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Sorry, we did not post last night. We were enjoying a family evening and celebrating the holidays. Ryan and Kristin are headed off to Colorado and we leave for Utah in just few days. So we had our Christmas, last night.
We were honored to share the evening with Ellen, my trusted executive admin. It was a nice night and we are all truly blessed.
During the weekend, I noticed that although I am busier than ever, I am noticing "The Voices" again.
For long time readers, you may know that I have assigned voices to all animate and inanimate things in our home. Garbage cans, dish towels, dishes, pools, empty soft drink containers, literally everything in the house has a voice.
You see for years I was correctly accused of ignoring everything in the house and being oblivious to what needs to be done. My approach to righting that wrong was to assign voices to all object everywhere.
At first it was amazingly overwhelming. I would walk in the house, and the cleaning towels would yell "Fold me, fold me." Then the full dishwasher would yell, "Empty me, Empty me." (In animate objects are not much for conversation, they just yell what is on their mind.) Then the dog's water bowl would yell, "Fill me, Fill Me!" (That voice sounds like Michael J. Fox in the lost dog movies.) The stack of mail would yell "Sort Me Sort Me" (Lilly Tomlin if you were wondering, but classic Lilly Tomlin with the phone operator snicker and accent.).
In a matter of minutes I would have 627 voices all screaming at me to do something. With the help of a therapist (Who wanted to co-write a book with me about the voices.), I learned how to manage the voices and use them develop meaningful effective task lists.
You see, I got to the point where even inanimate objects which I had no control over were yelling at me. There is a nice scrub oak tree out by the golf course near our home and it would yell, "Look at Me! Look at Me!" For crying out loud I would tell him (not sure about the gender?) "You are a scrub oak tree, what is the big deal?" I can't tell you what he yelled back. Let's just say scrub oaks have potty mouths.
Anyway after having the voices under control for several years and actually using them to be an effective partner in our marriage (Hope Devin is not reading this.) they kind of all went away when I retired.
Perhaps it was because I was busy with the buy out, or the set up of the portfolios, or just the change of pace of THINKING I would be able to look for things to do versus having thousands of voices vying for my attention.
Well, I noticed last week as I was getting ready to head out for my appointed rounds, there was a used make up sponge on the bathroom vanity yelling, "Throw me away! Throw me Away." Typically I ignore products that Devin is or was using because she always cleans up after herself, ALWAYS. (Just in case she is reading this one.)
So I ignored it and turned and a stack of dry cleaning was yelling "Put me in the bag! Put me in the bag!". I acquiesced and put him in the bag. Then between the closet and the bedroom, hundreds of voices were screaming and I did have the time to acknowledge their screams and satisfy their yearning.
Sorry, I had to take a break as there were some dog gunkers in the backyard yelling "Pick me up! Pick Me Up!"
If you build it . . .
In the movie Field Of Dreams circa 1989, Kevin Costner builds a baseball field and a bunch of early league dead players come to play on the field.
We are building a recording studio and maybe I can get a bunch of dead artist to come and play in my studio. Ironically, the first "professional" connection I had made is with Norbert Putman who along with Ronnie Tutt, James Burton, and I believe Glen Hardin will be touring Europe in January with Elvis Presley.
You see these guys "tour" with a jumbotron that shows Elvis from his, That's The Way It Is and Elvis On Tour documentaries and they play the music as they did from 1970-1977. I have Burton's attention and now Putman's attention and Norbert promised to talk to Tutt while on tour.
My plan is to have them all come out to do the ground breaking on my studio. Then when it is complete . . . Yes you got it. Elvis will come out of the corn field and say "Wassup baby? Oh my, my boy. Let's get real, real gone!" and the band will kick in and hundreds of thousands of people will line the streets of Rancho Santa Margarita to see the King once more.
Or I could lease an office to a lawyer and a realtor and make a couple of bucks that way.
Truth Is Stranger Than Fiction
Occasionally I run a cross news articles that are just too good to not share. As you know, NASA has been struggling with budget issues for several years.
Well, in theory they have had budget issues because this congress and this administration does not want to be bothered by a pesky thing like a budget so they have not submitted and ratified a budget in three years.
But the line items for the 2010 NASA budget totaled 18.7 billion dollars. With a 16.4 trillion dollar debt load and non working budget. (It would be cool to run that company wouldn't it?) 18.7 billion dollars would be comparable to deciding who was going to pay for the potato chips at lunch today.
So you are running NASA and you come up with this idea, to send two identical satellites racing to the lunar surface and crash. Seriously, they designed two identical lunar vehicles to drop for 43 miles off the surface of the moon and reach a velocity of 3,760 MPH (That is faster than you drive Douglas.) and smack into the face of the moon.
And let's call this project GRAIL Gravity Recovery And Interior Laboratory. They also dedicated a mountain near the crash site to Sally Ride the Astronaut. This only cost taxpayers 495 million dollars so it is not that painful.
But really. Have we got so good as sending stuff up in space that we have to intentionally crash not one but two vehicles into the face of the moon. My next clear night I am lookin' up there to see if there are pimples on the face of the moon.
The real funny thing was that scientist (Imagine being married to one of those scientists. "Honey, how was your day?" "Great we crashed two satellites into the face of the moon today?") were proud of their precision of crashing these two vehicles in a place that won't disturb any "historical sites".
It's the bloody moon for God's sake. What are we going to disturb a foil flag and some golf balls? I tell you I can't make this stuff up.
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Since 11/25/2012
