Busted At The Campground!

My wife Marie, who is an excellent story-teller, told one of our Airstream stories at dinner last night at The Lucky Lab, and it just cracked me up. Thought I would have a go at it. First, a bit of Airstream background.

In 1964, (our Airstream is a "64") and earlier, even later, Airstreams and other older travel trailers had only one dirty water holding tank, a "black water" tank, and, well, you know what that is. Kitchen water, however, was allowed to just spill onto the ground. It was only later that camping and campground regulations were upgraded such that kitchen water or "gray water" (from showering and hand washing too) was required to be held in the trailer for proper disposal. Now ya tell me.

So we buy our beater Airstream, spend a summer and a small fortune fixin' it up, and one weekend at the end of last summer, we go to a local campground, Blaine, Marie, the pups and I, to try it out, at Champoeg Campground, about 25 miles from home.

So I hook it all up the best I know how, incoming water, electricity, get the hot water heater fired up on the propane line, etc. But since the trailer is not equipped to hold the gray water, and I am an unaware novice, well, it's gonna just go on the ground, I guess, duh.

So we begin our stay, watched a dvd on my laptop, Marie's mom drops by, we take a hike, the dogs are in sniff heaven, we're all havin' a blast. Marie makes spaghetti and meatballs, a nice salad, in our galley, sporting her pink and lime green outfit she bought to go with the trailer.

Later that night, I go outside to adjust the Airstream shaped Christmas style lights I have strung on our awning. I walk behind the trailer for a sec, and see all these carrot and celery chunks lying on the ground behind our trailer in this nice clean park, and I think, uh, maybe I need to do a bit more research on this, this doesn't seem right. At that very moment, I see a park official, who looks like a Mountie, or that park ranger in Yogi Bear cartoons, walking toward me with his clipboard. "Sir", he says, "we have had a complaint that you are dumping gray water onto the ground at this location." I go, "gulp, er, well, yes, I guess we have", sheepishly, steeped in naivete, standing there by the carrot chunks. He replies,"well, it's against the park rules and there is a big fine for this", eyeballing the chunks. I apologize, and make my learning curve plea. He chastises,"Well, I will let you off with a warning this time, but we are talking a big no-no here, sir, we won't see any more of this from this trailer at this location, sir, is that correct, sir?" Of course I agree, and he gets back in his pick- up and takes off. So I enter the trailer and tell Marie. We are mortified and laughing at the same time.

I have figured out how to handle the disposal of gray water correctly since then, given that our Vintage Airstream is not equipped to handle gray water by today's standards. One must purchase and take along a portable "blue tote" tank for proper gray water collection.

We like to inflate the story, make it sound like we were busted bad by Campground security. I think I'll change the ranger's pick-up to a Hummer next time I tell it.


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Birdland!

Marie and I reserved one full day to ourselves for Christmas shopping this year. We tried to get out early, drank a couple of stiff lattees from The Java Man and ended up going completely out of our minds and buying a TIVO for Blaine. After we had the TIVO locked in the car, we walked over to the Petsmart which was in the same strip mall, to, oh, get a couple of things for the dogs, which of course ended up to be MANY things for the dogs. Dont get me started on what that nut Marie will do for her dogs. Sure is a good thing, that I, myself, am not extravagant with the dogs.

Anyway, while at Petsmart, Marie and I saw a couple of beautiful birds, Lady Gouldian Finches, and I could tell by the look in her eye that it wouldn't be long before we had a pair ourselves.

So here we are, a couple weeks later, and we have them, in a large cage, along with their pals, a pair of Bengalese Finches, also known as "societies", which are renowned for rearing Gouldian babies (nestlings).
We also picked up a very nice female canary, to go with our male, so it won't be long before we will have some offspring of both kinds of birds in our little homespun aviary. Their beautiful song and flying about really adds to the ambiance on our first floor.

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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year to all whose browser brings them here! We had a very nice New Year, highlighted by a dinner party New Year's Eve at our house with friends, featuring an amazing 9 lb. Harris Ranch prime rib, which we slow cooked to medium rare and cut into entirely too large slices. I admit to my fondness for beef. (See my song "Food Chain" at the "music" section of this site). Marie made Chantrelle mashed potatoes, we sipped wine, Marie read aloud the Internet story of the dogs and the elk carcass,
(after dinner), and Blaine showed off his new Tivo and it's unbelievable features.

It was great to have Marie's mom here for a few days after Christmas and into the new year. We love having her here!

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Cell Phone-O-Rama

So my cell phone hasn't been working all that well lately, cutting out, dropping the signal completely (ya know how that sucks when you are trying to finish up a big record deal by phone). I decide I gotta get a new one. So I go out to the AT&T store, now the Cingular store, since the merger, and toss my 8 month old phone on the counter, tell my story. "Oh yeah", the nice woman behind the counter says, " we aren't even building out that technology anymore". So with a chuckle and a "I knew that" attitude, I ask about a new phone, oh, maybe make a lateral move, I don't need all the bells and whistles. She shows me a small, handsome phone I can get for $18.00!, so I go for it.

Last night, as we watched the news, I toyed with it, stunned by the features. Before I was done, sitting there in my armchair, I had downloaded, from outer space, wirelessly, for $1.99, an additional "seasonal" ring tone, just for the holidays, "Deck the Halls, Salsa Mix". It rang today while I was in FreeGeek taking my son to work. What a great time to be alive.

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Christmas!

I have a good friend who used to claim that he and his brother would go shopping on Christmas eve. I know there are lots of people who do that......WHY!!!? I would tell him he needed to push the envelope a bit further, you know, go to the 7-11 at say, 2pm on Christmas day, buy his wife a nice bag of pepperoni sticks, a six-pack, some scratch-off tickets.

We are gonna have a party here this weekend to celebrate, and we are going to have some platters of beautiful Christmas foods and sweets from Criollo bakery, which is the bakery in the commercial building we own on 47th and NE
Fremont in Portland. I am certain my kids are going to drive up in that sports car they have been promising me for years!

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The Reign Lives

Had lunch yesterday with two of my old "Morning Reign" buddies, Craig Chastain (still plays a mean rhythm guitar) and Doug Heatherington (bass). It was great to see them both. Craig is working for the Luis Palau organization and Doug remains with Farmer's Insurance. Of course it takes about ten minutes for us to start talking about "the old days", and some of the wacky stuff that we did back when we were kids. The three of us also attended Willamette University, where we were members of Delta Tau Delta, so the stories of our fraternity days as well as the band stories abound. I am certain we revisit the same stories every time we get together, which is about once a year. I love those guys.

Post Thanksgiving

We had a nice quiet Thanksgiving at our house, watched some football, chowed, and just generally had a family day. It's great to have Marie home for a few days from work. Over the Thanksgiving break, we cleaned out our greenhouse and put the winter tarp over it, a job I loathe, so it was great to get that done. Last night we watched "Trading Spouses", the one with the Vegan Mom and the Cajun Mom. Gawd I just have to hide my face watching reality tv sometimes. This episode inspired me to complete a new song I have been working on, titled, "The Fundamentalist Gene".

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Welcome!

Of course we jest when we suggest that one might find some "useful information" on this website. But one will find songs, old and new, photos, and some weblog entries made by me, detailing every minute aspect of my life.....NOT! But I will come here to write when it strikes my fancy, and I promise to include things that, though they might be a bit less than useful, are entertaining. Basically if I just stay home and record the wacky shit my step-son Blaine does, that should do it.

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