I have been making the 300 mile trip to Crescent City to work on the demonic point of sale system (or POS, as it is called by its users) for six months. This is the fourth trip. During that time the successes have been many but never complete. The many and splendid ways in which it can fail range from simple to so arcane that not even tech support knows what we are talking about. It is a finicky contraption. That is why this week has been so strange. We have declared victory in three locations and now know the solution to a tenacious problem at two other sites. A solution is a wonderful thing, they are very relieved. But, I don’t know why it worked.

I used to tell the scientists and researchers I worked with that “why” questions cost twice as much. Scientists are very inquisitive by nature and they really wanted to know why a thing happened. They will spend years and millions of dollars to find out why a particular bird prefers a particular tree. They really want to know why their database worked one moment and did not the next. There can be a lot of answers as to what caused it. A solution and fix is almost always achieved. But, the reason why something happens is existential . The universe is a hostile place. The short definition of this dimension is, “A place where stuff happens”. If you are a religious person, you may assign the reason why bad things happen to computers to the evil deity of your choice and be correct. Just thinking about it makes me want to raise the price.

But, this is my dear friend’s demonically possessed, existentially dispossessed, and insanely arcane in a simple way problem, and I am going to attempt to find out why my fix worked. The system in question is an hour away in the Prairie Creek State Park Visitor Center. There is no cell coverage. They are inundated with curious visitors, some of whom seem to think I know something about the park. The system I am working on is in continual use. The only reason I am doing it today is the number of visitors will be much greater tomorrow. I have absolutely no confidence I can figure it out without consulting the demon which caused the problem and that is not always a good idea. My plan is to try and convert the system to Rationalism, but I am not a big fan of Rationalism, preferring Zen myself, so convincing a computer to think straight may not be easy either.

I am preparing for the trials of today by attempting to make peace with the universe (which is not inherently hostile despite what the Prairie Creek system thinks). It is important to show no fear in the face of computer conundrums to users. It makes them nervous. The fact that their future happiness rests in the hands of ancient philosophers and cultural normative notions is unsettling. They have a degree of faith that I can figure it out because I have figured out everything else to date. Being a fan of Zen, I know that there is a computer problem because there is a computer, but disposing of it isn’t an option. Maybe I can talk an evil deity into taking the whole damn thing.

 

I am going to remain in Crescent City for a time since I am being useful. Memorial Day is the beginning of the Park’s tourist season and there is a lot to do. Aside from being an invaluable source of information on what could go wrong, I have something which seems to not be readily available – a big truck. I spent all day yesterday and the day before unpacking clothing and sorting them into bins. Then I transported the bins to a couple of visitor centers. I picked up a load of wood for shelving and took that to a center. I did it all with only one injury and the bruise is not visible.

That is good because I have a bad track record here and they worry about me. Last December I injured myself walking a notoriously difficult trail and the fix was surgery (of course), and in March I ended up in the ER for a day. These things are not unusual for me but they scare the hell out of my friends I am staying with. But, with the exception of working up a circus act walking on bicycles, I am being careful.

The bicycle walking act was not totally without results. Having failed to find a suitable board, they bought a new microwave. It was the far better solution since setting a free-standing microwave on a shelf over the stove is something that not even I would (be allowed to) do. My friend and I have experience installing under-cabinet microwaves so what could go wrong? These are things that fit my skill set well, running an electrical line and attaching heavy objects five feet in the air. I already know the location of the ER and the personnel. There are several women available so we will have an adequate source of Good Sense. I don’t foresee any unfamiliar territory here so screwing it up will require ingenuity. Another tool in my skill set.

Meanwhile, my friend the director and I will be heading south to see if we can figure out why the systems which work so well when we leave fail to run well after we leave. If you have spent any time in computer support, you already know the answer, as do we, but we can’t say it out loud because of the profanities that keep cropping up. I have infinite patience with well-meaning people who have a deleterious effect on computers, being as well acquainted with insanity and idiocy as I am, but my friend has had a horrible time of it lately and she is somewhat less patient with such people who are in her employ. Have I mentioned their season starts Saturday?

It is going to be an action-packed few days. I am completely ready for the challenges, what with having no ownership of them. But still, I am committed to the effort. I have a big truck. I have people who are trained in 1st aid and CPR. I have an intimate knowledge of the types of ways once stable computers may be destroyed. I have other essentials but we won’t go into that. We have nothing to fear but fear itself, but as I said, we have other essentials for that. It is going to be a fun weekend.

 

Not as bad as it looks going forward. Every bit of it going backwards.




I have gained some valuable skills in my quest to become not just a complete, but perfect, idiot.Two of them are the ability go places no one in their right mind would go, and do things that less perfect idiots would not. This story illustrates my point.

I want to make it clear at the outset that I have nothing but love and respect for my best friend here in Crescent city because there is the off chance that he may read this. My friend has many physical challenges, far worse than my own. They sometimes render him unable to do the things he would like, and these last few weeks have taken a toll on him. So, this tale is not about him, it is about the lengths I will go to when not properly supervised.

My friend has a lot of bicycles. They are leaned up against each other in ranks that extend from the rear of the garage to roughly the center. His garage is no more tidy than any other normal person’s garage so the situation is a jumble. My friend’s wife asked me to put a shelf up above the stove for a microwave in the other house. Nothing fancy, two brackets and a board. A decision is made to use a piece of oak plywood on hand. Problem - the board is behind a barricade of bicycles and behind a bunch of other wood in the far rear corner of the garage. We will have to practically empty the garage to get to it.

This morning seemed to be a good time to start, but my friend is not well and returns to bed. I decide that retrieving the wood is a chore that is no more difficult than any other stupid thing I might try. Using my superb climbing and balancing skills, I carefully climb up on a BMX bike and stand on the cross bar. It seemed steady enough, the chances of falling being well within my acceptable risk parameters (meaning I probably would not die). I make my way to the mountain bikes in the rear by walking across handle bars and seats (not as dangerous as it sounds because the bikes are wedged in place by other stuff). I find the 1/2-sheet of plywood which is completely covered by shelving and paneling. It appears to have grooves and looks suspiciously like exterior T-1-11 paneling.

Using various objects within reach, I wedge all the wood and a cabinet far enough out that I can grab a corner of the plywood. After about 15 minutes of tugging and lifting, all the while teetering on two bikes, I get the sheet far enough out of its hole to see that, yes, it is T-1-11 exterior paneling. Knowing my friend would not be satisfied that I have correctly identified the plywood, I decide to extract it. I wrestle it out and perform the precarious bike walk in reverse carrying a 1/2-sheet of plywood (as dangerous as it sounds). I have placed the wood out in the open where my friend will undoubtedly declare it unsuitable. I just hope he doesn't want me to put it back.
 

I stood in the parking lot at the center of the universe as time restarted. Good thing, the old time was pretty bad. Just prior to time ending we had been in Arcata at the memorial service for the daughter of our dear friends.

My wife and two daughters had joined me in Crescent City to attend the service. We made the 1 ½ -hour trip to Arcata in the family station wagon as if we were making a trip like we did when the kids were young. It was wonderful, all us talking and laughing all the way. I never thought we would be doing that ever again, just the four of us, but the grandkids were not disposed to come and it wouldn’t have been a good thing.

I am not a fan of funerals or memorial services, and this one lived down to my expectations. My friends reported that while several people said some nice things, in the end they were miserable. Now, the day after, there is supposed to be some sort of “closure”, but more misery is what we have. The best thing I can say about it is that it is over.

We left the service when the appropriate time came. We headed north as the time for the eclipse neared. I had hoped we would be in the vicinity of the Klamath River when it happened as that was the exact center of the viewing area. Yurok tribal legend has it that the center of the universe is the mouth of the Klamath River. As fortune had it, we were in the parking lot of the Yurok tribe’s gas station, just one mile from the mouth of the river, as the eclipse began.

It was a strange and wonderful thing. The Yurok village dwellers came out and stared into the sky as the light got weird. Then a fiery ring appeared where the sun had been and time stopped. The thought struck me that I was in the center of both the Yurok universe and my own family universe as the sun all but winked from existence. As the light returned, we would return to our retro family road trip talking about the eclipse, while just minutes behind us our friends struggled to re-piece their broken universe back together.

Today hasn’t been the best day for the start of a new universe, but maybe it will get better. My family is headed back to Oregon and my friend’s house is empty save for the three of us. The sun will reportedly remain stable for some time so no more drama on that front for a while. I will remain here for three days to see if there is anything that can be done to make their universe better, but whatever it is, it won’t fix the problem, that being that their universe is irrevocably broken. Nothing at the center but a black hole. I am going to put up a shelf for a microwave next door in their rental, but that doesn’t seem like much. It is something, at least.

 

I am in Crescent City, California. I am staying with my best friends and helping them prepare for the memorial service for their 39-year old daughter who passed away a couple of weeks ago. Tragedy describes it well. Still, there are things that must be done, and that is why I am here.

I have given up on partial measures in trying to abate my increasing agitation and impending disintegration. I have resorted to using every known coping aid I have in order to make it through the next several days. I am doing pretty well at it with only a tic, some stuttering, and a few sensory distortions to give away my plight. The fact that I am taking a half-dose of an anti-psychotic and these symptoms are still present is not a good sign.

We have been staying up late and I have been waking up at my usual 4:30 so I am falling behind on sleep. Last night I dictated the condolence cards to my friend as she entered them into a database so that the grandchildren, who can’t read cursive, can read them later. That took three very painful hours to accomplish. The night before we selected 133 photographs to print. They will be available for guests at the memorial to take. That was worse.

My wife and two daughters are coming down today. It will be a real relief to see them. I hope my condition doesn’t worry my wife, but she is a keen observer and I can’t hide my true state from her. They will be returning to Oregon on Monday morning and I will be staying on several days after that. The tortuous point-of-sale system my friend has been vexed by needs attention so I will do some that. We had a great victory on that front yesterday. We really needed a victory of some kind.

I am hoping that the service on Sunday will represent some kind of emotional finish line and that we can start to come down a bit. My goal is to make it back home around Thursday in good enough shape to function normally. The six hour drive will help, driving occupies my mind. I am going to have to wean myself off the majority of crutches I am leaning on now in order to drive. It isn’t legal to drive on any one of the three things I am taking right now. That should be doable.

I have had a chance to take a few short walks and next week I am going to take on a 12 mile bruiser. That isn’t outside my normal range, and it will be on groomed trails. That is a luxury I never enjoy at home. Abject misery and exhaustion are marvelous healing tools. It is a big mountain and I am going to beat myself senseless with it. No need for sedatives after something like that. Nothing like crossing a river on a log to focus one’s mind. Barring hallucinations. That can be distracting. But, they have very big logs here. I am really looking forward to next week.

 

Goddess number 5



I finally got to the point where I could put strings on the guitar I have been building. It sounds pretty good considering. I am surprised that the thing even holds together at all. I built it using an instructional book, but I am incapable of following instructions.

My trouble with instructions is long-standing. No matter how hard I try, I cannot avoid starting in the middle and working both ways. That goes for everything from assembling toys to writing genetic sequencing programs. The process goes like this: Read step one. Discount it as purposeless. Read step two. Deem it inefficient. Skip to step five where things are more interesting. Proceed in both directions.

Having the aid of my wife has been a great help in assembling furniture (and all the other things that she would like to see done correctly). There is no telling what the swing set would have looked like if she hadn’t been there. The directions would have been much clearer if they had said, for instance, “Swings are located where they are in order to distribute the load better because the swings are what are used most”. That I can understand. Where to put what bolt is confusing when you can’t remember one moment to the next which step you are on.

My son-in-law loaned me a detailed book on building an acoustic guitar. I have never built an acoustic guitar. I have built several electric guitars, but I don’t play gigs anymore and I don’t need another one. The book is very, very detailed. If one were to follow the directions, they would have a decent guitar by the end of the book.

So, determined to follow the guitar making instructions in every way, I started by cutting out the top first. I had a good reason for doing it, but that step is on page 205. I followed the directions for making a classical guitar up to page 114, and then switched to steel string. Excellent reason, of course. Pages 143 to 176, Top Bracing, were not applicable for my hybrid design. I engineered my own. I already knew how to do pages 239 to 337, Binding, Fretting, and Finishing. Trying to follow the directions in the rest of the book seemed a little silly at that point. So, of the 387 pages of detailed, clear, and complete instructions, I had (more or less) followed 199. That’s pretty good for me.

I declare victory. Over what, I don’t know. Succeeding in the face of self-inflicted adversity maybe. If I am asked how I came up with the design, I will have to answer, “Thinking of something else”. I suppose it is a monument to the power of randomly following directions. I have it! I declare victory over me.

 

I received a phone message that all test results are negative so I am pretending nothing happened (see post before last). It seemed as though something was happening at the time, what with the vivid evidence and all. But, it is certainly is not the first time I did not know what was happening. I am attributing the events to a result of being me, something that has always been a bit of a health concern. Everything seems fine now so I am going to California as planned.

My friends in Crescent City suffered a terrible tragedy with the loss of their older daughter. I am going down to try to lend support, but I am concerned about the effort. My friends are well aware of my fully-featured personality, but this isn’t a great time for the Dave–o-meter to get stuck on high and the switch has been acting up lately. I would like to get it replaced but parts are not available.

All that aside, I am looking forward to being there. Crescent City is a great place if one discounts that commercial fishing and logging, the town’s two main industries, are virtually gone. A tsunami will come along now and then and wreck the place, that doesn’t help. The real estate crisis spawned a thicket of for sale signs in people’s yards. If you want a two bedroom house by the ocean for under $50K, that’s the place. Except for those things, it’s great. Oh, one more. The large native population didn’t come out of our attempts to eradicate them well. And the Pelican Bay Supermax Prison is just up the road, it is hard to tell if that is good or bad. But, the redwoods are amazing, and it has a good Mexican restaurant. Plus, two of my best friends live there so that makes it a great place.

There is another facet of the town that makes it attractive in a strange way. If I am having a bad day and staggering down the street in a heated conversation with myself, I don’t stand out that badly. One could probably find a couple of other people doing the same thing nearby. I have a background in fishing, grew up with logging, and wear the free t-shirts and hats the Mantua Farms gives me with their logo on it. I am fluent in all three languages. In short, I fit in pretty well. That is a nice change (if I don’t think about what it takes to make me feel at home).

Meanwhile back at home where I don’t have to think about what it takes to make me feel at home, I am trying to take care of those things that need to be done before I leave. So far I have gone for a walk and planted five geraniums. I think that about does it. I leave Thursday so I might buy some more geraniums before I go. I need to do something about the Dave-o-meter, but the good test results are helping with that. Maybe things will work out., I’ll bring it up with myself next time we talk.

 

We are having an unseasonably warm spell. It has been eighty degrees for three days and will be ninety tomorrow. Any day in May that reaches eighty degrees is an unseasonably warm day, it should be raining. As our youngest daughter observed after we had moved to Oregon, “April showers bring May showers”. The warm weather has brought an early inauguration to a springtime ritual.

I am cheap. I will not give up on something as valuable as, say, a barbeque until it is not just merely dead, but is really quite sincerely dead. During my preparations for a Mother’s Day cookout, I determined our barbeque was dead. As there are only two components that matter, the regulator and the gas cylinder, affecting a repair is easy. I do it almost every year.

Modern propane bottles will not dispense gas unless something is attached to the outlet. I needed something to attach in order to test the tank. As luck would have it, and rather unsurprisingly I suppose, I have the perfect thing: a field burner. An unsurprisingly big one. A field burner is an eloquent device consisting of a metal tube, a valve, and a large nozzle through which propane is expelled without the encumbrance of an evidently unnecessary regulator. A propane tank really puts out a lot of gas when not fettered by an evidently unnecessary regulator. The device is advertised as an “impressive” 400,000-BTU, 2,050°F torch, which is 10 times what a 50-gallon gas water heater produces. It is my favorite gas appliance.

The gas makes an ominous hiss as it escapes into the atmosphere. When it is lit, it sounds like a jet. When the 4-inch column of flame hits the ground at 100 psi, it is like a miniature reenactment of the weapon the aliens unleash in the movie The 4rth of July. It is the most fun you can have with propane in a piece of equipment being used for its intended purpose.

Here’s the thing – when I have used it in the past, it was wet and cold and I was dressed accordingly. I wouldn’t use it in summer, that would be insane, and the smoke is a concern to neighbors in August (evidently). Yesterday it was approaching eighty and I was dressed accordingly. Up until yesterday, the only piece of outdoor equipment which Don’t Do This warns against using while wearing flip flops is a string trimmer. I have added field burners to the list. Luckily, one does not need to get a 400,000-BTU, 2,050°, 4-inch column of flame too close to one’s foot to realize something is not right. I made a mental note regarding the entry and continued burning being careful to keep the flame pointed away from my feet almost all of the time. Tip: It helps if you curl your toes.

You never know when opportunity will arise. Even when performing a mundane chore such as removing weeds, knowledge may be gained which will save people from the pain and embarrassment the combination of mental instability and brain damage might cause. I am pleased to be able to deliver this invaluable piece of free advice (the best kind): Don’t wear your good flip flops while using a field burner.
 

My years of gathering and documenting information on what it takes to pass a mental evaluation paid off with a successful doctor appointment earlier in the week. I will not be taking antipsychotics, at least for the time being. Unfortunately, that good news was countered by becoming one the worst things one can be: medically interesting.

The very day of the successful doctor appointment, I came home and discovered something so disturbing that I can’t describe it out of concern for those readers of delicate sensibilities. It prompted me to call the doctor immediately, which prompted them to suggest I go to immediate care immediately. I declined as the last two times I have gone to immediate care I was admitted to the hospital and had an operation. They gave me an appointment for the next day.

Doctors must have a dull and routine job judging by how they react if anything interesting happens. Having a long, rich, fully-featured history with the medical community, I can state definitively that if one can avoid being interesting, one by all means should. I have never been told my problem was interesting and had things go well. The doctor who performed the examination said it several times.

He asked me if I had done any traveling lately or drank contaminated water, and it was somehow interesting that I had not. I delivered several other interesting responses. At the end, he declined to speculate what the problem might be and directed me to perform the most objectionable home sample collecting procedure imaginable (don’t try).

Just a month ago I was crowing about how well I felt and looking forward to a pleasant spring. Now I am leafing through Don’t Do This to see if I have anything covering attending a memorial service while unstable, all the while hoping an unpleasant condition doesn’t become significantly more interesting while I’m there.

The best case would have me returning from my stay in California at least no more unstable than I am now, and finding my problem can be solved with medication and less stress. It is still possible that I might regain my health if I can get through the next month with no hospitalizations. A week of near-zero brain activity on antipsychotics might not be a bad thing if the stars align and a mental reset is in order. I’ll tell you what, though. I have been here before and it is not a great place to start from. Maybe I should add a section to Don’t Do This about becoming less interesting. I’ll let you know if I discover how.

 

One of the most hazardous categories in Don’t Do This is “Spousal Requests”. The category ranges from washing the second story windows to removing rodents. Refusing is not a viable option, even if one is absolutely certain they will fail. Sometimes failure may be as innocuous as cuts and contusions, while at other times it may be much worse. Sometimes very much so.

An interesting phenomenon of modern life is that things continue to get smaller while we continue to age. In days of yore, worsening eyesight meant it got harder to read the newspaper. Now, newspapers have migrated to smartphones at a time when it has become difficult for me to even find the keyboard. But, it doesn’t stop there. Smartphones have aptly-named MicroSD cards.

I was trying to make it through the evening last night without sedation. I have a doctor appointment today and I want to report that I am so much better that I haven’t taken any medication for three days, which is a lie. I have taken oodles of medications, just not the one he prescribed. My efforts to make it through the evening were being met with uneven results. Then my wife announced she wanted to print some pictures from her phone.

That may sound like an easy job, but it isn’t. The only way I know how to download the images is to remove the aptly-named microSD card and put it in the computer. I was able to extract the miniscule card from its slot under the battery, and display the contents on the computer. The images weren’t to be found. That was terrible news because I was then expected to somehow locate, transfer, and print them with my wife standing just behind me watching.

I carefully examined the icon near the slot displaying how the card should be inserted. I carefully examined the miniscule card to be sure I was holding it properly. Then I inserted it upside down. My tenuous grip on reality loosened and I tried to remove the card with pliers. I broke the card.

Things did not go well after that. I think “panic attack” most closely describes my reaction. My wife reacted much better than I did. It turns out, for some incomprehensible reason, her contacts and texts were stored on the phone. Her music was lost but it was all from CDs we own. I had backed up her pictures just recently so only about a month was lost. She was OK.

I was not. If I had been in public, I would have been taken away. Uncontrollable anxiety makes me a rather demonstrative person, and the demonstration has a bad effect on people. I was able to come down eventually, but telling the doctor how well I am doing is going to be tough. This episode is going to get its own section in Don’t Do This: Critical Spousal Technology.

 

I was feeling pretty low when I wrote that last entry. Anybody would have, it was a bad time. But, people like me don’t just get depressed and then slowly begin to feel better. Any sort of depression is followed by a manic episode. Mania is my forte. It causes concern among interested parties because I am so darned good at it. Consequently, I was directed to the doctor.

The doctor was dismayed at my behavior, which is a bad thing. He put me on tranquilizers, which is a good thing. The alternative was an antipsychotic medication and I defy anyone to have any sort of fun while taking it. I was able to string together enough lucid sentences to avoid that. I go back to see him in three days. I hope to hell I pass inspection because he is leaving for two weeks and if he puts me on the antipsychotic, I will be VERY calm for the whole time. So calm that I will watch TV while it is off.

I’m in pretty good shape today. I can now speak English passably well now, whereas before I spoke a language having at least two subjects in every sentence and no periods. My skin seems content to be where it is rather than trying to crawl off my body. I think things are leveling out.

That means I can go out and take advantage of one of the few benefits of mania: boundless energy. It is going to be near 80-degrees today. I have been slowly increasing the distance and amount of time I can walk waiting for the weather to get nice. I am up to 8 miles in 4 hours. That means I should be able to do 10 miles in 5 hours, especially in my energized state. I will have to keep in mind that I am impaired and things that seem like a good idea may not be. It is really just a point of interest because it won’t stop me from doing anything.

I am going to skip my morning tranquilizer dose because this is no time for tranquility. The route I have in mind is pretty arduous and I will have to keep a good pace to make it in 5 hours.

Later –

OK, so it is 4:15 and I just got back. It was great, everything I’d hoped for. The skunk I ran into decided to split, so no problem there. The absurd route that I keep trying to turn into a trail was mostly passable except for several downed trees. Those were a problem. Every time I go down there I think maybe I can turn it into a mountain bike route. Then I get there and wonder what in the hell I was thinking. Anyway, it took 6 ½ hours to go a little over 10 miles. I was cutting my way through blackberries with hand clippers for a couple of miles of it and that’s what took so long. It was a good walk, I feel much better.

 

April was not a great month. Some awful things happened, and there was a tragedy in the extended family. I am suspending Don’t Do This until anything seems funny. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.
 

The world has lost one of the great canine practical jokers. Our 13-year old German Shorthair-Labrador Retriever mix, Kaya, succumbed to Lymphoma yesterday.

We got Kaya as a puppy when it was determined she was not the better hunting dog of the two being raised. That may have been true, she was terribly afraid of loud noises, but she had great instincts. When she was young, she and I took many lengthy walks. She ignored every other woodland creature she saw, but let a sparrow flutter across the road and she was in hot pursuit. In 8 years, I only had to take one bird away from her.

Kaya’s status in our family pack was a point of contention. Kaya believed she was the Alpha female and resented the amount of attention I paid my wife considering her Beta status. The dispute never became physical, Kaya never bit anyone in her life, but the discussions could be quite vocal, her English skills being excellent.

She was an obsessive ball dog. Her demands for attention could be annoying as she just never stopped. As much as she loved to play ball, she loved one thing even more, and that was messing with your head. One friend called her brilliant but demented, and it was no exaggeration.

She would hide a ball just around a corner, and then whine and yip as if she couldn’t find it. When we would finally break down and stand up, she would dart to pick it up and prance in circles grinning madly. She would set a ball in front of someone, and when they threw it, she would retrieve it and set it down a couple of inches further away. She would do this until the person finally had to stand, and then she would snatch it up and prance around victoriously.

Of all her little tricks and jokes, there is one that stands out. Our house has a balcony running around the first floor. Kaya would lurk on the second floor waiting for someone to either stand or sit under the “drop zone”. Then she would drop a ball, often soaking wet from a dip in the toilet, onto their head or into a plate of food. She once dropped a ball into a friend’s coffee cup (inspiring the “brilliant but demented” remark). She was subtle and devious and caught my wife and I time after time even though we were well aware of her tactics.

Humans and dogs have lived together since a time when humans where still breaking rocks to make tools. We evolved together. We are built to understand and care for them, and they are built to make us do what they want. Saying we domesticated dogs is wrong. They taught us how to raise and care for them. We learned to domesticate animals from them. There is no separating modern human history from our association with dogs. It is little wonder that losing one is so painful because they are a part of the family in the truest sense, and have been for 10,000 years.

We will remember her and recount her best pranks at family parties for years to come, everyone having been her victim at one time. She was loving, maddening, brilliant, and most of all a dear friend. She will be sorely missed, toilet balls and all.

 

Not much has been happening that warrants writing about, so I reached into my bag of tricks and discovered it was empty. It must have a hole in it. Either that, or I took the tricks out one by one and forgot to put them back. That is the more likely explanation.

I went over to the house of a couple of older friends yesterday to fix their ancient computer. I had made the mistake of telling them I had been a network administrator prior to retiring and they assumed that meant I knew something about computers. The task required locating the bag of tricks from the year 2000, which were a little stale but still good enough to fix a printer. I guess I will keep those. Knowledge of antique operating systems is worth keeping even though they are so annoying.

The tricks I really miss are the ones that I don’t realize are missing until I break something. That happens a lot. That includes the battery covers of many small devices which have directional arrows which bear no relationship to removing the cover. Thankfully, I have a complimentary set of tricks for adhesives to hold the cover on and solvents to melt the glue. These tricks are not of any use when dealing with the small devices of concerned parties who for some reason believe I should know how to remove the battery cover from their smart phone. The tricks required for that are covered in Don’t Do This – Relationship Repair and Maintenance.

I would be happy to settle for simply remembering the things that I seem to forget over and over. Ever since the demise of paper containers, I have cut the top off of the evil plastic bags containing food items such as potato chips, cookies, or bread crumbs. Now, I commonly discover that the edge I cut off contains a zip seal. That is disappointing

There is one trick I posses regarding modern packaging which is very useful. Some time ago, certain product manufactures moved away from theft-proof packaging in favor of packaging which cannot be opened at all. Many people are frustrated by the thick plastic amour encasing their new blow dryer or flashlight. Maneuvering scissors into a safe position is not possible (evidently). Force will not work. Fire works a little too well and is not recommended. Power tools work.

For your own peace of mind and personal safety, I recommend you obtain and band saw. A real big one. Something you could butcher a cow with. That will open the damned blow dryer package. You need to be careful because it will cut the blow dryer in half if you aren’t paying attention, and I can testify that it will do the same to fingers. However, once you have it, people from all over the neighborhood will come running to have you open their new cell phone battery cover package, their old one having been destroyed due to a lost trick. No more trying to cut up short ribs with a knife, either. Don’t cut one right after the other without cleaning the blade. It is tempting to clean the blade by holding a sponge against it while the machine is running, which works. Don’t do this.

It appears there are still a few things left in the bag of tricks. Never exactly what I need when I need it, but enough at least to open a package. Modern inventions are still troublesome, but who needs the damn zip seal anyway? I knew I was going to eat all the cookies when I opened the bag.

 

I have spent days in my basement shop trying to fashion the wood I have on hand into a guitar. Some of it is far too hard to be usable. Some of it is simply not suitable for the use I am putting it to. I don’t care. The fact that I already own it makes it perfect. One can actually bend Purple Heart if one gets it wet and hot enough. It isn’t recommended, but that is the recommendation of people who evidently don’t have any Purple Heart on hand.

The truth is I am not building a guitar. I am fiddling around in the shop making bending tools and playing with wood, and a guitar is slowly appearing. If I were actually building a guitar, I would do it the way it is supposed to be done. That would be very laborious. The book I am using as a guide is over 250 pages. Who has time for all that?

I used to be much more impatient. It alternated with being apathetic. Trying to craft something while manic is not recommended unless it can be done in ten minutes without sharp tools. Trying it while depressed leads to long hours staring at the floor. That leaves a few days in between ups and downs that one might build something, but those times are usually consumed with relationship repair and maintenance.

These days I would describe my attitude as “unconcerned”. I don’t really need another guitar. I’m not sure I even want one. My hands prevent me from playing much and I already have several littering up the house. But, I do want a steam tube with a propane torch-heated wood bender. Those are fun (unless you touch them, don’t do this). The guitar on the bench is turning out well enough, I’m sure it will be fine. Not perfect or immaculate, but neither am I.

I guess building something as difficult as a guitar while being unconcerned about it doesn’t fall into the “normal” range. The guitar builders I know are obsessed with it. They spend more money on wood clamps than I spend on the whole guitar. I am willing to accept this degree of abnormalcy in myself because I am unconcerned about what happens in my shop.

When I go out in public or have dealings with people, that is a good time for normalcy. I would love to have a simple conversation where I didn’t feel I had said something odd afterwards. But, in my windowless shop, where no one else will even go, I can be as abnormal as I want and not be concerned about it. That is why I am slicing hard, brittle wood into little-bitty strips and boiling them prior to bending them over a very hot pipe. It probably won’t work, but I’m not concerned. That is normal enough for me.

 

It is astounding how many things that I think will work don’t work. Sometimes they don’t work in spectacular fashion. Many times they are just minor disappointments, but other times they can be quite devastating. I lost one of my two functioning lasers in 1975 to a stupid mistake. That hurt.

I began to realize early on that I was not a common fool or simple idiot. I had powers far beyond that. That was when I began tracking those things which I had thought would work, but which didn’t. What follows are some of the earliest entries in Don’t Do This.

I had stashed a small container of a liquid, never mind what liquid, in the back of my amplifier. An amplifier played at high volume vibrates a lot. It evidently caused the lid on the container to loosen and the liquid drained into the amplifier. What ensued was a spectacular noise, flash of light, and ball of white smoke. Popular belief had it that I was playing so hard that the amplifier exploded. Close enough.

The waves on the north shore of Oahu are big. That is why our surfer friend was living there. My wife and I went to visit him when we were first married. I wanted to surf, but the waves were too big, so I picked a spot where the waves were smaller. Upon paddling out to the break, I realized that the reason for the smaller waves was that it was a rip tide. A real dandy. I had to be rescued by surfers. My wife was not impressed.

We had grown a nice bunch of peppers, but they were too hot to eat. I dried them in the sun with the thought of making chili flake seasoning. I began crushing the peppers where I had placed them to dry, in the direct sun. It was very hot and I began to sweat. Then I wiped the sweat out of my eyes with my fingers. Don’t do this.

Over the years my skills have increased as the complexity and ingenuity of my gift have come to full flower. You may never have to explain why there are blood stains on the ceiling, but if you do, I have an acceptable answer: 1- the cat brought a bird into the house, 2- it was a sparrow, 3- I put it outside and it flew away. Do not use if you don’t own a cat or if the bandage on your hand is visible. Also – don’t try to clean a vacuum cleaner while it is running.

I am currently experimenting with ways to fashion a guitar fret board which won’t work. I have three so far. There is a fret board of the perfect size and shape on-line for $19, but my research is not complete yet. It depends on if I can get the stain out of the wood. If I do, I will include the removal method in section Blood Stains - Don’t Do This.

 

This is a very painful time of year for me. I spend all winter in the shop with maybe a walk here and there when the weather permits (meaning it is only lightly raining). Then the equinox arrives and I begin working outside. I also begin trying to get in shape for the summer. That is where the pain comes in.

Discounting hedonistic pursuits, I love nothing better than long walks in steep country. When I say long, I mean more than 6 miles, which is short. I can cover 6 miles in 3 hours and that is not long enough to attain true misery. To be truly miserable, I need to walk 4 – 6 hours.

I believe there are a lot of hikers and bikers who go out to enjoy the peaceful surroundings and beautiful scenery. Those are nice all right. There are others I meet who are really working their rears off and I think they are fitness types. But, I haven’t meant anybody whose goal it is to beat themselves up with a mountain until the only thought in their head is getting off the mountain.

I feel good these days, but it is still a pretty busy place inside my head. It is hard to get everybody to shut up, and some of them just aren’t very nice. But, I at least know how to get them to all say the same thing. I can get them all to say, “For God’s sake, STOP WALKING!”

I have been told that I am abusing myself with this practice. Perhaps so, and it is a shame the whole class has to be punished for the actions of a few shrieking lunatics, but it works. I can flatly state that after 5 hours hiking up and down 1,000 foot high mountains, there is absolutely nothing else on my mind aside from stopping. In fact, it takes a few hours after stopping to be able to think at all, and that is the goal.

I am not in the best shape today. I am limping from a planar fasciitis injury to my left foot. I have vasculitis on both lower legs which is simply from exercising too hard. The doctor says it isn’t serious, but my wife can tell when I have really been at it. Plus, I am none too steady on my feet because I really excelled at silencing the unruly class yesterday so I can hardly walk. Now everyone agrees, including my wife, that I went a little overboard. Mission accomplished.

It is going to be warm and sunny today. It would be a great day for a walk, but I won’t be walking anywhere for a while. Today I will sit on the wet ground and pull weeds with a blank mind. That is totally worth a hours of misery.

 

I recommend adopting Friday the 13th as your lucky day. First, there is practically no competition for it. If anything lucky is going to happen, it could well be to you. Secondly, it might help alleviate the apprehension the day inspires in others when they discover it is not a universally unlucky day. Lastly if anything untoward happens, you can blame it on something other than bad luck, which is a lame excuse.

The bad luck excuse is not available to me. If even a portion of the mishaps I suffer were due to bad luck, I would be dead. In fact, it was very good luck that saved me from cutting off two fingers a year ago. I ended up with only an operation and two functioning fingers. That was lucky! Shortly after that, I was admitted with what they thought was pancreatitis and it concerned the doctors greatly. I was bombed and didn’t care. Luckily, it was only gallstones. A few days in the hospital and I was good as new (and a little lighter). I actually have very good luck.

The transmission in our 1-year old car locked up and my wife lost control of the car on the deserted back road to town. We skidded to a stop with one wheel in the ditch. My wife commutes 50 miles, half of it on I-5 going 135 MPH (it seems like). It could have been tragic if it had happened then. That was great luck. One might question if a one-of-a-kind failure was good luck, but it was covered by the warranty!

In my extensive history of gambling since my wife and I were married, I am $2 ahead. That is wonderful luck. It took a total investment of $12 over 40 years to get there, far more than I wanted to risk, but the rewards were worth it if you don’t count the horrendous hour in a smoky casino.

The real reason I tell people that Friday the 13th is my lucky day is because they all seem pretty lucky. If I were struck by falling space junk, I might cross that day off the list. But even then, they say that space junk never falls twice in the same spot, so naming the local as unlucky would be more reasonable.

I am going down to the luckiest place on Earth, my shop. The place where I didn’t shoot a nail into a bone and didn’t sever two fingers. The concussion was minor, I didn’t get electrocuted, and it was only a second-degree burn. It is my lucky place on my lucky day. I hope I don’t get too lucky, I am still recovering from my last bit of good luck.


 

We have a very clean upstairs bathroom floor, both sides. It usually isn’t, mainly because I am a terrible housekeeper. Today it is quite clean. So is some of the wood floor outside the bathroom. It was quite a job, but the results are good.

We live in an old church. The church office is upstairs and has two big windows looking out at the coast range twenty miles away. The church was remodeled into a residence in the sixties and the office was partitioned to add a bathroom.

I keep plants that require a lot of light in the office windows for the winter. These are plants that don’t like to be over-watered, but they like to be watered well when it is time. I put one of them in the sink under a fast drip a couple of days ago and forgot about it.

The first thing I noticed when I got back from town was a small puddle in front of the refrigerator. I thought it was an ice-maker spill. Those don’t usually drip on my head, which this one did. A brief investigation revealed the puddle was caused by a drip from the ceiling.

There was in impressive pond in the upstairs bathroom. The threshold is about ½-inch high, otherwise the floor would be cleaner in a much larger area. Why both the sink drain and overflow could not keep up with a fast drip is still a mystery. It is a small bathroom so it wasn’t hard to clean up, but the ceiling downstairs dripped for a couple of hours.

I don’t recommend this as a routine plant watering or floor cleaning method. It results in a large pile of sopping wet towels in the shower and it is not possible to conceal a drip coming from the ceiling. Some areas inside the floors and walls of the house which haven’t been clean for almost a hundred years are getting rinsed off, but it is just one clean spot in a largish house and is sure to annoy the mice.

Still, it was a success all in all. The plant is watered well and the floor is clean both on top and underneath. There is a nice pile of pre-soaked towels which are sure to come out of the wash very clean. Research is needed to determine why the sink will drain perfectly well with both faucets turned on full, but not a fast drip onto a plant. Next time I go to town, maybe I will put a plant in the sink and turn the faucets on full. I should clean the rest of the office floor anyway.

 

I live in a perpetual quandary about which of the things happening to me at any given time are due to whatever medication, whatever mental condition, or whatever quirk. The thing that is bothering me right now is the occasional sleepless night. I will wake up around 1:00 AM and be up the rest of the night about two or three times a week.

That is much better than I used to do when I was getting 20 hours of sleep per week. Back then, the only solution was a jolt of anti-psychotics that would stun a horse. That hasn’t happened for years, so a little sleep deprivation is not too much of a concern. It doesn’t make any difference in how well I function (which is never great), and it improves my napping skills.

I see a lot of comments from people who aren’t sleeping well. I don’t know if non-sleepers are in the majority or not. They are certainly more vocal. That stands to reason. I wouldn’t be writing this piece if I were sleeping well, although I’ll let you know if I ever start again. It will be a short entry.

This present condition started when I began to feel better. That has led me to wonder if it is “normal”. I have spent a lot of time considering what normal would look like and if I would recognize it when I saw it. My goal is to become as close to normal as I can, but it is an elusive target. Everything surrounding it is out of bounds and I never know I have missed it until I am debating it with the cat. You can depend on a cat being straight with you. The cat has been pretty quiet recently, so I think things are going well.

Meanwhile, I am considering those things which are best considered late at night. Those being the things that I don’t care about being right. That is a wide-ranging group of subjects so there is a lot to think about. Plus, there are a host of things I find interesting which no one else seems to and 3:00 AM is the perfect time for those. And best of all, no one expects you to think normally in the middle of the night. I can give free range to things such as a possible solution to the spectral frequency relationship to the anti-intuitive color wheel. That thing makes no sense. There is an answer in there somewhere, even if it isn’t right.