was attempting. And that sort of roadblock is just the thing to completely derail me.

So, you may ask yourself, what is it that I'm procrastinating on today? Well, in my crab-wise, sidling up to it way, I've gotten about 1/2-way thru cleaning the apartment, reorganizing my music gear, setting up the rendering lab for my VHS-to-DVD conversion project, sorting a whole bunch of clothes into keep or donate piles, finally deciding which of my kitschy collection of old audio and electronic gear to keep and which to pitch, oh my, the list can go on for days! And instead of doing any of that (I DID, after all, spend several hours this morning poking most of those projects with a pencil, after all!) I'm listening to my old Nektar CDs, having a cold beer and writing in this blog.

After all, it's GOOD to be the king! In fact, I think a plan is formulating even as I write-more slacking off, a mid-day nap (hey, it's going to be 90 degrees today! heck with going out...) then maybe a bit of early evening supper, read or play guitar a bit, and then one of my very favorite things-GO SHOPPING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT! While I try not to patronize Wally world too much, there are some things I need which I just cannot spend more than the barest minimum on...slacks and shirts for the new job, stuff like that. I love going to 24 hr. stores in the middle of the night, when there's no traffic in or out of the store, and I can just piddle along amusing myself looking at the things people spend money on.

Sounds like a plan.