| 12-24-02
A Christmas Adventure
Where was the ladder, I wondered,
as I peered over over the edge of the roof, had it fallen
down to the deck? I leaned further and saw the lower steps
but not the platform at the top. By stepping right up to the
edge of the roof, I was finally able to see a piece of the
top step, the rest being under the gutter. I realized I had
positioned it poorly, it being my first trip up on the roof
in a couple years. Sue is our "official" roof cleaner
and goes up several times a year. I knelt on the edge and
cautiously lowered my foot over the gutter toward the platform
on the top of the step ladder. Jeez, this is dangerous, I
thought, remembering Gulten's husband last year, and his long
recuperation after breaking his back in a roof accident.
I retreated to the safety at the top
of the roof where I had been working on the antenna. Looking
around the neighborhood, I could see no one moving in the
nearby houses. A few kids were playing hide and seek a few
houses over. I could holler for them to go get their parents
who could re-position the ladder for me, but that would be
soooo embarrassing. Was it Shakespeare who said, "Pride
goeth before a fall"? I was looking at a big one.
I looked up the long driveway to the
culdesac, wondering when Sue and the kids would return from
shopping. It was the day before Christmas Eve and an early
return was unlikely. They'd probably be back before dark,
but it was only 3, and the clouds were threatening rain. I
walked back down and tried to ease my leg over the edge. I
felt my balance begin to slip and teetered dangerously. Forget
it! The ladder was simply to far under the eves.
Back up on the center of the roof
again I thought about how similar this felt to the panic attacks
I've had while rock climbing. Many times over the years I've
climbed into dangerous perches on cliffs, stances where the
next safe resting spot was out of site and retreat seemed
equally dangerous. I was always tied into the rope of course,
but the protection was usually 5 or more feet below and a
fall would be scary in the extreme. I can remember standing
frozen in place for close to an hour, trying to build up the
nerve to either climb up in the hopes that I'd find the missing
hold, or climb back down to the safety of the protection.
I'd always managed to overcome my fear eventually, but in
the back of my mind I knew the rope was there to catch me
if I fell. It might not catch me right away, but I would eventually
stop. Why hadn't I thought to bring a rope? I could have tied
it to the chimney.
But this wasn't a cliff, this was my simple old one story
house and I was acting like an old woman! Where was Sue anyway?
Why did that damn woman have to go shopping when she knew
I might work on the antenna? What if she had a car break down?
I couldn't answer the phone while stuck up on the roof. Our
next door neighbor's house was as quiet as a tomb. If only
Jeff would come back he'd help me in an instant. I could see
smoke coming out of the chimney of Sue's brother's house through
the trees, but no one was moving over there either. Damn!
I stretched out my legs, stuck my hands in the pockets of
my old army coat and settled in to wait for a rescue. No way
was I taking any chances.
An hour later I was still sitting
up there, waiting in vain for a rescue. It began to rain...I
watched the sand covered asphalt shingles change from nice
sticky walking to a slick, mossy nightmare. As my eyes wandered
around the empty neighborhood, I listened to the panic bubbling
in my mind. This is really high up here...I wonder if my old
ear problem is acting up...it'd be a hell of a thing to get
dizzy on a roof...I wonder if I could jump down into the flower
bed...doesn't look that high from the ground.
To hell with this, I thought and
crept cautiously back to the edge where the ladder waited
patiently. As I approached the edge, my knee gimped out, apparently
still sore from cross country skiing last weekend. Well, if
I couldn't walk, I could crawl. I got down on my rear and
crab walked down to the gutter. I felt a little more secure
sitting on the edge. By lowering my center of gravity I was
able to more easily stick a leg over the edge. Hey, there's
the ladder I thought, as my foot easily touched the middle
of the top platform. Never mind that you aren't supposed to
step there. It's supposed to be a place to set a bucket, but
hell, I was almost there. Rotating carefully around until
I was facing backwards, I leaned on my hands and eased my
other foot, and my weight down onto the ladder. Hell, any
monkey could do this I thought as I climbed easily to the
ground.
12-21-02
Cross country skied today with
Sue and Lisa. The kids used to be the slow ones, but now Lisa
is the big athlete in the family, thanks to soccer. We were
climbing up a hill at Paradise in 5 feet of snow and a near
white out. Sue was behind with Lisa in the lead. She was like
an engine up there, not slowing down even a little for the
steep hill. Her getting out ahead like that would not ordinarily
be a problem, except for the conditions. At 6000 feet, we
were skiing inside a cloud. Visibility was down to a short
city block and when she disappeared over the top of the hill
I began to worry. I've seen white outs up there so thick the
end of my skis were invisible. Lisa wasn't even carrying a
pack. We had all the emergency gear. When I caught up with
her I forced her to put a whistle around her neck so she could
at least call for help and sternly warned her to stay within
sight. It was nice to get out, but my knees are feeling weak
from the unusual motions. We've had worse "first days"
of the season. At least no one got hypothermia.
I did a bunch of work on the college
web site this week after teaching ended for the quarter. N
came over Thursday and we worked together for most of the
day, plowing through the to-do list until it was scraped clean.
Yesterday I worked on another small freelance project for
a client. Now that I've built the main one, people are beginning
to come to me for help with smaller web sites projects around
the college. As long as they pay me, I enjoy it. Web design
is a fun business, for a day job.
I've continued to draw out in the
garage several hours a day. Two of my students handed in final
drawings featuring crystal glasses, something I've never drawn.
But now, thanks to the gauntlet they've thrown down, I've
finished my first ever drawing of a crystal wine glass. It
has some issues, namely the refracted image of the table cloth
as it shows in the glass.
When I showed it to Sue she couldn't understand that the glass
was empty. She thought it was halfway filled with water and
wondered why the water line had a bend. When I showed her
the set up and pointed out how the bend in the gray area was
simply the glass bending the image of the tablecloth she still
argued that it looked like water. Somehow I failed to draw
that part well enough to be convincing. I put a blue marble
on the tablecloth behind the wineglass so it was only visible
through the glass and added another one out on the left. I'm
still not sure it convinces me, but it's time to move on.
My new set up features the same glass,
but this time in front of a simple backdrop of draped white
cloth without the backdrop of dark velvet. For balance I've
added the blue marble and the small white porcelain bulldog
featured in one of my earlier pencil still lifes. I've not
started drawing it yet, life intercedes, but it waits out
there for me...a drawing to be. As far as bang for the buck,
painting beats 'em all for a hobby. My total investment in
this drawing, which provided twenty hours of enjoyment is
two dollars...including the wineglass from the Goodwill, the
archival paper and the pencils.
12-15-02
Typing standing up is tricky,
but at least it eases the cramps in my gluteus maximus. I've
spent the last 5 hours sitting on a stool drawing a wine glass
in pencil. I am using my standard cardboard box with a spotlight.
I have the glass sitting on sheet near the edge of what looks
like a table. The sheet is dark in front as it drops down
away from the light. Behind the wine glass I have lined my
little box/stage with deep royal blue, almost black, velvet.
It's a dramatic environment and more fun to draw than a barrel
of monkeys. As is my want when drawing indoors, I've been
listening to a talking book, this time a story of growing
up in the deep South called "Cold Sassy Tree" by
Olive Ann Burns.
When I get a drawing like this going, and it's looking good,
all my cares drop away. It's just me, the paper and the pencils.
Nothing else matters. The beauty of the drawing sucks me in
like the call of a deep green pool on a blistering hot summer
day. With each stroke it gets better and better until I find
myself pausing and grinning in sheer astonishment at the creation
I've brought to life. I wish I could better express the joy
I get from drawing at this level. This is what I excel at.
Everything else is just a day job.
12-14-02
School's out. Need I say more?
I've been putting together a PowerPoint featuring my Drawing
students before and after work. Some of them made some amazing
progress from no skill at all, to completing attractive still
lifes. I'm sort of rebelling against unnecessary computer
time right now, so instead of writing a long entry I'll include
the text of a recent long email to my brother concerning the
new computer we talked dad into buying to replace the string
of old beaters he's been living with. Here's the email:
Hi John,
I went down and installed it after work on Thursday, getting
there around 6 and leaving at 9:30. He was a little under
the weather with a cold. Mom thought your book looked easy
to understand...wouldn't that be something if she took an
interest?
I encouraged him to take a class at the senior center, again.
Dell puts together a nice system. I like those big diagrams
in the boxes and the color coded plugs.
He asked me how many watts his nice new monitor used, since
his old one said 70 watts on the case, but I didn't have time
to find the specs. He is going to love that new printer (
HP5550) once he gets familiar with it and the ability to print
in color. It's very fast, and has some really cool blue laser
scanning lights, that examine the print head alignment on
the first sheet off after changing print heads, automatically
aligning the heads. At least I think that's what they did,
since we weren't asked to do it as I am on my 5 year old hp.
The heads are very easy to change, and I had him put them
in and out a few times so he understood it.
I also installed Publisher 98, and burned him a copy so he
can keep the cd in his CD/CD-RW in case he wants to access
the big clip art collection.
It came with Roxio Easy CD creator, or something like that.
Anyway, it is different than what I have (Nero). I am spoiled
here on my system where I have a CD drive, plus a separate
CD burner on different motherboard cables and can do on the
fly copies. He just has the one CD/CD-RW combo drive. In the
future I suppose I could put his old CD drive into the Dell
so he could do on the fly copies as well.
Not knowing the software, I burned him the publisher copy
by copying all the files to a folder, ejecting the publisher
CD, then putting in a re-writable CD and copying the files
onto the CD/RW drive using XP's built in burning software.
He didn't understand it, and I didn't even try to explain
it since it was getting late.
His email is working fine, and he got 76 new emails when we
first logged on. 5 were from his ISP, complaining about a
bouncing VISA card number, so he promised to call them up
soon with the corrected number before they discontinued his
service.
I told him about the excellent free junkmail filter I use:
http://www.mailwasher.net
but advised he wait a while until he feels comfortable before
installing more "confusing" software.
I put the hard drive from his old system into an old beater
here at the house last night and was able to recover his data.
I can't tell what was wrong with his old computer, might have
been his motherboard or power supply, but the hard drive was
fine.
I'll mail him the CD with his desktop folders (Nestucca, robins
and letters) today. They insisted on paying me for my time,
even though I told him I did it to save him the money. I guess
they know we are very poor right now and wanted to help out.
I hope he takes that class. With the exception of the book
project which was too long ago, he has never spent enough
time on computers to develop that easy familiarity we get
from living with them. Simple things for us like copying files
to a floppy are huge challenges for him. He has never gotten
to the point where he understands basic concepts like file
structure, and navigating around his folders from within Word
or...horrors, attaching a word doc to an email.
I have students like dad at college. They want written step
by step instructions for anything that is even the tiniest
bit non-intuitive. To them, computers are vast, unsolvable
mysteries like a monstrous Rubik's cube. They see how everyone
else is so incredibly far ahead of them...even 7 year old
kids...and decide computers are simply a mountain they can't
climb.
I was like that 5 years ago. The only solution for me was
to have a guru available as I bravely navigated the uncharted
waters. He can call me whenever he needs to, and now he can
call Dell also, so we'll have to wait and see.
School is out for three weeks. I get to spend my time maintaining
the college web site (nice hourly wage) and preparing to teach
my 4 classes next quarter. I'm teaching Flash, advanced Photoshop,
Presentation Design (PowerPoint) to the students as well as
teaching a Dreamweaver class to the faculty. That will be
different: teaching the teachers.
Thanks again for your help, and if you have a cell phone with
free long distance, you might call him to see how he's doing.
Rather than figuring out how to do stuff, he tends to simply
turn it off.
looks like snow in the mountains. Talk to you later,
Mark
12-7-02
Last night I went to a Christmas
party at the company
that laid me off a year ago. The room was swamped with revelers,
several coolers of beer were quickly emptied, and the noise
was impressive. They are slowly recovering from the dot com
bubble debacle. It's a testament to their integrity that they
are still in business when so many of their competitors are
gone. I seem to make my best friends on the job these days,
and I really enjoyed hanging out with them again and enjoying
the easy camaraderie that develops over time. I know them
all as hard working guys with a ton of talent and integrity,
and they feel the same way about me. D has finally found a
girlfriend and it was touching to see how close they were.
J, who also left the company was there with his lovely wife
and I had a nice talk with him about climbing. He took the
Tacoma Mountaineers course last spring and had some adventures
that reminded me of my time with that organization.
He's learned that speed is safety
in mountaineering, but is smart enough to realize the compromise
in safety inherent in moving quickly, i.e.: without a rope.
Unfortunately, the views on top of dangerous mountains are
indescribably beautiful, cameras can't even come close to
the experience of being there. It's an intoxicating environment,
and if I was his age, with those bullet proof knees of youth,
I would do it all over again.
This is finals week at school and
my workload has dropped way off. I was out so late last night
that I ate a bag of no salt chips on the drive home. There
was no dinner ready, so I drank two glasses of eggnog on top
of the chips. At 4 AM I woke up with an unhappy stomach and
hung out on the couch for a couple hours while my stomach
wrestled with the strange combination of food groups. As the
3 week school break approaches I am planning how I will spend
my time. I need to get up to speed on my next quarters classes,
two of which I've taught before, and I'd like to spend an
hour a day in PHP, and possibly some interface design. At
the party last night I was reminded again of how important
it is to learn a language. One of the employees there was
hired after me with similar skills, but held on to his job
because he chose an area of focus: ASP, that was more valuable
to the company than my area of focus: Interface Design.
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