And now...

... for something completely different. I think my last entry ended with a 'ho hum', nothing much going on. Of course, that's just asking for it, I suppose. Tempting fate to step in and shake things up to make sure you're paying attention, if you believe in that sort of thing, which, in fact, I don't.

   And so it is that this week I'm uprooted and more or less tossed out on my ear from home and hearth by a sudden turn of events, unexpected if not wholly new to my experience. I've said I'll call a chapter in my autobiography 'Fun with Dick and Jane(and Jane's Other Head)'. Subtitled 'Adventures in Manic Depressive Living'. Funny, right? Only in the movies, my friend, because in real life, in real time, it's no laughing matter.

   Long story short- I know, I can run on about nothing for four paragraphs and now I'm gonna cut this short?!? -it's a weird, weird place when you're loading guitars one day*- gingerly removing them from the wrecked centre of your little hobby universe -and cramming the rest of your worldly goods, clothing and playthings into boxes and bags the next and beating a slipshod retreat from the place and, more to the point, the person who, all things being normal, ought to be a refuge from the cold, cold world at large.

   So this week I'm still setting up camp, home away from erstwhile home. The upside: cable TV, a pastoral setting with chickens, cats and a dog, private shower, nobody to worry about waking when you gotta go at 3 am. On the other hand, who wants to get to be forty-odd years and be making a two-room basement apartment at their mom's 'Home Sweet Home'? Another cinematic convention that ain't so hilarious in real life... Other minuses, beside the obvious removal of connubial and familial bliss: cramped quarters, change-of-address for every business and personal contact(who also need a condensed version of just why you're decamped at the old address), dog and cat hair, dust and cold in the unheated, cluttered garage bay that will have to serve as the 'rubber room', the toy lab, for the time being. And nobody to worry about waking when you gotta go at 3 am.

   I should qualify the experience by saying that I've really been 'homeless' before, after a fashion anyway. I spent more than one night with no fixed address late one spring/early summerat school bumming sleep here and there with friends and acquaintances or my art department studio**- and at least one night hanging around/sleeping/sitting on a park bench -when my part-time job played out and the rented room I called home became too costly for my beggarly means and I was too prideful, embarrassed and stupid to appeal to my folks for monetary aid.

   And now... On to the footnotes!

 *The guitar count has improved by one- an inexpensive Chinese acoustic model called a Copley. I went into Tuesday Morning looking for GI Joe sets a fellow collector espied previously and instead came out with this guitar. For a measly ticket it came with a stand, a nice hard case, tuner(I can't tune by ear to save my life!), two extra sets of strings, the whole ball of wax. And it has a nice, crisp sound, good looking binding and inlays, sealed tuners and the intonation was good right out of the box. Only the second new guitar I've owned; it now needs a new tuning gear in the aftermath of 'The Great Toyroom Upset of 2006'.

   **At least when an especially vigilant painting professor- a man wary of would-be illustrators versus 'real' artists, meaning people with little or no real rendering ability but excellent intellectual art skills -wasn't haunting the place hoping to oust such flagrant scofflaws. I'll tell you, the man could not see fifteen feet across the room to call you by name in his class but he could drive by at ten-thirty at night and see lights burning in the fourth floor of the building... and he had the time and wherewithal to clump up the stairs and escort me out by the arm and check every door in the place that might have been propped open in preparation for such an eventuality before calling security and assuring their due vigilance for the remainder of the night.

Skin

   ...in behalf of skin' I read from the book of Job last night at a public forum. Funny how reading aloud like that is one of my favorite things. Still slightly nerve-wracking, of course, but not mortifying like giving that bird report in the second grade. This particular passage offered the opportunity to read several 'voices' as quotes were made, give a little inflection to make it something more than a 'dry' reading. No place for cartoonish, over-the-top characterizations like it was a Hanna-Barbera show but still enough to keep it interesting. Interestingly enough, one of the high school theatre productions for which I designed poster art was a play entitled simply 'J.B.', a modern day parable of the same book set in a traveling circus. I confess, I don't remember much about it, the poster or the production.

   But, more to the point, I gave up a little skin this week to the dermatologist. A little speedy application of liquid nitrogen- I made the requisite joke- always try to put the professionals at ease... -about having seen The Terminator and my face cracking and crumbling apart -and >zing!< gone is an irritating little skin lesion that refused to go away on it's own. Fifteen minutes with a physician's assistant, that quick assessment , spritz and I'm out of pocket over two hundred clams. Ouch! Well, I guess it's better than letting it go and finding out it's advanced to something not so easily treated down the road.

    In other news, we made a road trip to Root's Farm Market in East Petersburg PA last week, fun, fun. They have all the fresh foods and baked goods and so forth you could want plus a coupla buildings with flea market offerings and a livestock auction every Tuesday. Stocked up on whoopie pies from Bird-In-Hand Bakery, had a little microwaved lo mein and egg roll and gawked at the people and stuff.

    Saturday morning was another trip to Lancaster with me Mum and my family for a memorial service for a family friend. We didn't see Wayne often since my family moved back to York county more than twenty years ago but his influence and example was still keenly remembered and will be sadly missed nonetheless.

   Not much else is new or worth reporting at least. Ho hum...

'A' is for Alvin

    I kid, it's just a hat, not a mongram. I confess, I don't know Abercrombie from Fitch, that hat came from a yard sale bin, more than likely. But it's wearing nicely with the fringe of the brim getting ragged and stringy and I find it more attractive every day. I don't know what it is about the aging of fabric that grabs me, must be a holdover from the seventies and those ragged hippie fashions. I was a neat boy, by my mother's account anyway, kept my room clean and straight with everything in it's place and hated to wear clothing with any dirt, defect or discoloration. That changed somewhere along the way; in my twenties my favorite attire was what my future wyfe and I dubbed the 'miracle jeans'. In other words, it was a miracle they stayed together with all the raggedy holes, rips and patches at the knees and... well, just everywhere. It was the Van Halen influence at work there, I'm sure. I wouldn't go so far as leather chaps but torn jeans I could get away with that. Today I'd just as soon lounge around the house in my oldest pair of sweats- cutoff at the ankles(I just couldn't take the clinging elastic any longer!)and daubed with multicolored latex in the best Jackson Pollack tradition while plying my homespun toycraft. I've threatened more than once to cut out the top of the legs, frame them and call it 'art' but I just can't bring myself to part with them as clothing yet. Maybe if I got the right offer. Seinfeld says wearing sweats is like saying 'I just don't care anymore...!' But, hey, inside the house, why not? I don't make a habit of wearing them to the store. Or to get my hair cut. To the mailbox maybe. And to cut the grass, sure.

   Speaking of hats, son boy got himself a nice cowboy topper from the local western wear emporium this week- a deep chocolatey brown with deep bows in the brim, the kind favored by all the noveau country singers, and a neat metal studded leather band. While we were at it, the wyfe talked me into getting one too. I have two already-  three if you count the straw hat, slightly western-ish, but more beachy -a well-used Hoss and a suede that I scrunched the crown down flat. But the new one is crisp and sharp, ash gray color with a deep crease in the crown, very old-school silent movie cowboy looking though not quite so tall as most of those guys wore. Thing is, I'm not accustomed to having a clean hat that I have to worry about soiling. So I was running around with me mum Friday while the Saturn was in the garage for new tires, alignment and a ball joint. She had some errands in town and picked up my sister and her boy for a doctor's appointment as well. But it was windy as anything and even though it's a great close fit, I lost the hat once in the WalMart parking lot. It went skidding off between the parked cars and I scuttled after it expecting to catch it sitting in a puddle of somebody's lost oil or antifreeze. Came away with just a little gravelly scrape on the front that wiped away easily enough. Next new hat'll have to have a chin strap!

   Oh, and the 'A' is for 'Alistaire'. No... not really....