More Photos, Taken While Not Sitting In Front Of My Laptop

I feel like this week really validated my decision to go back to working days. The kids were great, saying a number of funny and/or profound things during their time at camp. For example, when we discovered some mating Milkweed bugs, one girl looked down and mock-angrily yelled, "get a room!". At the end of the week a lot of the kids mentioned that they were grateful for the opportunity to get to know students from the other school (we had two different schools at camp this week), and in general, many of the kids indicated that they now have an increased appreciation for wilderness/nature. That's what I want to hear. Sure, sometimes kids just tell you what you want to hear, but in this case, I didn't get that feeling.

Tuesday morning, the first thing I did after opening my eyes was pull back the curtain and look outside. This is often my first action in the morning, but this time the view that greeted me was a bit different:

If you look closely, you can see that she has babies in her pouch. They were wiggling around. By the time I thought to do so, two different neighbors had already called Animal Control for advice. Jeanine later got in touch with the Humane Society (after talking on the phone with some rude person at Animal Control), and the consensus was that the opossum had been scared away from her home by something, and couldn't quite decide what to do. She stayed on the fence for a few hours before vanishing.

And here are a few other photos from my work week.

Monochrome Mornings

I'm back in the field again this week, hopefully this time to stay. Working days tends to keep me away from spending too much time on the internet, which I choose to see as a happy side-effect of my job change. This week started out with some heavy rain, which the kids endured. Some even had smiles on their faces about it all. The girl who fell in the creek today definitely had a smile on her face.

Here are some photos I took last week, one morning when the fog lingered. I've been playing with various settings on my camera, and lately I've taken a liking to the monochromatic look.

Lead Us Not Into...

To illustrate the temptation I'm faced with when I'm online, I give you this afternoon:

After a quick check of my e-mail and Facebook accounts, three musical carrots dangled in front of me. One came my way via a Bandcamp e-mail. Once you buy something through Bandcamp, "helpful" e-mails will appear in your inbox every time that artist or label releases something new. The second and third enticements appeared in my Facebook feed, with one being a recommendation (for a new Polish black/doom metal band) from a friend, and the other being an update from a veteran Italian horror electronics group who is celebrating their 30th anniversary by releasing not one, but three albums.

I'm listening to the Polish band via YouTube as I type. If this was last year, I already would have clicked a "purchase" button or two, but this is this year, and I'm trying to restrain myself. I always tell the kids who get in trouble at camp that they should think before they act, so I'm walking the talk and following my own advice here. I really do have enough music. Besides, I'm over my (somewhat arbitrary) budget for this month already. That's a little sad, given that we're only halfway through the month.

Top Ten (In Order, but Not In Importance)

Here are the ten most recent items in my Facebook feed:

1. Video of my friend's daughter playing on the slide at the park.

2. Link to a news story about the forming of a "Trump militia". My friend who posted it makes the usual snide references to Nazi Germany. I agree completely, of course.

3. Photos of Episode 3 of Hap & Leonard, which is based on a series of books that I absolutely love. I still haven't gotten around to watching the TV show, but I plan to do so. Not sure why I would need to look at photos though.

4. A link posted in a discussion group called Debate Me, of a video featuring a discussion between Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders. Paul comes across as a smarmy, self-interested slimeball, and Sanders is eminently reasonable.

5. A link to a video of a Scandinavian guy happily dancing to accordion music throughout his day around town somewhere in the frozen north, and getting others to join in. Apparently an ad of some sort, but cheerful and innocuous.

6. Another Debate Me post about how Bernie Sanders has just been endorsed by a Wall St. economist. Preaching to the choir.

7. An animated short, posted in the group Folk Horror Revival (one of my favorite Facebook groups) and featuring a fight between death and an old woman who proves that she has more life in her than expected.

8. A video of a short interview with Jimmy Carter in which he states that there is no way he would be able to (or want to) run for president today. He mentions that our democracy has been replaced by an oligarchy. I think that this country has always been an oligarchy, but it's definitely more so now than it was then.

9. A video of Norwegian black metal band Carpathian Forest covering Discharge's "The Possibilities of Life's Destruction". I like the original better. The song doesn't really lend itself to the black metal style.

10. A check-in at Lucille Packard Children's Hospital Stanford for a genetics testing appointment.

I find myself agreeing with all of the political posts above, which isn't too surprising because most of my Facebook friends have similar views to my own. I do have a few people whose opinions are almost polar opposites of mine, and I keep them around because sometimes I like to argue. Plus I don't want to live in a political echo chamber. One of my few Republican friends (and old Junior High school friend, actually) gave me a shout-out in a post yesterday (the post was about another so-called "liberal" that he respected), saying that even though we disagree politically, I walked the talk. That was nice of him, and a reminder that there is common ground in amongst the differences. It's also refreshing to see that a lot of people on the right can't stand Trump. That said, the other Republican contenders are either equally bad, or worse. Trump gets the most press because he's loud and crude. The lowest common denominator can relate to him better. We live in an oligarchy which is aided and abetted by an idiocracy. Hopefully we never add "theocracy" to that description, like Ted Cruz wants to do.

It's a bit of an eye-opener to see grandfatherly Jimmy Carter talking about the current political climate. Maybe "eye-opener" is too strong a phrase. After all, I was around when he was president, and I'm around now. I've seen the changes. Carter remains my favorite ex-president though. He definitely walks the talk too.

The music and video links are just enjoyable distractions, many of which are almost immediately forgotten. For me, the compelling thing about social media (and to a lesser degree, e-mail), is that it is updated constantly, which sends little spurts of dopamine to my pleasure centers. Have a moment of indecision about what to do next? Let's see the latest posts! That said, most of the e-mails and Facebook updates aren't worth my time. None of the posts mentioned above really have any bearing on my day, other than to confirm that yes, there are other like-minded people out there in the world. But I already know that, don't I?

I worry that people in the current generation often don't have thoughts like the ones above. It's easy to mindlessly scroll through social media sites, mindlessly share links (without bothering to fact check them), mindlessly rely on autocorrect, and generally navigate the internet without any real thought. The current generation can't remember a time before (I even sometimes have trouble doing so, which is one of the reasons I've been focusing on this kind of thing lately) the internet. The virtual world has become the real world. People are forgetting how to do real world things.

It will have consequences.

Photos

I just saw a pair of crows chasing a seagull. Don't mess with crows.

Here's a pair of photos from a week ago, taken by my friend Wayne at Dos Pinas in San Francisco before heading out to the second of three Neurosis 30th anniversary shows at the Regency. The shows (the two I saw, at least) were phenomenal, and it was great to see lots of old friends too. Eva came along for the Saturday show, and Jeanine for the Sunday one. Sunday we had Thai food beforehand.

And a bonus picture of Brian, taken by Jeanine.

Daylight

I'm back in the field now, although with staff shortages, I'll be doing one more week of nights next week. I got to play outside this week though, with great kids, varied weather, and lots of hiking. We even had to bushwhack around a fallen oak tree to get to the creek, climbing through lichen encrusted branches and gingerly stepping over blackberry bushes. I'm guessing that the tree fell victim to the storm we had last weekend. More rain is in the forecast for the next couple of days too. This is good.

I did get a bit of a sunburn after exposing my pale, nocturnal skin to the elements all week.

This is the view from the highest point we reached this week:

I've got a cold right now, which doesn't affect my energy level when I'm teaching, but sure leaves me drained by the end of the day.

We also had parent chaperons this week, which was new to me. One local school district insists on them, and fortunately, the parents seemed like a good bunch. The one who hiked with me was positive and helpful. I've heard from co-workers that having more than one with a group can be a bit of a trial, because the parents sometimes just hang out together and talk while instructors are trying to teach.

I haven't been strictly limiting my computer time over the last week, but I've still spent much less time online than usual, mostly due to the change in my schedule, but also due to being aware of how much time I waste online.

Back In the Field

Today was my first official day back in the field at work. I've been the night host since 2007, and although I've led many field classes between then and now, it was always with the understanding that I was still the night host, and just subbing for other staff members.

Technically, I'm subbing this time too, since one of my coworkers is out on maternity leave, but this time I'm staying diurnal and a new position is supposed to be created for me sometime before the end of the school year.

I'm at the Cupertino site this week. The kids and teachers are nice, the cabin leaders seem to know what they're doing, and there are parent chaperons (which is mandated by this this particular school district). I haven't worked with parent chaperons before, but I'm not anticipating that things will be much different.

It rained a little bit, but isn't supposed to rain again until Thursday.

Obsolescence, Planned or Otherwise

When Jen and I divorced, she let me take her computer with me, but it didn't last out the year. I replaced it with the laptop I'm currently using. Later this year, it will be 8 years old, which makes it more or less a museum piece by current technological standards. It's funny how fast the things we use become obsolete, but not funny when one considers how much of this is planned obsolescence. I guess this is what drives innovation. The concept of planned obsolescence is still irksome to me though. It's beyond wasteful. Everything has to have an update every year (or in smaller time increments), and from the complaints I hear, sometimes the updates are less desirable from the prior version.

I still get the feeling that time is speeding up. I wonder if people in other centuries felt the same way. "This new scythe makes the harvest so much faster! It seems like just yesterday that we had to work weeks longer every Autumn!"

I'm guessing not.

We still use books though, and despite the various e-readers on the market, books are the oldest technology still in wide use. Or so I've read. Strangely enough, I think I read it online though. I'm still very much married to the idea of reading actual books and don't see that changing anytime soon.

Disconnected

I wasn't online at home until late 2001,about 10 months before I started this blog, when I moved in with Jen. We had a dial-up modem, and in order to go online, we had to unplug the phone to plug in the modem. It's funny how primitive that seems now, but at the time, I knew no better.

The good thing about the dial-up modem, not to mention the fact that the computer was tucked away in the master bedroom, meant that it was hard to make it the center of our existence. It wasn't on all day, so I checked it at discrete intervals rather than having it immediately available whenever I had a sudden whim.

One thing I've learned about myself over the years is that if I like doing something, I tend to overdo it. It's a good thing that I never got into alcohol or other recreational drugs. Do I have an internet addiction? Possibly. That's one of the reasons I'm backing off from it this month. So far, so good, although I haven't been as productive as I thought I would be.

There were a couple of days this week when I didn't turn the computer on at home at all. I did take it to work with me though, but I limited how much time I spent on it. I'll also admit to checking my phone at home on those days, just to make sure that there were no messages that required immediate response. We tend to live in a world where people expect timely responses. The younger generations growing up in first world countries (and in some cases, third world ones) know no other way of life. Everything is immediate. Everything is now. That's the thing about e-mail and social media. It doesn't come once a day like snail mail. This creates a desire to constantly check and recheck various inboxes and homepages. As I was typing this paragraph, my phone buzzed twice, indicating that I now have two unread e-mails. It's constant.

In a profound way, to be connected is to be disconnected.

Thieves

It was while I was working at the Children's Discovery Museum that I first got my credit card number stolen online. I was trying to buy this CD (which means that it was the year 2000), and somewhere out there in the world, greedy little eyes were following my progress. The transaction never went through, and it wasn't until much later that I found a copy of the CD used at Amoeba Records. It's funny how many of my memories are somehow tied to music.

The thief managed to buy an airplane ticket with my card number. Such audacity. I've had my card information stolen online only one other time since then. Given that I have a powerful tendency to treat the internet as a 24 hour record store, that's not too bad.

More Firsts

I didn't send my first e-mail until after my parents split up. I don't always remember what year certain events took place, but I know that my dad wasn't online until after he moved to an apartment. Come to think of it, I can't remember the subject of my first e-mail either, although I'm betting it was music related, probably involving ordering a record or something like that. I used my dad's e-mail address. I wouldn't set up my own account until much later.

Writing the above paragraph inspired me to go check my current e-mail account, just to see what the oldest e-mail is. It's probably not the first one I ever sent from it, since I think I used to occasionally delete messages. The e-mail is from D#1 (see this post), and she talks about riding her new unicycle and meeting up for a concert. Looking at the e-mail that she was responding to, I see it was a Heather Alexander show. I was looking up Heather Alexander awhile back, only to discover that she is now a man named Alexander James Adams. Here's my favorite song from that long ago evening. I seem to remember that she made us all sing along with the chorus.

The e-mail was sent nearly seventeen years ago. I was working at the Children's Discovery Museum and living with Laura and Kelly in Mountain View.

Here in the present, things have snowballed, which is why I'm currently enjoying the challenge of cutting down on the amount of time I spend online. Some of my newfound extra time is taken up with reading, and some of it is taken up with more immediately useful pursuits.

First Computer

My parents got a computer sometime during the latter half of the eighties. It was this huge, hollow beast of a thing that survived on a steady diet of floppy discs. In order to converse with it, one had to consult a dusty grimoire and use the knowledge contained therein to tap out arcane, rhythmic commands on its plastic teeth.

It wasn't user-friendly at all. My brother took to it with much more alacrity that I did, perhaps because he was younger. I used it primarily to type up tape trading lists (that's cassette tape, not sticky tape) because that was during my tape trading days. I can still remember the sound of the dot matrix printer as it slowly relinquished its grip on page after page of those lists. I'd send off the lists with a cassette or two, and get back a different list and a cassette or two, and so it went. It's so much easier to obtain new music these days.

That reminds me. I had friends whose parrot could do a perfect imitation of a dot matrix printer. It was uncanny. I still have those friends, but they no longer have the parrot.

I also used the computer to write bad song lyrics inspired by the bands I listened to, the movies I watched, and my own morbid interests. I turned many of these horrible writings in for credit for my creative writing class. I actually just got an e-mail from that particular teacher a couple of days ago (on a totally unrelated subject though - I doubt he remembers those old writings).

I remember a number of text-based computer games that my brother would play. I might have played once or twice too. Eventually, the computer became obsolete. It was replaced by a newer model, and I think it was primarily used by my mom, who played solitaire on it.

By the time she died just over six years ago, my mom still hadn't gotten online at home. Then again, she never hooked up the answering machine I got her either. I think she knew exactly what she was doing.

Beginnings and Endings

When I woke up this afternoon, I did something different. I didn't immediately fire up my laptop. In fact, I waited around 2.5 hours before doing so. I'm trying to break the habit of immediately sitting down and losing myself in the garish unreality of the internet. So it begins...

On a much more sobering note, Jeanine's dad died last night. Ever since I've known Jeanine, her dad has been in various assisted-living situations, with each successive one upping the assistance. Strangely enough, I never officially met the man, although I did see him unconscious in a hospital bed once (after yet another stroke). Jeanine would often refer to him as a "grumpy old fart" or a "stubborn old man".

He was just short of eighty years old. R.I.P., Edwin.

Jeanine and Eva are at a punk show tonight, and I'll be going to work in a few hours. I'm turning off the laptop now.

As It Was Then, So It Is Now

This year, February gets a bonus day, so I'll close the month with one bonus memory.

Coincidentally, after posting about Blacklist Mailorder yesterday, I listened to Jello Biafra's "High Priest of Harmful Matter" spoken word album. I say "coincidentally" because I've just been listening to my records alphabetically in a concerted effort to re-listen to things that have been gathering dust on my shelves. Decades-old spoken word albums aren't something I would put on as a first choice.

Jello Biafra, of course, used to sing for the Dead Kennedys, and is also the label boss of Alternative Tentacles records, which shared office/warehouse space with Blacklist. We used to run into him when we were there volunteering, and would invariably talk about music. I still see him at a lot of shows too. Listening to the record reminded me of the time he spoke at San Jose State. I can't remember exactly what was included in that particular talk, although it was probably much the same as the material on "High Priest of Harmful Matter", which is about censorship and the infamous Dead Kennedys trial. What I remember clearly though, is the shirt worn by Jello that evening. He had somehow managed to find a yellow and red striped shirt that exactly matched the obnoxious carpet pattern in the SJSU student union building.

At the end of the talk, he brandished one of his shoes and said, "this is my shoe!", which effectively got our attention as we started to file out. He then exhorted us to put donation money in the shoe - probably to help with trial expenses.

Listening to the record now is more of a history lesson. It also makes me realize that, like many people, I have a tendency to view history through the so-called "rose colored filter" of the intervening years. The record reminds me that the right wing religious nuts were just as irritating back then as they are now. The only difference is that perhaps they were a bit more subtle then. As is the case with pretty much every aspect of modern popular culture, the new right is a brash, ignorant, dumbed-down version of what it was (It's like they're in a race to see how low they can sink - a tea party where they throw themselves overboard?).

For March, my goal is to spend much less time on the internet. I plan to allow myself a set amount of time just to clear e-mail, reply to messages, and of course, post updates here, but I've come to the conclusion that I could really be getting a lot of other things done if I limit my time online, so I'm going to spend a month tracking my progress and my withdrawal symptoms. Will I be successful? We'll see...

Volunteering

I often say that my first volunteer job was at Hidden Villa, but it really was at Blacklist Mailorder, which shared a space with Alternative Tentacles on Shipley St. in San Francisco.

My reason for volunteering was selfish. Volunteers packed orders, which involved getting records from shelves, addressing boxes and envelopes, and other similar tasks. While getting records from shelves, I'd be silently amassing a pile of things that I wanted to buy. So yeah, I volunteered so I could get first crack at the records. I discovered a lot of good music while volunteering there.

Come to think of it, my mom volunteered at the Cupertino library for much the same reason. Great minds think alike, I guess.

Youthful Folly

When I was in high school, I used to ride my bike up to the hills with my friends. We would sometimes push our bikes up the ranger roads in order to turn around and go flying down them again. Injuries sometimes occurred. We would catch snakes and other creatures too. The first rattlesnake we ever caught was sheltering under a smashed beer can on the dam at Steven's Creek Reservoir. Over the years, we caught a few more.

One day, at the bottom of the steep driveway leading into Steven's Creek County Park, my bike slid on gravel, which led to my knees sliding on gravel when I suddenly found myself underneath my bike. Using what we had on hand, I bound my injury with one of my socks (which slipped off unnoticed later in the day) and we continued our adventure. We caught a rattlesnake that day, and brought it home in a bag of some kind.

My parents took one look at my knee and told me that I needed stitches. I disagreed, not that it did me any good. I ended up getting 13 or 14 stitches.

The rattlesnake ended up living under a couple of tires in the backyard, with a board thrown on top so it couldn't get out. I only kept it for a week before giving it to a guy I'd met at BAARS (that's Bay Area Amphibian & Reptile Society). I didn't want to chance it getting loose in the backyard. I could just see my parents' faces when I told them there was a dangerous reptile loose on the property. I ended up telling my mom about it something like a decade after the fact, and even then she wasn't pleased.

Shortly thereafter, I ripped out all of my stitches while attempting to kick over an empty garbage can while riding my bike. I'd obviously forgotten which day the garbage truck came.

The can wasn't empty.

It was like kicking a bag of cement, and I spun to the ground to the tune of my stitches popping out. Instant karma.

Attack of the Ultra Dinner Guests II

One final Stanford Sierra Camp memory, and then I'll be done.

I can't remember what year this happened, but it was probably during the very early eighties. The dining area was similar to the one at my current job, with a good number of people seated together at each table, meaning that there would often be two or more families eating together. At one meal, we found ourselves seated next to a couple named Roger and Julie. My parents had no idea who they were, but I did. I think Greg did too, although I can't remember for sure. He was still pretty young.

Their last name was Corman, if that helps. If not, click on the links above.

Greg spent a lot of time hanging out with the Cormans, but he has always been more social than I am. I would usually find at least one like-minded kid my own age and go exploring out on the lake in a plastic kayak (called "playaks") or hike up to the lower falls to catch garter snakes.

13

Willow becomes a teenager today! Happy birthday, Willow!

I don't remember my 13th birthday. I guess it's an arbitrary kind of milestone. Junior High doesn't hold a lot of fond memories for me. Being a teenager is so awkward.

I was around 13 when our family started going to Stanford Sierra Camp (see previous post), and those trips created some of my best memories from that time. I got to play on a ropes course for the first time, tried sailboarding (I was fine until I tried to change directions), water skiing, sail boating (we managed to turn a small sailboat completely upside down in the near freezing waters of Fallen Leaf lake), backpacking (overnight in Desolation Wilderness - it was great except for the fondue one of the leaders made one night, which was so bad that it became an in-joke), and many other things that make better memories than stories.

One afternoon, my friend Jody (I think that was his name) and I decided to go on a hike by ourselves. Being ambitious and not very realistic in our thinking, we headed up the side of Mt. Cathedral, which looms behind the camp. Our journey involved a lot of bushwhacking, scrambling, and sudden revelations that we weren't as near the summit as we thought we were. We finally made it, and almost fell off a cliff when the boulder we were standing on started sliding over the edge. Then we noticed it was getting dark, so we headed back toward camp. I remember scrambling down dry washes, dislodging large rocks on top of each other, and generally having the time of our lives, despite our excitement gradually becoming overshadowed with worry that it was going to get too dark to find our way back.

We tiredly walked into camp just as a search party was being organized. Looking back, I'm glad that we didn't become a statistic that day.

Who Chooses the Music?

Today, I was contemplating writing about the first (and last) time I ever got drunk, but instead decided to write about something entirely different. When I picked up Willow from her mom's house earlier, she walked out to the car with a CD. I'm usually pretty selfish when it comes to who gets to play music while I'm driving (as in, "the driver always gets to choose"), but today, in honor of it being the day before her birthday, I relented and we listened to One Direction all the way home.

This spurred a memory of a long-ago family vacation at Stanford Sierra Camp (does it even still exist? - let me check - yes! It does!). On the way there, as we navigated the narrow road around Fallen Leaf Lake, it was my turn to pick the music and I was, naturally, listening to Celtic Frost's "Morbid Tales", which would indicate that the year was probably 1984. My dad, not even remotely a fan of Celtic Frost, threw a mini dad-tantrum about it. I'm not sure why this sticks in my memory, but I was actually laughing about it as I inserted the One Direction CD into the CD player today. Willow asked why I was laughing, so I told her the above story.

I guess it is the sacred duty of the child to find music that the parents don't like. The torch has been passed.

I have many fond memories of Stanford Sierra Camp, and might share some of them before the month ends. To keep this post somewhat thematically consistent, I'll close with another memory of my dad at camp. If memory serves, he often seemed more interested in heading over to nearby Reno to gamble This may have been an early indication that all was not well in marriage-land. It was, after all, only a couple of years after this that my dad moved out.

Seventies Hi-jinks

I was contemplating a third day of Tower memories, but instead I think I'll take a detour.

When I was a kid, my friends and I spent most of our time playing outside. I quickly became adept at finding wildlife, mostly toads, around the neighborhood, which would prove to be the seeds of a lifelong obsession with wildlife. Cupertino during the seventies was a mixture of suburbs, orchards, and vacant lots. In other words, perfect for outdoor play. I feel kind of sorry for kids who are growing up there now, since the open spaces have all had condominiums and shopping centers cemented down on top of them, sealing away the dirt and life forever.

We would wander into fields and orchards to catch lizards, dig holes, climb trees, and more generally, just explore. There was a boy who lived in a big house attached to the orchard behind 7-ll (which is now a Q-mart), and I remember that on our first meeting he brandished a knife. He was one of the only African-American kids in the whole neighborhood, with the remainder being almost entirely Caucasian (a big contrast to the Cupertino of today, which is almost entirely Asian). I think his name was Malcom. I don't remember ever going into his house, but he had a great tree house high up in the huge Oak tree that spread into the sky in front of the house. That was much more interesting to us than his house anyway.

There was another vacant lot abutting Steven's Creek Boulevard which at one point had a bunch of metal stakes driven into the ground across its expanse, maybe for a Christmas tree lot or something similar. One day, when a bunch of us were playing there, a man walked by and said he'd pay us if we bent them all down. Excited at the prospect of easy money for a fun task, we naively got to work. Shortly, a police car pulled up and a nonplussed cop wandered over and asked us what we were doing. We told him, and when asked, provided a description of the man who promised us money. The cop drove away, and in no time at all, was back with the man in the back of the car. We positively identified him, and away they went.

Here is a picture from around that time.

That's me on the right, wearing a Lord of the Rings shirt. The boy brandishing a skateboard in the back is Jeff. He was a little younger than the rest of us, and was treated accordingly. He continued his interest in skating as he grew older, but I lost touch with him and have no idea what eventually became of him. The boy on the left is Joe, and this picture was taken in his driveway, I think. I did run into him at least once as an adult. At the time, he was a salesman for Bose (if I remember correctly). That was years ago though, and I have no idea what he's doing these days. The short kid in the middle was perhaps my best friend during my elementary school years. His name was Steve. As he grew older, he got into drugs, and was eventually killed in some sort of drug-related frame job. His murderers were caught trying to burn pieces of his body (or so I've been told). By that time, I hadn't seen him in years and years, and didn't know him any more, so it wasn't quite as shocking as it would have been had we still been close friends. It was still plenty shocking though.

More Tower Memories

There was a man named Elmer who worked at Tower Books, and he worked circles around everybody else. This was either despite, or because of, the fact that he was in his seventies. He came from a generation with a serious work ethic. Because he'd lost his son (to cancer, if I remember right), he treated the rest of us like his kids. He was a wonderful man.

One day, when the power went out, I had to climb the bookshelves at the back of the store, remove a panel in the ceiling, and crawl up and over the wall dividing the store from the back room. One would think there would be a better way to circumvent the keypad allowing access to the back room in the event of a power outage, but no.

There was a homeless guy named Mike who made a living washing car windows out in the parking lot (at least in part - there were rumors that he was also a drug dealer), and when I talked to him about how much money he made, discovered that he was making more than me. One day, he pulled into the parking lot in an old camper, complete with prostitute and a jumble of old super 8 films. Looking back, I guess he was kind of a sketchy character. None of us were interested in the prostitute, but we took some of the films, along with the projector he had, and watched some of them in the count-out room in the back of the store. The room was tiny, but had the advantage of being windowless, which made it perfect for watching films. Of course, most of the films were erotica. One was even a bestiality film. I won't divulge which co-worker kept that one, other than to say it definitely wasn't me. There were also a few home movies and other similarly innocuous films. I think we ended up using one of these films for an irr.app.(ext.) performance some years later. I ran into Mike much later on, in Berkeley, near the building where my brother works. He saw me and asked jokingly, "what are you doing in my city?".

There was another time when one of my coworkers initiated a conversation about sex by asking me which of my coworkers I'd have sex with. She shared her list as well. We were on each others lists. Of course, she had the bad judgement to start the conversation during a register shift, and I had the bad judgement to continue it. Or maybe we just didn't care. While we were talking, a customer walked up and asked, "is there an admission fee to this conversation?". I can't remember our reply. It's a good thing that customers seemed to expect that kind of thing at Tower.

We would dress up for Halloween, and sometimes when it wasn't Halloween. In the picture above, I have an entire roll of toilet paper wrapped around my head. There was another guy, Allan, who would periodically show up in a dress. He wasn't a cross dresser in the normal sense of the word, but more of a surrealist. He liked to mess with people. When our instore cassette player died, he went to a thrift store and bought an 8-track player to replace it. This inspired the rest of us to do the rounds of all the thrift shops in the area so we could buy 8-track tapes to play in it. We had some good ones, including 8-tracks by Can, Black Sabbath, and other bands that I still listen to today. Sometimes when we were bored, we'd cut up the inferior 8 track tapes and splice bits of tape in backwards, making strange sonic art, which we of course then played for customers. I would also buy CDs next door and often my first listen would be during a register shift. This sometimes backfired due to the occasional massively inappropriate song lurking within. Nick Cave's "Stagger Lee" is the one I remember most.

Tower

Yesterday, I had intended to take a picture of the building once occupied by Tower Records/Books/Video, but I ended up staying late at Kelly's baby shower, so by the time I left, the sky was already darkening and I decided to get home so Jeanine and I could go see The Witch (which was excellent, by the way).

As mentioned a few posts ago, I lived with Kelly and her mom at the apartment on Church Street. I hadn't paid much attention to the address where the baby shower was being held until yesterday, but when I did, it seemed familiar. As it turned out, it was at her grandma's house. It was nice to see her again. The shower was organized by one of Kelly's old friends, and she went all out to make it fun. There were games (including a baby food tasting & flavor identification one), a gender reveal cake (it's a girl, much to the excitement of Kelly's son), and lots of food. I don't usually do too well at events like this, but it was fun and relaxing.

My earliest memories of Kelly were from my time working at Tower. She was in elementary school then, and spent lots of time rampaging through the store. There was a woman named Ruby who worked there and also had a kid, but I barely remember them. Most of us were way too young and insolvent to have kids.

For most of my time at Tower, I was a shift manager, but despite my job title having the word "manager" in it, by the time I quit in the late nineties, I was only making around $7.50 an hour. This meager paycheck was somewhat mitigated by the employee discount, which meant being able to buy books and music at very reasonable prices, not to mention free video rentals. It was during this time that my musical tastes expanded in all directions, thanks in part to being able to read music magazines on the job, and thanks in part to being able to take chances on CDs due to the discounted prices.

I always joked that Tower was the last resort of scoundrels. If a person couldn't manage to get hired elsewhere (either due to personal appearance or otherwise), Tower would usually be the last option. My coworkers were often drunks, potheads, nerds, outcasts, twentysomethings looking for meaning, and just about every other kind of non-optimal employee imaginable. One guy would read books at the register, and wouldn't help customers until he came to a good stopping point. This same person was caught hiding in the loft and reading too. I imagine that he applied there for one of the same reasons I did. He liked books, not people. Another employee quit in shame when he took some porno magazines (we sold quite a selection) into the bathroom for some alone time, and then didn't lock the door, with predictable results. His friend, who was always stoned, lasted a bit longer. I remember that he spent an entire shift one day doing nothing besides working on his car in the parking lot. Sometime later, there was a day when he showed up to work without getting stoned first, and this led to the sudden revelation that his job sucked. He quit soon after.

There was a homeless guy named Kerry who used to hang out in the store, talking to whoever was running the register. I would sometimes let him sleep in the loft in our back room, especially if it was freezing outside. I would have to kick him out before closing time at midnight though. He was a strange one - an MIT graduate who wouldn't take any charity. Customers, seeing him with his overly-laden shopping cart, would sometimes hand him money, which he would hand right back. I once took him to the recycling center with the cans and bottles he'd gathered from dumpsters, and he got somewhere around $300.00 in return. He could read all of the codes on food items, so when employees at Long's drugs would throw expired items away, he'd be there waiting for them. We got lots of free candy that way. Sometimes we would engage in candy wars, throwing them at each other while "working". Once, while opening up a register to replace a spool of receipt paper, I found a peanut butter cup wedged inside.

More Tower memories to follow...

In the Walls of Junior High

This is my junior high school today. It has a different name now, and looks like it has had an extensive makeover as well.

Most of my memories of this school aren't fond ones, but I was fortunate enough to have a literature class in which we were introduced to the works of H.P. Lovecraft. We also got to watch Soylent Green in science class. I'm willing to bet that the kids who attend this school now aren't exposed to anything nearly as cool.

First Fight?

My old elementary school now has the name of my old junior high school. Somewhere along the way, the seventies architecture was updated, so the school I attended is no longer there in either name or appearance.

The memory that bubbles up from the long-term memory vaults today is one of sudden violence. I was standing on the field during recess (or lunch), when a sudden shove sent me to the ground. Without thinking, I stood up and punched the offender in the face(or maybe the stomach because, for most of my early school career, hitting people in the face was taboo by general agreement). Mission accomplished, I wandered away. When I turned around to look back, a pair of teachers were kneeling by the crying kid, trying to figure out what had happened.

That's when I noticed that there was a soccer game being played on the field. I had inadvertently wandered into the middle of the game, and had gotten shoved for my obliviousness. I remember feeling sorry for the crying kid, but proud that I'd made an older kid cry.

I never got in trouble for it either.

Another Good Field Ruined

This is a recent picture of the field near my old high school. I liked it much better as a field.

When I was attending San Jose State University, getting my Environmental Studies degree, I took an Environmental Impact Report class which involved generating an actual EIR based on a real site. Our group was assigned this one. It seemed like this parcel of land, which then boasted a rundown old house and an aesthetically appealing dead oak tree, has been perpetually slated for development, and our professor handed us what I remember to be an actual development proposal.

I spent some time out in that field, taking pictures and making notes. I remember that it looked like good Burrowing Owl habitat and recommended that anybody looking to develop that parcel would need to mitigate. There is also a creek nearby, which would also need to be taken into consideration.

I think we got a pretty good grade on our report. I don't have a copy of it now, and I kind of wish I did. It was an interesting process. I wonder how closely our report mirrored the one that was generated in advance of the actual development.

If I had actually landed a job writing EIRs, I would most likely have dedicated my existence to thwarting development. I'm biased. I like fields and trees, and I'm less than fond of condos and malls.

High School

When compared to the school I attended in the eighties, Cupertino High School looks almost entirely different now. Cupertino itself has become quite exclusive, as in "we're going to exclude you if you don't have lots of money", so the high school looks like it has gotten a rather extensive makeover. I recently watched an impressive video tour of the campus, which made it look very enticing indeed. When I drove by with Willow last weekend, she was amazed.

I attended school there from the Fall of 1982 through Spring, 1986. I could fill pages with memories, but for now, I'll just relate a few.

I remember riding my bike to school, especially in the Winter of my freshman year. It was an extremely wet rainy season, and at one point, nearby Steven's Creek Boulevard flooded when the creek backed up. I was pedaling my bike through at least two feet of water to get to school that day, but I was the kind of kid who didn't mind showing up soaking wet. Sometimes I'd go out of my way to do so, standing in the rain and failing to detour around puddles.

I made some friends who are still in my life today, including Wayne, Cristie, and Sylvia, although Sylvia didn't actually go to the same school. I met Cristie one morning when she came into take the attendance to the office. She was wearing a Metallica shirt, back before anybody really knew who they were, so I was intrigued enough to step out of my usual shell and become friends with her. Many of my lasting friendships had their genesis in similar musical tastes.

I can't remember my first meeting with Wayne. He's a couple of years older than me, and I remember him being surprised when the yearbooks came out and my picture was in the freshman section. He hadn't realized I was so much younger (two years was more of a big deal back then).

At one point, somebody stole a scale from one of the science classes, and I was blamed, for no other reason than I always wore a black trench coat and sat by the door. I think that trench coat was a gift from Sylvia, if memory serves. One science teacher was so sure that I'd done it that he burst into one of my classes and confronted me in front of everyone. I also got called to the principal's office, where the vice principal, a supercilious man named Mr. Dexter, not only accused me of stealing it, but stated that he had witnesses. I called him a liar, and eventually brought my parents in to get him to stop harassing me. The parental intervention worked, but I was still irritated that somebody in a position of authority would lie to my face about something. How naive I was.

Of course, I knew who had stolen the scale, but due to the teenage code of not ratting people out, I kept my silence. This was probably the first time I was profiled. I looked suspicious, therefore I must have done the crime. To be fair, I cultivated that look. I still kind of do. I like to confuse people.

Here are my high school ASB cards. I don't look particularly happy in them, except perhaps in the last one. Maybe I was anticipating being done with high school forever.

When I graduated, I showed up in sneakers, which was apparently unacceptable. I had to trade shoes with my dad, meaning that he had to hobble around in tight sneakers while I flopped around in overly large dress shoes. Under my robe, I wore a spiked belt and a Celtic Frost shirt. Sylvia, Cristie, and other friends showed up as well. In the picture, my brother Greg, who wasn't even in junior high yet, is wearing a Bloom County shirt and flipping off the camera.

Here are a couple of recent shots (taken by Wayne) of me and Sylvia, alongside our mutual friend, Devon.

And here are a couple of shots from 2009,with Wayne and Cristie, taken at a memorial for a guy named Sam Kress.

I got a record in the mail from Cristie last month, and it's really good. Get your copy here. I don't see Cristie, Wayne, or Sylvia very often, but we were good enough friends that years can go by and we just slip right back into the groove as if we'd just spoken yesterday. Here's to friendship.

Alden Way

I didn't live in this apartment very long. No more than a few months, in fact. After I met Jen and decided to continue that relationship, it became time for me to move out of Laura's apartment and find a new place. I spent a month or two sleeping at my mom's house. I slept on the couch so I wouldn't get too comfortable there. I didn't want it to feel like I'd actually moved back in.

Jen let me know that the apartment across the driveway from hers was vacant, but the rent was more than I could afford on my own, so I cast about for a housemate and found a guy named Dan, who used to live with my friend, Matt. As it turned out, by the time I left this apartment, Dan still hadn't moved in. He paid rent because he'd agreed to do so, but in the end, still owed me money (for the deposit, if I remember correctly) that he never paid back.

Other than my developing relationship with Jen, the only event of real note that took place while I lived here came one morning in September. I'd gotten back from delivering papers and was in bed asleep when Jen knocked on my window. She looked frantic about something, which jolted me into immediate alertness. She said that there had been some sort of attack on the country, so I rushed next door with her and we turned on the TV, which was broadcasting the unfolding story of the 9/11 attacks. Jen had gotten a call from her stepmother, who had done a good job of blowing the event all out of proportion, which when one considers the gravity of the actual event, is saying something. Alex, who was not quite five years old, sleepily wandered into the room at one point, but Jen quickly ushered him back to bed. We were riveted to the TV for hours, or so I remember. Eventually, I went next door to go back to sleep, but sleep obviously didn't come easily. At that point, nobody knew how extensive the terrorist attacks would be. There was fear that there would be more, which is of course exactly what the terrorists were hoping for. That's why they call them terrorists.

This was Jen's apartment (slightly blurry because, like the other photos, I took it from the window of a moving car):

Sophie was born on the couch there in June of that year. She is now 14 years old.

An Arm and Two Legs

I remember breaking my arm when I was young. I think I was around 5 years old at the time. A neighbor named Tommy was giving "rocket rides" on another neighbor's lawn. This involved him lying on his back and bending his knees so the "rider" would have a seat on the soles of his feet. He would then swiftly kicked with both feet, sending the hapless rider into the air. It was fun until I came down on my arm and broke it. I don't remember any real pain, but I remember freaking out at the startlingly new shape of my arm. My dad yelled at Tommy, and I came to his defense, saying it wasn't really his fault. I'm not sure if I did this because it was true, or if I didn't want to rock the boat as far as the neighborhood pecking order went. Tommy was an older kid, after all. Both motivations probably came into play.

I had a plaster cast which was soon befouled with grime and signatures. It's hard to suddenly become less mobile, especially when one is young.

Later on, I would lose one of my pet snakes in that same lawn. It was a Ringneck snake and was, if memory serves, one of the first snakes I'd ever caught. Being not much bigger than a worm, it managed to wiggle its way into the lawn and disappear.

That lawn was bad luck.

Of Love

It's Valentine's Day today, and the fourth anniversary of me proposing to Jeanine. On today's agenda, we're going to clean the chicken coop together and later on, watch the mid-season premiere of The Walking Dead. Maybe somewhere in between we'll do something more in keeping with the holiday.

Other than what I've mentioned above, I don't have any Valentine's Day memories that I consider interesting or unusual enough to share here. For the most part, it's a holiday engineered to move vast quantities of stuffed bears, red flowers, and boxes of chocolate from merchants to people who want to reassure significant others that yes, they are loved.

My parents stayed married until the end, but didn't live together for a large chunk of that time. I was between high school and college when my dad announced that he'd be moving out. I don't remember being too surprised, so I must have subconsciously known that my parents' relationship was headed in that direction. I can remember my dad being stressed out a lot of the time, and he often stayed at work late. My mom called him a "workaholic". I'm not sure exactly what the breaking point was, although I imagine it was a lot of little things rather than one big one. My teenage self was self-absorbed enough to simply take it in stride, and my brother seemed likewise unaffected. We just carried on with our lives while our dad got an apartment nearby.

Up until the end, even after our dad moved up to Citrus Heights near Sacramento, we continued to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas together, with my dad making the long trip down to join us. My parents also kept in touch during the year, checking in with each other. I'm not sure how often they talked, but I know they did. I seem to remember my dad having a brief fling with a woman that he worked with, not that he ever brought it up (I don't think this started before he moved out though - that would be troubling). It was more of a case of reading between the lines. Both of my parents were relatively private individuals, and despite all of my writing here, so am I. Most of the time, I feel like I'm typing into the void here. I know a few people who either regularly or irregularly read this blog, but I don't go out of my way to send people in this direction. This writing continues to be more for me than anybody else, although lately I feel like I'm chronicling my life here more for the benefit of those who come after. Someday, after I'm gone, Willow might be interested in digging through these posts. History, even family history, isn't for the young though. Right now, she is firmly rooted in the present. Someday that will probably change.

The Old Homestead

Today I took Willow on a trip through time. We visited the house I grew up in, my elementary school, my junior high school, and my high school. I hadn't been by my parents' house in several years. After my mom died and we'd rescued everything we thought needed rescuing (space allowing - both Greg and I lived in apartments, and as it was, we had to rent a storage space which we promptly filled to the brim), my dad sold the house for $600,000.00. The realtor bought it himself, saying that he was going to live in it with his family. Out of curiosity, my cousin Peter recently looked up the house online and discovered that it had been sold again, to the tune of $1.5 million or so. Sure, a lot of work had been done on it between sales, but still... that's quite a mark-up!

Here's the house as it looked in the late sixties, shortly after my mom and dad bought it. I still fondly remember the Volkswagen in the driveway because coins would always end up getting stuck between and under the seats, so it was like a goldmine for me. Once, I even found a copy of Playboy (or some similar magazine) in the back somewhere. Eventually, we had two Volkswagens, this one and a newer, yellow one. The newer one wasn't as fun. Maybe this is where I developed my appreciation for decrepit machinery.

I had a lot of toy Volkswagens too. I can still recall pitching a major fit one day when my mom brought me home a Volkswagen that I already had. She said something like, "but the new one works better!", to which I replied, "no it doesn't" as I furiously demonstrated that this was so. What an ungrateful little jerk I was.

Another memorable moment in Volkswagen fandom came when it was revealed that there was a really old Volkswagen at the rear of a garage where my dad was getting some work done on one of our cars. He had probably mentioned to the mechanic (or the owner) that I liked Volkswagens, so we were taken back into a dark corner of the garage to gaze in wonder upon a Volkswagen so old that the rear window was divided in half. Here's a photo I found after a quick online image search:

And here's the same house today (literally - we just got back from our little photo tour).

This is very much in keeping with the trend of places looking nicer now than they did when I lived in them.

Journal Entry From 21 Years Ago

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned taking a road trip with my friend, Chad. Casting about for something to write about today, I found my one journal entry written while on that trip. I did about 99% of the driving because at the time, Chad didn't have a license. He only drove one day when I couldn't keep my eyes open after driving for nearly 23 hours straight. That was a long haul.

Most of my journal entries involve various sorts of self-improvement strategies and reflections on my shortcomings, or agonizing over failed relationships. This makes them kind of tedious and grating to my current self. I might pick and choose a few other tidbits to share here, or maybe not.

"Today is Wednesday - we've been on the road since Friday and this is the first night we've slept in a motel. We spent three nights in the car and one in a friend of a friend of a friend's basement. In Idaho. Land of the hick.

Animals we've seen: I almost ran over a skunk in CA. The skunk is supposed to be one of my guide animals, along with the otter. Skunks command respect. It's interesting that I've seen two skunks in the wild since I've found this out (never seen a wild skunk before this). Both times I've been in a car with a friend. Something to do with friendship & respect?

Other than that, we've seen deer, buffalo, rabbits, a mouse, possibly an owl, lots of crows, and various chipmunks. A couple of deer got really close. A buck licked my hand but left when no food was forthcoming. While driving through Yellowstone, we had our car surrounded by a herd of buffalo. It was snowing gently as these ancient-looking animals made their unhurried way down the road. The whole scene was beautiful and somewhat surreal - also a little bit sad. it made me think of the past and what was done to the buffalo - hunted almost to extinction.

The crows also interest me. Wherever we turn, we see them hopping or flying away from the sides of roads. One flew in front of us in the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. What do they symbolize? More later... wish I could write in the car like Chad does, but I have to drive. Oh well..."

During this point in my life, I'd become interested in the symbolism of the natural world. The bit about skunks and otters being my guide animals was inspired by a Native American tarot reading done by Laura. The crows which seemed to appear at every corner led to me getting one tattooed on my arm when Chad and I reached Flint, Michigan (where his mom and stepdad lived). One of Chad's friends owned a tattoo parlor, so my crow tattoo was heavily discounted. This tattoo would later inspire the camp name I chose when I got hired at my current job.

Other noteworthy moments included following some unpaved roads to the site of the Wounded Knee massacre. This was quite a solemn undertaking, and the bleakness of the monument and the tiny cemetery nearby has stuck with me all of these years.

In Michigan, we went river rafting down a tiny river. We went tubing behind a speedboat too, and I remember cartwheeling across the water after the poorly inflated tube spun out from under me. Here's me, Chad, and a couple of Chad's friends.

On the way back, we stopped at Mesa Verde after spending some time in Colorado Springs. I've been wanting to go back there ever since. We also drove through St. Charles, MO, which is where I was born. This was the first (and so far, only) time I've been back there. We looked at cute hedgehogs in a pet store and checked out some record stores. I bought a Saint Vitus CD from a guy who was a member of a band called the Strangulated Beatoffs. It's funny how I can still remember some of these details.

We briefly stopped at the Grand Canyon too, as well as Four Corners. At some point, we found ourselves following Satan's Freeway.

Revisiting these photos (all taken by Chad, except the one from the rafting trip, of course) confirms that I had a really crappy scanner back when I scanned them. There are other pictures from this trip in a photo album in the attic, and someday I might revisit those too. It's funny to think about how many photos I would take if I took such a trip now. Probably hundreds. There's something to be said for just experience life, instead of constantly recording it. Photos tend to narrow the focus of our memories down to the recorded images, leaving the rest of the experiencing in some unattainable mental archive.

A Pleasant Present Interlude

Amidst all of this reminiscing, the present continues to eat up the future and quickly digest it, leaving only the past behind. I'm nearing the end of yet another week of working nights, although I'm quickly approaching the time when I'll be switching back to days.

The eruption of frog song this week is nearly overwhelming in its intensity. Our pool has been neglected for awhile now, and resembles a murky, green pond. Yesterday evening, I managed to capture three different amphibian species there: several chorus frogs, a small toad, and an equally diminutive newt.

On Tuesday, I went with Jeanine and Eva to see Black Sabbath, getting to work a bit late. This is balanced out by the fact that I've been staying later than I'm supposed to in the mornings due to some ongoing schedule snafus.

The sunrises have been nice too, especially this morning.

The kids this week have been perfect sleepers. I haven't seen a single one of them during the overnight hours. I did see a Gray Fox rooting around in an overturned compost bucket on Monday night, and actually had to intervene when the fox spotted our fluffy little feral cat nearby. The fox suddenly got very interested in the cat, and its whole demeanor changed. I got in between them and scared the fox away. I'm not sure if it would have attacked the cat, but I have a soft spot for cats, so I didn't let things escalate.

I'm always impressed by how alive wild animals are. They always seem to be quivering with potential, their senses straining to perceive the slightest changes in their surroundings. The fox moved so quickly that it seemed like a ghost, teleporting from shadow to shadow and then finally vanishing back into the woods. People are never this alive. Maybe we should take inspiration from this fox and its kin. I've been thinking about this all week.

Church St.

That's my old window in the upper left hand corner of this rather dull looking building. Looking at it now reminds me of the time when the roof was replaced. Due to the fact that I worked nights, there was a period of several weeks where I was awakened every day by the sound of hammers directly above my head.

This cookie cutter apartment complex squatted dolefully at the end of Church St where it abuts Highway 237. I moved into a two bedroom, upstairs apartment with Laura and her daughter, Kelly, who I think was then around 12 or 13 years old. Before we moved in together, they had previously lived across the complex in a one room apartment. Also living with us was their cat, BJ, who was one of the smartest cats I’ve ever known. He was constantly trying to get outside, so opening the front door always had to involve a quick motion with a leg to block his inevitable attempt to dart between the doorjamb and the opening door. Years later, after moving out, I had to break myself of the habit of swiftly inserting my foot into the widening space as I opened the front door of my new residence.

Laura worked at Tower with me, she in receiving and me out on the floor as shift manager. Our relationship was the only workplace romance I’ve ever attempted, and as I’ve mentioned elsewhere, it was an on again/off again affair. Our differences in age, personality, and life experience were profound, with her being 14 years older and having a background that can only be described as harrowing. She was also in chronic pain, and had bad days where it was all she could do to get out of bed and sit in her chair.

Kelly was a strong-willed and intelligent child. In a way, she was like my first stepdaughter. Not that Laura and I were married, or even in that kind of relationship most of the time. I helped teach Kelly to drive (she reminded me of this last year, when spent an afternoon together with our kids), and was generally there for her when needed.

My friend, Ellen, who had also briefly worked at Tower, moved into an apartment in the complex for awhile, and so did at least one other Tower employee, if I remember correctly. Jeff, my housemate from the first couple of houses in this ongoing series, lived in an apartment complex on the next street, accessible by a gate between our complexes.

Living with Laura was rewarding, awkward, frustrating, occasionally profound, and provided me with multiple opportunities for growth, some of which I took, and others which I didn’t. She was a woman for whom the words “I love you” were easier to utter than the words “I trust you.” I was a relative innocent. She was anything but. More than once, she said aloud that she wished that she could have what came so easily for “normal people”, but while we were living together, she never quite managed it, and I didn’t know how to make it work either.

During the “off again” moments of our time together, I saw other women, whose names all began with the letter D. I met D#1 through Ellen. She was a good deal younger than me and would eventually, long after our brief fling, become the co-owner of the Bal Theatre in San Leandro. D#2 was another Tower employee, and her claim to fame was that she had once been a model for Frank Frazetta. D#3 was somebody who I met through Jennie (yes, an ex-girlfriend, playing matchmaker). I might have taken this last relationship farther, but I was still emotionally confused about my non-relationship with Laura, and Laura, sensing that I was drawing away, turned on the heat, drawing me back in. She often admitted that she had a “come here/go away” problem in her relationships, both wanting and not wanting one at the same time. All of these brief “relationships” were overshadowed by the fact that I had unresolved feelings about Laura and my living situation.

There is a strange addendum to the story of D#3. My inspiration for starting this blog came from my first wife, Jen, way back in 2002. Jen became fascinated by the art of blogging, both reading and writing them. To this day, she makes a living working for a company called Blogher, so she managed to turn this fascination into something sustaining. Back when we were married, I happened to notice that one of the author photos attached to a blog she was regularly reading looked really familiar. Sure enough, it was D#3, who had become a Unitarian minister down in Texas. Being amazed at this coincidence, I briefly contacted her, which given Jen’s jealous nature, probably wasn’t a good idea. In retrospect, I think this might have been one of the first wedges inserted between us. I’m not sure if Jen continued reading that blog afterward, or if it exists. Maybe I’ll poke around and see.

I also did the majority of my international traveling while living on Church St., going to France and England several times. I also went to New York a couple of times during this period, and Texas as well. It was a busy time. I was young(ish), and between my two jobs, I could afford to travel, as long as I did it as cheaply as possible.

Laura eventually quit Tower, and was jobless for awhile, making me the sole provider. She eventually got a job at a paint store, and then one at Trader Joe’s. I quit Tower as well, and after my friend Matt mentioned that he had a friend who worked at the Children’s Discovery Museum and that I would be a good fit there, I got a job at the museum.
While working at the museum, I met Jen one day in the early childhood center. Remembering Laura’s tendency to pull the “come here/go away” card, I resolved that this time I wasn’t going to hold back from exploring the possibility of a new relationship which, as things developed, led to me moving out.

Later this month, I’ll be attending Kelly’s baby shower, held in expectation of the arrival of her second child. She’s in her mid-thirties now, which makes me feel elderly.

Reed St.

I can't remember how I ended up on Reed street. I think that the impetus was my aversion to living in a studio apartment. It might also been yet another move inspired by a break-up, because this was around the time that Jennie and I called it quits. I had a number of housemates in this house, including Chad who, while we were living there together, was my companion on an epic, 8000 mile road trip. Chad, with his band, The Earles of Newtown, ended up singing at our wedding when Jeanine and I got married a few years ago.

Another housemate, who shall go unnamed, tried to overdose on pills and ended up moving out. Yet another housemate, who I think was named Sheila, came home one day with two black eyes, looking like she'd been attacked. When I asked her what happened, she said she'd fallen asleep at the wheel and crashed into a bus.

We had a small garden in the front yard, but every time something started to ripen, it got stolen.

The house had two bedrooms, although we ended up converting the front room into an additional bedroom. That's where Jesse lived. Jesse collected hub caps and was a bit of an artist, if I remember right. He also liked having barbeques on the front porch,which was okay as long as uninvited people didn't show up, like this crazy homeless guy known as Mundo. I seem to remember Mundo leaving some graffiti behind.

I'm pretty sure that one of our neighbors was a prostitute, if her mode of dress was anything to go by. She would emerge in the evening wearing shiny, short, skin-tight skirts and wander up the street.

There were illegal aliens living in an old airstream trailer out back. They made a living picking fruit, and would sometimes share the bags of fruit that they brought home. Somebody ended up calling the cops on them, and our landlord suspected it had been one of us. Our response was something like, "no! They give us fruit!"

There was also a converted garage at the back of the property where some other people lived, but I don't think any of us ever had any interaction with them.

When we lived there in the mid nineties, the rent for the whole house was $800.00, which won't even cover a studio apartment these days.

While I lived there I was going to San Jose State (for the second time) to get my Environmental Studies degree. I also still worked at Tower, where I was on again/off again (mostly off again) romantically involved with a coworker named Laura. I could walk to school, but the commute to work was much longer. I was still delivering papers at night too.

We briefly had a housemate named Stacia, who had just moved away from her parents' house. Often, the only indication that she was living there was the pile of empty bottles of alcohol that built up in the kitchen. Once, she came home drunk and passed out in the front yard, where she slept all night. She was lucky. It wasn't the kind of neighborhood where a young, attractive woman stood a good chance of emerging unmolested from such a judgmental error. She sure liked her alcohol.

Next door, looming over our driveway, there was a building that looked like it was about to fall over. I remember once getting blocked in my the mail truck, and having to drive down the sidewalk in front of our house to the next driveway so I wouldn't be late for work.

Like all of my other similar living arrangements, this one eventually fell apart due to the nomadic nature of twenty somethings. People moved out and moved on. I was the last one to go. When we vacated the premises, we left our couch (which we had bought for $15.00 from the neighbors) on the front porch. We naively thought that whoever moved in next might want it. I can't remember how much of our deposit we got back. Probably not much.