November, 2004
When you're lying on the ground, there's no way to go but up.
Things got started a bit better than last month; as you recall it started and ended with picking burrs out of my hair. We sliced up a huge downed tree (but not its stump which was buggy) and that about finished the winter's wood. Finished splitting that about the middle of November. Y'all remember how Noah was commanded to build an ark of "gopher wood" (Genesis 6:14)? We found out that we got some in this mix of trees. The maple and cherry last a good while, but sometimes to keep the fire going on cold days, every hour or so we have to "go fer" wood....
So how did we start November? Mostly trying to ignore the political ads, although the election went more or less the way we can live with the easiest. "None Of The Above" unfortunately was not on our ballots. He might win if he were to run in Indiana. Got to the polls at 6:45 AM and had to wait in line. Went out for breakfast afterward and made it to work OK. We could have thrown away our votes by voting Libertarian....
Come On, Ring Those Bells, Light the Christmas Tree!
Got the biggest share of the Christmas display put up with the help of a neighbor. Good thing we did it on Halloween because the weather has been getting progressively colder (surprise!) Lots of little electrical problems to iron out, but it generally went well. High temperatures were up around 70 at the beginning of the month so we didn't freeze our fingers. Had to do major repairs on the sign, which is falling apart. Can't complain, though; it held up for two winters in Toppenish, got moved 2200 miles and then two winters here. Wind caught it and flipped it over last year, which was a lot of wear and tear. The two plastic bells on top of the sign are broken in several places but the lights are repairable so I'll just fasten them to a piece of plywood and plug them in again. Turned one spotlight into a large flashbulb when I ran 250 volts through it, but didn't do anything else quite that stupid.
Had all kinds of computer problems. Played yay-boo for several days. One of the disk drives for the Christmas Tree computer decided to fail (boo!). I have a DOS disk with testing programs for the Christmas Tree and I can go to Staples and buy another hard drive (yay!). But the motherboard in the Christmas machine is old, so it can't use the new kind of drive with the 80-wire cable (boo!) But I can replace the two SCSI drives on my main computer with this one new drive (yay!). Takes three hours and a phone conversation with son Jon to partition, format and copy all the data to the new drive (boo!). But the SCSI drives and controller install readily on the Christmas computer (yay!). Then Red Hat 9 has problems formatting the SCSI disks (boo!). Now, says I, this is not normal. Then I noticed a strange number when it counted up memory. I wrote it down, and then another time it gave a different total. After a bit of fiddling, I found the offending stick of memory (yay!). But all this after three days and $80.00 worth of changing other parts.
Spent quite a bit of time doing wiring in the storeroom; in addition to upgrading the room lighting, I wired in the Christmas display cables from across the driveway, the ones I buried in conduit last summer. We now have 12 outlets over there for "blinking" the bushes, fence and sign under computer control. Put as much storeroom wiring as possible into conduit since everything is open. One "conduit" is a piece of 4-inch sewer pipe suspended over the walkway beside the "tree", so visitors won't be tromping on the cables this year. (That one is removable, of course.) I should buy stock in Lowe's....
Break a Leg! Both legs while you're at it!
Kathy had a good time repairing and ironing costumes for the play at the college. She brought home a trio of very hungry thespians after the dress rehearsal, and they got leftover pizza from lunch when I had some students over to admire the electronics of the Christmas Tree. That Saturday night we went to church for an "Autumn Years" dinner put on by the high-schoolers, which was supposed to honor us old geezers but may have just made us feel old. We ducked out a few minutes early (but after eating of course) and dashed over to the play, which was excellent. Afterward we went out for coffee. It was a great evening but a bit long. I had spent the day tracking down electronic and computer problems so it was really good to do something involving people.
We've been practicing for the Christmas production at church. This is not just a cantata but a dramatic production sort of like a musical play. Not quite like back at Jerry Falwell's church, but with lots of cast members and it's presented on two successive nights. I was asked to sing a solo -- Frosty the Snowman. Wonder if they're trying to tell me something? Ah, well, it's a lot of fun being in the choir. Haven't had so much fun in years! We'll tell you more after it's all over with.
Never Cut Timber On A Windy Day -- or any other time if you don't have to!
One of the college maintenance guys asked if it "would be OK" if they brought over chunks of two maple trees they're removing from the far side of the campus. Um, yeah I guess so, says Kathy trying to suppress her delight. We didn't even have to go after these! They're not really huge, but we'll have a good start on next year's wood unless it's really really cold this winter in which case we're extra extra glad to get it. I may yet get those 10 pounds off this fall; I'm halfway there. The pieces are about six feet long and they brought them in three trips of their huge front-end loader. I'm losing about a pound per cord as I split the wood; there's at least another pound out there.
Now Thank We All Our God!
Son Jon and daughter Kriss came for Thanksgiving, along with Kriss' fiance Dr. Jon. Had a great time. At one point, just before dinner, we three men were sacked out, one on a couch upstairs, one on a couch downstairs, and myself in the prime spot, the loveseat in front of the fireplace insert that heats the house. Kathy and Kriss were doing kitchen things and it was good because mother and daughter get together so seldom. Rather than try to get all the food on the table, we served buffet style, which is actually quite adequate considering that we were all stuffed after one plateful of food. Good thing we have a small fridge downstairs to hold some of the leftovers. The two Jons went back to sleep and I took the ladies out to see "Polar Express", which was quite cheap as a matinee and not at all crowded. There was a crowd gathering for the next showing, however. They just expanded the theater from six to nine screens and just in time for the big Christmas releases like the SpongeBob thing and I forget what all. Kriss and her Jon had to leave the next day, but not before I impressed them with my prowess at chainsawing.
And we put on the first Musical Christmas Tree "program" that Friday evening as some friends from church wanted to show their kids and grandkids the performance. A couple of the guys had to come in for the "50-cent tour" of the computing facilities, of course, and we're always glad to show off. We ran last year's program since the current one is still being written, but everyone is happy.
This Thanksgiving I got to thinking about what I'm thankful for. It brings tears to my eyes. We have a nice house, enough to eat, and the only problem with clothing is getting the motivation to go to the store and try on stuff, which I despise doing. We're working and getting paid like clockwork, and have enough left to save some for vacation. Our bank contacted us (!) and said wouldn't we like a lower mortgage interest rate so we refinanced and will have this place paid for at retirement. (Lady even came to our house with the paperwork instead of us having to take time off to go to the bank, and it closed in four days!) And we have our retirement funds that amount to something decent in addition to Social Security. We generally tip the waitresses more than 15% because we've been poor ourselves and their feet hurt just like anyone else's at the end of the day when they have to go home and clean house and try to sort out the bills according to which ones have to be paid and which ones can wait like we used to do. We extend hospitality whenever we can and in our thinking it's a privilege that we're able to do so. I'm thankful for the friends who have helped us so much along the way. Many have passed away, so we're trying to "Pay It Forward" as they say, since we can't pay it back. People have always been kind and generous to us. Not so with organizations....
Recession: Your neighbor loses his job.
Depression: You lose your job.
Daughter Kriss reminded us of the "good" old days, back when I was doing programming. Ah, those were the days, my friends, may they never return! She tells her friends that her dad worked for a "dot-com" that went broke long before it was "cool". Strictly speaking, of course, it wasn't a dot-com because Al Gore was still busy inventing the Internet (?), but it was a computer software company startup that had little money. Unfortunately, they issued neither stock nor regular paychecks and we were mighty lean and (figuratively) hungry when we found a soft place to land, namely, Liberty University. At least I got regular paychecks there. (For a while, but that's another story.) At the time of that "dot-com" business, I had just landed there from a grocery company that went out of business, not completely but enough so that there was no longer a computing facility. That was not the company's fault and they did successfully sue a New York bank for $7 million but it's like Humpty Dumpty trying to put a formerly "going business" back together and they never have. But at the "dot-com" I ended up having to put in 60 hours a week (lots of travel between customer sites) to get 40 hours of billable time, for which the company charged the customers $40 an hour and paid me $15. $1600 a week and I got $600. Except that I usually conked out before I got in the 60 hours and as I said, they didn't pay all that regularly. I think they would still owe me many hundreds if not thousands were they still in business. Boy, I really knew how to pick 'em! One of the customers was an hour and a half from home and another was half an hour. Some were a lot closer, but I remember many a time driving through Knoxville from one site to another, stuck in traffic with my stomach hurting, trying to get back "on the clock" because I wasn't getting paid for sitting there breathing exhaust fumes. The company health plan was simple: Don't Get Sick. Time and a half for overtime? You're kidding! And our poor kids had to put up with parents who were tense, nervous, worried and upset as well as not having a lot of things the other kids did. I remember that our kids packed their lunches to school in those days. The neighbors across the street were on welfare and got free lunches. Their kids asked our kids one day why they didn't just eat the school lunches "because they're free!" But I had the disadvantage of being gainfully employed. Not very gainfully, but enough so that we had to "make do" ourselves. And I wasn't into "business lunches", either; usually it was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches eaten in the customer's break room along with the janitors who probably took home as much money as I did after I paid for my gasoline for the '61 Chevy I drove for 19 years. (Business lunches ran about $3.00 back then; I still don't eat $3.00 lunches twenty years later!) Shoot, I should have cut back my hours so we could qualify for food stamps but that would have caused acid reflux bigtime.
If you could see where I once was,
If you could go with me....
-- Gaither vocal band
We're not complaining, mind you. With God's help, we're doing well now and the kids turned out all right in spite of everything.
Have a great Christmas, and remember whose birthday it is!
Next