Category Archives: The Basics

Homer had a lovely little holiday gathering at his home in Tucson on Saturday.  Ray and I made the 90 mile drive up there because, A) I really wanted to go to Homer’s party and B) There were several blogger peeps that I wanted to meet in person. 

(This is where I would have put a photo of everyone but for some reason my camera did not capture a very flattering picture so I opted out)

Before we went,  Ray and I made a huge batch of Thumbprint cookies to take with us.   It has become our holiday tradition to make these treats.  Ray calls them our “signature” cookies.  I call them easy to make and very tasty.

We had a really good time at the party.  Homer had little creative crafty stations set up around his house.  I started out with cookie decorating.  I figured that being a creative type; I would be churning out lavishly decorated edible works of art in no time.  I was wrong.  I was so focused on my shitty little cookie thinking I was doing a good job that I did not realize Sandy sitting across from me decorating a guitar shaped cookie with strings and frets.  My cookie ended up looking more like something Jackson Pollack would have done.  However, it was delicious.

After that, I moved on to the make-an-ornament-out-of-pipe-cleaners station.  I sat there working on a saguaro cactus shaped ornament thinking I was doing a great job when I looked up noticed Frank had made a three dimensional Santa stocking.  That’s when I decided to give up on the creative things and just chat with the other partygoers. 

I really liked meeting the other blogger peeps.  Brian was there.  He’s very, very sweet and much taller than I expected.  It’s nice to meet him in person because we email each other back and forth frequently.  Sandy was in town all the way from Australia.  I enjoyed chatting with him and hoped that his cookie decorating talent would somehow transfer to me via osmosis.  It didn’t.  Then there’s Frank, whom I have met once before.  Frank is younger than me and quite hunky.  At one point during the festivities, he picked me up in his arms for a photo.  I did not get a picture with my camera because I was, well, being picked up by a hunky man and cameras weren’t exactly running through my head at the moment and yes, I was giggling like a schoolgirl.

Ray and I also got to sit and chat with Victor and Scott, two very nice guys in Tucson that we hope to see more of.  Everyone was very pleasant.  We always have a nice time with Homer and his friends. 

Here are some photos of the party:

Sandy’s guitar cookie

Frank and his 3D pipecleaner ornament.

Kitty was not too happy about this.

The ever popular one armed blog pic.  Cobban, Frank & Sandy.

Ray and I figured since the festivities started at 6:00 PM and it was a Saturday, people would want to go out afterwards.  We planned on staying at a motel for the night.   By the time the party wrapped up, the let’s go out and party more vibe had diminished.  Ray and I thought we’d venture out on our own.  Yeah, right.  Once we got to the car, we both just decided that we are too old and too gay to chase the party vibe in Tucson at the Venture N.  It was chilly, we were tired and the thought of sleeping in my own bed outweighed the desire to be chatty and peripatetic in a tired old leather bar.

Homer hosted a holiday get together tonight.  I had a great time and plan to blog about it but but I can’t right now because we decided to drive home from Tucson instead of staying at a motel and I’m really tired and I had to reinstall the operating systems on both computers today so I don’t have anything (Picasa and Photoshop) to crop or edit photos yet…

 I will say one thing…You can tell a man by the company he keeps and Homer is a great guy.

 I’m going to bed.

Here is a totally random photo I took last spring of a baby bunny rabbit that was trying to be invisible out on the front porch.  In the late spring, early summer they’re f*cking everywhere–literally. 

To get an idea of scale, this little bunny would fit in the palm of your hand. 

We have a polite coexistence pretending not to see each other (even though I just want to pick it up and cuddle the little bugger).  

No bunny cuddling.

You have to ignore the wildlife out here.  No feeding or petting.  This isn’t Dances With Wolves.  (Cuddles With Bunnies?)

————-RANDOM—————

Beck’s album Midnight Vultures absolutely rocks.  It’s music to design by.  Meaning that, as a designer, there are countless late evenings trying to squeeze out the last drops of creative juices like water from a stone.  With a looming deadline on a high profile project, the only solution is an album–one of your favorites.  It has to be likable all the way through so it can be played on a loop or mixed in the CD shuffle…

I just said mixed in the CD shuffle!  I dated myself.  Oh my God I said album too!

This is the age of the iPod.  Music is digital and no longer confined to media.  You can’t touch it.   The days of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon with its stickers and totally bitchen’ posters are over.  The new digital age just galvanizes that fact.  This is perplexing.  It’s hard to give up the tangible experience of album ownership.  Nowadays, what do you own?  An electronic facsimile of ones and zeros?

What’s most interesting is the new generation of music lovers who don’t know anything but this technology.  A CD is about as novel to them as Grandma’s wind-up photograph was to us.  Which, kind of makes us Grandma.

But I’m a Grandma with an iPod!  I have an iTunes account as well–which is really funny because whenever I buy music online, the first order of business is to burn it on a CD.  It’s too hard not to have it in hand.  The scary thing is, that’s not Grandma–that’s my Mother.

Now from a purist point of view, there’s the whole icky compression thing going with digital entertainment that compromises the sound and or image quality.  The general public doesn’t seem to be phased by less than perfect reproduction.  It used to bug me until I realized after years of working with sound and multimedia engineering, I’m just way too critical and most people don’t even notice.  That being said, my iPod does not hold much music because the less compressed a music file is, the more space it takes up so I don’t compress.  No I don’t.

THANKS: 
Homer mentioned my birthday on his blog and I got more comments and hits on my blog than ever.  Thanks Homer and thanks to everyone who sent a nice comment.  It really was a great day (except for the head cold).

Ray and I are floored at the outpouring of notes and emails about Aunt Leona.  It really, really made a difference.  We are humbled by everyone’s condolences–especially from people we don’t even know.  It has restored my faith in humanity (for now).

More people are starting to read my blog.  I have received great feedback.  It’s a wonderful feeling and I am very, very thankful for that.  It’s been great because I’m starting to find other blogs and bloggers that I didn’t even know about.

Ray finally came home on Tuesday night.  ThankYouThankYouThankYouThankYou for his safe return.  Even the cat is relieved.

UPDATE:
Last night I met with a personal trainer.  He was short and didn’t seem to have much of a disco body.  So much for hiring the hottie eye candy trainer.  I figured that it would be stupid to turn down the opportunity to meet my fitness goals over something as superficial as what the guy looked like.  He’s obviously capable.  (I have to thank Joe for that insight.)  They gym is really nice, I can afford it (kinda but not really) and–fuck–why not?  Right?  I’m going to do a trial workout with him tonight.  He has a great attitude and was in tune to everything I said.  If all goes well, I’m going to meet with him twice a week for an hour at a time.  He said something about getting me into “Boxing Training”.  Hmmm……  Cobban Balboa?

I have developed really good calluses on my fingertips due to my diligent attempt to play my acoustic and electric guitars every night.  I have three to four songs in development and can sing and play at the same time for at least ten seconds if I try real hard and don’t think about it at the same time.

Ray called to check on his Aunt Leona in the hospital the other day.  She said she couldn’t breathe and asked for his help.  He hopped on the first plane to Chicago.

Aunt Leona is the younger sister of Ray’s mother.  Ray used to call her Auntie Ohnie when he was a wee (and very cute) toddler.  She lives in the same house she grew up in just outside of Chicago in a village called Itasca.  Or shall I say lived in the same house?

Leona slipped on the ice last February and broke her arm.  She hasn’t been home since.
 For the last nine months, Leona has bounced back and forth between a nursing facility and the hospital.  She was a sickly child and suffers from asthma–not a good thing for a hospitalized elderly person with broken bones as they are susceptible to pneumonia–which, by the way, she has had several times over the past few months.

Without going into too much detail, Leona has gone through a lot since this happened.  It’s almost house of horrors to me. 

She get’s probed and picked at as if she were an inanimate object.  They discovered cancer and removed part of her colon.  She’s now in isolation because she developed Clostridium Difficile.  She has a problem regulating her electrolytes so they restrict her fluids.  Every time we see her she asks for water and that stresses me out.  Why can’t they just giver her water?  I mean, I know why, but there has to be an alternative.  They treat her for these things in such a cruel and inhumane way.

Ray has power of attorney and looks after her.  The doctors don’t always call him back when he has questions and some of them have that Doctor/God complex.

Oh benevolent Doctor, please dumb it down for me.  I am too stupid to understand your technical mumbo jumbo.  Why, who would ever think that there are reputable medical resources on the internet?  Prick.

When we lived in Chicago, Ray and I frequently drove out to Itasca to see Leona.  She’d say “The boys are coming over.”  I loved that.  The boys.

The center part of Itasca looks like a movie set right down to the white church with the towering steeple.  It’s actually a historical landmark and Leona lives right in the middle of it.  She owns a modest old house on a huge lot with no sidewalk.  The inside reveals the tell-tell signs that a Depression Baby lives there. 

It’s funny now to look at old photos because not one thing has changed in that house since FDR.  Aside from miscellaneous canned goods, the pantry is stocked with used plastic bread bags, empty mayonnaise jars and plastic deli containers.  She saves and reuses everything.  You’d be amazed at how long she can stretch out the life of a twist tie.

I…just…don’t know how to write this post.  I have been ruminating on it for days.  Please forgive me as I’m at the point where I just have to finish…

Ray was at the hospital the day after she said she could not breathe.  He asked them to remove the tubes and wires that were plugged into her frail very dried out body.  Her hearing aid batteries had died leaving her shrouded in silence.  She was so contagious with the Clostridium Difficile that Ray had to suit up in scrubs to sit with her.  Ray’s niece Gretchen was there too.  Gretchen is a chaplain for Children’s Hospital.  (You think I gush about what a saint Ray is—Gretchen could tell you stories that could melt a heart of stone.  She is truly awesome.)  Ray finally got them to give her water, and then they gave her some morphine.  Leona seemed comfortable now—as comfortable as one could be in that situation.  After a short time, she took one last breath and quietly slipped away with Ray and Gretchen at her side.  She was just five hours shy of her 89th birthday.  That is so like Ray’s family to be that punctual.

My phone rang right away.  I was home with my cold and was not really prepared for the news.  Ray told me she was gone and then hung up.  I started to weep even though I was not all that sad.  If anything, I was happy.  She was free now.  The only thing that made me sad was realizing that I would never sit in the big comfy chair in her creaky old house eating cookies and drinking coffee with her again.  She treated me like one of her own nephews.  It was over—she was over.  Forever.  Now I started to cry. 

Crying with a head cold.  Talk about a tsunami of snot.

For a brief moment I was overcome with a feeling that she was with me except now she could breathe and see and hear.  She was letting me know that everything was OK.  Some people think that a person really does pay one last visit when they die.  Other’s think that it’s a bunch of bullshit.  I think it doesn’t matter what it is as long as it’s comforting and leaves you with a sense of closure.  It’s my dreamworld and I’m going to believe in whatever it takes to make me feel that someone I adored, admired and loved love is in a better place–dammit.  Then the feeling left as quickly as it came.  In my heart, I knew it was her.  I looked up at the ceiling and said “Goodbye Leona.  I hope our paths cross again someday.”

A couple of weeks ago, Ray came home with a DVD that his sister had made from all the old family home movies.  It was such a treat to see the films of a young vibrant Leona playing with cute little Ray.  At one point you could see them talking to each other.  There’s no sound on those faded old films and I wondered if he was calling her Auntie Ohnie.

What a day yesterday was.  Ray had reservations for dinner, the mail included birthday cards and family members called.  The highlight of the day was Homer mentioning the occasion on his blog.  I’ve been getting happy birthday’d left and right.  (Thanks for the suggestion on the new comment filter Brian and thanks to you too Homer!  You are a great friend.) 

 The big surprise is what I ultimately got for my birthday.  It was something I didn’t expect.  Something I didn’t have either.

I got sick!

Yes, I’m sick.  It’s official.  I fear that I’m going to be under the weather for a few more days.  Got some sort of crud in the back of my throat accompanied with mild aches, chills and over all malaise.  Feels like there’s a conference going on down there to determine if I should have the flu or a really bad cold.  I’m voting for the latter.  After all, I did have a flu shot this year.  This time around, I’m popping echinacea like crazy and drinking tea.  Where did I put that vitamin C?

We canceled the dinner reservations last night.  There was going to be this whole lunch with co-workers thing today.  Ray works with a woman named Linda who’s birthday is the day before mine.  It’s kind of become the standard to have a dual lunch birthday celebration.  Oh well.  Hey, happy birthday Linda!!

Yesterday morning I made a decision.  It was right when I saw myself in the mirror after getting out of the shower.  I want to find a personal trainer.  I need help. 

Let’s face it, I’m 42–I mean 40.2.  If I don’t start doing something now–right now–I’m going to have a really hard time trying to do it later if at all.  The only trouble is, I live in a rural area.  It’s not like there’s this vast selection of personal trainers. 

Most people just find a trainer and go with them without any thought.  They just want someone to help them along, spot them during workouts and give encouragement when needed.  I want all that, but I have two other prerequisites of a trainer.  A) My trainer must be male, and B) He has to be totally fucking hot. 

I’m a visual (and/or really shallow) person.  I need the eye candy.  I’m the ass who only gets motivated by a carrot on a stick.  It’s just that simple.  I hired a trianer in Chicago for a brief period and he was OK, but more on the lean side.  He’s standing there all tall and trim telling me to push harder and I’m feeling like, “Bite me! You get down here and do this!”

It’s kind of like the time (or times) when I was having a tad bit of personal difficulty in my life.  At the suggestion of a friend, I went to see this therapist.  Upon walking into his office the first thing that stood out was how dark it was.  All the blinds were drawn and the shelf lined walls were brimming with books, paper and other assorted crap.  In the center of the room was a desk piled high with files, a half eaten egg mcmuffin and whatever else couldn’t fit on the shelves.  Behind it sat the corpulent therapist.  He was a classic specimen with ill fitting clothes and greasy hair and my first thought was, “How is this fat fuck supposed to help me get my life in order?”  His answer was medication.  I found someone else. 

When offering professional help, it’s best to exemplify your services.  If you’re in the market to be a personal trainer, you should be an inspiration to your clients.  This rule also applies to dating.  You’re kinda gonna to get what you attract.  I was chatting with a gentleman in a fast food restaurant several years ago.  He was rather heavy set, balding with a big beard and long hair.  In between bites of his taco he lamented how he, “…just couldn’t find a girl”.  At that moment a big glob of taco sauce slopped on his belly blending in with the tear and all the other stains.

So here I am in rural Arizona hoping to find my fitness muse (God I am shallow).  Oh, and before you ask, Ray does not work out with weights.  He’s a totally different body type.  It would be great to work out together but we have different fitness goals.  He just needs to maintain.  I need a complete overhaul.