This tree is coming down. It’s a flowering crab apple and is very pretty for about 4 days out of a year and looks like crap for the rest of the year. It also increases the shade in my garden, which is already too shady.

One of the YaYa’s husbands has a chainsaw and Beck emailed them to see if we could use it. He replied that was concerned about safety and how much chain saw experience I had. I replied, “An old UFSF woods rat like me? My only concern is that I might not be able to use it without a fire burning around me!”

He was apologetic about doubting my chainsaw machismo, but the fact of the matter is I haven’t used a chainsaw for about thirty years. And I never actually did use one in a fire. During that summer, all of us on the crew got a chance to use the saw and we were tutored by a contractor who was a real woods rat. An Idaho redneck woodsman of the highest order, he probably fed his family with elk and trout and knew the North Fork from mine dump to pristine mountain waterfall. I’ll never forget him telling us that if you used a chainsaw all day you’d have “muscles in your shit.”

Forest Service saws were used and abused and we waisted hours trying to find one that ran or was sharp enough or schlepping back to camp to trade an unstartable one for a functioning one. When you used the saw for Smokey, you had to wear heavy chaps, and the standard Smokey gear was steel toed boots, long pants, long sleeved shirt and a hardhat. That’s how I was dressed when it was my turn to run the saw. Of course, it was the hottest day of the summer and my task was to cut out a tangled deadfall at the bottom of small revinge were they were going to do a burn in the fall. It was probably the only humid place in Northern Idaho, unless you count the bottom of a mine shaft.

Everyone was a little apprehensive about the city kid (after all I grew up in a town of twenty thousand) college boy handling a dangerous tool. But I managed to come out of the experience unscathed, but hot and exhausted. I didn’t notice any muscles in my shit though.

So wish me luck. I’m going to call the Emergency Room and North Memorial so they can prepare for limb reattachment surgery. They’re famous for it.

It’s the wife’s night out tonight and the teenager is out hangin’ with her posse. It’s MEA the annual teachers convention that closes the schools from Tursday til Monday. Q is partying tonight having negotiated a reprieve from her month long grounding. Saturday she takes the SAT’s and then she and a friend are driving down to Ames to visit L at college. I’m a little worried about turning those two loose on the ISU campus. It may never be the same.

I’m curious to see how she does on the test. She hasn’t done any tutoring but shes a sharp kid and does well in tests. Like her I had moderately good grades in high school but did well enough on the tests to get in to Carleton. I don’t think the same credentials would get me in there today. They were trying to broaden there student body at that time and I think my artwork was what really got me in. That and the fact that one of the trustees was a golfing buddy of my Dad’s It’s not what you know, but who you know.

I kind of wasted the chance at a great education there. The art department had great teachers, but for that kind of money I could have gone to a high end art school. I probably would have just pissed my time away there as well. I wasn’t really achademic material and I didn’t have much drive. I avoided the science curriculum because I heard that it was very difficult. I was a Government and International Relations major until my dad died when I was twenty. Then, without him around to dissappoint, I switched to Art. I’m not sure I could have made it through any other way. I may have gotten through Carleton with the least number of papers written and science courses taken ever. I kind of blew the Biology Achievement test out of the water, so one of my Math/Science requirements was waved. But I chickened out on the Doctor track that so many went there for. At that time, the U of M was spotting Carleton Biology majors a half a grade point.

I’d love to say it was a great decision and that art has been a great career for me, but I was pretty lazy about that too and over the years I never really applied myself to that. I’ve pretty much devoted myself to the compulsion of the moment. First the guitar, then basketball, chess, computers, now I’m obsessing about building a website that makes money. I’m sure it will just be another lame attempt at e-commerse that brings in about 5 bucks a month, but I’m learning a lot and who knows.

I guess the thing that really gets me stoked is learning. I just love to dive into a discipline and absorb everything I can about it. Up to a point. I never really push things to the logical end. Once I become moderately proficient, I loose interest. I can’t say it hasn’t been fun though.

Wow, I didn’t realize that was what I was going to write!

And this.
dooce

101 Words.

This morning I entered the office elevator on the ground floor. I used my security card and pressed three to get up to my cube farm. As I pressed the button a dismbodied voice asked, “Are you going to the fourth floor sir?” I froze, my palms began to sweat, I was thinking hard…was this a trick question? I began to stutter, “Ummm….there is no f-f-f-fourth floor!?!”
The voice said, “I mean third.”
“uh….yes?”
“My toolbox is right outside the door, be careful.”
“Thanks.”
I got off, there was a toolbox there. I still don’t know where the voice was coming from.

Wow, that’s a relief. I got pissed off and cranky last night. For awhile there I thought I was the Stepford Husband.

Is it possible to be too happy? I know, if that’s the least of my problems…shut up! You might be wondering if I can’t really write without something to bitch about and talk about a stretch, bitching about being happy.

It’s the meds of course. Since the shrinks put me on the newest stuff nothing seems to bother me. Well I do get a little irritated that since the software rollout at work, I’m clueless about solving problems that people used to rely on me to solve. But it’s a minor irritant. And it’s not like anyone else can figure the problems out. Oh and I suppose that part of it is that I really like my new boss. It’s a lot easier to go to work every day.

Well I guess I’ll just shut up and continue walking around in this slightly manic state with a shit eating grin plastered on my face. Soon people will start thinking of me as the village idiot.

My depiction of the corporate chain of command. I’m not the littlest dog, but I’m the littlest dog that’s not in a union. Shit rolls downhill and has a helluva lot of momentum built up by the time it hits me. I was recently in a meeting with the guy three rungs up the latter from me, so a big wheel, and he was trying to do the frank and honest discussion thing about how the biz can be improved. I brought up one of my many pet peeves, something that we do wrong in the most basic no-brainer way. He heard a couple of buzz words and came back with an answer that was so vaguely related to what I was talking about, I might as well have been speaking Urdu. I tried to explain myself but I’m sure I sounded like a crazed techno babbler to him. Over the years there have been so many times that they’ve rolled shit out and I’ve predicted that it wouldn’t work and that it was a vast waste of money, if I’d just gotten on the phone with the CEO I could have saved the company millions. Or I would have gotten fired for not being a positive team player! My motto is. “keep your head down and be quick on your feet to dodge the turd slides.”

Something from the sketchbook. I started drawing again. This image is from my imagination without reference material. Obviously I couldn’t remember what a parrot looks like.

Music. Latin, Irish, Classical, Cajun, Reggae and Red Neck. The accordian is a rock and roll instrument. Soft spot for swamp boogie music that rides the Mystery Train through Chuck and Elvis and Bo and Mississippi Fred and John Lee. Memphis in the Meantime Baby. With a Telecaster turned up to ten. John Hammond sitting at his daddy’s knee getting Southern Fried. Beat me Daddy Eight to the Bar. And Twelve Bars on Bourbon Street. Working Man’s Dead. Sobering up, crashing into John Hiatt singing Stood Up about sobering up drying out with John for almost twenty years and thinking Bring the Family was the pinnacle and then last year Beneath This Gruff Exterior with songs about the creative process and taking a crap or dog love or mortality. And Sonny Landreth making an electric guitar sound like a caliope. Sonny Landreth doing things that seem to defy the laws of guitar playing. John Hiatt has probably written over seven hundred songs and he is going strong. Listen.