Lord, where to start…
Father, forgive me for I have sinned. It has been a month since my last confession…
*chuckles* And I’m not even Catholic!
Yes it’s been just over a month since I last wrote and paradoxically, during that month I managed to turn another entire year older. I’m now 52, or approximately 7 in dog years. I have also driven something like 1500 miles going on various and sundry road trips, and I have missed something like 75 hours of sleep that I could have used.
My birthday was on the 18th but I don’t really do anything special to celebrate it so other than going out to eat on the Sunday before, it was much like any other day. I did stop on my way home and buy myself an ice cream cake but that was the extent of the revelry. A very good friend was getting married in Tennessee on June 2 so I scheduled my summer vacation around that event. I rented a cabin in the mountains of Pigeon Forge, TN for May 29-June 1 then drove from the mountains of East Tennessee across the state to almost the Tennessee River to where the wedding was located. Once we arrived and took care of getting settled in there we decided to drive another hour west to Jackson, TN where we had lived from 1997-2004. We found the old house, drove around to see some of the changes, then had dinner and drove the hour back to the motel. The next day we dressed for the wedding then changed into our travelling clothes for the reception. We left the reception at 2pm and drove more or less straight through to home, arriving at 10:30pm. I had work the next day so I was very sluggish the following day. Then, on Sunday I drove to the other side of town to pick up a friend and then drove 2 hours north to a birthday party for Raymond Parks, one of the founders of NASCAR. It was his 96th birthday. The rest of the weekend was spent mowing the grass, repairing the toilet, and getting things organized again after unpacking from the trip.
I learned yesterday that I’ll be flying to Seattle at the end of this month for my work. I need to inspect a piece of equipment we’re considering, and see a demonstration of the equipment’s function. I received permission from my boss to leave on a Thursday for a Friday meeting then fly home on Saturday since it’s a 7+ hour trip not counting time spent travelling to and from the airport (which is 100 miles away from my house) and arriving there in time to clear security and check my bag. Checking my bag might be interesting anyway, since I’ll be carrying a machine gun barrel! I hope to visit one of my old college roommates while I’m there, he lives in Northern Oregon. I don’t think I ever shared this story in here, but he grew up on Long Island but spent his younger years travelling around the country. I think by the time he was 30 he had been in all 48 of the Continental United States but he always loved the Hood River, Oregon area. When he was around 35 years old he had to have open heart surgery to replace one of his heart valves, while he was in the hospital recovering he decided that life was too short to wait for a better time to make his move. On the day he returned to work he gave notice, effective after the current income tax season (he is a CPA, at the time he was working for a Manhattan accounting firm) and true to his word he packed all his belongings into a ‘90’s Plymouth Duster and drove from Long Island to Oregon alone. No job, no place to stay once he got out there, just his savings and his dream. He rented an apartment, found a job, and built a life for himself in Oregon. I haven’t seen him since 1997, I plan to try to visit him for at least a few hours while I’m in the vicinity.
That's the excitement that has been my life for the past month. |
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