GoodeStreet

Little O. One in a litter of five, the only kitten who survived beyond three days.

The cat that would hiss at us one moment, yet would snuggle close moments later - expecting to be pet.

Just realized earlier today, that at age nineteen our kitty cat called Little O, but more often simply The Cat, has been witness to, and companion of, Barb and I for nearly half our marriage.

He died at 11 PM tonight, with Barb and I both stroking his fur as he took his last breath on earth.

As a cat, he could be, and often was, a royal pain in the ass. He could, strangely, also be a devoted companion.

God help me, never thought I would say this, but... I'm really going to miss our damned cute kitty cat.

With Barb and I awkwardly strolling into semi-retirement (sheesh, does anybody retire without initially thrashing about?), I have decided to remodel a piece our digital furniture. The result is we will both be posting to GoodeStreet, which will then cross-post to Facebook if I can get Barb to remember to hit the danged share button.

Listed below are job offers I received that came with a "How soon can you start...tomorrow?" condition attached, and decided to decline the job offer.

UPS manager: Worked at UPS part-time while attending classes at the University of Washington. Near the end of my sophomore year UPS made an offer. Finish my final two years at a University of California business school in LA. UPS would pay all tuition, books, fees, and housing expenses. After graduation, I would work in management positions at UPS for a minimum of three years.

Regrets: None. Had no interest in getting a business degree, or living anywhere in the vicinity of LA for any period of time.

NBC News director: While attending Western Washington University the television production professor, who held a top management job at NBC News before retiring, made a tempting offer. He offered to call friends in New York to get me a position. Said I would never look for a job for the rest of my life. He outlined the benefits (of working in NYC): Great pay. Generous retirement plan. Invitations to the best parties. New York City. He was brutally honest about the downsides, too: Would live in many cities before reaching NY. If married, would get divorced. If remarried, would get divorced again. Long work days, with lots of pressure. New York City.

Regrets: Mostly none. Was seriously dating Barb by that time. Knew she would never like the downsides of the directing job. Besides, getting married to Barb was the best decision I ever made. Have never regretted the decision for a nanosecond. However, ooh gosh. My second love was directing TV shows, and wondered over the years if I had the right stuff to be the director in a NYC network news studio. Make the long journey to da big time, ya know.

University professor: A month before graduating from Western Washington U, the head of the visual communications department secretly met with me a half-dozen times. He wanted me to become a professor, and replace him as department head after he retired. 

Regrets: None at the time. At moments since, wondering what if? Have never liked cigars, blazers or cardigans, which at the time was the seemingly mandated uniform of professors. Yeah, silly reason to drag up from the cellar. Less silly was the resulting drama had I pursued a position. A professor only a couple years my senior, and with whom the student-me had had prolific unresolved arguments with, also had her eyes on the department head position. I think I probably would have won that battle, but the go-or-no-go decision that kept creeping back into my brain was those gawd-damned frickin cardigans. Shit. Couldn't imagine my ever wearing one. Not even in my grave.

Chevy general manager assistant, pay raise: Gave 4 weeks notice that I would be quitting my car dealership job to go help Barb build her/our audiology biz. On the final day (at the dealership, not THE final day EVER), the GM grabbed my shirt and insisted I tell him how much of a raise I was holding out for. The irony is - if his offer had come 3 weeks earlier there's a good chance I would have taken it. But, nope. So Barb and I jumped with all feet into the abyss.

Regrets: None. Learned a ton about sales, accounting, psychology, dealing with big corporations (GM, Chevy, big banks) and regulators. However, I still refer to my car dealership job as the best worst job I have ever had.

We've been busy wrapping up loose ends since selling the audiology practice last December. Two [more] milestones have been achieved. And not a day too soon as far as I'm concerned. I'll take it as a birthday gift.

We cleaned out the storage unit that housed spare business gear and records. Phew. One nagging monthly bill is done and gone. Below is the almost-there shot, with Barb celebrating. After shedding all that deadweight in the storage shed, Barb still thinks she has four pounds to rid from her frame. Damned perfectionist.

Here's the "finished, let's board-up-this-frickin'-place" shot.

In the last two weeks we also resolved all outstanding insurance claims. Yep, your medical insurance company will string out paying your medical providers for up to 6 months when they can (and not much can be done about it by the provider). Imagine if after putting in a weeks work your employer said they'll send a paycheck to you in 6 months.

Now you have a sense of what medical providers deal with. Constantly.

Also, since all electronic insurance payments have finally cleared the bank, I gleefully closed all our checking, savings, ACH, and merchant accounts that we had with the big-bank thieves. Finished moving the last of our accounts to local banks today - who don't do all the nasty, shit-head things that big banks do to people.

Made a point, though, of thanking many of the branch employees for their fine service and smiles over the years. They are the poor souls caught in the middle between putting food on their table and screwing people over by following management "orders".

By the way, I'll go preemptive here: Don't dare tell me, "Well, they can always quit if they hate what they are doing so much!" To which I'll respond, "Bull shit". When you have bills to pay and make the money they do, it isn't always easy to just walk away from a job. Put the blame where it deserves to be. Not on the employees. Put it on upper management where it belongs.

Enough of this. Barb and I are on our way to discovering what it is like to not have the hassle, and joys, of owning a business (our new part-time recording play-thing doesn't count as a business in the same sense). Feels strange right now, but am enjoying what our increasingly simplified life has been like during the last few months.

After arriving home I installed sundials throughout our home wherever I found a clock. Wasn't very difficult. I built clocks and radios and transmitters and receivers and stuff when I was a kid. Tore stuff apart all the time just to see how it works. My mom recently bought a new alarm clock and told my sister she wants me to have it when she dies. With a smirk, she said "I know he'll have it torn apart within 10 minutes."

Back to the sundial story, have wired the sundial output to our alarm clocks, microwave, stove, irrigation controller, thermostat, televisions, wireless home phone (yep, still have one but don't answer it when it rings), clothes dryer, digital audio recorders, video camera, computers, iPods, iPads, iPhones and radios. Even wired a sundial to a pen with a clock in the barrel I received as a gift.

Whew. Had no idea there were so many clock circuits sprinkled throughout our house. If a cop wandered through our front door Barb and I would be jailed for centuries. There are half-bombs strewn all over the place. Had no idea I had become so radicalized. I'm at least half an Ahmed Mohamed.

I think I rewired sundials to all the things with clock displays in our household, but there are so damned many things with clocks in our house I may have missed a few. Oh well. So I may still end in in prison, despite taking extreme precaution. Can't do anything about that. Have done my best to hide my true spirit. I admit it. I'm a Jeffersonian radical.

Only problem left, then, and where I could use your help, is I bought these sundials from a place down under (you know, Australia) without realizing their sundials run backwards in Oregon. Anybody know of a fix, short of flipping our house upside down?

Posted for a reason, but not relevant for most. Sorry.

Below is the mast raising system I was developing. Unfortunately RA took over my body to the point we decided to sell the boat. The version seen in the photo below was a proof of concept. With a few tweaks, it would have been a quick and easy way to raise the P-18 mast.

Plus this photo (below), also for a reason not obvious. Never will be but to a few folk. Evidence of the third dent I have put in a vehicle - not counting the 30 feet of fence I knocked over with a UPS truck. Fortunately, the lady who owned the fence was happy. Said it was the best reason she had to coerce her husband to finally get around to ripping the damned thing down. The photo below is from a tangle between my Tacoma and our neighbors fence. Call it a draw. Both were injured after the rear bumper fought back.

I was fortunate to capture a recording of an interpretive dance that Barb performed during a Thunder and Lightning concert in Ashland. The occasion became all the more special (for me, in particular) because Thunder and Lightning, which is no stranger to the Rogue Valley in Southern Oregon during summer months, typically prefers to perform in open-seating venues at numerous rustic locations throughout the surrounding Cascade and Siskiyou mountain ranges. However, this time they chose to perform within Ashland city limits... and on consecutive nights!

Thunder and Lightning has drawn rave revues world wide due to their unique, never-copied sound, along with their equally impressive special effects which accompany their performance. The craftsmen of T&L have never been shy about informing the public about their performance beliefs, feeling the Grateful Dead, while being kindred spirits in nature, also desecrate nature by recording music in a studio, and to make matters worse, in the minds of T&L, require unnatural sources of power to perform. T&L eshews all such, as they state, "infringements to creating and performing their craft" and as a result are able to create their own power in ways no performing artist has ever done before and since. Thunder and Lightning is the only world-renowned band to perform solely live, and also does not charge an admission fee for fans to attend their utterly unrehearsed concerts. No restrictions are placed on recordings of T&L performances, either. Take that and smoke it, GD GD.

I didn't have the good fortune to announce Barb's cameo appearance. Actually, nobody was tapped to announce her entrance. Learning about that gotcha, I figured my job was to get Barb to hang around long enough to overcome her stage fright. As you can imagine, it isn't easy living up to the billing of a group called Thunder and Lightning, who unleash their fair share of decibels and lumens on such a massive stage. It was particularly hard for me to encourage Barb to add her interpretive elements to the show. Anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm not big on interpretive dance. Just try to get me to observe an ecumenical interpretive dance, in particular. Won't happen. I just don't see what those bible-prancers are trying to portray. Anyway, I took one for the good of the team and convinced Barb to dance however she felt was right. You'll hear the outcome, starting 43 seconds into the recording below. She was amazing. Never saw her move like that before. Truth be told, I had to give Barb oxygen for a while after her performance. She put that much effort into wildly dancing down a hallway. She gave a very convincing effort. Possibly a Golden Decibel award winning performance.  

About the recording, T&L played more than 60 songs during a 30 minute span. They played for more than 6 hours, though not always at the frenetic pace throughout. You do the math. What I have included is a five minute compilation of their greatest hits. While you listen you will realize that this band plays to a way different beat. Thunder and Lightening creates a show unlike any you have seen or heard, and no two songs are identical.

P.S. During my next attempt, I going to try recording Thunder and Lightning in stereo so you'll hear the sound stage that this band creates. They figured out how to bounce a portion of their sounds off mountainsides, creating a natural reverb that is simply amazing to behold. I'll let you know if I manage to capture the full fidelity of their performance. Until then... enjoy.

And one more thing: If you attend a performance by Thunder and Lightning, be prepared to get wet. Those dudes can really perspire while performing.

I have always been fascinated with lightning storms but Seattle, where I grew up, never had many. I looked forward to our summer trips to Pittsburgh because there was always at least a couple thunder storms when we visited. I remember watching my cousins huddled around their parents legs during storms, wondering what they were hiding from. I was mad the adults wouldn't let me stand outside, instead forced to experience the show from inside a house while looking through a window.

While in my early 20's, three friends and I were playing a round of golf at Jefferson Golf Course in Seattle. We were on the back nine when we saw a rare thunder storm form to the north east. We had a great view of it. Seeing a flash, we counted. One mongoose one, one mongoose two, one mongoose.... waiting to hear the thunder. By our reckoning lightning was dancing 8 to 15 miles in the distance, so we teed off.

Walking down the fairway, the hair on my legs and arms suddenly stood straight up. I wasn't the only one who felt it happening. We all looked at each other, seeing hair on everyones head looking like we had just stuck our fingers in a lamp socket. Even the air tasted different. Unlike anything experienced before. Weird.

(Seattle always looks like this. Lightning optional, fees apply. Photo is stolen from KOMO-TV web site who stole it from the University of Washington web site who probably stole it from an employee of either or from a student. Shit may hit the fan but so what? I ain't making a dime off this blog so let 'em all complain. Besides, I took communications law classes at the UW long before the internet existed and know I'm on shaky legal ground using the photo, but am risking it anyway with no principle in mind at all.)

We didn't get much time to wonder about the strange stuff going on before a blinding light flashed. Almost immediately the loudest sound you have ever heard deafened us all. We dove to the ground. Pure instinct. We could feel small objects hitting us while we covered our heads with our arms, golf bags and empty beer cans. At that moment we realized it was a lightning strike near by. It didn't take long to see how lucky we were. We spotted a tree, a mere hundred and fifty feet away, splintered into three large pieces. Broken branches and pieces of wood were scattered across the fairway.

Being that close to a lightning strike leaves an impression. I still enjoy watching lightning storms, even more since my close encounter. Like a dog that keeps checking out a porcupine after getting a snoot-full of quills. A veterinarian told me that once, while taking quills out of my dog's face. If a dog doesn't get quilled in their first encounter they will avoid porcupines. But get quilled once and a dog will keep going after a porcupine. When it comes to lightning storms, I'm a quilled dog. Always mindful of my fairway encounter, I prefer to watch a lightning storm from beneath safe shelter.

Tuesday afternoon there was a racket going on outside so I looked out the window. Small balls of hail were falling. Then a flash. And then another. And another. A lightning storm! Cool! I grabbed my microphone, recorder and headphones, hoping to capture the sound of thunder. News reports later announced that an inch of rain fell in thirty minutes, and a thousand lightning strikes had been measured during the storm that afternoon and evening.

I wouldn't doubt it. It rained like hell and I could see flashes often. As it turns out, I was fortunate to use the rig with the dead mongoose on it, the poor animal we accidentally ran over in Hawaii so we ate it and I use the skin to wrap around microphones to control wind buffeting sounds.

Outside our back door I adjusted the gain for the short shotgun mic to best capture thunderclaps heard three to eight miles away. Satisfied I was getting a decent recording, I slipped the headphones off my ears to listen naturally. The sound of thunder was rolling left to right, then right to left, then back again. Over and over. Damn! If I had grabbed my stereo mic instead I could be recording the sound as it moved around. What a sound stage that would be.

A bright flash took my mind off the stereo mic and how good dead mongoose meat tastes. Lightning had struck nearby. Probably less than a half mile away. I managed to say "one m..." before the sound hit. You can "see' the lightning below (click on it to see a larger image if you wish).

The lightest colored squiggly lines of the graph is what the sound of rain looks like. The darker sections with taller peaks is thunder from three to five miles away. The darkest part (at 51 seconds) is the thunder that was close by. Really close. There was too much gain for a sound so loud and close to the mic. You can see the first second and a half of the thunderclap is badly clipped. But by listening it becomes abundantly clear that nature has one hell of a reverb plug-in at its fingertips for use.

A recording of the thunder is below (1:12 minute long). Don't know about you, but the sound heard sparks my curiosity of lightning storms even more. Acid rock bands got nothin' on a good thunderclap.

It wasn't until moving to Southern Oregon that I learned what it is like to live in a forest fire zone. Western Washington has forest fires, but nothing like what the dry woods of Southern Oregon offers. This morning, on a hot and cloudless day as is common this time of year, the nearby hills had a thin haze of smoke surrounding them. (The shots below were taken at 6:48PM)

By afternoon, the hills were invisible to the naked eye, and everywhere you look has a orange glow. Such is life when a forest fire rages. This time, the Douglas Fire. Located about 40 miles or so north of Ashland, the fire was started by lightning. Fifty four strikes were recorded. A few fires joined before they could be doused, leading to a growing fire.

The smoke sure makes for a spectacular looking "sunset" visible for many hours. By the time the sun is near the usual sunset time, it's invisible. The fire is still growing, so smoke will be hanging around the valley for a while.

Don't know why the idea struck me as so damned funny. Barb and I were talking about how our psychotic cat is starting to act like a normal cat now that he is around nine years old. Barb asked when I thought it would become totally normal, so I simulated a cat with all fours pointed skyward. The cat doesn't stand a prayer of ever acting like a normal cat.

One thought lead to another and another, and it wasn't long before I was laughing over a phrase that sprang to mind. Happens often. I laugh hardest and longest at my own jokes.

Anyway, I want Barb to put this phrase on my tombstone (or plaque, actually, as I want to be burned into a tiny, tidy easy to transport and store package):

"Finally, he listened."

              ~Barb

Let people who stumble across the phrase decide what it means.