Maybe the very last time. I mean it.. maybe.

So we're sitting on site until they move this beast.  For a couple of days we'll make a good bit of coin, certainly worth the drive.   But there are challenges mind you.  Lisa and I fall into the roles we've picked out the last couple of years, her being on days and my anti social self nights. She being the more socially gifted I have no issues whatsoever her insulating me from the top tier bosses and such.  On this job, the site safety man has turned Lisa loose on the clean shaven rule which has resulted in many sound admonishments of unsuspecting and lackadaisical workers showing up all face messy and stuff.  Upsetting enough to warrant nasty looks upon leaving.  Although from previously scruffy faces.  The power of the site safety man is immense and mountainous woes to the talker backer.  For she will certainly rat him out.

This has not always been the case.  The rules vary from boss to boss.  While some have asked to outright deny access to some persons, not all company guys wish to subrogate that duty and we have occasionally been called on the carpet.  It's all good.  

My night life role has different challenges.  Eyesight and hearing failings cause there own problems.   First the hearing, "What's your name?  Tyke the driver replies over the sound of the diesel.  "Dike?" I repeat.  And he says "sure" as I note it down wondering what parent would name his child after a female lesbian.  Secondly the eyesight.  At night I have to almost get within five or six feet of a mud covered license plate to read it. Even with a flashlight.  And that's not a failing that mixes very well with some of these psycho drivers who blow through our little checkpoint without stopping.  Fortunately my cat like reflexes, well don't really exist anymore.  I am surviving this world entirely on dumb luck.  Probably equally quantified by my willingness to get all pissed off and to start yelling at young guys....from Texas...who work in the oilfields...at my age. Anyway.

Watched the democratic debates.  You know the adults.  Bern does it for me each and every time.  Nevertheless, whether he wins or loses and I think he's in it to win it.  His mantra will be carried on.   It started with the occupy movement.  The assholes in the windows of the wall street firms mocking them to get a job.  Yeah, well they and many others may be singing a different tune if Bernie gets into office.  Is it fair that bazillions of people have criminal records for smoking pot when through fraud some of these rich guys broke the world and not only got to keep their millions, but the taxpayer's millions too? Candidates are now speaking the words.  Too rich to go to jail?  I guess history will tell.  But in any event, times are changing.  For myself, how interesting to still be around to watch.  For my children, the pendulum seems to be swinging the other way.

Listen, when I was a kid, a single person could work part time and afford an apartment, a car and even some extras.  I could afford to play on the weekend, pay for a date and even catch a college football game or two.   My kid jobs? bartender, truck driver painter and a host of others, predominantly unskilled.  I caught up on classes in my off time.  The handful of times I had a legal issue, twenty bucks the first time and forty the second.  The latter involved showing up to court on my behalf twice.  I painted a dentists house in exchange for work and even the most minor part time job usually had some elective health care with it.   At twenty years old if I was crazy sick, (which was the only time I'd go to a doctor)  I just opened my wallet and grumbled that it cost twenty bucks.  

So, thirty years later was I surprised to learn that in effect, bartenders made less than I did.  Thanks to a shitload of regressive taxes, car registrations are crazy expensive.  Likewise the price of cars and insurance prohibitive. A visit to the ER on average is eight hundred, but who are we fooling? It could be thousands. Where I was making two fifty an hour, a little under two weeks wages that was set aside paid for tuition for a semester of college.  Cramped my style that month because rent was seventy five bucks.  Somebody was going to have to buy the beer this weekend.  

Bottom line, if we want our kids to have any quality of life, minimum wage fifteen bucks, I'd say make it twenty. Surprise, maybe some common sense will prevail.    I'm gonna have to be a little precocious here: my generation needs to get over themselves.  We didn't "work" harder than our kids do.  If anything, we were just more entitled.  

And so it goes.

Mid January Suck and other stuff

I added something today.  It'll happen any moment now.  Wait for it......

I read an article that no matter what, I should hope that I don't win the Powerball because of the financial ruin that has devastated over seventy percent of lottery winners.   No.  I want to win.  In fact if I have to be financially devastated in seven years because of it.  Then OK.  It's a deal.  So for now I'll probably be like every other sucker conned into this snake oil game and continue to buy a ticket, maybe two, or once in a while three....

Picked up a free camper shell a couple of months age.  Not bad from side, even with the scratches on the top. Rumor has it the thing went airborne at some point in it's life.  One of the results being......

No rear door.  Actually purchasing a replacement is somewhere's south of four hundred bucks.

So I gathered up a bunch of raw materials and came up with this for about fifty.

It'll do.

Feeling under the weather.  On reflection I almost can't remember the last time I felt like this.  Which I suspect has a lot to do with avoiding crowds and living near the Coast.  But every dog has his day.  So I'm sipping hot Sake waiting for that warm alcoholic glow to set in.  Every time I purchase the stuff, which is sold in more stores than one might think, it always appears to be a topic of conversation, as if I'm always somebody who looks willing to chat.  To which I always respond.  It's just a phase friend.  Just a phase.

Sitting around these last couple of days has made me unbelievably restless.  So I did a bit of research and holy crap, there are some amazing deals on some exotic vacations.  So, yeah, I think I'll work on that for now.

I picked out these songs well, because I guess my tastes have just become more mature.   Got an important call, gotta go.

Brisket , Sweet Potato pie and David Bowie

  It's been four years since I decided to battle a Brisket.  The last three were cooked on an electric smoker and even then only two of them were even edible.  I so went to great lengths with all three, injection marinades and all.  Two were edible. One even being kind of OK.

  This little seven lb. beauty took ten hours of careful tending while soaking up hickory smoke in a simple barrel type BBQ.  Simple spice rub of Cayenne, Beer, Vinegar, Course Salt and a few other ingredients.  Pretty ugly huh?

 Hah,  turned out pretty amazing.  We subsequently invited some other residents of the park over for dinner.  Scalloped potato's and Coleslaw being the main events. What was going to be just a simple meal turned into several hours of just an excellent time. Somebody brought over a sweet potato pie and some BBQ beans to go along.  And Rolls of course.  Good food and good conversation.

Really it's been awhile since we had a group meal.  The last few occurring with the adult kids.  Those were also highly enjoyable events I might add..  The difference being with this one was it consisted of folks we'd previously had very little contact with.  What a difference a dinner makes.   I suspect much like the Christmas dinner that is alleged to have occurred between the Germans and the Allies in World War I. (And those people were enemies. We were just strangers)  Does make one speculate if more folks in this country, not to mention the world were to sit down to a meal once in a while, maybe then we'd see eye to eye much more often.

So, middle of the afternoon, on a drizzly overcast and cold day, I'm sitting right by the open door in this little castle.  I'm finding it kind'a enjoyable.  Lisa long ago gave up on the day and decided to nap through it.  There is really no other activity around this place.  Secret is, is that most folks only come here on weekends and during the week, the place is more or less deserted.   News everywhere says David Bowie is dead.  Cancer at 69 and just one more reminder of impending mortality.  This one bother's me a little more because I have memories of such clarity of nearly half a century ago.  See I was just fifteen and had just gotten my driver's license. It was supposed to be daytime only but   Dad, working for the UP railroad sometimes needed picked up late at night at the old railroad depot in Twin Falls, Idaho.  The one that long ago was moved twenty miles away and eventually became a pizza joint.  Well, Mom might have been working, or not.  But damn it, a new kid had the ability to drive and maybe she was just tired of so many late nights waiting for his train to come in, that it was more convenient to have the, eager to drive at any time, boy go get him. So I was given the keys to the family bus, which was a solid step above the vehicle I was usually allowed to drive, told to watch out for cops and go get him.

The Bowie connection?  Well, I'd drive around town a bit, cruise Main  trying to look cool as if that car were all mine.  But I'd finally end up waiting in that dark parking lot late at night, sometimes after midnight and, sometimes better than an hour.  And you guessed it.  Always accompanying that memory is the voice of David Bowie singing "Ground Control to Major Tom" over that am radio.  And I'd sit in that car and look up at the night sky (it was always summer of course) like he was really up there somewhere.  Sometimes I snuck a smoke and it, well, added ambiance to the moment.  And today just reminded me once again that like it or not, the world is changing, not always for the best.  And nobody ever gets out of here alive.  But I guess for the most part, when it happens, well, it likely will be with good company.

Old Lang Syne

There have been 196 posts to this blog.  Which I suspect only a few bored Internet bots read from time to time mostly cause they are programmed that way. ( I call them Steve and Barry). But I like to think of it as a bit of a legacy.   No doubt about it, there have been some adventures from time to time that, well wouldn't have happened otherwise. A good number of them weather related, climate change be damned.    Speaking of damned.  40 mph winds out there and a 27 degree temperature drop In about an hour from the same system that just hit Dallas and created a EF4 Tornado..  A horrible tragedy and my heart goes out to the victims.  A bright spot, hot water heater still working when it sometimes gets blown out by a spring breeze.

So a few acquisitions.  Lloyd the camp host gave me a nearly new barrel BBQ.  Smoker style.  I haven’t personally smoked a brisket for quite a while so looks like a project for next week.   Second thing, I joined a gym.  For the better part of my life I have had a means to blowing off steam.  Not the case the past few years until I started looking a my rising blood pressure.  Sure I walk when I can, but it’s all about the location location location.  The gym is a fifteen minute drive from here.  The  best deal came from the most upscale.  And the drive along the bay is quite invigorating.  The workout satisfying. 

But to the point of this post.  Occasionally I'll break out of my shell and have a meaningful conversation with other age appropriate folk. anywheres from ten years younger to twenty years older than oneself.  Any older than that and you're talking to a parent, even if you are 61.  See he'll just profess to know a lot more than you  and begin directing forthwith. And yourself?  Thought we'd broke out of that.  At least by the mid thirties anyways.  OK, some of us are just a little slower than others. 

But one thing I’ve learned during our travels, that can grease the dialogue faster than anything else, muttering these few simple words having the potential to bring nations together,  is the simple phrase:  "What kinda gas mileage you get on that rig?"  Those few  code words align the synaptic brain response in a universally accepted and non aggressive disposition.  Incite the conversational juices for a couple of old guys like no other.  Familiar ground acquired each party then proceeds to comfortably wandering into more personal subjects’s one, well, wouldn’t feel right talking about beforehand. Such as “they just don’t build Fords like they used to”.   Now that’s opening your self up folks.  Party, culture and otherwise.  Soon a wellspring of opinions sprout forth.  Politics, family matters and personal beliefs.  Fifteen, twenty minutes is all it takes. Usually takes place in a neutral area, say in the middle of the road, casually and most assuredly stepping slowly out of the way of oncoming  traffic and never breaking eye contact, so’s to dispel the other’s notion that you might be afraid or something.  It’s also a spot where both geezers feel equally comfortable and in neutral territory.  After a reasonable amount of time, ( after all there’s other things needing attention,)  satisfied each walks away from the other simultaneously.  Has to be that way.  Mutual retreat. Even if it never happens again, it takes such an encounter for older males to be able to live in proximity to one another in peace in these RV places.  If that ritual doesn’t occur timely, it’s been my experience that suspicion,misgiving and ill will usually follow.

Now women adhere to different rules. Women speak tends to be a whole different form of communication.  I notice women tend to be more patient with other women, particularly when they are in a demanding mood.  They seem to get less upset.  A privilege not extended to us men.  

Recently, what with Lisa trying to get the house sold she’s been agitated more and more by circumstances being what they are,  1800 miles away and all.  She’ll talk k  over some of the issues with me, and my responses tend to be more direct.  Emotional, profound, requiring instant decisive action.  Yeah, I’m the decider as is my proper role.  Problem is I can’t make up my mind and tend to fritter back and forth sometimes.  A fact I’ll deny later if anyone asks.  But for some reason unknown to myself, this seems unsatisfactory to her.  So recently during a visit to a local real estate Office of the same chain being used in Idaho,  Lisa connected with  just what the doctor ordered, another woman.  And for the next forty plus minutes they danced around every aspect of every concern she had.  Drove down every street and looked at all the intersections.  Turned left, right and then drove back.   Then go down and explore some other dark street in their minds.  Naturally for the first twenty minutes or so, I tried to keep up, grabbing upon little tidbits of talk and instantly coming to the proper decision.  Cause that’s what I do being the decider and all.  But that folks got to be exhausting.  Even decider’s need naps.   After blurting out my opinion a few times just to be ignored, I was viciously overcome by a nap attack. No sense fighting it. After the mind meld,  I was rather rudely awoke by a more satisfied Lisa.  She seemed more pleased with whatever decision she’d come to.  Me, I had the satisfaction that she’d finally taken my  advice.  I was sure on that point.  

So I'll finish this.  Somewhere South of San Antonio. Middle of the night at the end of a Caliche road and just witnessing the arrival of 2016, with some satisfaction. Rain and cold wind blowing outside and my party, unlike the boozy nights of the past, amounted to popping a bag of popcorn and boiling a cup of water for one of the midnight worker’s unable to get away for a little food.  Sent him away with a couple of energy bars,  bowl of warm soup and a Happy New Year.  The same that I wish for all my friends and family.  And I’ll take a moment to remember  those friends from the past that never made it this far. And that friends will do me just fine