Things feel good at the moment. The Americana Crazy Train continues down the track of destruction, but I am working hard to stay balanced. Acknowledging the pain of others, but understanding my ability to help is limited. And of course, hoping for a quick and fatal end to this nonsense and if not that, perhaps we will get lucky at the midterms and get both houses of Congress. Feels unlikely but…..
Dolly died. That was a gut punch. She was the best of all of us. Never had a bad day. An angel if ever there was one.
I drive to the farm most days when here in Ohio to let Marti run off the leash. I noticed today that one of my cousins, traditionally red through and through, has a banner up for the Democratic candidate for governor. So that is a hopeful sign.
I’m traveling to Canada later this week to hang out with Sjoerd and Shane for a few days. Thinking about getting an Iranian passport so the Canadians will be more accepting of me. Or maybe North Korea.
Marti is outside barking her fool head off. All day long, she sleeps on the little couch in my office while I work. I leave the door open but she hardly ever ventures outside unless we go for a walk. But when the sun goes down, she comes alive. She is nocturnal by nature. I came to the treehouse bedroom and could hear her barking way down the hillside. I left the door open and sure enough, after about 15 minutes, she came trotting through the door. Breathing heavily. Now it’s late enough that I close the door behind her. Unfortunately, the coyotes and bobcats and black bears are also nocturnal and she is an easy target — in spite of her believing she is tougher than she is.
I wonder if kids who wear pajamas to school, wear jeans to bed. When I walk Marti here (at the Ohio home), we walk by loads of kids as they wait for the morning bus. A great many are wearing pajama bottoms. I think I could deduce some things about the parents based on what their kids wear to school. That sounds pretty old and pretty terrible, but there it is. I am somewhat old by most measures, so giving myself some grace.
Years ago, in Namibia, when I first started youth programs, kids would routinely turn up 10, 25 or 60 minutes late. They would tell me ‘Sir, it’s Africa time. It’s our way’. But I felt my job was to help them develop better habits so if they chose to do the hard work required to develop qualifications for a job, they would at least understand that timeliness matters to some people. Specifically employers. The kids got it. Or I should say they really got it when I took to closing and locking the door 5 minutes after the scheduled start time (5 minutes was my concession to the fact they had no clocks or phones to know the time to the level of minutes).
Is wearing pajamas to high school an indicator. Perhaps not. I actually have no idea. I do find it interesting and slightly annoying though. Which I suspect is their point. An expression of rebelliousness they are capable of with the limited control they have over their lives. I am sure they will all be fine.
In Ohio, the storms have been many, and been severe. Marti loves to run outside and howl when the warning siren goes off. Some days it goes off 3 or 4 times in an afternoon, so she has been busy. And I really love this about her.
I drove to Brittany’s house on Friday after two weeks at BDR. We spent a day and half cutting up the tree that fell in her backyard and fixing the fence that was smashed. Sunday morning we both ran the Grandview Yard quarter-marathon. I came home to find the grass needed cut and mom and dad’s basement had an inch of mud from the storms. So my relaxing Sunday evaporated. Be good to get back to work to get some rest.
We did get Brit’s backyard mostly back to normal. We also had to take down her shed that was badly damaged and haul it off, but she is back in business now.
I’ve been trying to get a few biking miles in when I can. The hills here are every bit as tough as Idaho. They are shorter, but steeper and and keep coming. So instead of one really long climb, like up to Kinport or Scout Mountain, there are dozens of short but acute fuckers. My ride Sunday had 2,000 feet of vertical in 27 miles.
Mom and dad took a trip down to Southern Ohio where they lived for 60 years. The stories about every single person are death, near-death, cancer, shitty hair do’s, quality of old folks homes, surgeries and all manner of other problems. One of mom’s friends was in pampers and a t-shirt and nothing else. She was lying in bed and telling mom she should be sure to go back to finish her last year of high school. Brutal.
Dad told me he walked down the street to see his old friend, whose name he could not remember (Jim Pell) and Jim’s wife had died. She actually died around 20 years ago, but I didn’t remind him of that.
All these people are slogging through life, hanging on by a thread, kept alive by modern medicine long past the time of any enjoyment. Dad is not far off from finding out what comes next. Or so it seems. Guess we never really know. He remembers about 50% of things these days. Spends most of his days on the front porch, the back porch, or the couch. If you ask him how he’s doing he will just say ‘I’m doing it. This is it, all day long’. He has no motivation for life.
I’m a-thinking and a-wonderin’ walking down the road
I once loved a woman, a child, I’m told
I give her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don’t think twice, it’s all rightSo long honey, babe
Where I’m bound, I can’t tell
Goodbye’s too good a word, babe
So I’ll just say, “Fare thee well”I ain’t a-saying you treated me unkind
You could’ve done better but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s all rightBob Dylan
TOOM is technically live on the Apple platform. Android will be ready in a few weeks. We are not yet where we need to be from a user experience perspective. Just too clunky in a few areas. But we are working on it. Our team is small and distributed, so far from optimal conditions. I floated the app to a few friends and they were mostly unimpressed, which kinda put me into a meltdown.
But I’m reminded that every new technology frustrates us at first. Over time we get more familiar and the technology improves with feedback. I’m not by nature an optimist or a pessimist — just a realist. And reality is we will never appeal to everyone. In spite of what I feel is a good concept, some users simply will not take the extra 30 seconds if they feel a process is unwieldy. We will need to be exposed to millions of potential users, and need to capture thousands and hope they actually use TOOM for its intended purpose. Also, we are limited by what FINAPPS and banks are willing or able to do. We cannot improve in some areas of user experience without their cooperation and we are a new start-up with no users and no revenue. So not much leverage.
MySpace was horrible. Terrible. But it got massive before being swallowed up by Facebook, which also was pretty immature at the beginning.
I am not getting much writing done which is annoying the hell out of me. I’d like to re-release SV2SA by end of year, but work is sucking my time and emotional energy . Also walking Martini for 1.5 hours a day. But that also helps my fitness so we both benefit. Just life. Harder than it should be at times, although I am aware my life is blessed many times over compared to most.
I met with the film crew on Sunday, we are also pushing for a finished documentary by December 1. We’ll see.
Imagine, if by some miracle I release my book, a film, and have TOOM fully operational by end of year. Of course on top of landing and managing a good project at Boston Childrens. Then a week in Mexico to celebrate. A big year — perhaps.
Mom’s been having more ‘episodes’ that we feel are probably mini-strokes. She had several last year and now they are back. We are trying to get her back into the doc this week. Scary.
I caught up the other day with my friend Leslie Tom. I have not seen or talked to her for around 10 years I guess. I am reminded of the variety of my experiences on this planet and what lovely people I have come across.
Not my finest post here today, but I’m trying to be more consistent even among all the other projects.
No other news of note.
Humbly Submitted
Robert Myres – Flanker, Portneuf Valley (ret.), writer, comic genius
The Martini Tales 