Today was a monumental day- my first time back on a surfboard since December of last year! (That’s right, us crazies out here on the west coast still surf at Christmas!)
2022 has been a rough year for me health-wise. Not only did my 5-day a week gym routine go out the window, but my surfing came to a screeching halt. Over the past couple months I’ve been making strides at the gym, but still haven’t felt I had the strength for surfing.
The conditions weren’t great, but then again I’m not a great surfer, despite my passion for it. But it felt incredible just to be back in the Pacific, paddling out under squadrons of pelicans. And in the end, I did catch a nice wave and managed to get upright for a short but sweet little ride.
Sunday I got to hang out with my brother-in-law and his work/fishing buddy Bill, and do some fishing out of Half Moon Bay.
B-I-L has a great boat – the Miss Jessica – and he’s an awesome waterman, so getting out on the ocean with him is a real treat, despite the 3:30am “boarding call”.
We launched at the HMB marina at 5am and headed south toward Pescadero. We didn’t have much luck for the first couple hours, then I was finally able to land a salmon, only to have it 3″ too short, so back into the sea it went…
About half an hour later, I pulled in this beauty:
Literally THE “catch of the day”.
I am not by any means a “fisherman”. As a kid I used to fish lakes and rivers with a couple of cousins, but by my teen years I had too many other interests and fishing fell off my to do list for decades. But I gotta say, this open water ocean fishing is a whole different level!
We first ran down to south towards Pescadero, but when things were not happening we headed north up through Pacifica, nearly to the Golden Gate Bridge. But evidently the fish had other plans for their Sunday…
Yep…
Anyhow, as luck would have it, my keeper was the ONLY fish brought in that day. The irony that 3 fisherman (two with decades of experience!) could stay out on the water for 11 hours and the only fish brought in was by the noob with literally. 001% the experience of the other guys, was hilarious to me. Nonetheless, despite their arguments that I should take the whole Salmon, as it was my first ever caught, I insisted the we split it 3 ways – keeping with a long standing tradition of my BIL – so we all walked away with a nice couple Salmon steaks after a great day on the water.
These trips are a great learning experience for me, it’s almost information overload to be honest, but its awesome to have guys that know a LOT about a subject try to pass on as much information as they can, to make your experience all the better. And being on the water is always a joy for me, no matter the time of year or the conditions. To be honest, the fish is just a nice parting gift, the least important part of the day.
I think the old adage is true: the worst day of fishing beats the best day of working!
Thanks for a great day Captains Karel and Bill – it’s one I won’t soon forget!
The Mrs. and I woke up and realized we didn’t have anything pressing, so we threw some cold drinks, some mixed nuts and beef jerky in a cooler and hit the road to the coast.
We didn’t have a specific destination in mind, we kinda let traffic lead our decision making, and we ended up at Manresa State Beach in La Selva Beach, CA – about 20 minutes south of Santa Cruz.
Manresa was one of my haunts as a teen, first learning to surf. Later it was a family favorite where we often took our daughter. But today was the first time back there in a dozen years at least.
It was a little overcast when we first got there, but it burned off by 11:30, and was just gorgeous after then, a perfect day at the beach!
I’m inclined to head back tomorrow with my board, for old time’s sake…
As we head into this July 4th weekend, I’ve been thinking a lot about the state of our country, and the state of our populace. These last couple weeks (and let’s face it, years!) we have seen and heard much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and some spectacular twisting of logic by both our so-called representatives and media pundits. America these days is in a sad state of affairs.
The America I was born into was still widely considered to be a “melting pot”, which to my adolescent mind meant just that – the people of the world were all mixed together-melted into a big pot of America, to become American.
To me, American people didn’t have a color or a religion. They had ALL the colors and religions, and that was all good. One nation under God, INDIVISIBLE.
I can vividly remember the Bicentennial celebrations of 1976, yes there were certainly problems in our country (the Nixon/Ford years) but as Americans, we all came together to celebrate the duration – against all odds, I might add – of our country for 200 years! It is hard to describe the general feeling of the time; it is so completely foreign to how people operate in America now, it would come off almost as a fairy tale. But yes, there was UNITY. We were celebrating America and proud to be American. I’ve haven’t seen or felt any such unity as Americans since then.
Growing up there were of course cases of ethnic pride. You’d see bumper stickers, t-shirts and ball caps with things like “Proud to be Italian” or “Kiss me, I’m Irish”… little things that pointed to something that made the wearer of said things stand out, or to just show pride for their ancestors and in their ancestry. But above all, we were all AMERICANS. If you asked Eddy Spaghetti (a made up, fictional name to make a point) “what are you?”, you would get something along the lines of, “American, but my family came over from Genoa 3 generations back”, or some variation of that theme. Most people seemed proud of their roots, but they identified as Americans of “x” ancestry.
It wasn’t long after that “political correctness” and the dreaded hyphen began to rend the fabric of America. We’re now 3, maybe 3 1/2 decades into what I’d consider the American Identity Crisis.(c)
I’ll be honest and say I don’t understand the ubiquitous “Hyphen-American”. In the mid to late 1980’s, when we as a nation were first admonished to refer to all black folks as “African-American”, I thought, “well, that’s dumb…” What about black folks from the U.K.? What about black folks from the Caribbean? From Brazil? But what really started rubbing me the wrong way, was when everyone under the sun jumped on the bandwagon. Before you know it, we were cajoled into using only Mexican-American, and then Asian-American to add to the mix. But that wasn’t “good enough”, they cried, it isn’t DEVISIVE ENOUGH!! Evidently referring to someone as Asian-American is offensive, so they need to be sub-divided into Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Filipino/Indonesian-American categories… And then there are all the rivalries amongst the Central and South American folks, that don’t want to be lumped in with the “Mexican-American” moniker, and whatever you do, don’t refer to them as Latinx! Or maybe ONLY refer to them with that term? It changes so often, it’s hard to keep track of all the infighting. And to what end?
I’ve been watching all this for decades now, and I swear it gets stupider every time you turn around. The exact same thing that happened with “African-American” happened with LGB, which morphed into LBGTQ and now I believe contains nearly the entire alphabet, and some punctuation marks added for good measure. Every little obscure niche demands to be included in every stupid club. Again I ask, to what end?
I don’t mean to be offensive, I really don’t. I’m sure if anyone is reading this, then someone is offended. It seems virtually impossible to utter more than a single syllable these days without offending somebody, somewhere. But I’m not sorry for saying it. The media and government have been pushing division for a long time now, and rather than reject it, most people not only embraced it, they started throwing fuel on the fire, until we find ourselves in the place we are now as a nation. And what have ANY of these “marginalized” groups gained from this, aside from the animosity of every other group? Zilch. Zero. Nothing.
Honestly the entire thing just seems silly to me. If you are American, why do you need to use the little extra descriptive words? Especially if you were BORN here. If you consider yourself whatever it is they call folks from where your ancestors came from, then own it and just drop the American part. “American” isn’t a race, a color, a religion. America is a belief in personal freedom. America is a place to shape your own future. America is the place where you can speak your mind without fear of punishment. At least, it USED to be before basement dwelling SJWs, their Karen parents and social media came along… But I digress.
America only provides an OPPORTUNITY to WORK for whatever in the world makes you happy. America doesn’t owe you, me or anybody ANYTHING.
Our government, for the last few decades, has been decidedly un-American in its pursuit to divide the populace and we’ve been falling for it, hook, line and sinker. We can be better as the HUMAN RACE, without being crammed into a bunch of little separate boxes. The thing is, while each and every one of us is unique as an individual, you aren’t “special”, because of what you “identify” as. Likewise, if you ACCOMPLISH something that does indeed make you a standout, someone actually “special”, your race/ethnicity is completely, utterly irrelevant. Should someone discover say, a cure for cancer, does that discovery become more important because the scientist was blue, green, or purple? Of course not, the discovery is the important thing, the person that discovered it IS special to all of mankind, but the race/gender/orientation is irrelevant TO the discovery.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure everyone has their “something” that sets them apart, that makes them feel special…but in the big scheme of things? Not so much. We all have more in common than not. We all need air to breathe. We all need food and water. We all feel discomfort when too hot or too cold, we all get sick from time to time. We all are looking for security in our person and home. We all laugh, we all get angry… We all want our kids to succeed and have a strong future. We all want a better, cleaner world. I could keep going but I think I’ve made my point. There isn’t one single thing listed above that has anything to do with ethnicity, religion, orientation or any other “marker” you want to try on.
Maybe it’s because I’ve always considered myself a mutt, with a varied assortment of ancestry, that I don’t ascribe to identity politics. But the bottom line is, I was born in this country, my folks and their folks were born in this country, and I am an American, full stop. Not a Dutch-American, not a French-American, not a German-American, nor any of the other crumbs I’ve got swimming around in the ol’ DNA. And really, what difference does it make anyway? Other than (maybe) to persons in your same “group”, I’m pretty confident that NOBODY cares what you “identify” as. Unless they are USING YOU as a tool for their own purposes, that is. Don’t be a sucker. Be American, think for yourself, forge your own path, and make your own decisions. If you’re feeling so insecure in yourself that you feel compelled to align yourself with one of these identity politics groups, STOP. Take a breath. Then focus on things you can do to build YOUR self-esteem. That’s what you’re looking for after all, a way to feel better about yourself and your place in this crazy world, right?!?
Take a minute over the holiday weekend to reflect on what WE are celebrating. We are celebrating INDEPENDENCE DAY. The 4th of July is but a date, the reason for the celebration is INDEPENDENCE. We’ve forgotten that thanks to the “marketing” over the last few decades. Independence Day isn’t ABOUT BBQ, beer and fireworks. It’s about standing up against tyranny, it’s about bravery, it’s about self determination.
I freely admit that I’m one of those old fashioned folks that much prefers to use cash rather than debit or credit cards.
The positive aspects of this are that I have a better idea of how much I’m spending, when it is literally -not just figuratively – coming out of my pocket AND it leaves less of a “paper trail”. My fellow “tin foil hat” brigade will know what I mean…
The negative side of these transactions is that I always have coins in my pockets.
A few years back I decided to turn lemons into lemonade and started saving the coins in a couple jars at the end of each day. Since we’re apartment dwellers, we always need quarters for laundry, so they have their own separate tin. When the jars were full I’d take them to the coin kiosk at the local grocery store and trade them in. Usually I’d walk out with $40-50, nothing to sneeze at.
Well, yesterday was the first “cash out” since pre-Plague. My jar of nickels and dimes had filled up, so I tossed ’em in a little wood box I had and kept going. Then I had to dump into another tin I had, then the jar was nearly full again! Along the way I started a second jar for pennies too…
I dumped all the “silver” into one plastic bag, then all the “copper” into another bag. I weighed the two before heading out and to my surprise, the silver coins weighed in at 17.2 lbs. and the copper coins added another 2.3 lbs. Nearly 20 pounds of coins! Now you see why I don’t like to carry them around in my pockets!
The kiosk takes a cut off the top for the service, I don’t recall off hand what it is, I think is was 12% or something, whatever. I’d rather pay that than buy coin wraps and spend the time sorting, counting and rolling them up myself, THEN taking said rolls to the bank to deposit, but I digress…
Now, granted this was the longest stretch of collecting – by a long shot – due to the Plague, but I walked out the store with $190 in “folding money”, with a little collection of coins to throw back in the jars for the next run!
Not too shabby!
Of course, in reality I just lost a little money with this exchange. But psychologically it feels like I just got a bunch of money for doing nothing but feeding the coins into a machine. Bottom line, I never would have spent the coins as they were, but by flipping them into cash I got the Mrs. and I a nice pizza for dinner last night and threw the rest of it into the emergency “cash on hand” pile.
You DO have an emergency CASH ON HAND collection, don’t you? If not, why not?
If you don’t (and you really, really should!!!), this is a painless way to do it! And did I mention you REALLY should have emergency CASH on hand?
I had a nice weekend and came in Monday morning feeling recharged and “ready for battle”. By the end of the day I felt like I’d been pummeled, but I went home and played my new bass for a while to calm the nerves and went to bed in good spirits ready to have a good Tuesday.
Tuesday came along and was busy as all get out, but around 3pm I’d just finished a grueling, nearly 3 hour meeting on a big project I’ve been working on for months. I sat back and thought to myself, “alright, that was some progress, I’m finally getting somewhere!”
Less than 10 minutes later, one of my most solid and dependable employees comes in and gives me his resignation.
I’ve been short 2 employees for nearly a year now – it started back in June of ’21. Now I’ll be down 3. We still have to have 6am -10pm coverage, 7 days a week, 365 days a year and the remainder of the team is getting burned out and certainly less willing to “pick up the slack”, now that we’re 11 months in to a “temporary” situation. I can’t blame ’em.
Last night talking with the Mrs., I said “just once, I’d like to have a day when NOTHING goes wrong. I don’t need anything good to happen, just nothing bad.”
Well, today ISN’T that day. I’d just pulled in, hadn’t even turned off my car, much less exited it, and I’ve got the big cheese of the place yelling at me about an incident that had just happened.
It took 1000% of my willpower to stop myself from putting the car back in “drive” and leaving. Forever.
Thankfully I happen to have a couple hours booked in the rehearsal studio tonight AND a good friend/very talented musician is joining me for some noisemaking. Sometimes it is the little things in life that help get you through the s#!+ storms.
Hope y’all have a good day out there. If you’ve got dark clouds hanging over you, like I do, find something, anything to bring you a little joy. Self care is necessary, especially these days.
According to the Associated Press (AP), California lost 117,552 residents in 2021. That was the second year in a row of dropping population, bringing us a current count of 39 million and some change.
For politicians and economists, this is terrible, frightening news. You see, relocation is expensive. The people leaving? Yeah, they’re the ones with assets and high paying jobs or retirement accounts. And they’re taking all their taxable income with them! Huzzah!!
That dark red color comes from bleeding us dry!
As someone that was born and raised here, as well as raising my own daughter here, I welcome this news. There is very little left of what made this place awesome. And what IS left, you can’t get to without spending half your day in traffic, and then you’re surrounded by the hoarde. It’s just become extremely overpriced and crowded, and since less than (I’d guess) 20% of the people here now are “natives”, there is NO culture or pride anymore. Nor should there be.
Just another day in paradise…
The recent culture is “money” and the pride is all about “how much money do you have”…it’s kinda gross. I’ve lived within 30 miles of where I’m sitting right now, my entire life. And I’ve never felt less “at home” anywhere. California dreaming has turned into nothing more than a get-rich-quick scheme and it has destroyed the state.
Now if we could just come up with a plan to shed another 15-20 million, this state might be a nice place to live again!
The girls went out today for a girlie appointment so I had a little free time on my hands.
Spent it hanging out in my little happy place, the “home studio”. (It isn’t really a studio by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s where I keep all my noisemakers.)
I gave my new pedalboard a little attention, but didn’t make any permanent changes. Trying to fit the bass rig and the guitar rig into one pedal board due to my lack of space, and it’s a little tight in there.
Top row Bass, Bottom row Guitar
Now it just needs a little cable management and cleanup and she’s good to go.
Then I sat down for a little e-drumming, trying to keep the reflexes up.
The eDrum rig
After a little warmup, came up with this little groove…
Ok, the title might give you the wrong impression. This isn’t about biblical lore, or archeology, or aliens. This about what “we” leave behind, once we’ve shuffled off this mortal coil.
I’ll be perfectly honest and admit right up front that I stole that headline from a book I started last night. I may have fudged the wording, but it was the idea that it sparked that got me writing. In fact, when I read the sentence, it was like getting hit upside the head! This is the “cause” I’ve been looking for and working towards for years, I just didn’t know it until this unknown (to me) author put it so succinctly.
One of the greatest curses of mankind, is the knowledge that life is temporary. Well, it might not seem a curse to some, but I think for many – and I include myself in that group – it is.
I’ve always had a keen interest in “leaving my mark” on the world. I don’t mean that in terms of being “famous”, which holds no appeal for me, but in terms of making a lasting contribution. Being able to breathe my last breath, knowing I left the place just a little better than how I found it. Or if not better, just different, in a nondestructive way.
I don’t really know why I feel compelled to leave something behind for posterity, nor why it feels important to me, but I do and it does. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I think I’m special or particularly noteworthy, it just feels comforting for some reason to think that when my days are done there will be something left behind. As the title says, some evidence of my existence. Selfish? Perhaps.
I know in some little ways I HAVE made a difference on a personal level, to some individuals. Finding that “needle in a haystack” employee and putting them on a career path that was truly life changing for them. Helping out friends that were going through some serious problems and seeing them through to the other side. Teaching music to kids, being an “understanding” adult when their own parents either couldn’t or wouldn’t. Helping strangers broken down on the side of the road. Giving food -directly- to hungry people. These are all things that I’ve done and feel good about if I stop to think about them, but none of that will leave a lasting mark.
Back in the mid-80’s my father was the General Contractor on the first hotel built in Campbell, CA. I was in high school at the time, and frankly couldn’t understand why anyone would want to invest money in building a hotel in Campbell (shows what I know, now there are half a dozen!), but nonetheless even I felt a sense of pride in my meager connection to this project. The hotel still stands today, and every time I drive by it, I still feel proud of Pops. Before that, his father was a Contractor building skyscrapers in the Dallas boom days of the 1970s, which he got into after several decades building military installations around the country. I’ve got long lines of builders and craftsmen on both sides of the family, so maybe this pull in me is just part of my DNA. But now I’ve been around long enough to realize NOTHING lasts forever. Back when I worked in “the Trades”, I worked on and built some beautiful stuff for homes, offices, retail establishments… but over the following decades, those homes have been sold and remodeled, office buildings and shopping centers torn down and rebuilt fresh…as I revisit some places I’ve worked, it’s kind if heartbreaking to discover that part of my history has been erased. In a weird coincidence, I spent about a year building cabinets and fixtures for a large residential facility being built at the time. Some 15 years later I would go to work as the Facilities Director for that same facility, and oversee an 18 month “master plan renovation” that entailed tearing out and replacing about 90% of the things I’d built 15 years prior. That one stung a little more than usual.
I’m sure the artists that created all those magnificent bronze statues never could have imagined 2020 and their destruction either…
Aside from the relics of my days as a tradesman, I’ve recorded an album-that never saw the light of day- and started-but never completed- two screenplays and a novel. All of those efforts were things I thought would be my legacy, and yet they were never wrapped up because I was trying to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table, or even simply keeping my head screwed on straight. Survival today ALWAYS takes priority over plans for tomorrow.
And now, here I am on the downhill slope of life. If I’m lucky (which has never been the case for me. Ever.) I’ve got another 30 years. A far more realistic timeline, based on family history, reckless youth and a history of “bad habits” is maybe 15 years. That isn’t a lot of time to secure a long lasting legacy, especially when I don’t even know what it is… I guess I better figure that out quick, time is ticking!
Anyhow, I’m not really sure where I was going with this. More “thinking out loud” on my part I guess. Maybe I’ve got it backwards…maybe it isn’t setting out to leave a mark that actually accomplishes doing so, maybe it’s just being true to yourself and doing what you are compelled by your very soul to do. Maybe it’s just following your inner guide that sets you apart and leaves that mark on the world. All we know is that we don’t know what we don’t know, ya know? What I can say is that if you’re on your path and it feels right TO YOU, don’t let anybody dissuade you from following that path to the end. The world is full of people ready, willing and able to tell you “you’re doing it wrong”, but you’re the only one that knows what’s right for you.
I’ve been waiting for this for a very, very long time and it’s finally here! Left handed Fender “Players” Jazz Bass!
Finally!
I had a Jazz bass copy a decade or so back, but it was right handed and in a really ugly finish, so in one of those times in life where I needed a little extra to make rent I sold it off cheap on Craigslist.
I’ve wanted a lefty bass forever, and finally bought one a month ago, but when it showed up, it was a lefty body and neck, but strung as a right handed bass. D’oh!
After learning it would cost me more to have it setup back to a lefty by a luthier than a new one would have cost me in the first place, I returned it.
As luck would have it, shortly after I returned the bunk bass, I found this one listed as a demo model, and it only cost me $30 more than the used (and useless!) bass I returned! When it showed up, it was in the factory box, with all the paperwork and it still had all the protective plastic wrap stuff on the tuners and pickups, etc. So yeah, basically a BRAND NEW bass for the price of a used one!
This was the “last piece of the puzzle” I needed for launching my self-produced music in my little home studio, so now it’s time to hole up in there and let the creative juices start flowing!
Feelin’ like a kid on Christmas morning right now!
The Boring Old Man 