Recent photo of me in class.

9-28-99

There are some bad links in this web site right now. I had an upload crash and lost a directory, this one, for the journal. I have mickey moused it together so you won't notice it unless you wander around a lot. Our instructor has been giving us some good tips on proper server side upload technique. She recomends uploading the images and html files in separate folders labeled appropriately: img and html. The third file in the server directory will be the index.htm. Use the htm extension to differentiate it from the html files in the html folder. This way the browser can find the index file faster and start loading the page. I don't have time to tinker with this site too much until the weekend. Lots of homework. This is a project in Powerpoint, my first ever use of Powerpoint.

9-27-99

I slept decent Sunday night and feel ok tonight after my standard school and work ordeal. My new catch phrase for school is: I am a sponge.
Sunday night I went to bed with Sue and slept the whole night. I haven't done that in years. You would think that falling asleep in the arms of ones loving wife would be boring. Hey, it's all new for me. And little things like watching the sun come up on the way to work. I had forgotten how that could be so enjoyable. One of the students named S. loaned me his digital camera. I used it to take this picture of one of my recent paintings. It seems to have a contrast problem. I will post it anyway but plan to fix it later when I can try one of the more expensive digital cameras. Another student has a Sony that cost a grand. It takes almost a megabyte photo whereas the camera S. let me use only takes 50K. I have a lot to learn about the world of digital cameras. And they teach that in school. Isn't that cool?

9-26-99

Life is beginning to develop a pattern now that the first week of school and work is over. I get up at 6 AM. Spend a little time with Sue as we both get ready to leave for work and school. Leave at 6:30, arrive at school at 7:30. Leave school at 3:15, arrive at work at 3:30. Leave work between 9 PM and !0 PM. Arrive home around 10:30, study for an hour, have a vodka nightcap and hit the sack at 11:30. On Saturday I worked from 8 AM to 8 PM. Sunday, today, is my day to catch up on the life I didn't live all week as well as homework. I have met some interesting people in class. The guy in the chair next to me has his own web site about shortwave radio. I was wondering why he seemed so interesting since we had just met. We all took an abbreviated version of the Meyers Briggs test Friday and it turns out we have the exact same Meyers Briggs personality profile: (ISTJ). Both the middle aged women next to me are artists of the computer graphics variety although both also paint traditionally as well.

9-23-99

School is going well. I am still ahead of the curve as far as what is expected of us. Everyone at work is being very understanding of me only working 4 to 6 hours a night instead of 10 to 14. I was offered the weekend to work if I wanted to which money makes necessary. I see Sue every morning for 20 minutes which is great. The kids haven't got up to see me yet but they know they could if they needed it bad enough. They get up fifteen minutes after I leave. We are studying basic html. I appear to be a solid month ahead of where the teacher is teaching due to this web page. However, they are already almost ahead of me in photoshop. We have an assignment due next week to create planets in outer space using photoshop from scratch. I heard today we also get to learn flash and Adobe Premier and a whole lot of other software way over my head. We will also spend some time in the sound and video studios in preparation for integrating both into our web designs.

One of the other students has been importing my paintings and drawings into his classroom desktop as wallpaper. While I am flattered, it is a little embarrassing to have that much attention drawn to such a private part of my life. I have always tried to keep my job and my art separate. Especially in printing I learned to not bring my paintings to work to share with co-workers. I get all distracted. The two disciplines use different hemispheres in my brain. I can't print and talk about art at the same time. I would compare it to bringing your children to work.

Maybe in this new field I can loosen up a little. I put my self portrait on my desktop as wall paper. So far I have spent about $140 on books. I need to study right now.

P.S.

I was not able to cheat on the scavenger hunt assignment. In addition to some of the answers on the cheat page being wrong, I had not read the entire assignment. In addition to providing the answers, we had to list the search engines, the queries we used and two hyperlinks proving each answer. Try that on who was the first American woman to win the Congressional medal of honor? and What is the name of Bart Simpsons grandfathers home?

9-21-99

I have good news and bad news today. The bad news is I thought I was dying at lunch. My inner ear inflamation flared up. I lost my breakfast in the men's at school. I felt so dizzy I couldn't even leave the stall for an hour. I went to the doctor after school who gave me some diuretics and prednisone to calm the ear down. He also wants to see me in a week for an MRI in case I have a brain tumor. He says that is extremely unlikely but he has to check.

Now the good news. I love school. Today my teacher gave the class an assignment that wasn't due for a week. It was an internet scavenger hunt. Very bizarre items like the literacy rate Argentina and how many Blacks were in the Civil War. I struggled for 2 hours and got half way down the list before I stumbled upon a web page listing her 12 questions in order, by number, with the answers and the links to the sources. I was floored! I think it takes a hacker mentality. Thank you A. for teaching me that. I shared it with a couple fellow students against my better judgement after my teacher laughed it off.

9-20-99

I had my first day of web design today at Clover Park Technical College in Tacoma. It looks like I will be ahead of the curve for a month or so due to this web page. After that I will have homework. I am still fighting off jet lag from the shift change. I only worked 4 hours afterward. My bosses took pity on me, kidding me about where were my new school clothes. They are being way too nice.

Here is an entry I wrote on Sunday afternoon before I started painting the river.

I'm lying on a bench on the dike above McCormick creek. It's a lazy hours walk to the parking lot where Sue and the kids dropped me off before continuing on down to my dad's house in Olympia. The river is wide and calm here. Far off in the distance I can see the traffic steaming down Interstate 5 but no sound reaches me. Only the tops of the islands in midstream are visible. I have painted these small islands at low tide in the past and know they have 7 foot tall concave muddy walls all the way around, with a mushroom shaped head of swamp grass on top. It must be high tide because only a foot of grass sticks out of the slack water.

There is a large flock of birds on the far side of the half mile wide slew, paddling easily in the light ripples. The only sound is the plaintive whee, whee, whee of the seagulls as they lift off and fly overhead. No, I also hear an undertone of crickets all around singing their mettallic song. Several times an hour the artillery crews fire off a couple rounds at Fort Lewis. It comes without warning, shattering the peace with bruising body blows of sound. The birds seem used to it and I recall the slogan on the Fort entrance, "Pardon our noise, it's the sound of freedom".

Although I came out here to paint, it's highly unlikely. Swing shift jet lag has my bun in a wringer. My life is at a pivot point today. School starts tomorrow, my first school in 25 years. I will be studying in the same building where I learned printing in 1974. I wish they hadn't covered up the volleyball court. That would really be deja vu. Everyone at work is wondering how many hours I will be able to work after school. Dad offered to help financially since I was the only one of his three kids who didn't go to college. It was a nice gesture but there is no way he can replace the two thousand a month I take home from printing. My ear is roaring again. I broke down and ate a couple bags of chips over Labor Day. The salt appears to have got the Menieres disease in my inner ear ringing again. I will have to try the diuretic he offered when he diagnosed my flakey ear.

Something is jumping out in the river. I saw a shiny body, it must be salmon. Out in midstream a pair of sea kayakers startle a grey heron on one of the islands. It rises ponderously from the swamp grass, honking angrily with each slow flap of its huge wings. I feel like zoning off into the warm sun but know that would send me right back to swing shift.

Sue was cranky as usual last night, bickering venemously with muscleman Clint about how he is "Ruining my life by keeping me up past my bedtime every night!" I went in later to see if she was mad at me too. She wasn't. I am one lucky guy.

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9-19-99

I just watched "Shakespeare in Love". Wow! I thought Titanic was great. This movie beats that to pieces. I don't think my eyes dried out for more than five minutes the whole film. Life seems so sterile most of the time. Anytime I can get access to my emotions I am all for it. That is why I prefer slower, introspective music. Whether I am listening to it or playing it on my Martin guitar, I'm a sucker for a sad song. I think sensitive guys have gone out of fashion. Well, piss on fashion. Speaking of fashion, let me say right here that I hate the current fashion in men's shorts. Why do women get to walk around in comfortable short hiking shorts while men have to wear them to their knees. What are we, a bunch of prudes? Why has modesty swamped men's fashion? Thank god I still have my 15 year old hiking shorts, tattered though they may be. Fashion can take a long walk off a short pier. I really shouldn't write after I have had my nightcap.
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9-18-99

I have once again switched over to day shift. This time I will make it stick or die trying. The last time I got on day shift was when I tried to replace our day shift cutter operator at the print shop. That lasted 2 weeks before they fired me and immediately rehired me for swing. I've planned it out a lot better this time. When I rehired on here almost two years ago after a 6 year absence my plan was to go to school like this and print part time in the evening. At some point during that hectic several weeks I decided to paint full time in the mornings instead of computer school. Emotionally it made perfect sense. Painting is the only thing I have done in this sorry excuse for a life at which I have excelled. It feels completely right for me. I'm not sure how I got sucked into working full time swing again. But that's all water under the bridge now.

I had a horrible fifth ten hour shift at work last night. I really never recovered from all the OT last week. When I walked in it felt like someone had sucked out all my blood. Our scheduler said I had 6 1/2 runs of an hour and a half each on the Komori. They were four color runs for our biggest customer, laying down the black and yellow on a 28 page full color book. In other words, not a gravy night. I moped around the press for a couple hours, feeling sorry for myself until everyone left and just barely printing. At that point I really got depressed and considered walking out. I thought perhaps a little exercise might improve my attitude and I could finish printing afterwards. Instead I plugged along, bending under the weight of the gorilla sized attitude on my shoulders. It's funny how I can work myself out of a mood. At about the 8 hour point I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I think the main thing to remember about working tired is to just keep moving. Don't stop to feel sorry for yourself or you're dead in the water. I find if I keep chipping away at the huge mound of work, even with a "I'll never finish all this stuff" kind of attitude, the mound inevitably diminishes.

Speaking of a gorilla on my back, below is a note I wrote on my morning break, sitting on the loading dock.

Sue and I have been on a backwards slide toward despair these last weeks. When I see her all I talk about is how tired I am. All she talks about is how broke we are going to be when I'm going to school, how the kids need winter coats and clothes, how she needs two crowns and the car needs endless expensive repairs. Where is the money going to come from, we will be living on Visa's and savings etc., etc., ad nauseam.

She wants security and I want a life worth living. We both will lose for a year. This morning I am so tired death seems like a heavenly release. My workload is incredible. Fresh I could survive it. I am considering punching out and walking.

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9-17-99

I worked from 3 to 4:30. I'm so tired I can't figure out the math. Must be around 13 hours. I was printing a glossy cover for a music magazine on the Komori two color. Four colors over four colors, work and turn. It had full coverage with big black solids and huge national advertisements. I missed a hole in the second unit blanket. Of course it was right on the front cover of the book. It was totally my fault. I was trying to hurry.

I got a weird call from a TV show in Nantucket. They have a traveling correspondent, Geno Gang, who is interviewing artists across America. Somehow they came across this web site, liked what they saw and sent me an email. I gave them my phone number but slept through the call this morning from the correspondent. I tried to call him back but the number was no good. I'm not sure why I cared since I don't watch TV anyway.

Besides, right now at least I am not the artist they are looking to interview. My painter has crawled back in his garret. He is mad at me for going to computer school. I hope to coax the ornery little bugger out one of these days. Saturday morning I could paint early before I visit my Olympia gallery. I would be working on 3 hours of sleep but that hasn't stopped me before. I can remember getting off work at 3 AM, driving one hour to a boat launch and crashing in the car. I got up at 7 AM, hiked 3 miles out to a viewpoint and painted a small landscape of a river. I sat down to take a painting break and fell asleep by my easel flat on the trail. I woke up to the sound of gravel crunching as a bird watcher strolled by. I need to hit the sack, I have to be back there at 3 for more punishment. I'm sleeping in this morning until at least one thirty.

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9-16-99

I got a nice fat check today for all the overtime I have been working the last two weeks. G. is back from vacation thank god. When I told him I had worked 35 hours of OT this pay period, he pondered for a minute, and then, quick witted as ever said,

"You worked almost my whole week for me on top of your week while I was gone. Thanks."

I have managed to minimize the car expenses. They charged me $289 for the timing belt and front seal. I found some old snow tires in the shed that cured the vibration in the front end. He admitted that half the cars that come in there have gas dripping from the carburetors, most of them dripping more than mine. So I can put off the carb rebuild for a while. I am babying the clutch until I find a weekend to work on it. He said it might go a month. I am bracing for a brutal weekend. I have to go from getting up at noon to getting up at 6 AM. I plan to go to sleep at 4 AM and get up 3 hours later. Ouch. Now I have to tackle a bunch of bills. Should have some money left over this time. The extra $500 will come in mighty handy.

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9-14-99

I am still steaming about that suicidal climber on Sunday. Rockclimbing without a rope got popular back in the 1980's. John Bachar made it popular in Yosemite and Joshua Tree. I even saw him filming for some TV show when I was climbing nearby. He looked so solid I would have felt safe on his shoulders. But that was before all of those ropeless soloers started falling off and dying.

Sue and I were climbing down at Lake Perris in the early 80's. We were on a belay ledge, 100 feet up. A solo climber came waltzing past and proceeded to climb, ropeless, up the very route I had intended to climb, directly above Sue and I. He did not fall, but if he had, not only would he have died but he also would have killed or maimed Sue or I, depending on which one he landed on before he continued on down to the ground.

Last Sunday, when I heard the soloer below me and watched him traversing into the loose rocks and debris off to the side of the normal climbing route, above my family, I got very tense. My mind filled with horrible pictures of his body falling and landing mere feet away from my kids. In my minds' eye I saw once again their horror filled expressions as they saw a gruesome accident up close and personal. He was hanging onto pencil sized branches as he picked his way gingerly across the rotten cliff, searching for a way down without a rope.

"Heh," I called, "Do you need a rope down there?"

Silence

I hadn't wanted to say anything, but he was so obviously in macho meltdown it was irresponsible not to. He ended up perched over the overhang looking sheepishly at his girlfriend and did eventually slide down my rope to safety. People like that deserve to die. As we were leaving we saw another soloer, a young teenager. I hurried the family away, not wanting to be involved in the body recovery if he broke off a hold.

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9-13-99

Well, the worst has happened. No, I didn't get cancer. No, I didn't get fired. No, I didn't have a "pilot error" climbing.

What has happened is a car has died. We are barely scraping by financially. Our house payment is $480. Both the 96 van and the 82 Toyota are paid off. We have no credit card debt. Even though that sounds like a great financial situation, we live paycheck to paycheck. We don't blow money on frivolous things like the lottery or cable TV or dinners out. Once in a while I replace a stereo or a hard drive. I am as careful as I can be with our money while still having a little fun every now and then painting or climbing. Both of those activities are very cheap. Climbing is free other than four dollars a night camping fees. Painting pays for itself.

The Toyota needs $1200 worth of work. It has bald vibrating tires, gas leak in the carburetor, oil leak near the worn out timing belt and a slipping clutch.

Jeez!

I am going to ask around at work about what I could buy used for that much. I have $3000 in a rainy day savings account that was supposed to be for the new roof the house will need soon.

Yesterday Clint and I had a great time climbing up on Snoqualmie pass at Exit 38. Sue and Lisa didn't climb as usual but Clint actually got excited about climbing for the first time. He climbed 3 routes in street shoes. He could have rented climbing shoes but thought it was dumb when given the opportunity beforehand. I was cruising as expected. I was 50 feet up, rigging lines for my rappel when I heard a voice below me. It was a climber climbing without a rope passing below me. I hate these suicidal idiots who think they are so good they don't need a rope. He could have dropped onto my family at the base of the cliff and killed them. He was trying to traverse to safer ground and ended up in some rotten rocks and bushes where he sat marooned, 30 feet up. When I rappelled down I asked him if he wanted to use my rope to get down. He said no at first but changed his mind shortly. Idiots like that give safe climbers like myself a bad name.

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9-12-99

Oh goody, I get to write another dysfunctional entry. I have given up on my dream. I knew I was an artist. I believed in myself. I gave up. It was too hard. Now, all I want to do before school turns my life upside down is climb. It is such a passing pleasure. Last weekend I watched all the climbers at Smith Rocks nurturing their talents. Some had clearly been climbing steady all summer if not longer. Living on daddy's money, off for the summer. While it is a lovely, totally engaging sport, and I do believe in the need to "chase the tiger" every now and then; what will they have to show for it at the end of the day? What do I have to show for all the years I climbed? Boxes of slides and piles of picture albums. It is such a passing, ephemeral joy. Art lasts. What in gods name am I giving up art for web master school? I feel like a groom having last minute jitters before the wedding. I could tell my boss I was going to paint full time and work part time in the evening. I am so mixed up. I probably shouldn't write after I have had my vodka nitecap. Especially after all the overtime last week. I'm toast.

9-11-99

Lisa is making me beautiful. She has a new plastic necklace that, when stretched over the skin looks like a tattoo. It looked a little funny on my thigh. Now she is combing my hair. When she and Clint were younger they used to love to put rollers in my hair. Getting dressed up is an old family tradition. My uncle Ed is a master at entertaining the girls. The last time the family got together, Lisa and her two young cousins covered his shiny balding head with seaweed. He looked like a hairy monster from the deep and the clan was in hysterics. It all comes down to not taking yourself too seriously.

I haven't seen Clint and Lisa in 14 days. Either they were in school or I was working. They could have spent the weekend with me but chose to stay home. But now we are all home at once. Very nice. We are going climbing together tomorrow up on Snoqualmie pass. I will be all warmed up and should be able to cruise the easy stuff.

I worked 51 hours in 4 days this week. I didn't get out of there yesterday until 5:30 am. Started at 2pm. There was another three or four hours of work. I am supposed to go in this weekend and finish that. I wrote them a note indicating I thought I had paid my dues for this week though I am such a whore for money I may go in after dark and run that job as well. My beater Toyota is looking at a possible $900 dollars worth of clutch and front end suspension work. That is more than the old car is worth. The old engine has over two hundred thousand miles on it. One of Lisa's friend's dads has agreed to teach me how to replace the clutch in exchange for a couple paintings. That should be fun.

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9-9-99

So far this week I have worked a 14 and a 13. I shudder to think what I will have to work today. Thursday is usually the worst. Jobs due out to the customers by Friday have to be run Thursday so the ink is dry enough to go through the bindery on Friday. And with G. on vacation I am the lucky victim. Last night I had our biggest customer's graphic artist press checking a job with the owner of my company. They both stood waiting patiently as I labored, 45 minutes late for the press check to show them a sheet of acceptable printing.

The first unit on the GTOZ is in marginal condition. The ink rollers are shiny as glass and pitted. The water system roller journal hangers are the originals from 1986. And the sad thing is this kind of neglect is common in the cut throat printing industry.

Thank god I finally had the good sense to go to college. Just two weeks to go now. I had 4 pictures of my latest paintings on my printing table/desk. They are right next to where I put my press sheets as I run. Where most people would have pictures of their children, I have pictures of my paintings. I wonder if I saw my kids more than 2 days a week if I would have them up there two? I am worn down to the quick. I had an easy listening station on the radio. When a sad song from the 1980's came on, tears streamed down my cheeks as I wallowed in self pity and loneliness. Being in touch with ones inner self can be a real pain in the ass sometimes.

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9-8-99

I just got home from a fourteen hour day running four color on the GTOZ. I asked my boss if I really had to finish everything he gave me today. He said I did and left. The shop foreman is on vacation this week so I can see I will have to have a little talk with our scheduler. He has very little concept of how long things take. Without G. to bounce questions off, he is apparently scheduling by when the customers want it rather than how long the jobs will actually take me to run.

Here is a short story/poem about climbing this weekend:

9-6-99

Dave and Mark eating cold beans from the can leaning against Mark's beater Toyota at Smith Rocks, Oregon:

Dave, sipping on a beer, "Look at all those stars,"

Mark, sipping on Dave's Southern Comfort, "Yeah, they go on forever."

Dave, "Do you believe there is life out there?"

Mark, long pause, "You mean on other planets?"

Dave, "Yeah, I mean look at all those stars, you gotta' figure each one of them has planets circling it."

Mark, "I am sure we are not the only life forms in all those galaxies, the odds are very high that some kind of life has formed out there. But, if we aren't the only life, why haven't we received any radio transmissions from them?"

Dave, "Ah, that's something I can't answer. But they must be out there."

Mark, "They say the universe is expanding but what bothers my little mind is what is it expanding into? I'm okay with the expanding theory. But the fact of an infinite emptiness in all directions bothers me. How can there be space without boundaries? What is outside of that empty space? My mind can't come to grips with infinite space."

Dave, "Have some more Southern Comfort"

Mark, "Yeah"

Today was the last day of our Labor Day weekend of climbing. I finally started climbing well. I got on a 5.8 bolt route that has scared me in the past. Instead of worrying all the time about how far above the last bolt I was and how far I would fall if my strength or nerve gave out, I concentrated on how large the holds were. From the bottom I could look up the route and see the little one to two inch ledges sticking out from the vertical cliff. Before I moved up I would plan where to put each of my limbs. Right hand there, left hand over there. Here is a good nubbin for my left foot by my waist. There is nothing to worry about, all the holds are there. Just keep your weight on your feet and climb to the next bolt. There are so many jugs here you couldn't possibly get lost. Look, plan and climb.

And it worked. I flowed up the rock with an unerring grace, lost in the magic of moving over stone. I have no idea why climbing puts me in such a state of grace. I move over the rock like a spider on a ceiling. In mere minutes I am seventy feet high. I am so exhilarated I yodel out across the canyon. My voice is in perfect pitch and the musical tones echo off into the gloaming.

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9-3-99

I just got my pictures of my paintings back from my vacation. I posted the new images back with the story on 7-31-99 Sue also got a great photo of Clint jumping a half pipe. Tonight was a rough night on the press. Last night was even worse. Last night I got so frustrated running a poorly designed job on the GTOZ I threw a solvent bottle. As my foreman said, "You were having a tantrum like a spoiled little boy". I don't yell at people or kick machines. However, when I get extremely frustrated I have a bad habit of throwing things. There is no one around to vent to or bounce questions off of. There is no one in the building and in fact, I don't think there is anyone in the block. If I can't figure it out, it won't get done. When the solvent bottle sailed off into space it landed on the KOMORI's emergency stop safety switch. I was done running that press for the night and assumed that the empty plastic bottle hadn't hurt it any. Wrong! M. came in in the morning and the press wouldn't start. I had unknowingly broken the plastic switch and frozen it in the stop position. He woke me up in the middle of my night to ask me what was the last thing I had touched on the press.

He and the electrician didn't figure it out until they had wasted at least four hours of press time. So guess who got to make up the missing time? It is ironic justice I guess. I certainly deserved it. So I worked another 14 hour day. What a party. Dave and I are going climbing this weekend in Smith Rocks Oregon. I am a little worried about going climbing with an someone I haven't seen in a year. I will just have to be on my best behavior. I will do anything to climb. It is the greatest sport ever.

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9-1-99

Today is my 20th wedding anniversary. I should be telling Sue all this but she is sleeping so I will tell you. I love my wife. Still. I can remember the day we got married. It was pouring down rain and we were having an outdoor wedding. We had planned to leave for a nine day hiking honeymoon across the North Cascades. We canceled it due to the weather. Instead we went home and opened presents, went back to work on Monday.

We met in the Tacoma Mountaineers club in 1976. I never said more than a few words to her at the Tuesday night lectures. She wore too much pancake makeup (which she never wears now and denies doing then) and hung out with a tight clique of friends from her college where she was studying to be an Occupational Therapy Assistant. Me and every other guy in the class had the hots for her stacked friend Cindy. Long blonde hair, legs up to here and a chest that made my eyes water. The first time I got close enough to talk to Sue was when I went over to look at the snow cave she and her girlfriend Cindy were digging to sleep in up on Mt. Rainier on one of the Club field trips. Cindy stepped out of the cave and beckoned me in. I crawled up the five foot entrance tunnel deep under the snow to where they had carved out the sleeping dome. Sue was in there alone and I suprised her. I can remember her huge hazel eyes watching me alertly. We were alone in the blue glacier light, deep under the snow.

Nothing happened. I still wasn't impressed and went out to chat up Cindy. After the 6 week course was over, my buddy John said he had managed to get a hiking date with Sue. (Correction: Sue tells me she initiated this first date by calling John. My faulty memory). The only fly in the ointment was that Sue wouldn't go alone. She wanted to bring a friend, Leanne, with whom she would share a tent. You get the picture. She brought Leanne and John brought me. Sue still can't believe that she married a guy who showed up for the first date in a red Gremlin. Apparently she and her mom were looking out the window and broke into hysterics when I drove up. As soon as we got to the trail head John and Leanne hiked on ahead and I hiked with Sue. Now that we had left the Club Rules behind, we could take off the wool pants and put on shorts. It was then I discovered Sue had legs like a thorough bred horse. She was a big time hiker and it showed.

I am not sure what she saw in me. In fact, I still wonder sometimes. I know she enjoyed my harmonica playing. I learned to play blues harmonica when I was a hippy 3 years earlier. I had long abandoned the lifestyle by then, but I could still play a mean harp while I hiked. They kept begging me to serenade them during the long 3 mile hike out the board walk to the ocean at Cape Alava on the Washington coast. Sunsets, surf and 4 lonely souls. Much to John's dismay, the girls slept together in their tent as promised. When Sue got back, she told her mom, "I sure hope he calls me." I couldn't wait past Tuesday. We had pizza on Wednesday, I took her home and played her some James Taylor songs on my Guitar. Afterwards, we hugged, over the door of the Gremlin. We ended up putting 240,000 miles on that Gremlin. I had the best years of my life in that old beater.

I suppose I might improve on those years if my new career takes off. I guess I'm still a dreamer. I wasn't painting much at all back then. I drew her portrait a few times. But we got so involved with hiking and climbing I lost interest in art for about a decade. Climbing was our religion. We wanted to get all our fun out of the way so we could focus on children when we were good and ready.

Yesterday was a nightmare on the press. A job that my foreman estimated would take 4 hours took me ten. That is another good example of why I am not suited for printing. Tonight was much better. The KOMORI powder unit was offsetting some of the jobs. I took it apart and found some worn parts. Then I had to draw an exploded schematic of what was inside the powder unit so the day shift guy could figure out what kind of Mickey mousing I had done to get it to work without calling KOMORI who aren't there at night anyway. I love to do mechanical illustration. I could happily spend hours drawing metal parts. I should have bought Sue a card.

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