LETT-0-MAN’s blog

Well I survived my first day of school. My math teacher is an older Russian woman who basically told us that if anyone was taking her class for an easy grade they were sadly mistaken. Since the summer quarter is four weeks shorter than the rest we would be getting our instruction with both barrels. So far I seem to be doing fine. I do have an issue with the bimbo sitting next to me in class. Her damn phone keeps buzzing and of course she has to answer with a few minutes of feverous texting. I think she spent more time texting her friends than doing the class work. My English class was pretty good as well. The professor is a younger guy who actually played some reggae on his laptop while he was getting the class roster figured out. I was supposed to be taking some counseling class that they require all new students to take. According to my schedule, it was supposed to start two hours after my last regular class BUT after my two hour wait the class was still empty. I went to the records people and they told me the class doesn’t start until August 11^th. Woo Hoo! That was a waste of time. No that everything is straightened out, I should be fine.  

When oh when are these damn fires going to go out? California has close to 1000 fires burning right now and it’s making the whole state look and smell like a camp ground. While I was eating my lunch today I kept seeing snow flake looking pieces of ash falling from the sky. It didn’t bother me at first but now that the fires have been burning for a few weeks, I am spending my days wheezing like a chain smoker and my eyes are so blood shot I look like a crack whore. Please put the fires out. I hate being stuffy and cranky and blood shot. The only thing that’s neat about the smoke is the sunsets. Last night the sun looked like a blood red bullet hole in the sky. I have never seen such a dark shade or red before.

Another great comic lost....

 

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Comedian George Carlin, a counter-culture hero famed for his routines about drugs, dirty words and the demise of humanity, died of heart failure at a Los Angeles-area hospital on Sunday. He was 71.

Look up the word “Pathetic” in the Pictionary and what do you see? A line of 25 to 30 guys waiting in line outside the new Hooters that opened up in my city. What may be even more pathetic are the three guys running down the sidewalk to get in the 25 to 30 man line. I guess I don’t get it? I don’t see the thrill in waiting in a long ass line to eat mediocre food just because it is delivered by girls scantily clad girls that you can’t touch. "Excuse me miss, can I have a side order of low self esteem?" I can see it now, all those guys turning in to eleven year olds as they walk in the door and saying “heh boobies” over and over. Don’t get me wrong, I like a pretty woman just like the next guy. I just can’t stand being around large groups of idiots who don’t know how to act around them.    

The last few days have been kinda crazy. Sunday we had a boat load of people over to the house for a pool party/mini graduation for Tracy’s nephew. I guess he is moving on to a middle school this year so everyone wanted to have a party. I am fine with that. It’s not my house so I really don’t have a say any way. It’s just some times her family hits the house like a ton of bricks. The term “bulls in a china shop” doesn’t even come close. They are the type of people who come over and cause complete mayhem, eat free food then use the pool for the day and leave. If anything gets broken, all we get is “that’s what happens when we get invited any place”. Kind of like “oh, that broke” oh well. I was assigned BBQ duty which is fine because I like to use the grill. All is well until Tracy’s nephew starts telling me the food looks burned. After the third comment I told him he didn’t have to eat any of it and the cat food in the bowl next to the grill didn’t have to be cooked and he was welcome to it. The food was just about ready to come off and I turn around and see everyone practically clinking their forks and knives on the table like hurry up slave, we’re hungry. Then they proceeded to inhale the food like they hadn’t eaten in a week. It was half gone by the time I sat down to eat. When I see most of them all I see is a group of consumers. When they are done consuming, they leave. After everyone left, we cleaned up “of course no guest offered to clean up shit” and enjoyed the quiet for a few hours before my brother and his family came to visit for a bit.

My brother won some free passes to Disneyland complete with airfare so they his family and my mother packed up and headed down to California on Thursday. After they left Disneyland, they drove up to north to see my grandparents and on the way they stopped at my place for dinner. It was good to see them even though I was still frazzled from earlier in the day. They had been on the road all day and didn’t plan on staying very long. We offered them left over burgers and chicken from lunch and they ended up staying for a few hours. My mother had never seen the house we are in so she got the nickel tour and Amy hopped in the pool with Hayden. Hayden must have really liked being in the pool because all I could hear in from in the house was squealing and laughing. Since my mother came along they were planning to head over to the central valley to visit my grandparents who have been in a nursing home for the last year or so. The rest of my relatives visit them almost every weekend but that’s part of a rant I won’t put in this blog. I haven’t seen them in a long time so I was going to tag along with my brother Monday and we were going to have lunch with them. Since the place where my grandparents live is almost in Sacramento, I had to leave the house at the crack of dawn in order to make the 11:30 lunch time. When we all finally got there I was shocked at what a dump the place was. The residents are free to roam the halls and it seemed like the staff ignored every one of them. Both of my other grandparents lived in an assisted living facility just before they died and their rooms looked more like apartments. They had their own furniture from home and it felt more like a home. This place seemed more like a hospital. Both of my grandparents stay in the same room but all they have is a hospital type bed and one nightstand each. There are two chairs in the room but they look like they were stolen from someone’s waiting room. The nicer place I mentioned felt like a lodge and the residents were just on vacation but this place just seemed like a place to stay while you waited to die. Both of my grandparents are in their early 90’s and both are suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. My grandfather seemed happy to see us even though he didn’t recognize my nephews. I knew that was going to happen but when we all decided to go to the dining room my grandfather pulled me back and whispered in my ear “I’m sorry but I don’t know who you guys are”. When I told him he seemed to be ok. I got the impression he was just happy to have these people visiting them so he tried to be a good host. My grandmother was pretty sharp most of the time. She kind of knew who my brother and while she was talking to my mother she kept saying “did you know us back then?” which meant she was almost in the same boat as my grandfather. I remember what we all went through with my other grandparents when they came down with Alzheimer’s so I half expected them to act like they did. The dining room looked ok but the help sucked. The woman who brought the food didn’t even know what the cauliflower was. My grandmother seems to be doing as well as can be expected but every once and a while my grandfather would stop talking and just stare at something. It would take a few times calling his name to snap him out of it. He mentioned that his heart felt funny so we brought that to the nurse’s attention. She said he was going to see the doctor that afternoon for a pace maker check up. They won’t tell us the results because of their weird rules but I haven’t heard from anyone in the family so I can only assume he is ok. I really hate the situation they are in but there is nothing I can do about it. My uncle rules all the family issues with an iron fist and refuses to keep us all updated. After my grandfather left to see the doctor, we had to leave because my brother’s family had to catch a plane home. I felt bad leaving my grandmother. She didn’t really know who we were but you could tell she was sad that we had to leave. I hate visiting relatives under these circumstances because they can’t leave with you, they don’t want to be there and you almost have to do the “hey look at that” and leave in the opposite direction. I feel like shit every time I leave after a visit like that but I can’t stay. I want to protect them but I can’t. I want to kick the uncle in charge in the face but I can’t. There are too many things out of my control in this situation.

While I was driving home I got the feeling that was the last time I would see them. My grandfather really isn’t doing well even though the rest of the family is delusional and keeps saying he is. The two of them have been married for close to 70 years and if one passes I don’t think the other would be able to handle the loss.

Well this is probably way too much information for one sitting. For some reason blogging about my issues helps me deal with my issues. I need a drink……     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!

This has been a week for wild fires all around the Bay Area. The weather has been pretty hot and really dry all week. There were a few smaller fires earlier and then a day or so ago a new fire started in the Santa Cruz Mountains. From what I can tell, the fire has burned close to 1000 acres and doesn’t seem to be under any sort of control at this time. So far the smoke has been blowing south and down the coast line. That is until about 5:00 pm today. The winds shifted inland and now there is a HUGE cloud of thick brown smoke over taking the valley. The fire is no where near my house but I do live within a mile or two of the mountain range that is burning. So far the fire is on the coastal side so all we see is smoke but the smoke is so thick I can’t see the mountains that are only a little ways away. It reminded me of “The Nothing” from The Never Ending Story. It seemed to slowly block out the sun then cast a dark orange tint over everything. I took some pictures and you can see how everything had an orange hue to it. Now my neighborhood smells like a camp fire and my eyes are all irritated. I hope they can put it out soon. Not just for the fire’s sake but for the poor fire fighters who are fighting the flames on steep grades and in 90 degree heat.    

Makes my eyes all scratchy just lookin at it.

This is kind of a crappy picture but you can see how big and thick the smoke cloud is and how it's blocking out the sunset.

Well this has been a busy week. Tuesday I went and took a Math and English placement test for school. Evidently I have been out of school for a long, LONG time. The English test was a breeze. I hope so because I was born here and have only spoken English my entire life. The math on the other hand was a different story. I remember doing some of the work when I was a kid but I haven’t been told to actually write out simple math problems on paper ever since. It’s amazing how easily you forget the simple things. I use math all the time but if I get stuck I use a whacky thing called Google and I can find out how to do what ever I need to do. I can also use a thing called a calculator. I guess all of this technology we have created has in a way made us all lazy over the years. Why remember something when you can Google it. Hell, Google is in the dictionary now. Any way I still suck at math. I had issues with it when I was younger and I guess I still have issues with it. Today I took the biology placement test. For this test I was only trying to get in to the lowest class they offer so I had to get 14 out of 25 correct in order to do so. I am not sure how I did. I did guess on a lot of the questions but fortunately I remembered some of the things I used to do while I worked at UL. Oh well, we will see.

This evening I was invited to a party celebrating the end of Netli Inc. That’s the company I worked for that was later purchased by a larger company. I only worked for Netli for a little over two years but I picked up some real good friends in that time and I was able to work with friends/coworkers I worked with at Hotmail. It’s amazing how close knit Silicon Valley is. No matter where you go, you are bound to either run in to some one you know or end up working with someone you worked with before. Netli was a less than 50 person company and seemed more like a dysfunctional family that a work place. We were bought out over a year ago but there has been a crew keeping things alive while our customers they were transferred to the new company’s network. Well the last customer was shuffled over to its new home and the old network was powered down. So an invite was sent out for all current and previous employees to head over to Molly Magee’s to celebrate the end. It was good to see all my friends again but it was also sad in a way because Netli was one of those rare places were it was really fun to work.  

I was browsing through some of my OLD music and came across this song from back in the 80's. I remember listening to it  while we were coming back from one of our surfing trips down the coast of Baja. It was the tail end of Summer and still pretty warm. We had been driving for close to 12 hours straight, the sun was starting to set and I felt like I could drive on forever following the sunset. It's amazing how easily you can forget some things but then how vividly a memory can come back just by hearing a song. Good times...... 

 

 

A funny thing happened on my back patio a few days ago. Some of you may know I used to be a cactus whore and had a collection of about twenty different kinds growing all over the house. I have a thing for cactus. They look neat and they can jack you up if you don't pay attention. One of my older cactus, I inherited from my parents so it is now over 20 years old. It never grew very big probably because it has been shoved in a pot for its whole life. I think I may have transplanted it twice in the whole time I have owned it. It's kind of a mutt. It never looked very good and was never really healthy BUT it never croaked. A few weeks ago it developed a brown wooly knob on the tallest stalk. Some of my other cactus do the same thing and it’s actually a flower. This one however decided to do something new. I have never seen anything like it on this particular plant. I am glad I got some pictures. For some reason the saying “silk hat on a pig” comes to mind. 

Well this weekend was pretty good. Friday I got signed up for the first round classes. They start on July 30^th so I still have some time to relax and get ready. I know some times I make it sound like a prize fight but I have been out of school for a LONG time. In the beginning I know it will be challenging but after I get s few classes under my belt, things will be fine. Saturday I went over to my friend Tony’s house and had dinner with his family. Tony grew up two doors down from me when we were kids. He is the same age as my brother so we all hung out a lot. I guess I could call myself lucky to still be good friends with people from my childhood. We kinda did the math and figured out we had been friends for over 30 years. OK, I guess I can call myself real lucky because I am still good friends with a lot of people from my childhood. Tony is married and has two high powered kids now. They are both little bundles of pure energy and I don’t know how he keeps up with them. I also got to see Susan again. Heh, Suzan used to date my brother back in the high school days and she still keeps in touch with Tony. I haven’t seen her in close to 20 years even though she won’t admit to it being that long ago. hahaha. It was good to see them all. Susan still looks the same after all this time. I guess that’s a good thing. Since I last saw her last my hair fell out and I gained 150 pounds.

Today we went out to Lou’s for breakfast and then headed out t the local flea market. I wanted to pick up some metal doohickeys that allow you to make a frame that holds up a tarp. I wished I had those this past weekend…..If I did have them we may have stayed through the storm. With my new doohickey things I can now make an 8 foot by 10 foot awning that attaches to my Jeep’s roof rack. We were also looking for some cast iron cookware like a griddle. There is usually a guy there that has a stack of old cast pots and pans. The good thing about cast iron is it holds the heat well and lasts forever. Even if it gets rusty, all you have to do is sand blast it then season it again. Unfortunately the cast iron guy wasn’t there today. Poo. I was also looking for one of those Asian style conical hats. I found a few crappy ones but I am looking for one of the good ones that looks as though it was woven from strips of bamboo. They keep the sun off your shoulders pretty good and last forever. I may look funny wearing one but hey; no skin cancer for me.

This coming week I get to take a few more placement tests to see how dumb I have become since high school. They are supposed let the counselors know what classes I need to take and what classes I can skip on my quest to become a nurse. Woot! Tests! I need a drink.

 

 

There I told you I would write about this weekend. hehehehe