Tired out, and time to go to bed...

and I don't do half enough, I have to admire the rest of y'all, EnergizerBunnies all. Anyway, I have turned in my title for my Story on Saturday Night - really live. At the Antique Sandwich Company in Ruston, Wa. Oh, you wanted that linked, go Google it, I want you to show up and buy a five dollar ticket and enjoy good coffee, excellent strange local pies and such - and an evening of Storytelling. My story is "Hey, Old Timer" and it starts out all about me and then moves on to the important main character. Good seats at 7:00 PM.

I have to go shower, my wife's fine example of twenty minutes on the treadmill while I napped the supper away (difficult to keep my eyes open) made me go out and test the machine for forty minutes - yes, it can still bear my weight, the Country Music is more Rock than I like, but did enjoy the distraction from the blank wall in front of me... just me, the music and my mind... dangerous combination. Good night, y'all.

When they take you where you don't want to go...

I have been watching the Hospital for the last couple of days, thinking that I am as reluctant to go there as I am to go to prison - as a patient or a prisoner anyway. I didn't think to go find their library while I was there, visiting the hospital is about as mind numbing as many things that are on the outside of one's comfort zone. Mostly mind numbing because you don't have a function and someone you care about isn't doing well, but then this is where healing begins - isn't it?

Having had some interesting motorcycle mishaps while I was young, and being too close to excessive explosives exploding I have had my personal time in a hospital bed, but couldn't remember too much except that I was treated well and discharged and told not to do it again. I got an award of the Purple Hurt Award for the explosives trash buried in my leg, which hadn't slowed me down after my hearing returned, but they didn't like all that blood in the pant legs, not in OCS, just wasn't STRACT (and I can't remember what those letters are for, will have to Google it). Only the Urban dictionary knows...

Anyway the Hospital, like prison, takes those needing healing from across the population, and they respond best to proud professionals - which maybe why patients do better at the healing than the prisoners? Something to think about. The stress levels are awesome in the hospital, and I watched today some painful abuse by a patient to two doctors trying to help him - but they weren't doing it the way he wanted - duh, where did he go to med school? One of the recommendations for a future Marine was to make friends with the Corpsman, he is only Navy but he can save you when another Marine can't. I always liked getting the cooks and the mechanics on my side, too. Trained professionals do count in the worst situations - which gets me back to the fine professionals treating hundreds of people every day in our hospitals they don't get enough recognition.

Yeah, best get in good with the Medical Staff, they will help you beyond what you deserve but that old guy in the corner might not want to put up with your belly aching when added to his other problems - you could be the one thing he could fix, and he lived too long on a short fuze.

I received my renewed Concealed Pistol License...

and no matter what the anti gun crowd says - no child has been shot, not one suicide in this home, and I have never been involved in a gun fight in the street, at the Mall nor during someone else's road rage. Of course, I respect life and fine shooting and good weapons of many kinds, that and the fact that more good things are done with the firearms than what the criminals do with them.

Today is the first day of Spring, 80% chance of rain, highs in the fifties - yes, that is motorcycle riding weather for Earl. No, I don't put on my rain suit until I have soaked to the skin, then I put on the rain suit. Work was fine, ordered the last of the books, correctly and then thought someone was telling me I had done something wrong (but it was shotgun management style - blast away -- a little birdshot bursting everyone's bubbles) and I had to learn how to submit my travel for the conference and that is all new - this being an old man is so frightening when they add easier software to help me. Okay, I am not scared, but don't like looking like an idiot to the computers - I have seen the Terminator in action, and I felt like an idiot while I played with the entries and the computer kept telling me I was wrong I couldn't go back in time - and I am looking at the machine thinking I almost wish I could.

I got two good rides in today, the rain hit before I woke, while I worked in the library, and before I left to ride home- I even saw the SUN, briefly between gray towering clouds pushed by high winds and sea gulls. Still I get a nice feeling that after a few more wicked weeks of Western Washington's Winds and Waves (the ferry slams into the floating docks!) it will really be Spring and more fun than I deserve. My vacation time has been approved for the Boomershoot!

Only one last thing to write about, opening the door to the house, seeing my wife cooking in the kitchen and her smiling and telling me that I have to take CPR training - cause her heart isn't working very well today. She got leveled, went to her doctor and then on to work, and her blood pressure is high and the results of her other tests aren't back yet. But she wants me to worry about her coming heart attack - okay, dear, put it right there beside the other stuff on the procrastination pile. I did tell her to put the salt shaker back down and don't add any salt to the dinner, there is enough in the meat naturally. I do know CPR, just don't certify frequently.

You did notice I haven't written about the President and World Shaking events? Notice that this starts with something seemingly important (the 2nd Amendment and Concealed Pistol License) and gravitates right up to the only thing that is critically important in my life - hot coffee, nice steak and vegetables and my loving wife. Yeah, I know what I might lose sleep over.

But you didn't turn me on...

So you don't have to return the favor, love that lady in the red CTS. But I was working on self control, trying to get self back in myself. So with the computer down, the television off and no one calling me I did more than recent normal, break fast with my wife, head for the YMCA for more work on self, I watch a TurboJam commercial while I work out wickedly. Back home to stuff to do for us....

I am sharpening the lawn mower blade, with a file, like bayonets and axes, sharpen with file - yes, you could use a grind stone, a wet one and slow but there is art and art has heart and hand sharpening with a file brings back memories. Sharpening my swords before Hastings, or was it my ax, or spear? Riding a horse meant you could carry more weapons in case of loss or breakage, walking means you have to carry the extra weight and get moving somehow and hope it doesn't get in your way. Kind of like all the body armor and three types of killing ammunition and grenades and water and digital I-pod/camera/cell phone of the modern warrior in Afghanistan or Iraq.

I get called to lunch, ramyon with shimp and mon-du, the bright-eyed lady I came to the dance with across from me eating rice and kim chee. I have the Bluegrass playing and she starts mimicking the sound of the sad violins and voices, she catches the tones perfectly. I finish put the stuff away and change the cable to Korean music, telling her that I will start singing along one day. Outside the sound of jets, from the Air Base - the Air Force is on display, everything they tell us they fly is on the flight line or in the air today, the stuff they don't tell us about we will never have to give up to our enemies. The Thunderbirds are on at three, the highways all around are packed with slow moving cars trying to get somewhere. I still have to do the grass mowing and area beautification.

I know what Heaven is like, or at least my piece of Paradise.

Multi-tasking is for fools...

I have been trying to hold too much, and on the way with everything I try to pick up another thing to bring along and then drop half of what I was carrying and begin to start all over - piling it on, the first adaptation to stress, just pile more of it on. In the 82nd Airborne we were accustomed to juggling lots of priorities, and the only important thing about juggling - was knowing which of the balls were made of glass and which could bounce harmlessly. Nice thing about the procrastination pile, that is all stuff I don't want to do anything with right now... later when I have more time, no glass balls there.

Once a much younger and forward looking fellow (ME?) I stopped every Friday to work on my charts and accounts to figure out what my Networth was, and since I had been keeping paper Cash notebooks since 1969 I could tell you at any point what my dollar value was. Just reaching up on the bookshelves and pulling one down. Oct 1973 (year of the Yom Kippur War) I owed $9595.19 on my trailer, $2803.20 on my Buick, and $70 on my color television, I had $1,191.64 in savings and Savings Bonds. Every month after that the debt went down and the savings went up. Okay, that is a simplification, but I knew where I was and where I was going and could focus. On Fridays I started watching Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser as my host and guide into the world of investment. That was about the time I started my IRAs, for tax relief and future retirement, mainly the tax relief - until Congress started messing with it, reduction of my income by whatever my wife and I could put away (up to two grand apiece) was wonderful. My advice to the young, start early, add often and use dollar cost averaging and broad market. I will mention that I don't do that stuff now. I have figured out that I can't ever retire completely, that having some money means that the government automatically wants parts of it, that piece of the pie that they are sure someone somewhere needs more than my wife and I.

One of the things I dropped was that careful accounting of my networth, not really worth the time now. I am running out of time, falling apart physically and likely mentally. I went to the doctor and had my examination and got his best guidance and a new prescription - four days later, after the blood tests (that I haven't seen) came back his office calls and leaves a message that I should call them, I don't. I will stop and talk to the doctor, next Monday on my way to work, for it is easier to dream of chasing long legged redheads, and just smile about how much nicely my motorcycle slides through the traffic and our Sunny days, my son is going to be home that evening... Best do one good thing at a time, multi-tasking means I might miss that smile that will go into my tomorrow, and that would be a shame.

Heart Healthy... alive in love...

Thump, thud, thump, thud, the heart beats on
pushing blood all day long, be it weak or very strong,
surging blood moving on, beats the heart as it sings the song.

a heart in motion, yet quiet and still --
it feeds the body, soul and will.

All too soon the music seems to stop,
heart beats cease and pressure drops,
the body dies as Life steals away,
taking Soul and Will to their Eternal Day.

Loves and lives are saddened in pain
so soon only warm memories remain.