It is 10:30 Sunday night. I should be in bed, but instead am up doing homework and waiting out a dizzy spell. It has been coming on since this afternoon. I am hoping for a light one. So far no serious nausea, just dizzy. I took a couple extra ginger vitamins but I doubt if they will have much effect. The balance organ in my ear is defective, end of story. I worked Saturday for 9 hours on a 4 over 4 job. I caught a big typo. The customer will pay for the extra 2 passes to imprint the corrected type.
I heard some disturbing news from Sue tonight. She tells me that one of her close friends is considering separating from her husband. There are children involved of our own kids age. It is frightening how common this is. I have met the whole family over the years. They seem quite healthy but Sue tells me the happy exterior hides some chaos. Like most people we know, they have lots of money, unlike us. I feel for the children. When I hear about this stuff, I imagine our own kids going through that and it fills me with pain. Our family is poor, but we are very tightly woven. I could no more do that to my family than cut off my leg.
I was digging around in some old slides tonight, looking for rockclimbing images to use in a school interactive CDROM assignment. I found some old pictures of Sue back when she was in her prime. Man, what a babe she was in her twenties and early thirties. Now that she is 46, her heart is the same but her body shows the years. Young women are such magnets. Why do some women manage to hold on to their men as they age? Obviously marriage vows have little to do with it. I wonder if it might be in the genes. I come from a long line of stable marriages as does Sue. Logic seems to have little to do with divorce. My mind balks at solving the worlds problems. I just want to stop feeling dizzy.
I am home at last. In addition to going to school and working from 8 AM until 9:30 PM I had another dizzy attack at school that lasted well into my 5 hour shift this evening. When I felt it coming on after lunch I took two ginger vitamins. By the time I got to work I was scared enough to take one of my few remaining prescription seasick pills. They had a job that had to print tonight. My foreman, G. had to wait around to be sure I could work before he could go home. Fortunately he went through a several year bout of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and has a lot of sympathy for what I am going through with Meneires disease.
We are swamped with work. He had been putting in 14 hour days with more coming. I felt horrible forcing him to wait around while I decided whether I was sick or not. After about an hour I could tell I was having a "light"attack and would be able to work through it.
I need to make another appointment with my doctor. We didn't schedule another appointment since I was doing so well before the holidays. If this keeps up, I may have to let them cut on me. My doctor swears the skull surgery will cure me. The last time we spoke, he said he would never force me to have the surgery. "You will know when it is time,"he said. "When you cry uncle, when your life becomes unmanageable, you will be ready." He also said that most people who have gone through what I have gone through would already have had the surgery.
I am sad and tired. Today I had another attack of Meniere's Disease. This is the second one in 6 days. I am back on a 3 day schedule. If you want to read the details, and I don't recommend it, see the story on
1-13-2000. It is almost identical to todays epic. I got to work at 6 PM to find the ink almost dried up on the rollers. They depend on me to be there at 3:30. I hate letting people down like this. I have always been so proud of my integrity, my ability to work all night if need be, my peerless attendance record...That is all going down the tubes with this disease.
Once I got the press back in the mood to print, it wouldn't register. I fixed it, ran 10 inches of paper before it went back out of register. We can't sell the four color printing unless the 2 color Komori registers on every pass. I had to wash up. On the bright side, at least I will have two good days now while the bad ear builds up to another attack, probably this weekend.
1-23-2000
I need to get some Prozak. We creative types need to be in touch with our feelings but this is getting ridiculous. I worked yesterday from Noon until 9:30. I was the only one in the building after 4 PM. I had country on for a change and every time a sad song came on I had to get out my hanky. Picture a rough looking guy in dirty overalls, standing by a large grey Heidelberg two color printing press the size of a car. The machine is running merrily but the guy is leaning on a table with his head in his hands, sobbing great crocodile tears of frustration.
Things started going downhill when I woke up dizzy. I wasn't sure if I was heading for a day of minor dizzyness or full on "stuck to the floor barfing in my bucket" vertigo. Instead of going to work right away I headed to the library where there was a meeting of one of my art clubs, the Northwest Pastel Society (NPS). They are the premiere art organization in the Northwest. Many of the artists are full time, successful artists. Several at the meeting have so much talent they can charge $300 for 3 days of teaching and frequently do. I couldn't stay for longer than an hour of the 3 hour meeting as I had over nine hours of work ahead of me. The president was droning on about how she needed more artists to get involved in the organization, how it was too much work for the officers alone, etc. Notable by their absence were men in general and especially men under 35. I get the feeling from going to art clubs that male artists under 35 either don't paint or are too busy painting or working a "day" job to belong to clubs. I personally wouldn't be where I am as an artist without having been a member of my various art clubs. When I used to have time to attend the meetings of the three art clubs I belong to, I got a lot of encouragement and networking information from the friends I met there.
Here is an email sent to one of the members who saw me leave the meeting early:
Hi J.,
I felt pretty bad about leaving. There were so many interesting and talented
artists there who I would have loved to get to know. By getting to work
late, I had to stay until 9:30 and missed seeing my family at all yesterday.
I moped around the press room for quite a while thinking about how the
artists from NPS are so lucky to have time to have a normal, artistic
lifestyle.
I kept looking around the room at some of the faces who I had heard about
over the last 10 years. With the notable absence of Ned Mueller and Clark
Elster, I would guess that group of people represents the cream of the
pastel painters from the Northwest. I knew that, to be in the position they
were of having enough time to paint, they had made sound decisions earlier
in their lives...decisions I did not make until this year.
Things should be looking up for my painting in September when I graduate and
get my first job as an entry level web designer. I will be working day shift
with weekends off for the first time in 8 years. Eventually I plan to roam
the National parks, painting and telecommuting to my web design business
with a laptop from my motor home. As my painting improves, I will phase down
the web stuff as a back up for hard times. I know it sounds like a dream,
but then I've always been a dreamer.
Nice to finally meet you, I'd pictured a short little geeky guy...what a
surprise! By the time the next meeting rolls around I should have time to
talk.
I have had a couple of eventful days. Yesterday, my "study buddy" repaid my introduction speech about her with an introduction speech about me. We both did quite well. It was unnerving to have a relative stranger singing one's praises for five minutes. She had surfed around this site in search of speaking material to use in her speech. I was startled to hear one of my recent entries here quoted in front of the class. Putting myself out on the wire like this has it's downside. The instructor questioned me and several of the other web design students why we put ourselves on the net when we really have nothing to sell. I had a lame answer about how some of us just like to write; that pages like these are a book in progress.
On reflection, I think it goes deeper than that. Online journalling is more of a communication with something bigger than ourselves. Just like the net of phone lines carries these bytes of meaning out across the internet to whoever accesses my server, so too does a small fragment of myself spread out into the ether of world conciousness. If that fragment carries a little positive energy, all the better. Besides, I like to write. I like the music of language. I might be lonely too. I don't see my family during the week.
The paintings I took to school per my instructor's request didn't get hung. She said not to worry about hammer and nails because the janitor was going to hang them last night. When I asked her at quitting time whether she had decided not to hang the seven paintings I had brought in, she said the janitor never showed. So I wasted 2 hours of framing, cleaning and packing last night. It had occured to me to bring in tools to hang the show just in case, but I made the mistake of trusting the school to follow through. I won't make that error again. Now my ear is banging. It was acting up yesterday as well but felt fine this morning. This is such an unpredictable disease. I have been searching my mind for something to compare it to and can only come up with Migraine headaches. They won't kill you, just make life rather unpredictable at times. One never knows when they will strike. I had a bad dizzy session down at my Dads on Sunday night. I never got violently sick, and in fact was hiking around town during most of it with Sue and Dad. It passed in a couple hours with no worse symptoms than having to sit on the couch and skip dinner. I hope this one is equally benign. I might even be able to sleep through it. I am really tired.
I gave my first speech today in my new communication class. We were asked to spend five minutes, to the minute, introducing our "study buddy". Mine is a 20 something service advisor for a Ford Dealership retraining as an evironmental technician. I thought I pulled it off pretty well, but most of the class, including the instructor found my delivery wooden. One smart aleck wondered why I kept my hands in my pockets the whole time. She wondered aloud what I was doing with them in there. That was good for a grin. He plans to teach us how to loosen up as we give speeches. Should be fun.
Work was hell tonight. I couldn't get the press to register on the first pass of a four color job. After tinkering for a while I couldn't even get the doggone thing to feed paper. I gave up and came home to a 2 hour job getting 7 paintings ready for a one day open house in our new building at the college. My teacher N. says the Governor of Washington State is coming for the ceremony on Thursday. I'm all packed up now but my back is pretty sore. I am looking forward to seeing the rest of the class give their speeches. I went second as is my preference. I hate waiting to do uncomfortable things. I like to get them over with and stop stressing. Now I need to hit the sack. It is midnight and I need to be up at 6 AM.
Some of my classmates have asked me about my hippie years. I have always been
amused by the curiosity of people about my experiences in the early
seventies. I was, like many teenagers during those turbulent years,
swept up in the Vietnam anti war movement. We questioned the very
fabric of modern civilization. There was then, as there is now,
so much hypocracy and cruelty in the free
market
ecomony that we wondered if there was a better way. I had been raised
in the Presbyterian faith and believed in it whole heartedly. However,
in high school, I became friends with Devi Unsoeld, the daughter
of future Congresswoman Jolene Unsoeld and the famous Everest climber
Willi Unsoeld. We dated for a while and I got to know her father
who had become enamored with the Hindu faith while in Nepal. He
was,at the time I met him, semi-retired as a climber and teaching
philosophy at Evergreen State College in Olympia.
Over the course of several dinners at their lovely house on Puget Sound, he made me realize that Hinduism made as much sense as Christianity. They both are based on premises that have only vague connections with logic. I went home and confronted my father, the son of a long line of Presbyterian missionaries and ministers, with the problem. I discovered that his logic wasn't any better than Willi Unsoeld's logic. My romance with Devi, who later died on K2 in the Himalaya's, only lasted a few months, but the aftershocks from having my religious foundations ripped out from underneath me lasted years. Shortly thereafter I had the misfortune to take an extra-curricular class with a teacher who introduced me to pot.
In looking back I am not sure whether it was the drugs or the hormones but my motives became a bit hazy for the next 3 years. I dropped out of high school with only 2 credits to go, built a tipi from scratch and lived in local communes during the next 2 summers. During the winters my absurd behavior sent my mother into therapy and caused my father to kick me out of the house. At one point during a frigid week in January, I remember alienating so many of my friends that I had to seek refuge in an unlocked railroad car at night. There was a whole community of similarly confused teenagers living "on the road" back then. Whenever life got too confusing in Olympia, I would walk to a freeway exit and stick out my thumb. I hitchhiked all over the West coast of North America and as far west as Colorado for a Rainbow family "festival of life" in 1972. The Denver trip was my longest at a month. My mom gave me five dollars to live on, hoping I would be back in a few days. People who gave me rides would share their food and drugs and I entertained them with my blues harmonica. The drugs were mostly pot, LSD and mushrooms. When I couldn't catch a ride, I would hike up into the hills and cook some lentils over a small fire. I remember a lonely vigil high above I-5 in the mountains of California. The freeway was only a small line in the valley below. As starved as I was, the lentils, my only food, tasted like steak sirloin. After dinner, I sat back with my harmonica and sent lonely blues out over the empty space.
If you have a squeamish stomach, skip this entry.
I had a bad day. Meneires disease paid me a call today. I haven't had a serious attack in a month. I was almost starting to believe I had it under control with the ginger pills and the prescription diuretic. Although I did have the ringing in the ear this morning, I didn't pay it any mind. It hasn't gone any farther than that for a long time. I had a nice big lunch of homemade scalloped potatoes and spaghetti. Around 1:30 I felt the dreaded dizzyness coming on. When it got to the point where I had to hold on to chairs as I walked around the classroom, I went out to the car and took a seasick pill and a ginger vitamin. By 2:30 I gave up on class and walked out to the car.
I tried to focus on staying very still and calm in the vain hope that the dizzyness wouldn't turn into vertigo. I can see why Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear during his Meneire's attacks. I feel so helpless. No one can help me. We sufferers of Meneires have to grin and bare it. None of the medical treatments, short of brain surgery have more than a fifty percent cure rate after 5 years compared to doing nothing. And after 7 years, everyone is cured except for the hearing loss in the affected ear. It burns itself out. Thank god for that.
I filled up my bucket pretty good. A solid 3 inches of lunch. I didn't know my stomach was that big. As usual I was exhausted by it all and slept hard until 5 when I woke up drained but normal. It was a huge relief to go in to work. Normally I hate printing. Tonight, running the press felt exotic and beautiful. I was so happy to be healthy and vital. Just having a job was enough. N. asked me to bring in some paintings for the open house at school. I am stretched a bit thin. That is the 4th place I am hanging now. Nothing is selling anywhere. I don't even know why I bother. No, that's not true. It is good to have my work out there. If nothing else, it gets me respect.
I apologize for my site being down for a few days. Actually, it was in a recorded mode for the last week while the server was switched around to a different hosting service. I don't really understand it all but my buddy A. says it will be back to normal soon. School has been a battle ground. Lots of people out sick with the flu. I am fine so far. My classmate G. has missed 4 days now, his first sick days since school started. I have been working on this site quite a bit in addition to homework. I did another major redesign of the navigation system with more coming. Work has been slow which is great for homework but hard on the budget. I have to pull money out of savings to cover Sue's crown.
I slept reasonably good last night, having gone to bed at midnight and got up at 8:30. Saturday I only worked 4 hours. I took my time getting there, playing with my web site at home, seeing the family and, on the way in I walked the North end hill in Tacoma. I love that old neighborhood. Some of those houses are over one hundred years old. There is a 1300 foot long hill that is so steep the approaching beamers accellerate to 40 to avoid crawling up it in first gear. When they reach the bottom of the hill, their tires make a roaring noise as the asphalt changes to cobblestones. Walking up it one can't help but imagine how it must have been a hundred years ago when teams of horses labored up those same stones and the world was a much different place.
My class this quarter from S. involves storyboarding out future web sites in PowerPoint. We get to practice on an existing site and I chose mine. She was looking mine over at school and made some suggestions which I built in here yesterday morning. I have a bad habit of only looking at this site on my home computer. The school computers have different screen resolutions, color settings and monitor sizes. I am finding that what looks good at home may look horrible on other computers. She suggested I change the black, unreadable type on my index.htm page to white. I think it looks much better. I have also been playing with a downloaded try out version of an animation program called Ulead Cool 3D version 2.5. The animated gif on my index.htm page is from that. I know I need to get rid of some of the images on that page. It is getting to be a download bear.
I got lonely at work yesterday in the empty pressroom and went upstairs where I knew another guy was working in the empty office. H. and I are old friends. We met working here at J & D Printing in '88. He used to run duplicators while I ran the KORD. We spent many a 12 hours day printing and whining together. When I left in '92 for greener pastures, he took over my KORD and ran it until I came back as an unemployed, hungry wannabe artist in '97. At that time he was kind of a floater; moving between his new job upstairs in the office as an estimator, the KORD, and the duplicator depending on what was hot. Now that they hired a full time duplicator guy and me, the swing press floater, he is strictly estimating. Back in the day, we used to play on the company volleyball team which I captained. He and his wife are good fun. We had a nice break together beating up the printing industry and life in general. I plan to go bike riding on the hills around here today with Sue. I am looking at a full day of homework and dreading it. Working on or writing in this web site is a luxury I just can't afford.
This first week back after the holiday break has been tough. Although I felt a little less jet-lagged everyday, it was no picnic. I almost fell asleep at the wheel yesterday driving home. Instead of a long poorly written entry here I am enclosing an email I wrote to an ill classmate at school. It illustrates a typical day in web design class:
Hi G,
That must be a vicious bug. I always get a flu shot but I must admit I
have had a runny nose since Christmas.
Today N. gave us a big lecture on how to do selections on the Mr.
Potato head assignment. If you got your Photoshop in the mail, mr potato is
in the tutorial section. Among the tips she gave us on selections were:
1. Shortcuts V=move tool
2. X=switch black for white in the color mask mode
3. ctl+J =copy selection and put on new layer
She had us working with her favorite selection tool, the select/color
range menu to select the melon/potato then blowing it up to the pixel level
and editing it with the quick mask mode using paintbrush tools and the "X"
shortcut key to go from painting with black or white depending on whether we
were adding or subracting to the selection.
We skipped the resume class and did photoshop instead. So our assignment
from nancy is to do mr potatoe head at the pixel level, no firm due date
yet.
She also demonstrated transparent gifs and assigned pages 35 to 80 in
"photoshop for the web" for next week.
N. teaches animation on friday. It appears that we don't have J. at
all this quarter.
Now remember, if I get sick, you owe me a couple emails :)
Your geeky classmate,
Mark
I have a new class called Communications 108. I thought it was going to be a waste of my time but I am beginning to enjoy it, despite the poorly written textbook. The instructor is a character from another era. He taught construction at the college for almost 30 years with a degree in communications before switching to this class. His class appears to be based on the premise that despite email, cell phones, faxes and pagers, face to face communication skills and public speaking are the most vital skills an employee can have. Our first assignment is to spend five minutes introducing our "study buddy" who we were allowed to pick yesterday.
He had us all stand up and pick a partner from a room full of strangers. We weren't allowed to sit down until we had a partner. On looking around me I saw 4 fat guys, a punk rocker and a cute blond. You can guess which one I picked. We had to interview each other in order to start building our speeches due in a week and a half. She is a service advisor for Ford retraining as an environmental science worker or something. I had never heard of the field. The most interesting thing I have learned so far about her is her history as a rodeo rider. Time to go to school. It is nice being back in school. Work alone is boring.
We went cross country skiing today at Paradise, Mt. Rainier. Although getting the whole family to go together was like pulling teeth, once we all got up on the snow it was fun. Froze our butts off up there...It was 20 degrees Fahrenheit with a stiff wind blowing. We found a friendly hill on the lee side where we could carve some fresh tracks. I did a classic head plant and even Sue had fun, whooping and hollering louder than the kids in the fast downhill trails. The gate to the Park didn't open until 1 PM so we were the first skiers on our favorite meadow. I had forgotten how much work it was to break trail in 2 feet of new snow. Still it was lovely to get away from the house and this computer.
My computer woke up just fine this first morning of the new millennium. We all went to bed around 10:30 last night. I woke up briefly at midnight to the sounds of my neighbors fireworks. This head cold has put a damper on my enthusiasm for celebration. Ordinarily I refuse to watch tv but last night I sat and watched the ball go down in New York for the last 10 minutes. It was only about 9 PM our time. That was a good lesson in the concept since I had never paid much attention to time zones before. I've only been out of this time zone once and that was a brief car trip to Alabama in 1972. I've never had the need to fly on a plane before to far away places although I hope to some day. When we used to go climbing in the high desert in California at Christmas we drove straight through in 26 hours. People who fly have money to burn.
The whole concept of keeping time is such an arbitrary thing anyway. Yesterday I was thinking about y2k while gazing at the bark on a 14 inch diameter fir tree in my backyard. Fir bark is a good half inch thick and runs with cracks filled with pitch and moss. That tree has no concept of time. Somewhere in its genetic code it knows that warm weather is the time to grow new sprouts but beyond that...The tree doesn't know or care that someone named Jesus Christ lived and died 2000 years ago.
I spent a big part of yesterday working on a 3 foot square framework of pipe that I plan to hang from the bike rack on the rear of our minivan. I could buy the ski attachment but it costs $200 and my framework of iron plumbing pipe cost $40. The elimination of rain gutters on modern cars has made life difficult for those of us with outdoor lifestyles who carry skis and bikes with us when we travel. I am making good progress changing over to day shift. This morning I got up at 8 am. By Monday I should be up at 6 in time to get to school by 8 AM.
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