tip-toein

We've had some cloudbursts roll through today. I missed the ones early in the day, since I was in McCloud. Coming back north on the 97, once I came up over Stagecoach Pass, there was a lovely, humongous thunderstorm cloud over Klam. Lightning here and there. I could smell the rain, but had just missed it. More has come through, but back to when I came back into town. I turned off onto the City Center exit and made my way down to Klamath to get to 5th St. There was a lot of water on the street. A lady who probably worked at the title building or the courthouse was trying to find a place to cross onto the sidewalk (which was mostly underwater) from the road. She was dressed very nicely. As I passed her, I watched her hike off her shoes and go wading through. She smiled. Not a pained "Crap, I'm ruining my $120 pair of pants" smile, but a "ooo the water is cool" kind of smile. It's been hot and muggy despite the rain today. It's felt super nice to stand outside and let the clouds dump on me. There's minor street flooding- it seems there's no where for the water to go in some parts of town. Spring Street at S. 6th is under quite a bit of water. Perfect for a plastic boat regatta.

Shastika was wearing one of her hats today. The one they say that the Lemurians use when they send another space ship off.

Off topic, but not totally, Shastika is a fascinating mountain. Five glaciers, which I understand are growing, rather than retreating, sit in various areas. Mostly on the north side, I think. She makes her own weather. I've been coming south into Weed in the early morning and seen a cloud forming on her west flank, about halfway down. I've seen steam pouring off the profile on hot mornings, I guess the result of snowmelt. She's 7 volcanoes, and you can see, especially this time of year on the south side, the results of past eruptions. I love looking at Black Butte just south of Weed when I pass by it, too.

Disappointing and sad, though, is the sick trees all along the 97. Every tree has brown needles, some more than others. Some are just dead altogether.

struck me as weird

That next month I'm taking a 800+ mile long (one way) road trip with a relative I haven't had any contact with in 20 years.

The cell phone company that sucks

That would be sprint. There are places in town that we're roaming. I'm roaming when I'm 5 minutes outside of town. Right now, I'm roaming in my house, which is a new development. I can't even call Sprint to bitch at them. I get a US Cellular tower error message. What bullshit.

What's your job, you there with the sticks?

There was a small group of local musicians at the picnic today. Everyone got to get up and jam their stuff and it was cool seeing different people play.

One band, I felt so very sorry for. They had this drummer who seemed to just know how to play fills. And he just played them ...wherever... in their songs. It was bad enough that it was everything I could do not to just take his sticks away from him and beat him to death with them.

You're a drummer. You're job is to keep the beat. If you can't do that, you aren't doing your job, and you should take lessons or play lead guitar.

I don't know how these guys played with this drummer. Later, one of the KBS people was talking to their guitar player...

"Dudes, your drummer is really bad"
"We know" (looking embarassed)
"How do you jam with that?!"
"We've learned to ignore it"

Now, really, that's pretty damn impressive, to ignore your awful drummer.

out of the blue

Wow. Today, as I was heading out to play at a local corporate picnic with the Blues Society, my phone rang, and it was my aunt. My dad's sister.

I can't even remember the last time I talked to her. When I was a teenager?! Probably. I think the last time I saw my cousin, I was 15 or 16.

When Smart Half and I had been in Coos Bay for about 8 years, I got a note from my cousin that they had moved to a town near Grants Pass. Then I lost the note, with their address and phone number on it. Of course. But we've lived in like 5 places since then, so there's my excuse. Many things have been accidently chucked or stashed away in the garage or whatever.

But she wants to head down to SoCal with me when I go get the stuff from my dad. She would like to see him before he bails to Thailand. I'm going to call her tomorrow and we are going to work out the details and maybe catch up.

oh the bugs

A friend had said, a couple of weeks ago, that "hey, the bugs haven't been too bad this year". The mosquito and midge population had not reached an epic number, and that was nice.

Man, did she ever speak too soon. About a week ago, the midges EXPLODED. Our porches are disgusting. You can't even sit outside with a snack and enjoy the evening. It isn't much better during the afternoon. Usually, they aren't really bad except in the morning and evening, but, euw, it is SO nasty now.

a race track

You have maybe heard of the Race Track in Death Valley. Where, when the playa gets muddy and slick, and the wind blows, the rocks scoot across the ground, leaving tracks.

There's one nearby, too. I went and tried to get a picture of it today. I haven't unloaded the camera yet, but I don't think it turned out well. It'll be overexposed and the edges will be blurry. *sigh*

Anyway, it's near Tulelake

Project Jennifer

Mike, this is the story I was trying to tell you! My brain almost works.. Here's another good story about it. I'm trying to find a picture of the badge to share. It's an eagle with scuba flippers, scuba mask and..

G'Nite, Tubbycat

I had to put my old Tubby to sleep today. Her real name was Chevette, because she was just a little lighter and quite a bit slower than her mother, Chevelle (whose full name was 396 Supersport Chevelle). Tubby had contracted mammary cancer, and it grew quickly. The vet agreed it was probably best to put her down. She was 13 or so. She'd had many kitty adventures, lived in two states, seen the beach, the desert, the city, chased a lot of birds and mice (never caught one, though, that I knew of). Tubby was a dusty Calico cat, pink and grey and white with golden eyes. She had a funny walk. She sort of threw her back legs out in a circle, so she wiggled her butt when she was on her way sit in a spot of sun on the porch. She was a lapcat, and if no lap was available, she was a shoulder, lower back, feet, or face cat. She got the second name of Tubby when I had a horrible snorfly cold, I think, and I called her Tebette. Tubby stuck. It was a good nickname for her. She didn't get the idea of up for about a year. We would play with her and yank the toy up, and she'd look around side to side for it. She liked cat food. Weird. She also liked a bite of cheese once in a while, or a bit of hot dog or bologna, but never gave a rat's ass about tuna fish or the mushy cat food. She escaped a friend's house when we first moved to Oregon. She was gone for three months, but I kept going back over and looking for her. I finally got her to come to me, and she was so thin. The vet told us to feed her kitten chow and gave us steroids for her. One night soon after we got her back, Dale and I were eating our dinner of rice and cheese (well, you know the things you eat when you have $30 to spend for a week for food), and she got up on the counter and finished the leftovers before we realized it. So, she had a really full belly. Like she'd swallowed a big rock. heh. She ate every grain of rice in the bowl. She wasn't fixed yet, and not long after the rice n cheese snack, she had a *huge* kitten. Just one. One big, googly-eyed orange tabby. The steroids... we got her fixed after she had the kitten.

Tubby was weird. I'll miss her. She wasn't the brightest cat, but that was part of her charm.

Not a good enough reason

I love the people I meet at my job.

I'm starting to hate the job. Oh, yeah, after six months, I'm ready to chuck it.

Pain has never really been a good enough reason to stop doing something. At least, that's how I was raised. I'm rethinking that little way of living. I'm just sore all the time. Oh, I have some new muscles and once again fantastic legs, but who cares if all I want to do when I get home is flop on the floor and die? At least it's not back pain. Gawd I feel for all the people who suffer that every waking moment. No, it's just getting-old pain. I joke that I need a cane in the morning. Not funny, because I can barely move sometimes, especially after the Siskiyou route.

I need a better excuse to unload the job. Perhaps I should do something horrendous and get myself fired. That would suck, though.

Loser

I have the cover version of this song, done by Cracker, on one of the CDs in the Fo right now. In fact, I don't think I've ever heard the Grateful Dead one. Weird. But I've loved the song for at least a decade. Today it rolled up in the player and I just had to crank up the volume. It's a perfect song. Especially in mid-morning, with the sky blue and the air cool, the sun just starting to warm everything. It's fun to play on the acoustic and the bass. I think I could nail it on the drums. I doubt I could learn the lead in anything less than a year. But that's because I'm not a lead player, and my brain doesn't work like the brain of someone who plays lead. It's most comfy playing rhythm parts.

Last fair deal in the country.

growl

All this bullshit with my dad has put me in a foul mood. I try to not take it out on other people. It happens anyway. And then, amazing of amazing, I feel bad about it.

I have some perspective. Sure, I have a dad to be angry at. A lot of people don't have a dad at all, to snarl about or say nice things about. I'm grateful I have a dad. There have been times that I have felt like I didn't have one, though. That I just had this guy my mom married. I've had the love/hate thing with him for a long time. I swing from one to the other fairly often. And sometimes I go from being irritated with him to flat-out hating his stinking guts in the space of an hour or two.

So, sure, I have perspective.
Still trying to let this go.
Still having a hard time with it.
Still wondering if he's a fool after all, despite how successful he's been. At least as far as work goes.
Wonder if he'll ever find what he's looking for.

awone

according to OrBlogs, I am the only Kfallzer with a blog. Still. Hrmph.

waving

Ok the city has finally finished, for the most part, the nightmare that is South 6th st and Washburn. I can't wait for the miserable whining in the editorial section of the paper to end. But wait! No, it won't end, because they built these weird guided-by-curbs turn lanes in to the middle of the street. So, everyone in town who is incapable of reading pavement markings is in the middle of some kind of nervous attack over it. Heck, the curbs are low enough, just go OVER them in your monsterous trucks. Who needs curbs when you have 4 wheel drive, anyway? I actually like it. You could spend your entire life sitting in the left turn lane waiting to get into Safeway from that side the way it used to be.

Me, personally, I'm just mostly happy the touring around season is almost over. I mind, terribly, people driving 20 mph in 45 zones. It's not as bad as the 101 in summertime, but it is close. Hey, there's nothing interesting to look at on South 6th, hit that gas pedal, ok?

Hell's Corner

I think, finally, that the computer issues have been fixed. All summer being online has been a pointless endeavor, so no one has seen me much. So I did other things.

End of July, I hit the rapids with some friends for a weekend of splashing and camping. We took a trip down Hell's Corner on the Upper Klamath. That is some fun stuff and I would do it again in a heartbeat. A couple of weekends ago, we rafted the Rogue. Um, what a difference between the two. Three rapids on the Rogue, 42 on the Klamath... hmmm.... But it was fun anyway.

We had our Bly mountain jam, played at the Third Thursday and the benefit to raise money for the Veteran's Memorial at (ahem!) Veteran's Memorial park downtown.

I'm in the process of purchasing a friend's acoustic guitar, and have two more guitars being sent to me, as well as an assload of camping equipment. The two guitars belonged to my brother and he doesn't play them, and the camping equipment is my dad's.

Now let me go on for a moment about my dad. Every conversation with him anymore opens a new wound and wrenches scars off old ones. A thousand cuts, you could say. I'm also angry that the business he built from his garage in the 70s is being run into the ground by the people now running it. Anyway. Dad is moving to Thailand in November. He's getting rid of most of his stuff. He's leaving his condo for my little brother to live in. Dad bought a condo for this woman over there he wants to live with because he says "She just wants to make me happy". Well, dad, you're a rich American. Of course she does. I try to give her the benefit of a doubt, but since I've never met her and probably never will, it's hard. But anyway, the conversations always hurt now. They make me remember all the kicks to the curb. Wasn't invited to the second wedding. Was told to my face i wasn't as important as the new wife (now the 3rd ex-wife). Couldn't be bother to see me when i was a younger kid, "forgot" my weekends, then the demands to see me started when i was a teenager, and i got to be treated like a psych case by his wife, ignored by him. No really i have a long list of things that hurt and really made an effort to put them into the past, and was fairly successful until a couple of weeks ago when it all got dredged back up in a phone call.

I wonder if he'll ever realize it isn't anyone else's job to make him happy and he has to do it himself.