#gratitude – Page 3 – The Boring Old Man

In Memorium: Uncle Jack

Yesterday the Mrs. and I attended a “Celebration of Life” gathering in memory if my dearly departed Uncle Jack.

My Uncle Jack was a really special guy, the life of the party and a friend to everyone he met. He married my father’s sister when I was but a small kid and I’d say of all the extended family I’ve got, we spent the more time with them than with any other relations, on both sides of the family. I always, ALWAYS looked forward to a visit with Uncle Jack and Aunt Mary.

Yesterday my Aunt asked folks to share stories and such of Jack, but I found myself a little too emotional to speak. Although he passed some time ago, I suppose yesterday was the first time it felt real and I really started to process his loss. Anyhow, I thought I’d share one particular memory of him here, for posterity. And maybe eventually, I’ll let people in my family know about this blog and share it with them.

This is a story- one of many I’m sure- that captures just what a special guy Uncle Jack was…

So, many decades ago, I must’ve been maybe 10 or 11 at the most, Aunt Mary and Uncle Jack invited me to go on a camping trip with them and some other family friends. I was so young, I don’t remember any of the details insofar as what lake we were at and exactly how long we were there, but what I can remember – clear as day, as though it happened last week and not 45ish years ago – was Uncle Jack taking me out to learn how to water-ski. Now, I was NOT an athletic kid by any stretch of the imagination, I was NOT a good swimmer and I’d never been on a boat, much less been dragged behind one attempting to stand up on a pair of skis. As you might imagine, things did not go well for me. But Uncle Jack was beyond patient, and kept encouraging me to keep trying. Well, I did. For a while. But I simply couldn’t get the hang of it and the excersize ended in frustration and embarrassment for me. I felt humiliation, though I didn’t even know that word back then. They hauled me back into the boat after I gave up, exhausted, bruised and beaten. All I wanted to do at that point was go home.

Now, this being the 1970’s, the usual adult response to this would have been to mock the kid for being a “pussy” or make fun of their failure to “toughen the kid up”. Not Jack.

Instead of making fun and letting me wallow in misery, he threw me in the driver’s seat and taught me how to drive the freakin’ boat! The next thing you know, I’d forgotten all about my humiliation and I’m having the time of my life pulling other folks around on skis, feeling like king of the world driving around this hot-rodded, kick ass ski boat.

The rest of the trip went without another skiing attempt for me, but I drove that boat every day and had the time of my life on that trip.

That’s how it was with Uncle Jack. He loved life and wanted everyone around to love it too. He was a very special man and I’ll never forget him.

Godspeed Uncle Jack. I’ll see you on the other side, and we’ll take another long overdue boat ride!

Road Trip! Pismo Beach, CA.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is being published about a week late… I guess in the thrill of it all, I forgot to hit the Publish button… I’m going to go ahead and post, as this blog has become my “backup hard drive”, and helps me remember what I did last week. Without further delay:

Loaded up the wagon with the board, wetsuits, assorted delicious things for eating and drinking and the Mrs. and headed 3.25 hours south for a few days in Pismo Beach!

Easy drive, perfect weather, not terribly crowded…so far so good! Pray for good surf!

Our home away from home for the next few days…

Thanks for stopping by!

Better Late Than Never.

Here it is, the LAST day of June ’23 and I FINALLY got back in the water and took the surfboard for a spin!

The conditions are not great, and truthfully they usually aren’t at this time of year in this locale, but it felt GREAT to just get out there and be IN the ocean after such a long pause.

I love the beach, always have, and can hang out on the beach all day, but it pales in comparison to being in the water. There is just something magical about it.

Feeling very fortunate at the moment, and grateful for the pause in “real life”.

Might do another session tonight, and have one planned for tomorrow morning with one of my oldest and dearest friends, so more to come.

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Independence Day!

Be safe out there!

Double Nickels today…

Hit another milestone today, the 55th year of my existence begins. Ugh. Hard to believe.

It’s been a good day tho. Took some time off work. The Mrs. treated me to donuts (a blueberry fritter, no less!) and I spent a slow morning doing odds and ends before heading to my studio for some drum time. Even took the time to replace my severely worn out snare drum head.

Early afternoon I picked up the Mrs. from work and she accompanied me to a local legendary record shop, Streetlight Records in San Jose. I’ve been going there since maybe 1982 (the old location that was in a converted house!), but the last time I was there was ’19, before “the Plague”. I had a nice time flipping through the racks, and was happy to see they are really leaning in to the vinyl Resurgence! I found a vinyl copy of an instrumental Beastie Boys album, and left “feelin’ like a kid again”. The icing on the cake was stopping off for a Slurpee on the way home! Good Times!!

In the evening our Girl came over for pizza – my favorite – and some classic comedy movies. A quiet but delightful night!

On top of it all were well wishes from family, friends and even a couple co-workers.

All in all, I couldn’t have asked for a nicer day!

Thanks for stopping by!

Uninspired.

Not much to talk about these days. Not without going off the rails like a loon, that is.

Work has been a drag. Not cuz it’s slow, quite the opposite. No time to reflect or plan, everything is currently “reactionary” because so much is hitting the fan simultaneously. Amongst other things, our company was hit with a “cyber attack” and 6 weeks later we STILL are using workarounds just try to keep everything from going off the rails. The residents are cranky and the staff is worn out. The last month whipped by in a flash, but I feel like it’s been non-stop hamster wheel running…no destination in sight, just go, go, go! Then go do it again tomorrow. Then the next day. And so on and so on…

Music has been slower than slow, and I’m struggling to find kindred souls to play with. This makes it kinda boring, which in turn has me making excuses for not going to the studio (as my bank account slowly dwindles to nothing) and thinking I may shut it down here shortly.

Right now I’m trying to avoid “current events” and the news in general. The level of stupid is off the charts from everything I’m seeing, and most of it just makes my blood boil. Since I’m in control of approximately 0.0000000000% of what is going on in the world, and can do about as much to change it, there is no point in me spending my time getting aggravated over it all.

You’d think you’d get used to being surrounded by crazy people and their insanity, but no… The crazy is perpetual, and yet I’m constantly shocked by the latest version that comes across the interwebs on a daily basis.

The “fun” part of life has been particularly lean lately as well. We had tickets to one show this month, but then ran into schedule issues with an event at the Mrs.’ school (plus mental exhaustion on my part) and just passed on the whole thing.

On the bright side, Spring is here! After the nearly non-stop, newsworthy winter storms we had in California this year, I’m happy for a little sunshine. I’m trying to get enough of a boost from the change in the weather to be inspired to get back to seriousness at the gym so surfing can happen. The water is currently only about 49/50 degrees – which I’ve surfed before, cuz I’m a sucker for punishment – so I’m ok with waiting for a bit better conditions. I surf for fun and for relaxing, bobbing around like an ice cube is neither. Nonetheless, I’m starting to feel a strong pull to get in the ocean.

Soon. Not now, but soon!

So there you have it, the truly boring life of The Boring Old Man on full display…

Hoping May will bring better spirits, and better living. We’ve got two concerts to attend, Mother’s Day is around the corner, beach days are a distinct possibility and it’s a lot easier to drag my butt to the gym when it’s not 35 degrees outside! I’m close to done with another book I’ll have to blab about, got a new record to review whenever I get the opportunity to sit down uninterrupted to listen to it…things are happening in the background, just nothing I felt compelled to put down here.

Generally speaking I’m an optimist, but my optimism tank has been on empty lately, hence my lack of posting. I just thought I’d put this out there so this blog doesn’t turn into another thing I stop caring about.

Thanks for stopping by. Happy Spring to you all!

Year of the Rabbit

It gave me a smile when I learned that 2023 was to be the Year of the Rabbit in Lunar (Chinese) New Year. The last Years of the Rabbit were pretty good ones for me, so I took that as a good omen.

Little did I know that the Year would go flying by as quick as a Rabbit! Holy smokes, where has January gone?

That being said, so far so good, even at “warp speed”.

We had our gnarly couple weeks of storms, but other than 3 days without power and losing some perishable foods, no real damage sustained on our end.

I’ve started a new book, which I may write about down the line… I’m only about 15 pages in thus far, and it’s a different kind of read for me, so I’m not sure how I’ll take to it.

I’m getting slightly more consistent in getting to the gym and my strength seems to be coming back after the last year of poor overall health, which is very encouraging.

One of my music projects is starting to make headway, which is super exciting. Last night we auditioned a new bassist and she (yes, she!) was pretty great and we seemed to gel very well right off the bat. If you’ve ever tried putting a band together, you’ll understand how important that is, but also how incredibly RARE for things to click right outta the gate. We’ve got another bassist lined up for next week, who actually seemed like a better fit “on paper”, but now he’s really got his work cut out for him! But overall, I’m extremely inspired right now and just want to keep pushing myself musically as much as possible for as long as possible.

I’ve got a lot of work to do around the house, as I got pretty lazy and overwhelmed during the holiday season, but I’m chipping away at it and making progress, so I can’t complain. Just gotta put one foot in front of the other, as they say…

This weekend we’ve got an outing up to SF (I’ll be writing about that Sunday) and a plan to pull out our emergency bags and “regroup” after the lessons learned from our bout of storms. And if time allows, I’ll be working on putting together my IG profile. Yes, very, very late to that particular party. I’ve completely ignored social media up til now, but I’m finding that if I want to keep up with what’s going on in the world of music, I’ve got to have access to it, as that’s where all the kids these days are putting out their info. And when it comes time to put out our music, it will be a necessity- for better or worse. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em I guess…

And last but not least, we have a new addition to our family as of last weekend.

Now don’t get me wrong. This is NOT because it happened to be the Year of the Rabbit, it was just a timing thing. I used to raise rabbits waaaay back in my Boy Scout days, and my wife and I have had “house rabbits” almost our entire 30 years together. There have been some gaps in between them, just like any pet it takes a while to get past the grief when you lose one, but this little guy is our 4th house rabbit in 30 years. Our last one lived to be about 12 years old, which was staggering. He doesn’t have a name yet, we like to get to know our critters before bestowing a name upon them, but he’s already getting real comfortable in his new home.

Well, that’s really about it for now. I try not to go so long between posts, so forgive me. I appreciate all of you stopping by and sharing your time with me. Hopefully next week will bring something a little more interesting!

Have a great weekend everyone and thanks for reading!

Thank goodness it’s over!

The year 2022 will go down in my personal history as the worst year ever, and I’m glad to see it go!

Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of fun moments this year. I made some improvements in certain aspects of my life, and I got to hit the road a lot and do some traveling, so the year wasn’t entirely without some silver linings.

BUT! I’ve been sick more this year than in the previous decade COMBINED, which completely wrecked the excersize regime I worked so hard to establish in ’20 & ’21. Lacking the consistency at the gym led to a really lackluster year for surfing. Not surfing really did a number on my mental health. The decline in mental health made my job all that much more difficult to tolerate and made my productivity in both my “side hustle” and general “around the house choring stuff” fall off a cliff. And to top it all off, I’m starting to feel the old, familiar financial squeeze that I (fortunately) haven’t had to deal with since I started this job nearly 5 years ago. I also lost a dear friend this year, completely unexpectedly. I could go on, and really get down in the muck, but this blog isn’t really about spewing bitterness, so I’ll stop right there.

So yeah, I haven’t exactly had a banner year…

But instead of bitching and moaning about what a craptastic year ’22 has been, I will review the good stuff that happened and the good stuff I’m looking forward to in 2023.

First, as I mentioned, this was a great year for travel. Aside from all the local stuff, we hit Hawaii, Los Angeles, Napa and Oregon this year. And all those trips were great. Tons of fun, no bad vibes, nothing negative happened on any of those adventures. Who knows what ’23 will bring, but I DO know that a trip back to Oregon is already in the planning stages for late Winter/early Spring.

This was a big year for music too. Not only did we get out to a bunch of shows (most of which were FANTASTIC!), but I also started getting my groove back – both figuratively AND literally – spending a lot more time at the drum kit than in the previous years. Thankfully the drums help fill the void left by the lack of surfing. It’s not the same certainly, but both activities put me in that Zen mind space, which is something I found myself in desperate need of this year.

I’ve also had a bit of a regrouping with some old friends this year. I don’t know if it’s an age thing, or a general sense-of-mortality thing in this post-Plague era, but I’ve been back in touch with a lot of old friends this year, which has been pretty cool. It also helped take the sting out of the passing of my other friend…

This blog has been one of my highlights as well. I just jumped into it without much of a plan or direction, but I’ve found that it’s been a great outlet for me, which has helped me keep some equilibrium mentally and given me an opportunity to work with the written word again after a decade’s worth of slacking; another bonus in the positive mental health arena! I’m coming up on a year now of writing here and I think I’ll keep at it, simply because I’m enjoying it. Much to my surprise I passed 500 visitors a short while ago. I never expected that considering I have no “presence” on the ‘net to publicize this page, and I’ve only told 3 or 4 people about it. I realize that’s a tiny, miniscule number in the grand scheme of things, but considering my circle of people is very, very small it feels like I’ve talked to a whole bunch of new people this year and made a few new friends, which I can appreciate.

Looking forward into 2023 I see some good things on the horizon – of course I say that with the caveat that the “powers that be” running this psycho-circus don’t A) bankrupt us, B) starve us, C) make us all glow in the dark or D) all of the above…

I’ve got a few different music projects starting to heat up, which is super exciting for me.

More travel to places I’ve never been are on the itinerary. Getting back into the swing of things at the gym is another good thing I’m making happen. And I’ll keep plugging away here – more comcert, book and product reviews, more musical flashbacks, and hopefully continued improvement of my writing overall.

And lastly, a potential new business venture that could be a “game changer” for me and put me on a whole new path.

Will all of this actually happen? Who can say? I can’t predict the future any better than any of you can. But what I DO know is that without plans, drive and a sprinkle of good luck, we all just stay in the same spot, wallowing in misery.

I don’t know about y’all, but I’ve had more than enough misery over the last few years. It’s time to really start living again!

Thanks for stopping by and reading. I wish you all a happy, healthy and prosperous 2023!!

As the mad-dash escalates this week…

Keep this in mind when you’re facing lunatic drivers, overly congested parking lots and long lines that move at a snail’s pace…

The last few years have been so weird that it seems like people are going out of their way to make up for lost time the Christmas, which I can understand. But becoming a stressed out mess in an effort to “get back to normal” is defeating the true purpose and meaning of Christmas.

Take a breath. Relax. Love your loved ones. Enjoy your time together if you’re lucky enough to have someone to spend the holiday with.

And most importantly, be nice to your fellow humans. Everyone I know could use a dose or two of kindness bestowed upon them, it’s been a rough year.

Just my 2 cents…

Thanks for stopping by!

Thankful

It’s that time of year again, hard to believe, but true. The “holiday season” is upon us!

These past few years have been a non-stop dumpster fire and quite frankly I’ve found it difficult to maintain a positive attitude, not to mention being grateful. But when I stop to think about it, I DO, in fact, have a LOT to be grateful for.

Part of the reason for starting this blog was to help me remember the positive things, to give me something to look back on when things are not going so well. And honestly, it’s worked that way when I needed it. I have focused on maintaining a positive vibe, and have tried very hard to keep this blog from becoming a toxic rant-fest, as that’s where my head has primarily been over the last few years. It hasn’t been easy. I’ve had to stop myself numerous times from spewing angry stuff, calling out both the imbeciles and the grifters, and just straight up bitching about the (many) things that have been getting under my skin. Not that I always succeed, but I always make an effort!

But today, I want to “give thanks”, because when I stop to consider it I am pretty fortunate and have come a long way in the last decade.

First and foremost, I am grateful for The Mrs. We’ve been together for 34 years now and just celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary this year. We’ve been through some really rough times over the past few decades, but we always come through the other side intact, and we’re still best friends. After spending more than 3/5’s of my life with her, I can’t imagine it any other way.

I am thankful for our daughter who has grown into a fine young woman. She’s very responsible and pretty self sufficient, especially compared to her cohorts. She’s never been in any kind of real trouble, she’s helpful and just a pretty nice person. That we share a love of music and soccer doesn’t hurt either!

As much as it drives me bananas, I am thankful for my job. Being healthcare “adjacent” during the “pandemic” took me to the edge both mentally and physically, and it certainly left some scars. But the fact that I didn’t have to worry about a paycheck when it seemed like the whole world was going up in flames was something to be grateful for. And while I can say whole heartedly that I have no love for my job/career, I have learned a TON being here and I’m always grateful for new knowledge. And honestly I’m grateful for my team too. They test me and sometimes aggravate me beyond belief, but overall they are a solid group and when it comes down to it, they will come together and perform amazing things to keep this facility afloat.

I’m thankful that my parents are still around, even though I don’t see them very often. I was very concerned about them during the whole Covid nonsense, and I am very glad that they both came through unscathed. Now, if we could just convince my Pops to retire…

I’m thankful for the friends that are still in my life. They are few and far between, but those guys have been with me a long, long time. Some of us go back to the 1970s, a couple from the early 80’s…my “newest” friend came in to my life in 1990, so yeah I’ve got a lot of years clocked with these gentlemen and I’m grateful for all of them.

I’m thankful for my health. In spite of the fact that I’ve been sick more in 2022 than in the last 10 years combined, I’m grateful that I am still “healthy”, still able to hit the gym and have been able to steer clear of pharmaceuticals into middle-age. No small feat.

Last but not least, I’m grateful for still being able to get out and play music. It’s been feeding my soul when all else seemed misery.

All in all, I have a lot to be thankful for, I just need to remember to remind myself of the fact from time to time.

I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving, good health and serenity!

Thanks for stopping by!