Yesterday evening I went for a harmonica walk in my neighborhood, much like any other night. As I made my way down one of the back alleys I heard footsteps behind me and turned to find a woman running to catch up with me from a couple of houses back. She introduced herself as Julie and said, "Hi, I've heard you playing a couple of times before and you sound great and all and I'm having a party in my back yard..." [at this point, it seemed as though the next line was going to be, "...so could you stop?" but in fact...] "...and I was wondering if you'd like to come play a couple of songs for the party?" [Whaaaa?] My response, "Didn't see that one coming!" So I semi-reluctantly followed her into her back yard as I explained that I'd never really played in front of people before (Ok, that's a lie but an open mic and someone's family in their backyard are two different things) and she explained that I sounded good and they would all enjoy hearing a song or two anyway. She won me over by saying they had cake. I like cake.
So I walk into this backyard to find a dozen-plus members of her family sitting around a table filled with tea and desserts. Two of the ladies said that several people in their family play harmonica and that I played well (a compliment from afficianados!) and they all asked for a song. Well, I warned them that I could only try my best and invited them to talk amongst themselves. I put on my sunglasses and pulled my hat down low and began playing "Oh, Shenandoah." To my surprise, a few of them (emphasis on the older crowd) knew the song and began singing along. I played a medely of a couple of songs and a little freeform jamming and they dutifully talked amongst themselves. It was an awesome feeling playing for a group of people who asked to hear me, instead of playing for people who are forced into listening by way of proximity. I finished my first song and we talked for a few minutes. They asked if I wanted cake or tea, but quickly realized that I couldn't play while chewing so they offere me a plate of desserts to take home in exchange for one more song. Deal! Julie (the lady who invited me in) requested something "bluesy" like she had heard me play in the alley before. I left my glasses off for this one but shut my eyes and began playing "Oh, Sweet Jesus." They loved it. One lady went inside and grabbed two spoons and came back out playing the spoons against her leg. I let her become the rhythm and played with her. That surprised and pleased them. I played until my mouth was too dry to go on and received quite a boisterous applause at the end.
They packed up my plate of desserts and I left them with a fond farewell and a heartfelt thanks for their kindness. They were such nice people and it was a pleasure and honor to play for them. I took my cake and disappeared down the alley with a song. When I got home I handed Katy the plate and said, "Baby, let me tell you the story of how I got you cake..."
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The Case Against Shell
I found the following video on Digg.com today and thought it an interesting enough story to pass along. It seems that Shell Oil is being brought to trial for human rights abuses in Nigeria. You can read an accompanying story here on Alternet.org.
Don't think I'll be buying any gas from Shell anymore.
Don't think I'll be buying any gas from Shell anymore.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Happy Memorial Day
I miss being a soldier.
I miss marching.
I miss PT.
I miss belonging.
I miss the uniform.
I miss serving.
I miss the adventure.
I miss the discipline.
I miss the toys.
Mostly, I miss the guys.
I often find it hard these days to be proud that I was a soldier because I got out just as we went to war. It's like I was only a practice soldier. I find it hard to identify myself with these boys who have been in harm's way for so long now because they are fighting and I didn't. I go back and forth between feeling like I missed out and feeling like I lucked out.
But I never forget to thank our boys every time I see them on the news or read about them in the paper. I never forget what these guys are sacrificing. I never forget how much each and every one of those men and women in our armed forces loves their country.
There are no greater American patriots than those who step forward and say, "Send me." To them I am forever grateful, no matter the politics behind their deployment. To my brothers and sisters in the armed forces, past and present, I say thank you for your selflessness. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your courage.
I miss marching.
I miss PT.
I miss belonging.
I miss the uniform.
I miss serving.
I miss the adventure.
I miss the discipline.
I miss the toys.
Mostly, I miss the guys.
I often find it hard these days to be proud that I was a soldier because I got out just as we went to war. It's like I was only a practice soldier. I find it hard to identify myself with these boys who have been in harm's way for so long now because they are fighting and I didn't. I go back and forth between feeling like I missed out and feeling like I lucked out.
But I never forget to thank our boys every time I see them on the news or read about them in the paper. I never forget what these guys are sacrificing. I never forget how much each and every one of those men and women in our armed forces loves their country.
There are no greater American patriots than those who step forward and say, "Send me." To them I am forever grateful, no matter the politics behind their deployment. To my brothers and sisters in the armed forces, past and present, I say thank you for your selflessness. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your courage.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Dancing Dude
Tonight I bought a new harmonica and had a little jam while Katy was out. I think I had my best audience reaction tonight. Sorry if it gets a bit loud towards the end while I hold the camera to show you.
Monday, May 18, 2009
I am the robot master!
I haven't written in a few weeks because I didn't want to jinx my new found stability and good fortune. I think the coast is clear, though, to finally share my good news. For those who haven't heard, I found a real job! After 6 months of miserable job hunting I finally landed a job as a CNC operator for a woodworking company. Basically, I run two programmable robots, each with a router head and a drill head. I feed in computer drawings of cabinets that come from upstairs and set the machine up to cut a sheet of wood then let it do its thing. That's the simple explanation. There is a whole lot of troubleshooting and problem solving to get things to come out correctly and that's half the fun. I also have learned (quite quickly) to program the machines myself with line-by-line code. I think it's the first time I've wanted to write my high school calculus teacher and thank her. Didn't think I'd be pulling math out in such force at the age of 31. It's a great job for so many reasons. I get to work at 7am and work until 3:30... that's going to be rough in the Winter when the sun doesn't come up until 9am, but for the Summer it's fanTAStic! I get off of work and still have time to do something with my day. Plus, I love getting up early and getting out of the house by 6:30. (Sick, I know.) The shop is about 26,000 sqft and has an awesome array of tools that I can use for personal projects after hours (yay, furniture!). The guys I work with are a great bunch and I get along really well with them. Because of the nature of the work, I spend most of my days relatively alone in the back corner of the shop. I see other people across the room using saws and whatnot, but mostly I get to keep to myself. Plus, there's a door to outside right by my work area and a giant garage door, as well. It's almost like working outdoors!
I look forward to spending a few years here, though it wasn't an easy job to come by. When I found the ad 3 weeks ago, I was working in a sign shop for a very dishonest man. Life was not so good. My job at the sign shop had me cutting corners and doing things the wrong way for the sake of an accountant's urgent need to lower his bottom line. It was bad. So Katy finds a Craigslist ad for a CNC operator one morning and forwards it to me. I wrote an email cover letter during my break that morning and sent a copy of my resume from online. They got back to me in less than an hour and asked me in for an interview. Step one was complete and seemed a bit too easy.
So I went for the interview the next morning. I met with a young man named Todd, who is in his early 20's and is the son of the company's owner. He is the only other person in the shop who can run the CNC machines and they decided it wasn't a good idea to have all their eggs in one basket like that... especially when that basket plays competitive league hockey. Todd and I got along instantly and he showed me around the place and introduced me to a couple of the guys. When we were done, he gave me no assurances but said he liked me and only had one more interview to go. He'd let me know by that afternoon...
...or about an hour later. I got a call from Todd and he told me that he thought I was perfect for the job but management had some concerns that I was... (guess)... (yep)... overqualified! Oi! I couldn't believe it. I've heard the word overqualified quite enough for my lifetime. Todd said that they were looking for someone long-term and they were concerned I would get bored at that job or run off the first time an architecture firm offered me a job. So I asked for a second interview to assuage their fears. They agreed and I spent my evening preparing for step two.
Most interviews have one thing in common, that being you are trying to convince someone you are the best person for a job. My second interview, however, was a slightly different animal. For the first time, I had to sit in an interview and convince them that I wasn't going to leave them! I told them the truth... that I had thought it through and knew that I was stepping out of the architecture field for awhile. I also told them I wasn't that thrilled with "architecture" as a profession. I would be (and am) much happier in a wood shop getting sawdust all over myself than in an office getting carpal tunnel from clicking a mouse all day. Masters degree aside, I need to build... to make... to create. Working in a wood shop satisfies something very vital in me. So after talking to them for 20 minutes or so, they were sold and welcomed me to the team. I've worked there for 2 weeks now and life is normalizing a bit more every day.
In other news, the same weekend I got the job, Katy and I found our next apartment. Our lease is up on July 1st and we wanted to find a place for June 1st so we'd have an easier transition. We knew we were moving for certain because we need to pay less rent... $1500 a month hurts. So the first weekend of May we starting nosing around a bit just to see what the market looks like. We had no intentions of finding a place that first weekend. We went to 2 showings on Sunday morning and they were about what we expected... in our price range but kinda crap. The third place we went to, however, was quite a surprise. We showed up for our showing and the property manager began to walk us down to the basement. "Oh great," I thought, "I remember this." I lowered my expectations with ever stair we descended but then when he opened the door to the suite, things changed pretty quickly. It's an 850 sqft half-basement suite with a living room, kitchen, bedroom and dining room. We've never had actual rooms before! It's a 100 year old building and has all of the character and charm of an old place but without the musty mildew smell. It seems that anything built between the 50's and 80's stands a good chance of being crap but anything built before the 50's still has a chance of being in good shape because of the quality of craftsmanship. Take, for example, or 100 year old building that shows no signs of water damage. Nothing less than a miracle in Vancouver. So back to our suite... it has old hardwood floors, original trim around the doors and ceilings, and in the kitchen it still has the old icebox that you put a giant chunk of ice in to keep things cold! It has a real fridge, too, and the old one is just a cabinet now, but it's there! And we have an ironing board in the wall like the house I grew up in (jealous, mom?). We're sacrificing a balcony (which I swore I would have) and we're sacrificing windows and a nice view (gonna miss that) but we're gaining a home with rooms, more space, and way more character than this new place we live in now. Katy and I instantly had a surprise reaction as we looked around the apartment. It began with a "meh..." progressed quickly to a "well..." and then to "actually..." Within 2 minutes we were excitedly checking out the place thinking of where our furniture would go. The property manager is a very charming, fatherly Greek gentleman who took to us right away. It's like when I brought Katy for lunch with the girls at RHA in San Diego... everyone likes Katy and everyone likes me even more when I'm with Katy. So we weren't prepared to find and sign for a place but this was going to get rented out from under us if we didn't take it right away. Trust me, in Vancouver, that's not a lie of BS. There are 5 renters for every open apartment in the Summer and 15 in the Fall. So when Kostas told us we could think about it until the next day, we went home and talked it over. Lists of pros and cons were made. Maps were consulted. Exploratory bike trips were taken. All this in the course of an hour and a half. The apartment is right on my bus line to work. I walk out the front door in the morning and my bus stop is a half block to my right. That same bus going the other way (across the street) takes us right downtown. We're 2 blocks from the video store, pet store, coffee shop, little corner grocer, a deli, a killer pizza place, a pancake house, and a few random stores. And a half-dozen blocks the other direction has our large grocery store, veterinarian, and some other stores and restaurants. GREAT location! It's only about 7 blocks from where we live now so we're almost in the same neighborhood, but not quite. I will deeply miss the parking garage where I play harmonica. I can still go there once we move... it's walkable, but it's not the same across-the-street refuge it is right now. Oh well, that's the beauty of harmonica is that I can play it anywhere and can always find new places to jam.
So the move will happen in the middle of next month. We should be getting keys between now and the end of the month. It's a good thing I work in a wood shop because I'm going to need to make us a couple of things for the new place. While it has lots of space, it doesn't have lots of storage (d'oh!). No problem... I got this. We're excited about the move. Our rent is going to be significantly lower and I'm going to be making a real paycheck, plus I kept my Saturday job at the frame shop. Life is normalizing and we're getting ourselves into the loan-repaying, money-saving plan we've had since a year ago in Ottawa. It didn't happen like we thought it would, but then when does it?
I want to thank all of you who suffered through my mewling and whining for those many months. Thank you to all who encouraged me, who sent little notes and job ideas and articles and essays. Thank you to all who continued to read my blog, though the posts grew infrequent and depressing. I'm finding my voice again, though it's been slow in coming back after that karmic beat down I trudged through. Thanks to everyone who believed in me. Thanks mostly to Katy... she's a trooper. I'm amazed I made it through all that without getting strangled in my sleep.
Life is getting back to normal. Summer is upon us and the whole world here is turning green. Time for better things to come! Sorry for the ghastly long post, but thank for sticking with me if you made it to here. I hope you all have a wonderful week and I'll try to post more regularly now that I"m not worried about jinxing my good fortune. Bye all!
I look forward to spending a few years here, though it wasn't an easy job to come by. When I found the ad 3 weeks ago, I was working in a sign shop for a very dishonest man. Life was not so good. My job at the sign shop had me cutting corners and doing things the wrong way for the sake of an accountant's urgent need to lower his bottom line. It was bad. So Katy finds a Craigslist ad for a CNC operator one morning and forwards it to me. I wrote an email cover letter during my break that morning and sent a copy of my resume from online. They got back to me in less than an hour and asked me in for an interview. Step one was complete and seemed a bit too easy.
So I went for the interview the next morning. I met with a young man named Todd, who is in his early 20's and is the son of the company's owner. He is the only other person in the shop who can run the CNC machines and they decided it wasn't a good idea to have all their eggs in one basket like that... especially when that basket plays competitive league hockey. Todd and I got along instantly and he showed me around the place and introduced me to a couple of the guys. When we were done, he gave me no assurances but said he liked me and only had one more interview to go. He'd let me know by that afternoon...
...or about an hour later. I got a call from Todd and he told me that he thought I was perfect for the job but management had some concerns that I was... (guess)... (yep)... overqualified! Oi! I couldn't believe it. I've heard the word overqualified quite enough for my lifetime. Todd said that they were looking for someone long-term and they were concerned I would get bored at that job or run off the first time an architecture firm offered me a job. So I asked for a second interview to assuage their fears. They agreed and I spent my evening preparing for step two.
Most interviews have one thing in common, that being you are trying to convince someone you are the best person for a job. My second interview, however, was a slightly different animal. For the first time, I had to sit in an interview and convince them that I wasn't going to leave them! I told them the truth... that I had thought it through and knew that I was stepping out of the architecture field for awhile. I also told them I wasn't that thrilled with "architecture" as a profession. I would be (and am) much happier in a wood shop getting sawdust all over myself than in an office getting carpal tunnel from clicking a mouse all day. Masters degree aside, I need to build... to make... to create. Working in a wood shop satisfies something very vital in me. So after talking to them for 20 minutes or so, they were sold and welcomed me to the team. I've worked there for 2 weeks now and life is normalizing a bit more every day.
In other news, the same weekend I got the job, Katy and I found our next apartment. Our lease is up on July 1st and we wanted to find a place for June 1st so we'd have an easier transition. We knew we were moving for certain because we need to pay less rent... $1500 a month hurts. So the first weekend of May we starting nosing around a bit just to see what the market looks like. We had no intentions of finding a place that first weekend. We went to 2 showings on Sunday morning and they were about what we expected... in our price range but kinda crap. The third place we went to, however, was quite a surprise. We showed up for our showing and the property manager began to walk us down to the basement. "Oh great," I thought, "I remember this." I lowered my expectations with ever stair we descended but then when he opened the door to the suite, things changed pretty quickly. It's an 850 sqft half-basement suite with a living room, kitchen, bedroom and dining room. We've never had actual rooms before! It's a 100 year old building and has all of the character and charm of an old place but without the musty mildew smell. It seems that anything built between the 50's and 80's stands a good chance of being crap but anything built before the 50's still has a chance of being in good shape because of the quality of craftsmanship. Take, for example, or 100 year old building that shows no signs of water damage. Nothing less than a miracle in Vancouver. So back to our suite... it has old hardwood floors, original trim around the doors and ceilings, and in the kitchen it still has the old icebox that you put a giant chunk of ice in to keep things cold! It has a real fridge, too, and the old one is just a cabinet now, but it's there! And we have an ironing board in the wall like the house I grew up in (jealous, mom?). We're sacrificing a balcony (which I swore I would have) and we're sacrificing windows and a nice view (gonna miss that) but we're gaining a home with rooms, more space, and way more character than this new place we live in now. Katy and I instantly had a surprise reaction as we looked around the apartment. It began with a "meh..." progressed quickly to a "well..." and then to "actually..." Within 2 minutes we were excitedly checking out the place thinking of where our furniture would go. The property manager is a very charming, fatherly Greek gentleman who took to us right away. It's like when I brought Katy for lunch with the girls at RHA in San Diego... everyone likes Katy and everyone likes me even more when I'm with Katy. So we weren't prepared to find and sign for a place but this was going to get rented out from under us if we didn't take it right away. Trust me, in Vancouver, that's not a lie of BS. There are 5 renters for every open apartment in the Summer and 15 in the Fall. So when Kostas told us we could think about it until the next day, we went home and talked it over. Lists of pros and cons were made. Maps were consulted. Exploratory bike trips were taken. All this in the course of an hour and a half. The apartment is right on my bus line to work. I walk out the front door in the morning and my bus stop is a half block to my right. That same bus going the other way (across the street) takes us right downtown. We're 2 blocks from the video store, pet store, coffee shop, little corner grocer, a deli, a killer pizza place, a pancake house, and a few random stores. And a half-dozen blocks the other direction has our large grocery store, veterinarian, and some other stores and restaurants. GREAT location! It's only about 7 blocks from where we live now so we're almost in the same neighborhood, but not quite. I will deeply miss the parking garage where I play harmonica. I can still go there once we move... it's walkable, but it's not the same across-the-street refuge it is right now. Oh well, that's the beauty of harmonica is that I can play it anywhere and can always find new places to jam.
So the move will happen in the middle of next month. We should be getting keys between now and the end of the month. It's a good thing I work in a wood shop because I'm going to need to make us a couple of things for the new place. While it has lots of space, it doesn't have lots of storage (d'oh!). No problem... I got this. We're excited about the move. Our rent is going to be significantly lower and I'm going to be making a real paycheck, plus I kept my Saturday job at the frame shop. Life is normalizing and we're getting ourselves into the loan-repaying, money-saving plan we've had since a year ago in Ottawa. It didn't happen like we thought it would, but then when does it?
I want to thank all of you who suffered through my mewling and whining for those many months. Thank you to all who encouraged me, who sent little notes and job ideas and articles and essays. Thank you to all who continued to read my blog, though the posts grew infrequent and depressing. I'm finding my voice again, though it's been slow in coming back after that karmic beat down I trudged through. Thanks to everyone who believed in me. Thanks mostly to Katy... she's a trooper. I'm amazed I made it through all that without getting strangled in my sleep.
Life is getting back to normal. Summer is upon us and the whole world here is turning green. Time for better things to come! Sorry for the ghastly long post, but thank for sticking with me if you made it to here. I hope you all have a wonderful week and I'll try to post more regularly now that I"m not worried about jinxing my good fortune. Bye all!
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