What happens on October 8?

 It's a week until we go to Ireland for two weeks. I plan to visit the town of my ancesters though I have no idea if any of the distant relations are still there. If they are, will they be easy to find?

Eve of a significant birthday

 Yes, it's almost arrived: 70 years. I flatter myself that I don't look that old, but I probably do. One of my band mates told me I didn't, so I will assume he's being honest. 😄 I'm still in relatively good shape physically despite having a hip replacement a year ago. It just means I can't run races anymore, but the bad hip prevented me from doing it anyway. I'm doing cycling at the gym for my cardio and yoga to stretch my body out. But there is the inevitable decline that is coming. I look back 20 or 30 years, and it doesn't seem that long ago. With any luck, I will have at least 20 left. Unfortunately, at least 3 years will be with the abomination in the White House. 

I did finally use my accumulated frequent flyer miles as I noted in an earlier post but for a much lower reward that I had originally hoped. Since the pandemic, they have been devalued so instead of first class, I got economy plus. It was a nice trip though. I am hoping we can do a lot more traveling in the next few years. I have no desire to do a cruise, unless it's a music one, like the Little Steven's Underground Cruise. I'd have to convince someone to go with me.  Though who knows? I might enjoy one. I didn't want to go to Disney World when my kids did and had a really good time. I want to see Alaska and have read that a cruise is the best way. I enjoyed the Pacific Northwest when we visited Vancouver and Seattle a few years ago. Olympia National Park was beautiful but Forks was pretty dreadful. The B&B  in Forks was awful. We should have stayed in one of the lodges in the park.  

Got to post before I head off to my class: late Antiquity. 

May 21st

 was yesterday. It's interesting how people I haven't spoken to in several years can turn up in my dreams and we converse normally. I asked for updates on family and friends and I provided details on what I have been up to in the years since our last meeting. Some are people I'd expect and am glad to see. Others are obscure people from early in my work life that I really forgot about. Still, I enjoy dreams like that.

Been a long time

Wow, I didn't realize how long it has been since I posted here. Not that I expect that anyone is reading it. Still, life is good despite the days going by faster and faster. A month past the middle of my 68th year. I am enjoying not working. I spend much of my time playing and learning music. I am probably never going to be a virtuoso piano player or a highly skilled singer but I enjoy doing both. 

I still need to use all of my accumulated frequent flyer miles before they expire. I am not building them up anymore since I don't do much air travel. Ideally first class to Europe but with American devaluing them, I'll probably be lucky if I get economy plus. 

Still frequent dreams about work and the people with whom I worked. Some really obscure former coworkers even show up, along with regulars. I was watching the show Severance on Apple TV. The halls in the office complex reminded me a lot of walking in an academic department on a campus at 4 PM on a Friday. Lots of closed doors in a sterile building.  

The Swimmer

I just finished reading The Swimmer by John Cheever. It was published in the New Yorker in 1964 so they posted a link to it to coincide with the summer fiction issue. I saw the 1968 movie within the past year. It was on Turner Movie Classics so I DVR'd it.  It starred Burt Lancaster as Ned, the man who has decided to swim home from a friend's house via the swimming pools between the two points. It was definitely a period piece, a look into the life of an erstwhile successful man - "in the grey flannel suit"- as he encounters the pool owners along the way. I have been watching movies from the 60s and 70s recently out of nostalgia for the period. I was aware of them at the time but fifty years on, they seem foreign. I guess we thought we were very modern back then too.  There's no chance that I will be able to look back on today in fifty years. I am hoping that I can make twenty years.   

May 21

A month since my last post. Still playing music regularly although my jams with the retirees may have ended. I had a bit of a dispute with the drummer who organized it. I have also stopped running because I need to have some tests to make sure that my heart is healthy. I have no symptoms so I am hoping that I will be back to it again soon.  

Mortality

Again, it's been awhile since I posted. I received a notice from Google saying one of my posts from 2012 now has a content warning. I can't figure out why as it was just something related to Breaking Bad. 

I am still enjoying retirement. I am not one of those people who say that I am busier now than when I was working. I am not but I still have a routine that I follow so that I am not sitting around bored. I'm still running, exercising and playing music, all of which I find very rewarding. 

I had a call last week from an old work colleague telling me that a former boss had died of brain cancer. He was quite young, or at least in relation to my age. I was somewhat resentful when he was hired because I was interested in the job he got. Still, he was decent and didn't overmanage me. He even bought tickets for the two of us to see the Pogues in NYC. In the end, he couldn't make it so I took my son. It was an excellent show. 

I now read the obituaries regularly. I find it encouraging when the deceased have died in their 90s as that is still a good twenty years or so from where I am now. Though, twenty years ago doesn't seem that long ago. I was reading them while visiting my old home town and saw an old high school acquaintance died. He was the driver when a good friend of mine died in a car accident. We had been out bar hopping and I think we were pretty drunk. I was tired so they dropped me off at home. Right after that, they crashed the car on a country road. The friend was thrown through the windshield and died. I don't know if it was instantly but I got a call with the upsetting news the next morning. It looked from the obit that the driver never married or had kids as he was described as a "great uncle" and seemed to be very involved with religion. I wonder whether the crash caused him to change his life because he was a bit of a wild man before that. I didn't see any of that crowd again after the funeral. 

Story So Far

Wow, time flies. I didn't realize that it has been three months since I posted here. Thinking as another new year starts, I recall that in the first week in January from 1985 through 2019, I'd be at a resort (Camelback Inn 😄) in a warm location, catching up with good friends and generally having a good time. Oh yeah, and doing work too. 

This year I was at the national meeting of American historians. I strolled through the exhibits, wondering if I'd meet any one from my life in publishing. It was mostly university presses. The big commercial ones have given up on attending, so no one looked familiar. The sessions were interesting though they impressed on me how much I am not an academic. I thought I'd want to teach upon retiring but I just don't feel like I know enough. Sure, it's more than the students but I just wouldn't want to do the prep necessary to teach a course. 

So instead I run and practice piano three times a day. I met my goal of running or walking 316 times in 2022. I ended up doing 322 days and 980 miles. I am getting better on piano and playing in two different bands, which is enjoyable. I love playing and singing.

Happy Birthday...

 John Lennon. Though it is most unfortunate that he is not around to celebrate it. I am not sure if he'd still be making good music. Paul is making stuff that is just okay. If his reputation was based on his post-1980 output or stuff after John was murdered, no one would know him. But I guess you can say that about a lot of the musicians from the 60s.  The Rolling Stones are just an oldies act now. Looking at their set list, there is nothing after the "Some Girls" album. 

Two-thirds of a century old

 It's scary to think about that but nothing I can do except enjoy life for as long as I can. I was reminded today that October 8 would have been John Lennon's 82nd birthday. There will be a memorial at Strawberry Fields in Central Park.  I haven't been to New York City since January 2020 so doubt if I will get there for it. 

Long time , no writing!

Wow, I didn't realize that it had been so long since I had written anything. I am still enjoying my permanent vacation which has been six months so far. I think I have abandoned my old plan to teach history classes as an adjunct at a community college. That was originally my motivation for getting a masters degree in history. I guess I don't want to have to do the preparation that I'd need to do in order to teach a course. There are also times when I think that I don't know enough about specific eras so that I could teach. But then again, I will certainly know a lot more than the students.  I am just enjoying doing things at my own pace so spending the time teaching is less appealing. It is a nice feeling telling recruiters that I have no desire to talk and unsubscribing from LinkedIn updates. I still have work dreams or at least dreams that include people I worked with: them and whether Cristiano Ronaldo is transfering from Manchester United.

Band is going well. In fact we are playing our first gig this coming Friday. Whether we will find any more in the future is questionable as 60s music has a limited audience. Most people who like it are dead or not going out to bars anymore. 

Off to practice piano! Kumbaya, here I come.

Permanent Vacation

 ...is what it feels like. It is also getting used to not having anything especially pressing to do each day. I am waking up fifteen minutes later so that I am not on the same schedule I was before. So instead I get the NY Times read before lunch, do an early afternoon run or walk and play my guitar guilt-free. I recently retweeted a post about pre-industrial societies spending a large percentage of their time doing nothing so I guess I shouldn't worry.

I still need to come to terms with the fact that physically I am starting to diminish. For example, I was able to run my three mile circuit around town at an under 9 minute mile pace. Now I am at a 10 minute-plus pace. I will attribute it to not having run at all in the early days of the pandemic when my arthritic hip was bothering me. At least I am back running pain-free. I am actually thinking that I could do another half marathon with some good training. Still my long term goal of running a Boston Marathon qualifying time will probably never be achieved. It is 4:05 for my age group and there is no longer a half marathon qualifying time.

The countdown began

 a couple years ago but now I am finished tomorrow. Plans to go to England on the company dime fell through because of the pandemic so we're going to LA instead. It should be nice and relaxing though I was hoping for warmer weather during the trip. Still 60s is better than 40s. I  haven't trashed all obsolete work-related stuff but I will have plenty of time to do that now. Now I can also spend my time practicing guitar. I have a major decision to make. Do I buy a fuzz pedal or will my overdrive pedal suffice for the music I play? Unfortunately, the audience for 60's stuff is either dying or doesn't go out to hear music anymore. Most of the musicians my age are 70s classic rockers which is of no interest to me. I was listening to glam, punk and new wave in the 70s, none of which had much traction in the US. Someone got me a Rock Snob's Dictionary several years ago and I proudly wore that badge. I have been out of touch with music scenes for so long that it probably doesn't apply to me anymore. My present band is fun but the songs they suggest are the more obvious ones. I prefer the so-called "deeper cuts."  I always felt that there were enough lesser known good songs that there wasn't a need to write your own material. My model is the Detroit Cobras who did only covers but they were intelligently selected. Sadly the lead singer died earlier this year. 

Back to running

 It took me awhile to get back to regular running. What I thought was just muscular pain turned out to be an arthritic hip. (The ravages of old age!) The main issue now is running for the entire duration of the route. I will run for a few minutes then walk for 20-30 seconds. I end up doing miles between 10 and 11 minutes which is about 2 minutes slower than 3 years ago when I was training for races. I actually think that I could do a half marathon as a run-walk though I don't know how satisfying it would be to finish in the bottom half of my age group. I did a 5K turkey trot this past Thanksgiving. My first mile was 8:57 but then I slowed down for the remainder of the race. I was in the top half which I guess wasn't too terrible.

Off ramp

which sounds ominous but it isn't. I would write "end of the road" if it was that. It's kind of slow at work so I am using the time to sort through and trash old stuff I don't need anymore. Thirty eight years is a long time as is eighteen years. Add that to my present age and I am getting up there. I am also planning to use up all of my vacation before I go.

I am finally going to play with a band. This one is British Invasion but the members seem to be at least twenty years younger than me so weren't alive when the actual invasion happened. I hope it is better than the Beatles tribute band from October which included an anti-vaxxer. My enthusiasm dropped immediately when he said he had natural antibodies. I resisted leaving but immediately put on my mask which made singing a little difficult. If it doesn't work out I will keep looking. 

Curb

I am really glad that Curb Your Enthusiasm is back for another season. I have to say that I wasn't familiar with it back when it started. I had a few co-workers who really liked it and would laugh together about the various episodes they had seen. I never subscribed to HBO back then so, in addition to missing CYE, I never saw The Sopranos and The Wire when they were first shown. I caught up with both of them eventually. But I didn't really watch all of CYE until I was unemployed for a year in 2013. It was instead of sending out resumes and polishing my LinkedIn account. It was a nice distraction and better than the profoundly depressing In the Air, which I also watched during my year long sabbatical. That was also recommended by a colleague. 

(Previewed this post and really need to update my profile.)

Spirit of '67 by Paul Revere and the Raiders

This band actually had a lot of good songs, especially on this album. I really like Louise and would enjoy doing it in a band if I ever had the opportunity. Unfortunately, my band prospects have dissipated. I passed on one band because one of the players was unvaccinated and was dismissive when he was asked his status. The other one looks to be defunct as another one of the band members has retired and is moving south.

Guitar Tabbing site

Something for me to do when I retire soon: upload guitar tabs to tabbing. Most songs are already done but I did find a few that were not available or incomplete including this cool one by the Pretty Things Walking Through My Dreams from their great album S.F. Sorrow. 

I added the chords for the instrumental break in the middle. Of course, there are like 5 people in the world who have any interest in this song but it is still a good one.

 

Maybe a Band (or three)

 I am still desperate to play music again. I actually have a couple of prospects. One is in a cover band local to my town. They have been together for probably 20 years and are all my age or older. Their guitarist retired and moved away so they need a replacement. It might not come through as they are auditioning other players before me. When I have auditioned players for other bands, if we found someone we liked we usually just admitted him on the spot and dispensed with the other candidates. I am at least #2 in line so it may not happen.

The other is a Beatles tribute band that is forming. That is probably a little more sure as the guy forming it has been very encouraging. Who knows if we will play anywhere if we do form? I asked whether he'd want to do other stuff from the era but he was adamant that it was only Beatles. It's not "boots and suits" which is good because old guys in Beatle boots and wigs is kind of ridiculous.

Finally there is my Buzzcocks tribute band. I placed an ad on Craig's List for musicians who'd like to play their album Singles Going Steady. It's been about a month and I have had 4 responses. I may email the responders to see if they are still interested. I have no illusions that this band would actually play more than once or twice a year at some 70's/80's punk or new wave event. 

Here's a song about dreams by them.

Clearing out stuff

I have come to the realization that I need to start clearing out all of the stuff from my work history that I have been accumulating. What is the point of saving plaques or awards honoring me for my sales performances from thirty years ago and later? Right now they are just sitting on the top of my bookshelf gathering dust. I don't plan to create a wall of fame to hang them on. I was mildly displeased when I received another one in the mail for last year. They could have saved the money. I remember interviewing someone for a sales position who brought along a "brag bag" stuffed with his awards to show me. He wasn't hired. I suppose I should just dump them in the trash now in advance of moving or to save my heirs the chore of disposing them.