Goodbye to Peewee

Yesterday just sucked. Peewee has been raging against the effects of very advanced age for some time now, and yesterday he lost the fight.

So many years ago he wandered into my girl's life, when she was only a little girl herself. He took over and became the Head Dog,despite his tiny size. In a malstrom of other dogs he always had his way, displaying a certain lovable pig-headedness that you couldn't help but love. At the time, the family already had too many dogs, and her father didn't really want to keep him, but my girl insisted. Peewee and her dad became fast friends.

When my girl lost her dad, Peewee turned all his love and affection to her. They were closer than close. When she moved in with me she missed him terribly, and one day he just moved in with us. My place became a home on that day.

He was old and fragile when first I got to know him. He wasn't ding so good, so we went out of our way to get senior dog food for him, pamper him and do whatever we could. Of course, he displayed all manner of issues, but when he came walking in with that little confidant stroll, all was just fine in the world. He even got well enough again to enjoy playing and pouncing about...and walks in the park.

Once, on a trip to the mountains, he stood at the top of a mound probably 4 feet tall, surveyed the scene..and then lept! That's a big jump for a 7 pound, 15 year old dog, but he was just fine. H once raced around to met us after we were gone for the day, over-joyed to see us. That was a fine day....until...

...he had the second of some manner of stroke or seizure. He was never quite right after that it seemed. There he was, all himself, and then he wandered off. He seemed increasingly lonely. We worried about him, and so we got Max, to keep him company. Max looks like a giant version of Peewee, and has an equally demanding personality....but he soon learned Peewee was boss and respected that. Soon enough, his pig-headness came back and he was bossing the larger dog around and keeping him from his food.They made a nice pair together. Both seemed happy at the company, and they even got to the point of sleeping near each other much of the time.

These last six months have been hard, Peewee losing control of himself and peeing everywhere. I had decided that all was fine, as long as we had him with us. He was to be part of our wedding, which had to be postponed because of all the other crap. Now, he will neverbe able to take part, and I am destroyed by it. We plan to find and wear lockets with his photo in them when we do finally get married. Still, it won't be the same as having the loving little smelly dude there having his way with everything.

We buried him in HIS spot in the front yard of my girl's house, where he sunned and stood guard for so many years. To hell with the perfect lawn we destroyed doing so,and to hell with the sprinkler system we didn't know was there. I've found a statue that looks very close to him on-line, and think we will probably order it to mark his spot.

I miss you so much Peewee, fare thee well on your journey! I promise to take care of your girl for you, and to keep her from harm.

Let's just start the christmas season depression early.

I haven't been looking, because I am broke, but it seems The Waterboys are playing like 3 dates in the US after not being here for some years. None are near me-so....I will miss them this tour. I have never missed them in the US since the first tour. This is so depressing.

To top it all, Iron Maiden tickets seem to have gone on sale this morning also. Guess that's out too.

I feel like I have wasted my time/ talent and energies to have worked so hard, for so long, to have a place that others may enjoy their interest in the martial art I teach, and its all at the expense of my own security and enjoyment of life. Things need to change. I don't want to waste another minute. I want to be involved in music and writing at the level I wanted all this time, with a job that pays me enough to make progress in them and enjoy them.

Blogging Half life

It seems all cool blogs I follow run out of steam and vanish at some point. Interting people get bored, tired, fired, fat, injured....whatever, and the blog entries slow or stop compleltly. Its a bummer when you've been following some intelligent person, only to have them vanish ith no reason.

Probably worse is the victums of love. They go from having great blogs to googly eyed proclamations of never-ending love for whomever new is in their life. If you keep them bookmarked, at some point they break up and get interesting again. Others, they get married and join the ever increasing numbers of "baby blogs", fully documentingevery poop and fart their child makes as it grows. Talk about embarrassing for the kids. What happens when the never-ending blog is discovered by other fifth grade classmates some years later?Blogmurders? Who can tell.

Oh well, off to class and a mid-term test. I am tired, sick and mentally dull.I hope I get a decent score on the thing....

ALL the candidates are MORONS!

It crosses ALL party lines at this point. There is NOBODY worth voting for. Those in politics never have the people's welfare in mind anyway, its all about power and influence and stuffing their own pockets with money.

The democrats seem to have gone crazy on taking away things like guns (?!?!?!), forgeting that this country exists because of them (right or wrong). Where does that leave folks interested in shooting sports (not even hunting?). or collecting? And just WHY does every useless damned illegal alien that crawls across the boder DESREVE(?!?!?) "rights"??? I've had them RUIN my life twice now, and never take responsibility for THAT! The democrats used to work towardss at east a little sharing of the wealth by the common man, now they bypass him and want to hand his efforts to criminals it seems.

The republicans are so stuck on making money by hosting wars they even turned off their subtle machine and just blatently do so. I don't a DAMN about "spreading democracy around the globe", and neither do they. I just admit it. I couldn't care less about Iraq, to hell with the place, let it fall into chaos and see whp comes out on top. Who knew it was possible to create a larger clusterfuck than ietnam?

Where is somebody the normal, everyday person who HAS to work a job can trust?

AND...I am sick of the everyday "experts" who flail their party flags and can't see the idiocy of their own parties. It no longer splits down party lines...they are ALL useless!

Where can one move to get away from it all?

Getting Too Tired to Care.....

First, I can never remember the password for the googl version of blogger,so I never seem to update anymore. I have tonsof photos to try and upload, but that will be when I get some time.

Life has just sucked, to tell the truth. Was supposed to get married yesterday, BUT, the future mother-in-law worked herself into sickness and ended up in a hospital inducd coma with all manner of illness. It remains to e seen if she will actually survive. I am betting she will, as she's not all that old and always seems pretty tough. Her siblings all seem to think otherwise. I hate people who get into a hospital room and commence with the loud crying and praying crap. Where's the respect? All from the same people who got in the middle of ourlong planned wedding and screwed it all up. Guess who WON'T be invitd to the rescheduled one under any circumstance?

My grades have begun to slip at school as a result of all the stress ( I had scored only 100 percent on tests until last week....). I hope I do ok on today's test, haven't had a moment to study. Off to school I go...maybe I can squeeze 5 minutes in....

Planes of Fame 2007 Air Show-Chino

Hello Jimmy!,

School is out and I have TIME again! I have been madly cleaning my tiny apartment, applied for a daytime job and discovered how to finally get back to my blog and add photos. I had to get a replacement digital camera, so as to better service my website. The old one wasn't doing the job at all at this point. The first day I had the new one, I shot 707 photos with it! This, of course, means I went to an airshow. Looking back over the years, 98% of my photos are of airshows. I am DYING to find the gathering of warbirds from like 1971 I took with my first camera, if they show up I'll scan them and post them too. 707 photos is probably more than I've taken my entire life. 60% of them are crap (but I like them so they won't get deleated..), and I have new found respect for aerial photogs!

Now, on to the photos:

Ain't that a nice P-51 taking off? I have no idea whose it is, but it was clean and sounded great. The geeks among you already know how to look up the N-Number on the FAA website to see who owns it.....

Now here is a cool shot....guys pulling the prop through a few rotations before starting that great, big old radial engine on that cool B-25 Mitchell Bomber. Those of us who are A & P students at San Bernardino Valley College stood proudly by and knew WHY they were doing it. You wanna know...? There ARE openings in the next semester's classes....

Here's one of those Legacy Flights everyone gets so wound up about these days. I have found gas turbine engines to be pretty cool, but still would rather be wrenching on the older plane....but it turned out to be a pretty good photo after all.

The Final shot includes Glacier Girl, An un-named P-51 and a big old jet trying to not fall outta the sky. Yeah- my weekend WAS better than yours....!

It Let Me Sign In....

Since the blogger to google shift, everytime I tried to log in, the machine would not let me do so. I had to go and "reclaim" my blogger account to make one pass at things. Today was the first day it let me sign in on my own. A welcome change. Now lets see if it will let me attach a photo to things....

I think I'll call this one "Restless Passenger in a Biplane...."

Well, I guess it can now upload photos. Let's try again....

OK...Good...except it isn't the photo I thought I had picked. Still, its a cool photo, so I will leave it here.

THIS is the one I wanted..."Glacier Girl" breaking free of earth right in front of me....

Oh My.....

It's been such a long time since I posted anything. School is almost over for the summer, a few finals and I am done. I am like .5 of a point away from an A in one class...talk aout sleepless nights. More later.

Sometimes Dreams Come True....!

Hi Jimmy,

I know you are the kind that stops in the middle of a sentance and looks up every time an airplane flys over. Most airplane nuts are. Some become pilots, others head for working on the things....BUT....everyone of us cranes our necks in wonder and stares when a plane goes by on a trailer. Sometimes its a poor veterean of the air that didn't land so well, other times its just a lost angel waiting to be found in a barn or garage. Always, we wish we weren't doing what we were doing, and were helping this poor bird instead.


Its a lifelong dream to help recover a damagerd plane, no matter what was to happen to it in the end, and yesterday I realized that dream! Our aeronatics class got its hands on a Piper that had trouble at Big Bear Lake a few years ago, and has been sitting forlornly ever since. Through the work of one of our great instructors, things finally fell in place.

We wandered up with a surburban and my big ugly truck, Apollo. The other truck had a borrowed trailer and the pla was to toss the smaller stuff in my truck to keep the weight down on the tralered portion.

***Things to do, have to finish this later***

They've All Gone Deaf It Seems.

Hi Jimmy,

There is an interesting virus taking hold at the fencing center, the more advanced students all seem to have gone deaf. They rarely seem to hear what I say, and to make matters worse, they have begun to pass on their own mis-information to younger students. When I correct them, they don't hear me either. Defenses have fallen apart, terrible form is taking over and everyone is increasingly slow.

The approach I used to use was to show up with my own gear one week, kick everybodies asses and they'ed listen again. Now, my knees hurt too much from the constant class load to consider doing this. Nobody cares enough to compete anyway, so without that extra spark, I will simply have to treat the group as recreational students, as opposed to on-going competitive students. Not much of anyway to teah finer points of counterattack and the like on a group moving this slow anyway.

BUT- I am tearing through basic carbs at school. I have rebuilt dozens in my life, but the theory of why they work is now upon me. Continued learning is always a plus, and though I've torn apart carbs countless times, I always find a new way to look at tings to find yet another aspect of it all.

Guess life without crack codes isn't good enough for most. Oh well, maybe I'll end up in a third world country with little electricity someday.

Shaking Off The Rust.

Hi Jimmy,

School has started yet again, and I am glad to be off the holidays. It looks like the General portion of the program will be much easier with less unapplied math this time.

Powerplant is working on everything under the cowling that's NOT an engine...like Mags, fuel systems, props...you get the picture. Well, at least I will be a whole lot less greasy this time around.

It means that in three months I can go test with the FAA on General and Powerplant and get certified!I can't wait. I had planned yto do more summer courses, bu will probably work instead if I can find a summer gig. Then I can set aside the money to just have the truck painted instead of doing it myself.


Work is going very badly. There is an infection of the current computer game going around, and students waste so much time playing it, that they choose to skip fencing to do the homework they haven't done for school. I have always been concerned hat building your business around kids is a bad idea, and I miss the days when we had mainly college age and above students you could depend on. Oh well, right now I am trying to figure out how to drop a night and bargin for less rent so as to keep it all going. If it gets much worse, the only choice will to be find night work of some kind and close the fencing center.

Oh well, late to leave for school, should have ben out the door 5 minutes ago. C ya!

I Choose To Remember Today....

Dear Jimmy,

Many today will remember that the world lost John Lennon. I still remember that night like it was yesterday, it was a moment that shook time. It was a sad moment, and seemed the end of many positive things before the fall into the 80's picked up speed.

Today, I'll also remember that the world had gained Jim Morrison many years before- and will have a smile for Jim and a nod for John as I pass others on the streets.

Diaster Strikes Gatorland!!!!

Hi Jimmy!

Oh NO!Fire has struck the main building at Gatorland and destroyed it! The Gift Shop is ruined, but the great gator Jaws we have always walked through to get into the park have survived.....

They're gaping and burnt, with nothing left behind them...but look more sinister than ever I remember them.

Management has promised to not close the place down. Its always on the list to visit when in town, and for sure its a must see this year- every dime will count on getting them back up to speed!

School!

HI JIMMY!!!,

It RUNS!

The A 65 I have been working on was on the test stand, in the test cell toda...AND IT RAN REALLY GOOD!

I think all the little extra things I did for this tired old warrior helped for sure....

Details when there is time (meaning I have two more finals and two more tests this week alone...and all the homework is due...)

Apollo Is Getting On My Nerves..

Hi Jimmy,

Got to admit, Apollo is pissing me off. Now there is a charging problem and I can't drive him. I replaced the alt and fixed some mangled wiring to no avail. I have zero time to trouleshoot this....so its off to the local shop to hopefully get it all fixed. I am regretting not having Evie anymore...she NEVER failed me in times of need. (You see, I have to have a way to move equipment for classes...and the Miata ain't designed for that sort of thing...).

Word has it YOU have added shows out here, and hopefully a friend will be able to get tickets...as I'll be stuck in class at the time.

Bad Night For Little Dog...

Hi Jimmy,

I think there must be something in the air. The planet is falling off it's bearings or something. I ain't the only one who feels it either. Maybe that Mayan calander thing about not starting the Iraq diaster...er...war..., meant something after all.

Last night, about 10:00 p.m., my girls little dog, Peewee, walked into the room, took a few sips from his water dish and wandered away from it. He bagan gasping and choking, and then just flat fell over choking. My girl screamed out as she dove for him....

he was choking on his tongue along with whatever else was going on, and she tried to clear it. She got bit pretty badly as he struggled. I took his mouth and got his tongue out of the way while she pushed his chest to make sure he was beathing. At first he wasn't...then he barely began too again. When we were sure he was breathing on his own, we bundled him into the truck to race to the vet's office.

99% of the people got out of the way of a speeding truck that was flashing his lights to warn them...EXCEPT for ONE preppy ASSHOLE who cut in front of me, cutting me off and making me jam the brakes to not rear end him. I flashed the lights and warning flashers and he slowed down! He was making SURE I couldn't get past him.

OK...so what, I was born and raised redneck so I can outdrive damn near any little prick I see around here. I took it to the shoulder and went to pass him amd he speed up again! (Had we been in MY truck instead of hers...I certainly would have just tagged his front bumper and psun his sorry ass.No remorse, no regrets!). I finally got past him.

A mile down the road another truck pulled in front, but moved when I falshed the lights..I flashed a thank you back as we blazed by. You see, some people DO understand and emergency is going on!

Anyway, after almost two hours at the vet's (while another fellow's aged dog didn't make it...so sad...!), we saw the x-rays and talked with the doctor. Seems he must have chocked on something, but the shape of his body keeps his lungs from filling up all the way. You could see it in the xrays. The last week or so he had been a bouncing ball of energy, which is amazing for a 14 year old dog. I think he overdid things and that was part of the issue.

Today he looks like he lost a bar fight, he is vague, doesn't want to eat or drink- and is jumping up to pace the apartment every few minutes. Only in the last hour or so has he calmed down a little. He certainly had a rough night.....a Bad Night For A Little Dog.

Goodbye to Maynard Ferguson

Bummer. Maynard Ferguson has died. He wasn't that old (well, compared to fencers I guess...) but he caught some sort of digestive infection and it killed him.


Maynard was THE MAN of Trumpet, thats all there is to it. Oh, you have your Trumpet snobs like Wynton M and Mile D...but Maynard played with pure joy for every note. While the others run around buried in hype and pretention....Maynard just never stopped that roaring attack on the upper stratosphere of the instruments register.I saw him live- and it was just pure he way he played.

I was/ am crazy about the way he sounds. He gave it all back to the future generations too, spending the last 10 or so years playing high schools to bring the music to those kids. He would even practice with a high school group and perform with them. I would have died for the chance to do that. I saw on his website a few years ago that he actually played my little, out of the way school a while back. I was happy to know he had graced the place with his blanket of excitment.

Its just a sad day to know he is gone. I don't think anyone will ever surpass him, in that while they may play- they don't have that underlaying explosion of excitment to every single note. Oh to live life as he played....

Goodbye Maynard- you are missed!

How I Spent My Saturday.

Hi Jimmy,

Well, there was a flyin of the Short Wing Piper Cub Club at Flabob Airport, so ff we went to hang out and smooze. My Girl Ajay was a trooper, hiking around with a painfully injured knee. She cheered up some after getting food and meeting up with Marv (her cuz and a good friend...)Here are some photos:


OK...well...maybe not. I tried to upload photos a number of times to no avail. Maybe Blogger is having a bad day. Will try again later...stay tuned!

WOW!!!

HI JIMMY!,

Well, I got started in tearing down my very own A65 engine. just like the little jewels I have seen in Piper J-3 Cubs ever since before I was borned. Its so way cool!

I have learned a lot this week so far. Airplanes seem to be a great deal less complicated than autos. They are sturdy and basic....because...as the teachers say "If a car breaks down you pull over, if an airplane breaks down you fall out of the sky....."

This trusty little engine makes like 65 HP. The first manual I got my hands on was printed in March, 1944. What a gas. I also found out some of these engines have probably been in the program some 60 years....WOW! What greats in the world of flying might have gone before me here? I am going to a place with a legacy...it so rocks.

I know one thing, Art Scholl ran the program for some 18 years until the world lost him. There are a number of his personal crew still involved in and running the program...so you get the picture of the caliber of folks involved.

In addition, they are working hard with the charter school I know of that is focused on aviation. A number of their first grads are in my class, and some current high schoolers busting their butts to do as many credits as they can.

I love the detail and note-taking required by the FAA to repair engines. Its the sort of detail that got me fired or screwed under in my last two jobs. Yeah- this is going to be a great fit. I worry not about actually getting work at the end of it. I have a current desire to restore and stay around general aviation. Maybe the money ain't as good...but the rewards are higher. Then again, I am old with lots of other job refs to back up a new skill. Right now I just want a steady income and to start adding all maner of letters after my name like "A & P" and so on....

Hey Jimmy, if ya have a closet full of old airplane stuff nobody needs I know a great little program that would probably love to have them donated...!

School.....

Hi Jimmy,

Well, I am very busy. School has started and its very, very tiring. I have two classes with two labs attached to them. This means:

One class covers aeronatics in general and working in a shop.
Another covers working on recriprocating engines and working on them.

I have been assigned to two lab partners. One of which was actually working under he teacher over the summer...and one who doesn't seem to know anything at all about ....anything. It may be a language issue as he barely speaks, shrugs a lot and seems to want to get by on what we others do....

Oh well, Continental engines...here I come!