Dinner with one of my oldest friends

Last night I was invited out to dinner with one of my oldest friends Leslie and her husband Scott at Buffalo Wild Wings (the Mango Habanero sauce rocks). Back story on Leslie, we met the summer before my 6th grade, she lived a stones throw away from me and had a big empty lot next to her house with ATV’s that we used to carve up trails around the place with (I also ran over her big sister which scarred me for life, sorry Shelia!). Sixth grade, she was probably one of my best friends and was in fact my first girl friend before we both knew the full meaning of the word. Meaning we held hands a few times and kissed once… in her shed next to the quads. I think her dad telling me that he was watching me might have stopped that back then.

Talk about some old memories, talking with her reminded me just how much I forgot over the years. Items that were important to her back then aren’t even blips that I have thought about since they happened back then. A few items that I had totally forgotten about, I went to Thailand in 7th grade and brought her and her sister back souvenirs, I remember buying souvenirs but I don’t remember who I gave them to, she still has hers. I have a talent for drawing mazes, something I think I could do before I could actually write and I drew her name in bubble letters and made a maze out of it and I guess I drew her a some other drawings, I have no idea what they were but she still has them. In 7th grade, we had wood shop together and she told me that she was going to fail if she didn’t get a box she was making routed and I routed it for her. It was a big deal to her but all I remember was her asking me for a favor, I didn’t even remember what that favor was. The funny thing is, her parents are still using that box (and think that she routed it, heh). I don’t even have any of the my wood shop projects from back in the day. I think my mom sold them at garage sales or gave them away (like she did my comic books). 

Those are definitely some items out of my prehistory that were important to her and she was able to hold on to the memory because she had kept those mementos. They had fallen out of my memory because I had lost so many items from my past like most of us do. I had thought that I had a great memory compared to most of my friends about those days but seeing Leslie showed much of my past I had forgotten, I didn’t have a diary or a camera and most of those items had been added to the rubbish bin over the years meaning that they also fell out of my consciousness because I didn’t have those bookmarks in my memory to keep them fresh.

Forward to today, we both have kids who are in high school, we’re both happily married, in fact, she’s been married to the same guy for 16 years a cool dude. Anyone who stays married for 16 years and be as happy and as comfortable as they looked made the right choice. We both have tattoos, hah, never thought I would see that day. It’s strange experience seeing us both as adults because the last time we were close to each other, we were still children. We were friends after we moved away from that little neighborhood but after 7th grade we didn’t really hang out and grew two different ways but for that year and a couple of months, we were two peas in a pod and our memories of that time are still locked in place and unsullied by the process of puberty and growing up.

In Scottsdale, a mild stress attack and some karma rebuilding

I flew into San Diego the day before yesterday and did something so ignorant that I felt like banging my head into the nearest wall. I had flown down without the key to the car that I had left in San Diego, they were on the keychain to my truck. After a few minutes of pure panic, yes, it was very pure, I calmed down and called my wife, she said she would overnight them too me and that I should spend my last night in San Diego hanging out with buddies and we ended up having a great time, thanks Dang!  With a few words, my bride had calmed me down, it was more of a problem in my head then anything else, just had to remember that this was my town and I did have a lot of friends about to call on in times of need.

So yesterday, my keys arrived at my old landlords office at 10:30 and she told me it was fate that I would stop by and see her again, I caught another ride to base and I was off to Arizona and pulled into my dad’s around 7 PM.  I think I was asleep by 9:30, that stress attack had worn me down.

Today, I looked around my pops place and thought, my dad needs someone one to take care of some of these projects he has sitting around. Not my step mom, she’s busy enough as it is. You see, my father is a hoarder, he has worked with electronics as long as I can remember and his place is loaded down with obsolete junk and he seems to pick more up every time I see him. Being a minor hoarder myself, I know what he’s going through, it overwhelms you. There’s too many projects to do and it’s hard when you have piles of craziness lying around that need to be sorted.

So together we looked about to discover some projects that my talents could be put to use, the back glass door had hung up since he moved in, I said I would fix that, there was a pile of cleaning supplies sitting out on the back porch, he explained that he said that he wanted to put a sliding shelves under the sink, yup, I could do that and his grass was all splotchy, green and tan and yucky all over.  Mostly due to the 6 broken sprinkler heads, can do. So I went to Lowe’s and purchased the sprinkler heads and some rollers for the door, for the shelf, we used some sliders he had sitting about and some laminated particle board that just happened to be on his back porch.

I told him to go back to programming (that what he does) and sent started off with the back door so we could turn the A/C back on, it actually took 3 tries with his help to get it properly set, the spacing where the rollers were wrong and we had to drill an extra hole and put a spacer in but at the end of the day, it worked fine. The sprinklers, while dirty and muddy only took an hour in the hundred degree sun of digging. We argued around the idea of the shelf for a while and I think my idea of the sliders underneath prevailed. Picture below.

Tonight we went to the DAV for a spaghetti dinner on his tab and a couple of beers. Tomorrow, I plan on just hanging out with friends, yes, you Sherri and Leslie and see my uncle Larry. With all of the cursing I did in my head on Monday, I needed to balance out the karmic scales with some good deeds which have been taken care of. Have a great night everyone.

NorCal Trip

I’m taking a hop down to San Diego to pick up the car from work and then driving over to Phoenix to see my friends and family in that area of the world. The last ten days in Northern California has been wondrous. The first night in the city, I went to a Steam Punk party with the wife and some of her friends, every see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow or the game Bioshock? Well we dressed sort of like that, goggles, brass gadgets, old style clothes, live music, belly dancing, a guy playing a shovel, yeah, it was interesting. A bunch of geeky sort of people hanging out having a good time. Here's some pictures.

My wife wasn't the only person with blue hair.

We made a trip to the San Francisco Zoo and in comparison to the San Diego or Phoenix zoo, it’s much smaller and homier. Of course we had to see the pen where the tiger got out of, there were signs saying to respect the animals but no word of warning that the animal could jump the fence and eat you like a snack. I liked it, it was a chilly misty day, we were bundled warmly and I was in great company. It was the first public place I’ve been where, along with the trash can and recycling, they had a bin for compost. While the zoo was smaller, the animals seemed happier and well cared for.

I used to have a goat that looked just like this one

Someone else with matching hair

I'm sure this one wanted to eat me

During the week we also slipped in a trip to see the new Star Trek movie which being the geeks that we are, enjoyed tremendously. Lots of walks down new paths with the Gatsby, installing a lift in the mother-in-laws garage that could lift a 4X8 HO train track to the ceiling, hanging out with her dad, having a Mother’s Day lunch with the brides mom, grandmother the rest of her family. An altogether great time.

The plan when I land is to stop by the cleaners and pick up a uniform that I forgot there pick up the car and run by my old work to pick up a plaque, then hit the road and probably stay at my dads tonight in Scottsdale. From there, I‘ll probably drive up to Prescott later in the week and other then that, I’ll play it by ear. Hope everyone remembered to call their mom on Mother’s Day and be careful of catching the Swine!

Goodbye San Diego

I checked out of Third Marine Air Wing last Friday and will be checking into VFA-125 out of Lemoore (orders change, from a sea duty squadron to a training squadron). 4 years and a couple of months at Miramar including many adventures documented on this blog but its time to move on. The last time I was with that Navy unit was in 1999, the move is going to be a pretty big shift in my way of thinking. I’ve already dropped 600 dollars on new uniforms. I’m going to miss being on the green side, specially the friends I’ve made. Here is the latest snapshot of the crew I worked with out of Miramar.




And the second picture is of my local blogging support group, this might be the last time we’re all together in one place. Since I’m on leave hanging and my wife’s the one going to school this week, it will give me a chance to fix the links on the right and update my blog a bit. I was going through a period of backing away from my internet life and shrinking my presence in the cyber sphere into smaller bite sized portions. I was all over the internet and it was getting a bit out of control, turning. Just keeping up with all of my accounts was turning into a full time job and there were a lot of things I still wanted to do with my time. I think the forced separation worked, I’m not feeling the with drawls anymore but needed to step out of the shadows before not blogging became another habit.

Currently I’m on leave for most of the month of May, I’m staying in NorCal till the 11th then heading to Arizona to spend time with my family.