The Friday Fives

1. What’s a skill you’d like to learn?
I am currently starting learn (relearn?) French

2. What’s a hobby you’d like to try?
I thought I would llike to get serious about anaglog photography and pull out my Nikon F3 and get real old school. I recnelty priced out a roll of Kodak black and white film. Sheesh 3mm film costs $30 or more a roll Wow. That maybe the reason that camera is sitting around in the closet.

3. What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received?
That I care about my employees.

4. What’s one way in which you are awesome?
My sense of humor.

5. What’s a gift you would like to receive (in case anyone asks)?
A nice Omega watch. My birthday is just right around the corner.

The Friday Fives

1. In an era of technology, what old-fashioned way of doing things do you refuse to give up?

Don’t know if it is a refuse to give up issue as much as a return to old-fashioned return but I am tough on watches and have ruined/broken/worn out about three smart watches (Motorola and two Fossils.) Recently I have returned to my analog Casio wristwatch – this thing is basically indestructible.

2. What is a good documentary that is not about serial killers?

I recently watched Grey Gardens (I think it is on Amazon) It is about a mother daughter eccentrics living in a run down mansion in the 70s – they are Bouvier’s and relatives of Jacki O. It is fascinating – you just stare and gape as the camera rolls.

3. What’s a song that makes your ears bleed?

I recently got into a bit of a social media kerfuffle when I declared my distaste for “The Doors.” I need not hear any more Doors music. I heard it all up to my ear holes between years living in dorms in college and the army and doing morning radio in college. I will leave the Doors for others to enjoy.

4. What is something that is always worth having in your medicine cabinet?

Nitroglycerine pills. I don’t need them much any more but when the angina hits you will want that shit close by.

5. What do you put in your salads, and what dressing do you use?

Bag of lettuce, cherry tomatoes and either Bleu Cheese or Caesar dressing.

The Friday Fives

1. What are you starting to hate as you get older?

Constant lower back pain from sitting too much I mean I walk about 30 or minutes every day but work ties me to my laptop all day and I do gett up and walk around every hour and do flexibility stretching but there just some days when that backis just tugging at me and nagging.

2. If you could instantly learn any instrument, which one would it be?

So like ten seconds ago you couldn’t then Bam! you are now an expert?
Guitar.

I always wanted to play the tuba but my mom dreaded the entire idea of me practicing. The parents talked me into the saxophone for band. Dad already had one so I think it was practical for cost savvings as much as easier on the ears compared to the tuba.

3. What’s the most challenging aspect of adulting for you?

For me it is dealing with Adult ADHD. Concentrating and focusing is getting more difficult as I age.

4. What old school tech gadget is as helpful now as it was 75 years ago?

The god old always handy reliable Handy Man jack. It jacks up your truck, can be used as a winch or even as an iprovised jaws of life to extract a person from a wrecked vehicle. My dad once propped up a dying tree using his jack. He amazed me with this tool-use acumen.

5. What’s something genuinely beautiful that people ruined?

Mt. Everest. The ugly trash all around the base camps. the amount of dead bodies and human excrement buried in all that snow is truly disgusting and has ruined what should have been preserved as a pristine wilderness.

The Friday Fives

1. Did somebody ever tell you you would amount to nothing in life? And what did you make of yourself now as an adult?

Reading my old school report cards, due to my dyslexia, my teachers were stunned that I wasn’t just sitting the corner of the classroom as a drooling idiot. My school guidance cousnselors steered me away from any professional carrer goals and encouraged me to get a job in a garage assisting with oil changes (true conversation) i went on to serve in the army, graduated college with and English degree, edited the school newspaper and worked as a small town journalist. Maybe most of those teachers amounted to nothing in their lives.

2. What is your favorite childhood smell?

Mom’s freshly baked homemade bread. She usually made two loafs a week for sandwiches and breakfast.

3. Do you ever listen to a song and remember exactly what life was like when you first heard it?

“Crazy Little Thing Called Love” by Queen was the first song I ever heard on a Walkman with headphones and every time it comes on I remember that time.

4. What was your first job?

When I was 14-years old me and a neighbor girl started a window washing company and had contracts with an auto dealership and grocery store to wash their windows and also were able to get other jobs to wash windows all over town during the summer.

5. What was your first “expensive” thing you bought with your own money?

I bought a Pentax camera kit with accessories and lenses from the Speigel catalog when I was probably 17-years old.

The Friday Five

1. What is the weirdest thing you’ve seen or experienced in someone else’s home?

We took up this terrible task once and initiated home inspections of our work at home teams (this was years before COVID lockdowns.) One of the employee’s home we visited had a nice little home office – but there were gallon’s of used milk containers full of urine lined up along a wall. It was pretty unsettling and my co-inspector (I guess that’s the term) and I were som put off by that we didn’t even bring it up.

2. What is the weirdest thing you’ve seen on someone’s lawn or adorned to the outside of their home?

The Rev. Ed and I took to collecting these years ago in th late 90s and early 00s in Denver. There was bird house front lawn up in North Denver Park Hill Neighborhood that comes to mind.

3. At your house, what things lie around that are useless and just for whimsy?

I have too much clutter and need to rid myself of things that are useless or no longer work. But my little wooden sculpture of a Chicken cock, named Clarencce is useless and whimsy and is going no where anytime soon.

4. Where should you never build a house?

We had family friends that lived waaaaaaaay out in the middle of nowhere in Moffat County on the far northern part of the county in the Great Divide area. Neighbors were miles and miles away. No running water. They were renovating an old abandoned prairie home and electricity was years away from being affordably installed. No gas. Only pumped well water and heated with coal and wood burning stoves. There was a chimney fire that burned the house to ground — the fire department took nearly 30 minutes or more to arrive on the scene and the house was gone by then. Don’t build a home that has no societal infrastructure.

5. What is something that used to be in homes but has vanished and needs to return?

The landline phone on the wall in the kitchen with the long ass cord dangling that you could curl in your fingers why chatting away. For bringing communicites badk together we need the old phone call – connecting people instead of the passive texting and call screening.