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Post by AlanC on Jul 12, 2018 20:14:31 GMT -5
Melva had it done last year. A lot of dread and worry before the first one, then after a few days of healing she was champing at the bit to get the second one done. One eye for distance and one eye for close, and she's been thrilled to not wear glasses after fifty years of coke bottles. I have been doing some major dithering about this exact thing. I have had different contacts for many years. One is for close up and one for distance. I had always thought that I could have my upcoming cataract surgery be the same. The reason for my contacts being like that was so that I could work on my computer. They worked well for that. But then I thought that since I don't put in the long hours in front of the screen like I used to that maybe I should just go for distance and use WalMart cheaters for working. I need a grown-up to tell me what to do.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 12, 2018 20:04:48 GMT -5
OK, my friend. I think I can relate. I hit bottom about 3 years ago right after convincing my daughter to come run the company. First thing she found out was that I was some $250,000 in debt. This includes tax debts, lines of credit, company credit card debt, yadda yadda yadda. This is AFTER selling our home and office at fire sale prices many tens of thousands of dollars less than I paid. Bad choices? I'm a poster boy. It wasn't all bad choices although the some of it was.
Sometimes shit just happens. Somewhere there is a potter with wayy less talent than you that is sitting pretty. Why? Hell if I know. Sometimes people just get lucky and hit it at the right time. Other, smarter, harder working people roll snake eyes.
I plowed whatever pittance we had saved for retirement to keep the doors open just to find out that I was a quarter million dollars in debt. Talk about a hit to my self esteem. What a moron! Stupid, shortsighted, snakebit, unlucky, dumbass, you-name-it.
Might you lose your house? It sucks- I know. The house we raised our kids in had to go. Imagine the worst, come to terms with it and try to design a new life for you and Dar. Has your gross sales been relatively steady for the last few years or has it taken a sudden drop? What would it take to get your overhead below income? I had to shed houses, offices, locations, people, and the type of surveying I did. It took a while but I drastically reduced overhead below our income and changed the type of clients and work we did. It sucked.
What would it take for you to do that?
I might not be helping at all but if you and Dar are healthy, things are not desperate. Something can be done. It will be painful but there is an answer somewhere, somehow. I hope you guys can find it. I also hope you and her are on or can get on the same page. Our hard times and upheaval didn't hurt our relationship. It made it stronger. Our saying is something along the lines of: "Just me and you- that's all we know".
I wish I could help. I really do.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 11, 2018 12:27:59 GMT -5
Check out Beaumont Rag. It is not as well known as the others but a little more complex than most of the standards with some cross picking and interesting twists. I wish I could have mastered it.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 11, 2018 7:32:42 GMT -5
If Faithful Wife still had her subscription to Woman's World, I bet they would have known. They were uncanny.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 11, 2018 7:28:53 GMT -5
I won't be home till Thursday and if you don't have what you need by then I did find a stack of tabs for flatpicking songs. They were made by a friend of Jerry and I who died several years back. His name was Carl and he was a player. It had a cassette that went with it where he would play and explain the song and give details on cross picking and other techniques. I can never think of songs without a list (CRS Syndrome). Arkansas Traveler, Flop Eared Mule, Blackberry Blossom, Old Joe Clark, Angeline the Baker, Beaumont Rag, Whiskey Before Breakfast, Black Mountain Rag, St. Anne's Reel. Those are some that I used to try to play. I never made it to chump status. Flatpicking is hard.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 10, 2018 7:21:46 GMT -5
The current batch of USGS topo maps omit a lot of human-made features. In the environmental biz, the whereabouts of gravel pits, oil wells, large farming operations, and urbanized areas are relevant to assessing environmental risks, and what used to be there is often more important than what is there now. A couple of years ago I talked with one of the last remaining USGS employees tasked with creating topo maps. He and I both lamented the passing of paper topo maps. Our conversation involved a single lake elevation on an older topo map that was extremely relevant to my client's mining operation. Those guys were rock stars! I am in awe of all the cartographers who have mapped the world. In my office I had a large reproduction of the map made from the notes from the Lewis and Clark expedition.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 6, 2018 10:51:09 GMT -5
Whaaa? He never cleaned it? That alters my memory of Doug significantly. That's like a guy that plays the same dead strings for decades. Geeze! Really? I don't know why that surprises me but it does.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 6, 2018 10:22:03 GMT -5
Marty, I love those little cowboy guns. My brother in law has one that I used to shoot all the time.
Rob, that is about the year of mine but it didn't have the engraving on it.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 6, 2018 10:04:04 GMT -5
I bought strings and put them on my D18 and this old Yamaha beater that Jerry gave me a decade or so ago. Then I thought- what now? I can't go the bluegrass route again. I tried and failed when I was much younger. Flatpicking comes at a glacial place and leaves like a 747. I don't have enough years left to make it to chump status. So what the heck am I going to do? What is the point? I would love to be Bethany's sideman but she is a flight attendant with a crazy schedule.
my music book with everything Jerry and I used to do laid around underfoot for years and the last few months of downsizing and moving into a 5th wheel has caused it to drop down the rabbit hole so I didn't have one sheet of music to pull out.So just to have something to "play" I started thinking and poking around. What to do, what to do?
The only music that my inner eye could see me doing was mostly '80s and '90s Country music with a sprinkling of older and new songs. Mostly easy cowboy chords with a minor or two- maybe.
So until something else comes along this is what I have downloaded to work on: 500 Miles from home (Bobby Bare) Blue ain't your color (Keith Urban) Blue side of the mountain (Chris Stapleton) Broken Halos (Chris Stapleton) Blue Sky (Allmans) Chiseled in Stone (Vern Gosdin) Heaven Sent (Chris Stapleton) Help me hold on (Travis Tritt) Here in the real world (Alan Jackson) He's got you (Brooks & Dun) Killing Time (Clint Black) Melissa (Allmans) Nobody's Home (Clint Black) Old Flame (Alabama) Please call home (Allmans) Traveller (Chris Stapleton) Whenever you come around (Vince Gill) Momma don't forget to pray for me (Diamond Rio) You put the hurt on me (Chris Stapleton) 21 Summer (Brothers Osborne)
I don't know if I can do some of these but I guess I will try.
I also got some stuff for Bethany but other than some Brandi Carlisle stuff she hasn't told me what she wants to do.
My fingers are coming along but the voice is really rough. I know we are not a good judge of what we sound like but I'm pretty sure I have lost a ton of range. I don't know if it comes back- hope so.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 6, 2018 9:26:40 GMT -5
This brings up unpleasant memories. Unpleasant because I was stupid. I had just started playing and was enamored of all things guitar. Picayune is not a mecca of commerce and the only guitars in town were hanging on the walls of local pawnshops. I coveted a twelve string hanging in one of them: no name - a mongrel.
I didn't have any money but I did have something from my last obsession: A stainless steel Ruger super single six .22 with the extra .22 magnum cylinder. I didn't like the trigger pull (lots and lots of creep if you are a shooter). So I traded with him. Stupid, stupid, stupid. What a POS guitar! A gunsmith could have fixed the trigger in about 10 minutes. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
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Post by AlanC on Jul 5, 2018 14:47:11 GMT -5
We didn’t get the flying cars they promised us when we were kids. Why in hell should they get to nap on the way to work?
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Post by AlanC on Jul 4, 2018 19:11:36 GMT -5
I just saw this, my friend. I hope your brother recovers fully.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 4, 2018 9:24:49 GMT -5
I forgot about Sam Bush at the Iridium Club in NYC. He was playing there with an ad hoc group of jazz guys. Baby Dottir did very well in High School getting college scholarships and stuff and we as had gubment contracts (which is very much like free money) we spent several days taking her to Broadway shows. I was reading one of those "What's Happening Around Town" guides in the bathroom and saw a small ad for "Sam Bush and yadda yadda yadda at the Iridium Club tonight". Holy cow, that is right down the skreet! Faithful Wife would have no part of it but Baby Dottir is more adventurous so we went down said skreet and found the small doorway that led down into the basement. After we ate what they put before us Sam and some other guys came out and played a hodge podge of Jazz and something or other but it was all good. Afterward we chatted with him and his wife (I didn't ask). Very, very nice man. He seemed interested in what would get an obviously out-of-place Mississippi Mushmouth out of the mud to come to NYC.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 3, 2018 14:25:18 GMT -5
Cool stories, Grampa Billy. I am afraid I gushed at Doc Watson but was a bit cooler talking to Jerry.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 3, 2018 12:52:34 GMT -5
I have shaken hands and passed pleasantries with Doc Watson and Jerry Douglas. I don't know that I would walk across the street to meet any other "celebrity". All others are kinda "meh" after them.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 2, 2018 15:41:43 GMT -5
That is so cool. Thanks
Also more recently found in a cave I read that they located the soccer team. Now to get them out. Wonder if any of them will ever venture into a cave again?
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Post by AlanC on Jul 2, 2018 8:37:58 GMT -5
Finished my outside work before it got hotter. It can't get any more humid. Below is a pic of our home taken as we were leaving a local water park. Still learning about living in an RV. We haven't been on any extended trips yet as we were limited to two weeks at a time due to FW's mother being in a nursing home and needing regular visits else she really looses (for Doug) ground. If Lisa doesn't regularly engage her in conversation she will drift off into la la land and get totally out there. Now that Baby Dottir is a Jet Blue flight attendant, we can fly for free. So, hopefully, this fall (after IJam) we will take an extended trip somewhere out West. I will hold down the fort baby sitting Lisa's aggravating dog and possibly Baby Dottir's dog while she flies home for a week or so with her mom. I think I could hold out for a week or two if I were in a low cost (with my old timer's park card) state park somewhere in Montana or Idaho with a nice view of the mountains. I might get homesick for scrubby ass Loblolly pines, flat land, swamps, bugs, humidity.... but I doubt it.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 1, 2018 22:46:04 GMT -5
I found that the info I gleaned from people on RV forums was waay more reliable than what I got from RV and truck salesmen who are supposed to know. I’m talking safety info about gross allowable weights, tires, how much truck to buy etc. We have avoided many a pitfall and learned a tremendous amount about full time RV living from Internet forums.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 1, 2018 16:27:26 GMT -5
Report: Actions: I bought strings (Elixr lights), I googled chords for The Story, Cannonball, Different Drum, 500 miles from home, made PDFs, and played till fingers hurt bad.
Learned: After 5 years or so of not playing, one has no calluses left. I remembered chords better than I thought I would. I have developed Arthur-itis in the second joint of my left hand index finger- it kinda hurts a little when I play. My singing voice is in worse shape than my guitar playing. I worked on the harmony for "Cannonball" and it was difficult. But... if I practice I think I can get it.
If we could get some practice time I think Bethany would give the Sat night audience a real treat. The girl has a good voice. She is not quite Brandi but Vinton will not know that.
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Post by AlanC on Jul 1, 2018 10:03:27 GMT -5
That was a really cool post. Thanks
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