August, 99


highlights

poetry- Voices from the Past- Puyallup Fair- Limited Edition Prints- Painting On Location
Art Versus TV- The Admiring Public- night skating- dysfunction- artistic brake job?


Recent photo of me and Birdy at the computer

8-30-99
It is 3 AM Monday morning. I am not sure what I did earlier today. I do remember both of the kids being gone for a couple hours. Sue and I burned some card board boxes out in the back yard in the rain. I love a fire. I kept poking sticks in and rotating my body like a rotisserie for so long Sue came out an asked me if I wanted some hotdogs or marshmallows to roast. It is kind of scary being alone in a house with a beautiful woman. With the kids banging around life is pretty predictable. But just me and her, why, anything could happen. I am the luckiest guy I know in that department. Later I went over to a friends house and tried unsuccessfully to get her ten year old printer to communicate with her new motherboard.

After I got back home and saw them all off to bed I went out in the garage and took some 4x5 transparencies of my artwork. I really enjoy taking photos with my 50 year old Speedgraphic camera. I take slides and prints with my old manual Pentax 35 millimeter SLR. However, if I ever want to get into the limited edition print business, that is large prints, like 20x30, I will need four inch by five inch transparencies (slides) for the printers to scan from with their $30,000 scanners. This old Speedgraphic was a military camera that saw service in Korea. Their is no light meter or electronics whatsoever. It has a ground glass for focusing on.
Bulldog, 10x15, pencil
If you have ever seen a photographer looking at his subject under a black hood, he, or she, was focusing on the ground glass. The film is equally challenging. It comes in flat sheets in a box of ten for twenty dollars. You have to open it in total darkness and load the sheets of 4x5 inch film individually into the film holders. The film holders look like one half inch thick black sandwiches and hold a sheet of film on each side. Everything about the camera and the film holders is simple and yet sophisticated in a 1940's kind of way. Using a Speedgraphic, especially only occasionally like I do, requires total concentration. That may be why I like it, there is quite a learning curve. Modern cameras have gotten overly dependent on electricity. Although I must admit, I could benefit from a digital camera for quickly putting my paintings up on this web site. I have taken over a month to get my latest paintings up. Here is one of my summer still lifes. I wrote about it in detail back on 6-24-99. I have another still life set up out in the garage using the same three dollar garage sale goose. In this one I also have one of my one hundred year old leather bound books and a matching whiskey bottle plus the printers glass. I am not sure when I will start working on it. It is there waiting for me like a patient dog.

Sue starts back to work again tomorrow after having the summer off to be a full time mom. She is an occupational therapy assistant with the Tacoma School district. I finally heard from my climbing partner Dave. He did lose his job again which was why his phone was disconnected. Now he is only using his cell phone which number he neglected to give me. He called Sunday night to tell me he had been out with Search and Rescue all weekend pulling idiots out of the woods up on Stevens pass. He apologized for not calling me Friday night. We made tentative plans to go to Smith Rocks over Labor Day. That is my 20 year wedding anniversary but hell, Sue used to go there with me on Labor day for fifteen years in a row. I haven't changed, she is the one with the hang up about climbing. I don't really do the celebration thing anyway. It's all irrelevant. As Spock would say,"I can't see the logic Captain".

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8-28PM-99
I spent almost the whole day today reading a book about the French resistance during World War two. I kept thinking I ought to get off the couch and do this or that but I couldn't get excited about anything. Besides, Clare Francis writes a great love story and this one, "Night Sky" even had a happy ending. After dinner we all decided to go for a bike ride. Sue gave up in the driveway when she found herself too tired to pump her tires up. Lisa made it a couple blocks before she found a crippling bulge in her tire. I continued on for a couple miles to the hilly section of country road we use for aerobics. My trick knee wouldn't let me pedal so I walked up the hills and coasted back down a couple times in a row. On the way back I glanced up at the sky and saw a magnificent sunset. The peach colored clouds ran from horizon to horizon in stretched out linear patterns. One must have been several miles long, mauve and blue gray against the blue sky with incandescent back lit yellow highlights. I got that compelling sense of smallness I get sometimes when I realize just how insignificant my life is compared to the timelessness of the wind and clouds. Tonight I need to take slides of my recent paintings for my records. I should get the prints back by Thursday and have the new pictures posted here by the weekend. I may also take 4x5 transparencies of the 3 best ones as well. I have a couple graphic artists at work who are thinking about printing and selling some of my images as postcards. They will need 4x5's for that so I might as well shoot them before they sell and are lost forever.

My paintings are like my children. I think there is an old saying about children that applies well to Painting: Give them love and then give them wings. I've been told by more successful artists that I should hold on to a few of my best pieces to cheer myself up. It's great advice but not too practical when money is in short supply.

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8-28AM-99
Hooray! I didn't have to work today. I called in when I got up and my boss said his boss was out and to call in later. M. called me in a couple hours and asked me if I wanted to come in. I said I needed the time more than the money. He said that was ok with him if that was what I wanted. That's nice. These guys are almost too casual to believe sometimes but it fits me to a tee.
I had a long list of errands to run:

I kept the cell phone on the whole time so my climbing buddy Dave could call me and tell me where to meet for our scheduled weekend at the cliffs. His number has been disconnected. I hope the poor guy hasn't fallen on hard times again. He has a problem holding onto jobs.

I think the reason I put up with his abrasive character is a strange combination of laziness and respect: I am too lazy to seek out another partner who will accept my laid back climbing attitude; I respect his volunteering for King County Search and Rescue both in the mountains and as a body recovery SCUBA diver. He has some grizzly tales to tell about finding drowning victims tangled in bottom debris.

I am thinking maybe he got called out on a search. That would explain why he didn't call me and cancel our trip. Sue thinks she might want to go climbing Sunday if Dave doesn't call. What I need to do is get on the Internet and try to find a more stable climbing partner with similar interests.

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8-27-99 PM "Why TV rots your brain"
Your mother was right, it does. My parents didn't get us a TV until I was 8 years old. They thought it was bad for the mind. We learned to entertain ourselves the old fashioned way. We played games or I played with my toy cars and wooden guns. Far too many people use TV's for baby sitters. Even Sue and I have used ours for that on occasion when we want a little privacy from the kids. What I don't understand is why adults need a TV. The last time I watched TV was in 1969. I have vivid memories of Gilligan's Island and Lawrence Welk. I have refused to buy one myself but Sue's parents gave us a small twelve inch color set ten years ago. If I was around more I would try to wean my family off it. Whenever I am home in the evening working on this computer or out in the garage painting, they love to watch TV.

I need my vegg time as much as the next blue collar slave. My mind is so tired after my ten to twelve hour days and 50 hour weeks that much of the time, there is no way I am going to do anything productive. I like a good book. Almost as relaxing is writing on this journal. At least with a book, one has to use one's imagination. There are no commercials and a book can be put down or taken with. Think about it: Every night, across America, millions of overweight bodies attached to empty minds are glued to the specter of Bart Simpson moving across a cathode ray tube. He makes his ten thousandth fart joke and forty million souls laugh in unison. Just imagine if all those people had to entertain themselves for an hour every night instead of letting a Hollywood producer direct their train of thought. Why, some of them might even talk to each other. Before TV, people learned to entertain themselves and each other. Families played music together around a piano.

Boredom is a powerful motivator. Think how many more artists, musicians, composers, writers and inventors there would be if TV had not taken over our living rooms. When I get my day shift job, I am going to shoot that thing.

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8-27-99 AM
I walked into work today and M., the day shift pressman had just got the graphic artist to sign off on M.'s makeready, meaning the job was ready to run.

"You're all set to go," M. said. As I was looking the job over, I heard a loud hiss coming from the ink rollers. I walked over and looked more closely at the press.

"That sounds like emulsified ink," I said to M.

"No," he said,"It's running fine, I'll see you later."

As soon as M. left, my foreman G. walks over and says,

"He spent about eight minutes on that makeready. The Graphic Artist who signed off on the job didn't notice that the color was way off. You had better not run it that way. Here is how it should look."

I can't say I am surprised. This has been happening to me for years in various print shops. I spent around an hour dialing in the colors to the proper density (darkness) and ran the job. I am not known for being a fast press operator. I am, however, known for my accuracy and consistency.

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8-25-99
It is Wednesday morning. I have had a couple reasonably good days on the press. Last night I ran three small jobs, none of them were hard. That is a nice way to spend a day at work. Chop it up into easily digestible servings instead of one long nightmlare job. Sue and Lisa and her friend Andrea (Andrea and Lisa) went up to Wild Waves yesterday and played on the rides while I slaved away at work. Even Sue slid down one of the water slides. Those places look fun but I don't think I have the patience for the one hour waits required for the better rides. Also, since there is no skill required I would probably get bored. I get more satisfaction out of leisure time pursuits that have a learning curve. I wonder if my attitude or need to excel at everything is related to low self esteem.

I am a firm believer in the importance of self esteem. A couple years ago I stumbled across a talking book at the library by Jack Canfield on self esteem. I listened to his ideas for so long it became like a religion. The last tape on his book was a series of mantras you were supposed to repeat after him. I still have a copy of it in the glove box of my car. Whenever I get really scared and depressed about some overwhelming task I listen to it. He says things like, "I have all the skills I need for the task ahead." As I repeat his words after him, I feel a strange wave of confidence. I think it is a bit like self hypnosis. That is probably why it didn't work that well on me. I can remember coming in to work back when I was all pumped up with self esteem. I was so confident in my ability to work error free that I wouldn't double check myself as I made adjustments to the machine. After biting myself with overly high self esteem a couple times I fell back into being depressed and paranoid. When I work depressed, with a bad attitude, I know things will go wrong and I watch vigilantly to correct them when they do.

Clint broke another rim jumping on his BMX bicycle. He needs me to help him put the new one together. I am outta here.

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8-23-99
I am going to invent a back scratching machine. I feel bad asking my wife to do it all the time. Sometimes my daughter helps out too but I have to pay her a dollar each time. It would have to have a chair built in since I like to sit down while it's done. I am thinking of a stove size apparatus on wheels I could keep in the closet. It would have a soft stool type seat with a heated back. Built into the back would be tracks similar to a slot car track for the little brush like hands to travel around on. Off to the side would be a control panel. I would need to have a row of buttons, probably a full keyboard to tell the machine how to scratch. Or it could be voice activated.

"Honey, a little lower to the left," I would say. The machine would whir, and the little brush hands would travel in the intersecting slot car tracks down to that part of my back and scratch. I am thinking there should be localized circular sections of track for the circular motion that Sue is so deft at. As production increased we could build in programs for famous scratchers down through the centuries. You could push a button for the Cleopatra pattern, the Mother Teresa pattern etc. I would need to come up with some sort of heated flesh like frame for none active parts of the slot track so my tired old back would forget it was just a machine.
I am climbing again! Thanks to a divorce at one of the neighbors, my whole family went climbing yesterday. Sue finally admitted that she felt bad about denying me the climbing I love. Surprisingly, she even climbed without the terror that has dogged her for the last 5 years. She was smooth and lovely as she followed the rope up the cliff for 80 feet to the anchor. Our marriage was based on climbing. She was my best friend, lover and climbing partner all in one heavenly package. I used to be so proud that we were the oldest continuously climbing husband and wife team on the West Coast.

But people change. I have always hoped her hate of climbing at forty was based more on hormones than logic. And, of course, the whole families having witnessed that horrible accident back then didn't help any. I still get chills thinking about the wet sound that beautiful woman's body made when she smacked into the ground from 80 feet up. I can remember the sudden silence that descended upon the canyon as her sister, holding the useless rope, howled in terror. Climbing, like flying, is a sport where "pilot error" pays grim dividends. The woman, whom I later learned was a climbing gym trained climber, made an ignorant mistake and paid for it with a long visit to intensive care. These gym trained climbers have been giving climbing a bad name for years. Sue and I met and learned our craft in a mountaineering club. We learned how to travel and survive in the high mountains under all conditions. One of the most important skills in the mountains is knowing how to safely retreat down the cliff. Gym trained climbers are used to having their high anchors pre-placed in cement walls by insured carpenters. That lovely woman in Oregon didn't have a chance. Wow, this entry has taken a morbid turn.

Even Clint (14) had fun yesterday. He was lukewarm on the first two climbs he tried; never getting more than halfway up the routes. The last one was an overhanging 5.9 cave where the climbing route followed a line of safety bolts up the roof of the cave. It is a very muscular type of climb, consisting of mostly pull up moves with the feet scrabbling for holds below. I think it appealed to his pride. There was no way he was going to let his washed up old dad climb it without even trying. He even smiled a little as he worked out the moves. Each time he would fall off, he'd swing out into space and dangle and I would lower him back down to the ground for another try.

Well, I haven't had a shower in four days have to be at work soon. I spent all my spare time this morning writing here and haven't even read my email. That will give me something to look forward to when I come home. Email seems so urgent compared to snail mail. When I used to get letters from friends in my mail box up on the road, I would put them on the desk and savor the envelope for a couple days until I was in the mood to experience their paper presence. Now, with email, I feel like I should read everything right now and write back right now. It is kind of like leaving your cell phone on all the time. I suppose the benefits of instant communication out weigh the downside.

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8-21-99
Ahhh, the weekend is here. I hate these soul sucking 57 hour weeks in 5 days. I tried to rerun a job that was run earlier in the week by another operator. My consistency was better but the smoothness of his four color screens was better. He also managed to beat the ghost that plagued me. A ghost is a light spot in the printing caused by big blocks of open space on a print job surrounded by large solid areas. But that is enough techno-babble. Suffice it to say that I suspect my printing will be rejected also. I warned my foreman that the press was not up to the task before I started. I maintain the press is overdue for two days of maintenance time.

When I got up this morning Sue had gone shopping with the kids. She left me a note on the fridge saying she missed me too but had to get her back to school shopping done. Surprisingly she also mentioned that she wanted to take the whole family rockclimbing Sunday. I wondered what that was all about. When she came home she told me they had just found out that one of Clint's best friend's parents had just got divorced. Apparently she and the kids were kind of shocked that so many parents we know of are getting divorced. Clint couldn't figure it out. He just went to my parents 50th wedding anniversary. Everybody in both Sue's family and my family is happily married. This Labor day will be 20 years for Sue and I. Clint has no concept of how lucky he is to come from such stability. To him, we are nerdy and boring. I drove him into town the other day. It was like pulling teeth getting him to talk about his latest BMX bicycle jumping feats. I suppose that is mostly hormones. Sue says he wants to try a little climbing this Sunday. I hope to get him to crack a smile. He's an adrenaline junky on that silly bike and Rockclimbing is the queen of Adrenaline sports.

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8-20-99
Good News! I got accepted to college starting this fall. Back in June they said I was on a long waiting list and would get in fall of 2000. I told my foreman today and he didn't seem too upset at all. He said he had been thinking about it since I have kept him informed. He is considering hiring a part time KORD operator to take up some of my slack. I would assume I will have to work reduced hours to avoid fatigue. I am thinking school until 3 PM and work until nine-ish. I could get in 4 to 6 hours of work a night and finish up on Saturday. That will be so cool. I wanted to make a go of art for a while. I still feel bad that I didn't bite the starving artist bullet. Well, actually I did try it twice, for a month and a half each time. Both times it was in winter which minimizes my on location painting time. The bills pile up far faster than the art income grows.
But now I have settled on a realistic career possibility, Web Design. It is a full time one year course. I have savings to fall back on if I loose my job. I have a sound mind. I don't see how anything could go wrong. If a car breaks, I can ride the bus. We have been broke for a week. I got paid yesterday and Sue has been going crazy with back to school shopping. I haven't seen her all week. And now she says she is leaving first thing and won't see me tomorrow either. She doesn't seem to miss me at all. Or maybe she just loves to shop. I have no idea and I am too tired to care. I have been working elevens, twelves and fourteens all week. It hasn't been easy stuff either. I have been running four color on the KOMORI. It is way overdue for a two day maintenance work over. It has an ink, water balance problem. Color consistency is a joke. Emulsification on the second unit is a constant threat and tonight the feeder stopped cycling. I found a work around by calling the day guy at home but it wasn't pretty and made a hard job even harder. Now I have to pay bills. Life goes on.

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8-16-99
Sue and I and Lisa (11) went for a walk today on the hills of old town Tacoma. We have been walking those two hills above the Mountaineers Clubhouse since we met there in 1976. Clint (14) hates the walk now and stayed home at the neighbors. It is a charming 100 year old neighborhood of quaint gabled houses mixed in with a few new ones. Although it's a real pump to get up both hills it always puts us in a good mood. We have so many good memories from that neighborhood. Before and after we got married we lived just on top of one of the hills and walked them several times a week for exercise. Sometimes I wonder if the people living there recognize us. What do they think, looking out the windows of their luxury homes? Watching year after year as we sweat up the steep sidewalks in front of their manicured lawns.

I have always regretted not buying a house there but the prices were absurd. After seven years we saved up enough money to buy this house out in the country. Anyway, it was raining today but the walk was lovely. We ended up taking off our raincoats and umbrellas and getting wet in the warm summer rain. I finally balanced my checkbook and have been painting out in the garage for an hour. I am ready to give up on the lighthouse. It isn't getting much better despite my best efforts. I don't have the experience to create vegetation from scratch. It would be wonderful to get back down there and finish it on location, but I'm sure it's raining there too.

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8-14-99
I survived working on Friday the thirteenth. I had trouble getting going before lunch. I never know what causes that. After lunch I came alive, partly because I could see the schedule would keep me there until dawn if I didn't get in gear. I had a veg day today, laying on the couch reading. Sue and Lisa and I just went for a walk down to the lake for exercise. It was good to get some fresh air but my body seems stuck in vegetable mode. Clint came home with three other teenagers at 8:30 to work out in the garage. He has an eighty pound heavy bag as well as a speed bag out their from his karate days. And I have the old Marcy bodybar weight lifting machine as well as a Schwinn Aerodyne stationary bike and the broken treadmill. Pushed off in a corner is my lonely easel with a half completed lighthouse painting leftover from my vacation.

Sue is looking splendid today. She seems to be getting pretty relaxed finally now that her summer vacation is almost over. She and Lisa are looking for a cookie recipe to feed to the gladiators out in the garage. Tonight I have to balance my checkbook, change the oil in the Toyota and maybe work on my painting out in the garage.

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8-13-99
Friday the 13th. Today is the day when ghosts stumble on their sheets. I was thinking about going climbing but the weather looks shakey. I haven't heard from my partner yet. Sue is painting the ceiling with her parents. Lisa's friend Andrea is here. I am working at 3:30 today. It is nice to have time to laze around the house and read a book. Birdy needs a wing trimming. He was on his perch five feet away. I was reading at the kitchen table. Suddenly, I heard a flutter of wings and a bird slammed into cheek. He probably meant to land on my shoulder but missed. I guess I will throw overnight climbing gear into the car in case my buddy's other, better plans fall through. Climbing is fun but I must admit I don't have too much motivation to go. I have one of my vacation paintings on the easel out in the garage. It is a striking painting of the Heceta Head lighthouse. I need to finish the sky and hillside behind it but it is otherwise done. Uh oh, birdy is eyeing me. He is up on his cage again and measuring the distance to my shoulder.

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8-11am-99
Nice, I woke up, called in and I have the day off. No one is home, I assume they are out shopping again. Sue is trying to spend every spare penny we own on back to school clothes. What can I say, women live to shop. It is overcast and windy outside. I have been tinkering with the colors on this web page, trying to improve its appearance. Recently I have been visiting an online journal written by a doctor. She seems far to normal to have an online journal. Part of what interests me about her is her wealthy life style. I also like the obvious love she has for her her husband, child and job. She writes well also. Her life seems so well ordered. Everything runs like clockwork. She is an exellent example of how I would like my life to work. A good job, a good family and interesting hobbies like hiking in Yosemite and learning to fly airplanes. They all just came home. I should get off this computer.

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8-11-99
I finally get to write about something depressing. It seems like journals shouldn't be all happy happy. They need a little dysfunction to be interesting. Today at work I was having a hard time remembering how to cut paper. We are slow and I was asked to help out on a few cutting jobs. Our cutter guy doesn't program in a way I understand. I got so confused I had to take my afternoon break. While I was sitting down I figured I might as well draw my hand to cheer myself up. I couldn't draw for beans. Here is what I wrote over the top of the failed drawing:

God, I feel so depressed! Nothing works for me any more. I am half assed at everything I try. I try for excellence in all things and only get mediocrity or mistakes. Doesn't matter if it is art on a ten day vacation or printing stress free afterward. Doesn't even matter if it is sex with a willing woman or parenting our healthy children, I am so mediocre it irks me. I used to have moments of brilliance. It might have only been a twenty minute session a night on the printing press or perhaps ten minutes of great sex with the little lady. But at least, I could daydream about how wasn 't that fine! Didn't I do well there? That was so cool! I have had none of that for so long I am ready to vomit. I was counting on my vacation to lift me out of this bad mood. Fat chance. I couldn't complete even one good painting. I could try blaming it on the weather, there was plenty of bad weather. In reality, there was plenty of good weather also. I just couldn't drag the artist out of his room. Somebody locked his door and I can't find the key.

I am drowning in the depression that results from high expectations. There seems to be a veil over my mind, dimming everything just enough to make life boring. I am wondering if I need to go out and pump my adrenaline gland. That has been a staple of my life until this year. I think I will call my climber buddy Dave when I get up.

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8-9-99
It is Monday morning. Birdy is sitting on my shoulder as I type this. He is doing ear splitting wolf whistles at imaginary female birds. He's also doing a weird mumble sound just like the bird caller his baby sitter used while we were on vacation. I've been out in the garage cutting business cards for a client. I am supposed to go in to work whenever I feel like it. But our scheduler said I had better not get in the mood too late since it is a long job and I don't like working fourteens to the crack of dawn. Sue, the kids and their friends are up at a BMX track near Bremerton where my son is risking his spine flying through the air on a 40 pound bicycle. That's a charming thought.

I wonder how my parents ever let me do all the risky things I did at that age. I was a long distance bicycle rider back then. In the ninth grade I met a girl at my uncles and fell in lust. I was over there for a week picking cherries for money. When I came home, I was love sick. Dad wisely forbid me driving the car 4 hours across the mountains to see her. I decided to pedal across the mountains on my bicycle. It took four days. What will I do when my son goes nuts like that?

I spent most of this weekend framing my entries to the Puyallup fair juried art competition. Both entries are large Mt. Rainier paintings. Yesterday I went out for the third attempt to paint the Home barn. It is a lovely old boat house/barn built on stilts out over a lagoon ten minutes away. Both of the previous times I had worked on this version the tide was wrong. Yesterday everything was perfect. I came close to finishing it except for all the trees behind the barn. One more visit ought to do it.

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8-7-99
It is Friday evening. I worked 4 tens this week. I am usually tired after working 4 in a row plus overtime but today I am suffering more than usual. Partly it was the heat last week. Every day the meat thermometer we have stuck above the printing press measured 86 F or higher all day. And it didn't cool off as the sun went down; almost seemed to get hotter. I had to run my head under the faucet and soak my shirt every couple hours to prevent my brain from bursting into flames. I was ready to jump for joy when I found out I had today off. I think where I made my mistake was deciding to donate blood on my rest day.

I rarely make it in to the blood bank. They are always sending me letters and calling me begging for blood. I'd go more often if they were open after work. Plus, they don't pay me for my time and fluids. Probably the only reason I do it is that it seems like a good karma kind of thing and leaves me warm and fuzzy feeling. Not to mention all the attention I get there. Hell, I get more attention there than I get at home.

I also bought a new receiver at Magnolia HiFi. I don't think they like me too much there. No matter what I am buying, whether a phone, a VCR or a car deck, I always ask for the cheapest one. Today the flashy salesman took me to the three hundred dollar receivers. He was rambling on about how these were the lowest priced decent ones he had. When I mentioned that I didn't have enough speakers for surround sound, he allowed as how he had some stereo receivers in another room. Low and behold I saw a rock bottom Sony for one hundred and forty nine dollars. It was love at first sight. I think I toasted the last two receivers using my wifes state of the art 1967 model year speakers. We have some antique Speaker Lab speakers built in the first year of our marriage in 1979 that can handle 200 watts. I noticed today that her 1967 speakers can only handle 5 watts. So, I guess we won't have speakers out in the garage anymore but maybe our receivers will last longer than 2 years now. I used to be a stereo connoisseur back when I had time to sit in front of the stereo and read books after work. I loved to make my own reel to reel tapes, eventually making 26 six inch reels full of my favorite music. Now, the reel to reel needs a 200 dollar tune up and the tapes are growing dust. This computer is still acting strange. I have been getting a scary little dialogue box that states: Fatal Error, problems using UI skins. What the hell am I supposed to make of that? Thank god life doesn't begin and end at this computer.

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8-6-99
I just got my computer back from Peninsula Computers. It crashed to DOS and refused to boot into windows. It kept giving me arcane messages about missing files. They said it needed a new CD drive. Funny thing is, the new CD drive came with the wrong drive letters assigned. He also said my system ini. file was corrupted. Talking to geeks is like talking to engine mechanics. I don't have a clue. It is so frustrating watching them wander around inside my computer going, "Oh, look at this, maybe this is the problem." So, anyway, I am back on the net.

I have been tinkering with the 5 paintings I did on vacation. Two and a half turned out. The others I am trying to save from memory. I also am getting ready for the Puyallup fair entries. I get tomorrow off. That makes a three day weekend. Dave called me so I might go climbing for a change.

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8-2-99
I am up late, trying to get ready for swing again after a week of vacation. I spent today working on the unfinished paintings I produced during all the bad weather on vacation. We had the usual fight with our rebelious 14 year old over bathroom rights and when he should show up for dinner. I am really too tired to deal with any of this stuff. Hotdog 5.5 crashed 3 times as I was trying to change the journal button to reflect the new month of August. I think I opened too many htmll documents and over loaded the graphic card. I got a warning from Norton which I ignored. But now, Hotdog keeps trying to open with all 15 documents running at once which is what made it crash in the first place. It is a Catch 22. I need to open Hotdog to close all the documents. But it can't open because it is unstable.

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2003
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1999
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