A weed in time, saves nine. —Papa

Well, the day went great. For two reasons.

1. I fulfilled the greatest pleasure in life: Doing what other people say you can’t do. Everybody put on sunscreen, except me. Everybody was saying that I should put it on, or else I’d get fried. Well, I was confident in my Bronzed God status, that I waved it away. Sure enough, I didn’t get any sunburn! Ha!
2. We got a lot of recruits. (Most all of which have stayed)

The only thing to counter the greatness of the day was that I pulled my thumb… in a way. I was doing semi-free kumite with another fellow. After I attacked, he blocked and threw me on the ground (not hard of course). I threw my hand out to the ground, which really tweaked my thumb and wrist.

I was worried about losing flexibility in the wrist by not moving it much, so every day, I stretched it back and forth once or twice. It really hurt, but I figure, better than it freezing up. Anyway, two weeks later, bending my wrist still hurt. (it didn’t help that I was hammering and drilling with that hand) Seeing that stretching it didn’t really help it, I stopped for one week. So, at the end of the next week, it felt slightly better, but no real improvement.

So today, I was putting up joices in a house with Jorge. My wrist still hurt to bend it. After we got the joices up, I had an idea. I thought, why not grab onto the joice, and hang there to let the weight of my body pull my wrist straight? So I climbed the ladder. Then, I wrapped the fingers of my hurt hand around the joice. I clamped my good hand over the fingers of my bad hand so my bad hand wouldn’t be putting any effort into gripping the joice, so it wouldn’t slip loose, yet stay relaxed. When my hands were secure, I slowly took myself off the ladder, so I’d be hanging by my hands.

In my bad hand, I felt several *pops* and could feel things inside my wrist shifting around. When I stopped feeling or hearing things coming from my wrist, I put my feet back on the ladder. I bent my “bad” wrist, and to my delight, the pain was gone! Well, mostly gone, but significantly better than it used to be. That was a lovely surprise.

You know, when I was little, my mother always said I would be a chiropractor (well, not really). I guess she was right.

My dad had his some of happiest moments playing banjo. He wasn’t a great player but he sure enjoyed himself. He got good enough to have a band with some other Berkeley professors. We had jams at our house on Sunday nights.

I’m not a very good player either but I too find some of my most soulful joy playing and singing with family and friends. We go to jams too. I recently attended a bluegrass festival set in picturesque Big Sur. I plopped myself down with my friend Shirley (who plays very well) and we jammed. Good cheap fun. We’re singing “Don’t this Road look Rough and Rocky?” I try to sing it from a woman’s point of view, although the words are written from the man’s point of view. I don’t always succeed as you’ll see (if you listen).

So here’s how the night went on:

1. That afternoon, I settled on a costume to wear at the last minute; I would reuse my awesome “bum” costume from two years ago.
2. I pulled up directions to the house from Google Maps: after picking up some car-less students (’cause I’m just a nice guy like that) I’d drive up Highway 17 for… holy cow, this thing is in Los Gatos? And I’m driving on Halloween night with the drunks? And it’s raining?
3. Dirtied up my face and extremities for my bum costume. Charcoal and water, baby. Somehow I felt like I would have the strangest costume there. At least, in others’ eyes.
4. 8:15pm. Picked up three passengers (victims?) from the UCSC Communications Bldg. parking lot. Two other cars would pick up the other dozen (or so) and lead the way.
5. Lost sight of the lead car. Oh well. Good thing I wrote my directions on an index card.
6. Passing through Scotts Valley, the phone rings. Another guy’s phone; I don’t have a mobile.
7. “But Google told me to! Google would never lie to me!” I turn around.
8. Twenty minutes later, we’re back in town, driving past UCSC to Western Drive.
9. We spend at least twenty minutes driving around looking for the place: up Western Drive, down Western Drive, down Mission St (but not that Mission St), down a one-way road, up, back, around, through the whole industrial section of town…basically taking every exercise in going-the-exact-opposite-direction-we’re-supposed-to. (In our defense, we got pretty crazy, conflicting directions over the phone.)
10. I pull in, finally. Apoligizing to my captives.
11. Walking in the house, I immediately get recognized as “a homeless person!” OK, close enough. I leave my guitar downstairs; I doubt I’ll play it. (But you can never be too prepaired.)
12. I’m a little dismayed to see that this is an absolutely “typical” college party: loud-ish hip-hop-ish music, lots of drinking, and nothing much to do but feel drunk.
13. I watch as a few club members play Beer Pong. Andrew (an FPC officer who I’ve gotten to know a bit through FPC) welcomes me and directs me to the chips and drinks. I decide I’m going to stick with Root Beer, at least for now, so I can drive back. Not sure how long I’ll be able to endure this party.
14. I feel like I’m inside a zoo, watching the animals up close, but from the sidelines. I wonder about the ones who are just sitting on the couch? Are they having fun, or what? It’s too early for them to be that drunk…
15. I find balloons, and gently bounce them around a bit. Some others join in bouncing them around the room. The most fun I’ve had so far.
16. Some kids have Yeager Bombs. I consume about a thousand calories and a thousand milligrams of sodium in the form of chips, dip, and pop.
17. Sitting on a chair, watching. A girl (winner of Beer Pong) sits next to me and asks if I’m having fun. I respond, “That’s a good question.” She suggests I find something fun to do. I try to find a way of saying that being sober around a bunch of drunk people is not condusive to activites which I would consider fun. (Music-playing being a partial exception, although even that gets lame if too many drinks are had—and the iPod was taking care of all the music-making here.)
18. After pressing me for a game, I finally think of an improv game I know (”Categories”). Several others see us playing and join in. It’s fun for about four minutes, until the song changes and people want to get up and dance. (As in, raise their arms and do funny things with their hands, and bounce up and down.)
19. I find candy. Another 300 calories.
20. The lights go out, and the strobe light and fog machine come on. People start dancing more furoiusly. The strobe starts messing with my brain; the world has become a sequence of still images with a techno soundtrack.
21. The “song” ends. Someone grabs the iPod and repeats the track. Lame.
22. I am seriously starting to feel dizzy and tripped out from this strobe light. Whoa.
23. Me and another FPC officer (Kevin) exclaim to each other the weirdness of the strobe light. We start talking FPC and I mention that Kyle and I would like to play the roles of the sibling P.I. team in next year’s film production. Seed planted.
24. Strobe off, house lights on. The frame rate of reality went from 2 to infinite. I’ve never experienced smooth motion quite like that. Even the way the shape of the wall changes when the viewing angle changes was fascinating. Whoaaaaa.
25. Five minutes of tossing balloons back and forth. The pace increases, more balloons enter the fray. It’s an intense back-and-forth balloon battle! And then, suddenly, it stops.
26. I left the party to pick up two guys from downtown, ’cause I’m just a nice guy like that. Actually, I didn’t exactly want to go but I was the only sober guy there, and I figured, I’ve already driven around the county for an hour tonight, what’s 15 more minutes?
27. Arrive at Saturn Cafe and pick up the two guys. Catch a glimpse of the madness downtown. Take away all the costumes, and it looked pretty darn boring.
28. Listen to chatting from the back seats about getting drugs (which I’m not sure—those crazy codewords, you know) on the way back. Thankful I don’t have to make small talk.
29. Back at the party house, my old friends Conner and Amelia (from homeschooling—go AFE!) arrive. Yay! Except not, because Conner backed into a fire hydrant. Completely sober, mind you. Never drive with cowboy boots on. I stood outside with them while his dad, the police, and AAA got it all sorted out. Luckily, nobody was hurt, there was no property damage, and the damage to the car was limited to the body, which the hydrant ripped through like tin.
30. Midnight thirty. Ready to leave, but not tired and slightly frustrated from a complete lack of meaningful activity, I take my guitar off to the vacant downstairs room (that people were in earlier) and played guitar for clsoe to an hour. Now that was fun. I could hear the party upstairs as well: The Shining was playing; people screaming; more Beer Pong.
31. Now completely ready to leave, I say goodbye to Andrew and Kevin. Andrew asks for a ride downtown, saying he’ll walk the rest of the way to Morrisey. I end up driving him all the way back… ’cause I’m just a nice guy like that. And, he made for good conversation.
32. At 2:00, I pull in to the driveway and crawl into bed, thinking: “At least I’ll get a blog post out of this.”

Happy Halloween.

Kyle, with ice packs (or heating pads, not sure which) wrapping his head. No, he is not being mummified.

Early this afternoon the answering machine’s “pager” went off. I reached for the cordless but it wasn’t on the hook/charger, nor within eyesight, so I picked up the other phone.

“Hello?”

“Who’s this?” It was Gema. She can’t tell our voices apart.

“This is Luke.”

“Luke, call this number…” She needed the address of an old friend to mail her something. She has limited phone service (only $2 a month but no long distance) so she couldn’t call herself. I got the number and hung up.

I like the cordless better than our ‘wall’ phone so I took a look around… Was it on Mama’s desk? No. On my table? No. On the shelf by the record player? No. In the kitchen? No… Clueless, I gave up. Maybe Mama put it somewhere. I called Gema’s friend and got the address.

Three hours later, I returned home after driving around town on some errands. I chatted with Mama and Papa outside for a bit before making my way upstairs. I was a little hungry at the time and wanted a snack. I knew Kyle had some chocolate pudding that Mama had made, and I had already received permission to have a couple bites. So I opened the fridge, found the pudding, and had a bite. Wow. It was good. Rich, thick… actually, a bit too rich. I needed to wash it down with some milk. I was reaching for the carton when I saw something on the lower shelf. I did a double take, froze, realized what I was looking at, and burst out laughing.

There, sitting on the second shelf, nestled between the raspberries and the lettuce, was the phone.

When I gleefully told Kyle of what I’d found, he replied, “Guess I’ve still got some of the gas.” Meaning, the stuff that knocked him out. I said, “There’s something for your blog!”

(Sure enough, it ended up on what is now the family’s blog. And it only took us two and a half years to get around to it!)

I like cutting the boys hair. They have never gone to a barbershop or hair salon. Of course we aren’t alone. Perhaps you have never gone to one either. If we had kept all the hair that landed on the floor, we could cover a whole Mack truck with fur. I suppose we’ve saved a truckload of mullah too.

Now I wish Carl would let me cut his hair. He used to let me but now he is letting the whole deal grow long. Of course I love him anyway but I miss cutting his hair. He used to shave it twice a year. I helped with that too. It’s funny. Both Luke and Kyle want short hair. The 60’s have come and gone.

I’ve tried to cut my own hair with varying degrees of success. When it was longer I asked Carl if he would trim it. He said he would do as good a job as I did cutting the grass. That ended that.

Carl and I got together about 30 years ago. Soon after, Carl shaved his head to  make sure I loved him for who he was, not for the way he looked. His ex-wife wouldn’t talk to him for a few weeks when he would shave it and he wasn’t happy about that. Well it didn’t make any difference to me. In fact I decided to shave mine too for the experience. My hair was very long and I thought that the only reason I have it is for vanity. After the sunburn I got I soon found there were other reasons! But I digress.

Now perhaps Carl is letting it get so long to test me. Hmmm…. Do I love him with long hair? Yeh. But I sure would like to cut it.

When my ex wife and I divorced years ago I felt at the time that while we shared many common values, we differed in one core respect which almost inevitably led to that ended. To her, beauty was a reality ‘out there’; to me, beauty was in the eye of the beholder and completely relative. Our view of life was fundamentally different. This was only part of the answer for me though. I’ve wondered for years why people tend toward one point of view or the other.

Eureka!… maybe. Reviewing people I know well, I noticed a correlation between how competitive they tend to be and the point of view they favor. The more competitive folks seem to favor the view that reality is something out there in its own right. Why? Seeing a real ‘out there’ gives them the emotional incentive to win ‘it’. Not needing to win ‘it’ that much, less competitive folks are more likely to be comfortable with the view that ‘out there’ is merely a reflection of themselves.

Recently (i.e, early 2008, before the market went to the dumps), I couldn’t resist getting the stock you see at the bottom of my portfolio: Abbott Laboratories! I thought that was blog worthy.

Note: Back then I had gotten a little trigger-happy with the stocks and therefor bought quite a bit more than I could handle, even though I was making 7+% back! Now, the portfolio has been trimmed back quite a bit and unfortunately, I had to sell Abbott Labs! 

Poor duckies… the hawk danger has been present so when we’re not around to keep an ear out for their safety (which is rare) we put them behind this fence with lots of trees over them. They still have swimming water and plenty of room to forage around, but it’s not the wide open pastures they’re used to.

[Since this video was shot, we've taken down the wire fence; now we let them roam around a much larger (but still restricted) area of the yard, one with a relative abundance of tree cover. Fingers crossed, we've had no hawk attacks yet.]