#sunriver

Busted Up & Busy

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Welcome back to me…to my own blog…once again!

I feel like I need my own Yoda. Someone who will hear me say weak assed things like “I’m going to try and write more consistently” and remind me

Luckily, I verbally hedge my bets with that approach, so…no broken promises!

As alluded to in the title, I’ve been busy. Work keeps me pretty occupied. My workdays are a frenzied pace from start to finish, leaving me pretty wiped out at the end of them.

I still try – there’s that hedging again! – to get out and do some delivery driving a couple evenings a week. It’s only a couple hours per night, a couple nights a week, but it seems like an eternity when you hate doing it. The reward is getting worse, too, which makes it harder. I finished a two-hour block last night – after the Silver Fox hyped me up when I was ready to pull the plug and bail – and my average rate was $25/hr. That’s down from around $30/hr, which is a hefty percentage.

My parting thought as I bellied up afterward was “Might as well pay me in pesos”. But where two hours’ earnings might not matter, 10 or 12 hours over the course of a month is an extra car payment, so that’s not nothing. Especially as I scramble to make my goal of paying Angela (my car) off by the end of November.

So, I needed the hype. Especially since I wouldn’t have left my home at all yesterday without it.

Nonetheless, it leaves me too burnt out to write much.

I did get a break from the hard work last month when my family met up in Sunriver for our yearly vacation. Sunriver is right outside of Bend, Oregon, so there’s always plenty to do.

Mostly, this time I just ate. Mind you, I swore I was going to spend time writing each day. I’ll save you a scroll through my blog post library: that didn’t happen.

Why would it, in the High Desert outdoor playground that is Bend, Oregon? Well, that’s where the busted up part of this post’s title comes in: I fell down.

Again.

And it was bad.

The best I could piece together was that I slipped on a cat hair tumbleweed as I walked into my apartment. Cat hair + laminate flooring = a suboptimal traction situation.

I’d been down to the local watering hole for a couple beers – two, literally. I just wasn’t feeling it, so I hoofed the 10 or so blocks to Safeway for a six-pack and snack to nosh on at home while I watched a movie before bed.

The movie – or the snackage, for that matter – never happened. As soon as I set foot in my place, it was lights out for Xtopher.

I wish I could say it was something more glamorous or exciting, a mugging, defending a stranger from danger or even a dalliance gone bad…but it was just my natural clumsiness. My friends tried to nudge me toward a more exciting, albeit alternate, truth – the aforementioned mugging, DB even suggested I’d been roofied after hearing my story – but I could not oblige.

I was actually too harsh when I said “natural clumsiness”…knowing physics and geometry, ok, remembering what I do of my high school and college courses on the subjects, what I was doing and how I ended up adds up to cat like reflexes.

You see, if I was walking in the door and slipped on something, my feet would have gone out from under me, leaving my fallen body laying head first into my unit. Certainly the final resting spots of what had been my bag of groceries supports this. Me, on the other hand ended up facing the door, which could have happened – if I had ended up on my back. But I didn’t, I wasn’t just facing the front door, I was also facing the floor.

That’s where those cat like reflexes come in. Not only had I fallen backward instead of forward, I’d also flipped midair to land on my face.

Fairly literally, by the way.

I can’t tell you the exact order – likely due to being mildly concussed by the whole ordeal – but I know I hit my chin hard enough to break my front tooth and open a cut on the bottom of my chin. I remember pushing myself up once after being unconscious long enough for blood to pool around me. That I know because when I did push up, one of my hands went out from under me and I went back down on my face.

I think that’s where I got the four splits across my forehead. Well, not so much across (because that would blend with my age based creases that I do not call wrinkles) as perpendicular to my eyebrows. However, it could have been where I split the cartilage in my ear open. Remembering two falls and having wounds on three planes of my skull further suggests a concussion.

Since I’m a typically stupid guy, though, I didn’t go to the ER for almost 24 hours, so likely is as close to a diagnosis as I could get on that concussion.

Likely concussion, broken tooth and six gashes on my head…and bruised ribs, probably from the initial impact, that’s my damage.

All because I was too bored at the bar to stick around and decided to come home.

At least my ribs were only bruised.

Until the following Sunday, that is. I’d started feeling well enough to venture out of the house and met my parents for breakfast. Afterward I was tired – from getting up early on a Sunday, eating a heavy breakfast and the actual work of walking my injured ass over to the restaurant – so I layed down on the couch to rest. About 30 minutes of blissful dozing later, I sneezed…probably a tickle from cat hair drifting through the air. That’s what I’m going with.

Ah- Pop-Pop-Choo!

That was some pain. I couldn’t take a full breath. Hell, I couldn’t get up off my back!

After another 90 minutes of shallow breathing my way through the absolute WTF worst pain I can remember, I decided I needed to go back to the ER. The pain from getting off my back almost made me forget the pain of the prior hour and a half. It for sure eclipsed it.

Back at the ER, broken.

I wasn’t at all surprised to hear that. They were somehow surprised I hadn’t recalled them telling me how to sneeze until my ribs healed on my earlier visit. Um, hello? Concussion?

I was actually surprised to hear I hadn’t broken my sternum, just a rib on either side of it. I still think I did…while they were being surprised that I’d broken my ribs sneezing, I was being surprised that them hearing my history of micro-fractures hadn’t mitigated their surprise and prompted a referral for a little nuclear medicine to double-check my sternum. Not that it was worth pursuing, anyway…there’s nothing they can do for broken ribs, so why bother?

So that’s how I ended up spending a week in Sunriver and spending most of my time eating versus biking, hiking or paddling around the high desert.

I think I was three weeks post-fall and two weeks post-sneeze when I got back home. I returned from vacation feeling about as healed as I was feeling before the sneeze.

Progress!

That’s just the condition you want to be in when you move homes, right? But sure enough, I stopped on the way home from the high desert to pick up keys to my new place.

While it is just a short distance away, right across the park from my old place…it was a long time coming. I’d started thinking I wanted to move at the end of last year. I started looking with a mind to move at the end of my current lease: the end of March. Knowing where I wanted to be, my current building, made it seem easier to accomplish but ended up taking nearly a year!

It’s silly, living in a world with people who can own a condo and let it sit empty for two years because they thought the damage a prior tenant did to the floors made it un-leasable. One of the other residents is a realtor who knows both the owner of that unit and me and tried to put us together. The guy took my contact info and just…nothing.

Another unit had an active listing and never replied to my inquiry. It’s still empty, but the listing is gone now.

There was a third unit whose owner I spoke with in January. She wanted to list it February 1st but needed to find a property manager first. In two weeks. I didn’t want to move until April 1 to avoid paying double-rent, but offered to rent her place March 1 if I could rent from her – I loathe property managers. She passed. I get her dis-ease being a first time landlord…but I know eight residents, two of whom are Board members. Someone finally moved into the unit on September 1st.

Idiots. Am I not stupid enough to be rich…is that what’s stopping me from wealth?

The last weird obstacle to my move wasn’t really an obstacle at all, so we’ll call her an honorable mention. It’s the Silver Fox’s neighbor – or would be, if she lived in her condo. She doesn’t, though. She lives in the West Hills, where she moved…closer to 10 years ago than five. And her unit has sat empty for every damn one of those years. Assuming she doesn’t have a mortgage, she’s still paying $10000-15000 a year on HOAs and taxes. That’s cumulatively $100,000! I don’t want to live next door to my best friend, so I never pushed it. Not that it would have mattered if I did. I refer to that kind of wealth as “fuck you money” because they do not take instruction from anyone else.

But I made it! Persistence paid off, even though the reward was moving with broken ribs. When I told my landlord I was leaving, it was because of the crazy neighbor quotient in the old building. Crazy neighbors in four of 18 units is too high, even if it only worked out to an average of three crazy people in the building at any given time.

Little did I know that the cause of the broken ribs should have been the reason I moved in April: a broken HVAC. I told my landlord about it in March and he made an unsuccessful bid to have it repaired. I was heating my place with an inverted 4” terracotta pot over my gas stove in March and April. In June, July and August I became an expert at timing the opening and closing of windows each morning and evening to maximize the overnight cooling.

But the lack of air conditioning – or even air movement – has kept poor Myrtle in a constant state of shedding. Hence the cat hair tumbleweeds.

Ironic that the reason I should have moved this past Spring indirectly became the reason I ended up moving with broken ribs.

Cause of (near) Death: ProChristination.

Busted Up & Busy

Cue The Go-Gos…

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And before I begin, congrats to the Go-Gos on their recent inauguration into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

For as much anticipation taking a year off of vacation and travel created for us all, I have to say that my own came and went without much fanfare.

In October.

Which was great on a couple different levels. First, I got to deploy all my snark when asked if I was participating in Octsober. Um, it’s a family reunion-slash-vacation, so that’s a big

The second great thing – and just to be clear, I’m enumerating things beyond seeing the foursome from Texas that I call my extended family. Truth be told, they are the only other family. Anywho, the second great thing was the timing of it all. We’d originally planned this for late June-early July of 2020. And then 2021. But the parentals ultimately decided to exercise their right to cancel/reschedule on the last day they could before everything locked in 30 days out. With COVID and Delta being what it was, they made a good call.

October was the reschedule. For whatever reason, the original date lined up with my youngest brother’s 45th birthday. The fallback encompassed my sister’s 55th. This, of course, brought up my unresolved – and equally heretofore unknown – issues around 70s and 80s coffee commercials. Y’know, the ones with the butthurt housewife that’s upset when her husband orders a second cup of coffee with his dessert. They even spoofed it in Airplane!

Why don’t we ever do family vacations around my birthday?!? Surely not because it’s in the middle of January and everyone is knee-deep in their resolutions.

But the real coup d’etat on the timing was the timing! October isn’t the summer anywhere in the northern hemisphere, nor is it yet fully winter. In the Oregon high desert, that means the resort town we meet up in is itself deserted.

Also, there are no crazy temps either way. Sure, it got down to the 30s at night, but the days were high 50s-low 60s. It was awesome. Light sweater weather during the day, at worst. Then at night it was cold enough you could leave the window open a crack to get that crazy cold air deep sleep going.

Plus, the parents were on the main floor. “Age Rules” being what they are, that means that in addition to playing the TV at the same volume as their ages, the temperature was set the same way. If I didn’t open my window, I’d have woken up looking like a Costco rotisserie chicken!

All of this really bubbles up to the reality that after 4 pm, all there really is to do in Sunriver in October is eat and drink.

Well, that and watch the neighborhood deer.

What? You thought that seeing my family would be the best part of this story to me?

Don’t get me wrong, my enjoyment of my food and beverage consumption was greatly enhanced by my family’s presence. Not just because they are my blood. No, because the extended family foursome I have are Texas residents, so you know one of them was unvaccinated – and proudly declaring her natural immunity from the COVID she survived. Given her Instagram stories, I can safely guess this was from spending her pandemic galavanting around the western side of the country.

Still, I am of the opinion that she should have been vaccinated. I expended a great deal of emotional energy during the vacation trying to not lecture my 20-something first cousin on this topic. Helpfully, we seemed to be seated quite near one another at every damn meal. Well played, family. Well played.

Our usual meal routine for family vacations is that breakfast is a drop in event, we’re on our own for lunches and dinner is a family time. Generally, each person gets a cooking night but since working folk might pop in or out during the vacation according to their schedules, occasionally couples can pair up.

Me? I’m always fucked. I mean, destined to cook alone – the one time I brought someone, his grandmother died the day we fucking arrived…the nerve. I mean, lesson learned. Not that the family minds my solo-cooking misadventures, particularly since their favorite pastime seems to be harassing me while I cook. Can’t blame them, though…I can generally be relied upon to do something entertaining while cooking.

Hey, in the grand scheme of things, two small fires out of all the vacations we’ve taken is a blip at most. Right?!?

There are food related vacation traditions involved, for sure – beyond my minor conflagrations.

The ‘Phew generally orders pizza for his night. And that’s usually the day we arrive so we can ease into it.

The lil bro usually grills burgers.

The bro-in-law usually grills steak.

Mom makes spaghetti.

Dad…well, dad takes us all out to dinner. Then, per family tradition, argues with his brother about whether he can chip in. Short version: he can’t. Long version: we all had another round while they debated.

And, me? Well, since I love cooking but hate cooking for myself, I go all out. I’ve been known to pack not just a favorite knife – turns out, my LTR ends up being cutlery – but even a 10 lb pork loin and most of the ingredients for a molé or a paella pan or what have you. Hey, I’m not starting a fire cooking Mac & Cheese, ok?

You might notice the Texas Foursome was not listed. Not a bunch of cookers in that group. The mom isn’t super domestic, so they come by it honestly. Since there’s usually more people than nights, this usually isn’t an issue, though. Myself, I think this was the first time I’ve stayed the full duration.

This time, my COVID cousin brought along her fiancé. It was my first time meeting him, but it seemed everyone else had met him before briefly at some family function I missed. To his credit, he took up steak grilling duties for one meal – which my brother-in-law regrettably but graciously abdicated. I mean, who wouldn’t cede grill master duties to a Texan?!?

Poor guy. He asked how everyone wanted their steaks cooked and then served us all saddles. I know the pain of going from zero to 60 on cooking. The fires I set are obvious. His was more subtle – merely cremating a cow carcass. Why he gets a pass and I get harassed…well, further evidence of how nice my family is.

Or how much more they…like me?

That all being the case, I still found myself using my extra family time relaxing into cooking for pleasure. I had planned a beef stew over polenta dinner, with an ancillary black bean chili type dish.

Texans, remember? I knew there’s gonna be extra nights. Plus, with COVID protocols being in effect, I was pretty sure dad wasn’t getting a reservation for 10+ anywhere.

I got my stew inspiration from a cook at the restaurant on my block. The recipe served 30, so I halved it. There was 12 of us that night – the ‘Phew brought a girlfriend for the night – and everyone got one serving. Yikes.

My hecklers’ fantasy moment? Making polenta. It’s pretty easy…boil some stock, stir in the polenta and then stir as it does it’s polenta thing. I made the full restaurant recipe, but chose the wrong pan. I chose a 4-quart saucepan and needed at least another quart of space, although in retrospect, I’d have chosen a 6-quart sauté pan so I had more surface area for the liquid to cook off.

So, I fucked up the polenta. Think of it as me being a gracious host and serving low hanging fruit to my loving tormentors.

Remember, to make up for it, I had a second meal up my sleeve!

Plus, my mom pulled her favorite “I have a gay son”/Thanksgiving trick on her cooking night – handing me the spatula. So I cooked up a bunch of spaghetti.

Then, in a fit of “don’t end up like me” life lessons, I made a breakfast date with my 20-something first cousins from Texas and made a date for a breakfast cooking lessons. That sentence was…ouch.

The menu? Frittata and home-style potatoes.

I told them around midnight – it was more of a dropped gauntlet than an invitation – to meet me in the kitchen at 8 the next morning. Then we drank for a couple more hours.

She looked perfectly put together.

Surprisingly, my youngest cousin was already there when I arrived. I’d set my alarm for 745 and brushed my teeth and threw on a ball cap.

When I expressed my surprise, she was all, “What? You said 8!”

For my part, I mumbled, “Well, we’re batting .500”…you know I was still drunk if I was credibly attempting sports analogies. I started in on how easy frittatas are – I mean, do you want to make more than two omelette ever? – and how it can be something you just throw together with supplies on hand, put under the broiler and then slice up like a pizza and throw on the table.

Easy-peasy!

Guess who showed up right about then? That’s right…COVID cousin!

I told them my default frittata: cubed ham, cubed cheddar and broccoli florets. Pro-tip: you can buy the ham pre-cubed and use frozen florets. Aside from that, you’re big decisions are what herbs you want to use. Garlic powder, maybe a red pepper flake and “anything green” were my loose guidelines.

I put COVID cousin on frittata prep and showed my younger cousin the potato ropes. Since we were nearing the end of the vacation, my sister – tasked with provisioning the pantry for each of these vacations and affording my uncle another opportunity to hone his “let me chip in” argument – was in high “use everything up” mode. To that end, I instructed my cousin to use the remaining potatoes.

Short cut for home style potatoes: quarter them and nuke them for 3-4 minutes to soften them up. Then cube them and throw ‘em in a sauté pan with some oil and…whatever spices you have handy!

Why? Because the M.O. for this Homo in the kitchen is “Because I can!” Pretty much everywhere else I’m my life I seem to can’t so this is cathartic.

Keeping with my traditions of affording my family opportunities to harass me while I cook and simultaneously making a near-critical-slash-comedic error, the 6-quart sauté pan I chose for my cousin turned out to be too small for that many damn potatoes.

Fuck my fucking life. On top of the ongoing Struggles of Xtopher, I forgot to get a frittata spread pic. Ugh. Will these humiliations never end?!?

But at the same time, this minor crisis allowed me the chance to show my cousins how to roll with the culinary punches. I’m no Julia Child – despite my default childish behaviors – but I’m all for her “no one needs to know what happens in your kitchen” confidence. If they walked away with any of that from my struggle of tossing 4 lbs of cubed potatoes in a 6-quart sauté pan…my work as a twice-their-age cousin is done.

Since they are in their 20s and I haven’t seen any home cooked meals posted on their Instagrams, I’m gonna guess these confidence boosting lessons will need a <ahem> booster shot.

Cue The Go-Gos…

Dear Gawd, What Have I Done?!?

galby68, , 4 Comments

I was talking/texting with my sister the other day about our upcoming family vacation. Suddenly, the conversation turned back toward my favorite topic: me.

So, what have you been up to?

Such an innocently conversational question.

Of course, it generated a 4″ text response from me.

The gist was that my stupid PT job had been keeping me busy enough with 35-55 hour weeks for two months straight that everything else in my life was suffering. This is probably as good a time as any to add that my mother had pointed out to me that this was largely my own fault at lunch a few days earlier.

You do this to yourself, you could say no.

Oh, mom…of course I could. But that’s not how you and dad or retail raised me!

Anyway, my main frustration wasn’t the lack of time or energy I’d had for bike rides or hikes this far in the summer. Zero, at that point…if you’re keeping track. It was more that there were two writing projects I’d wanted to make some significant progress on this summer. My second book in the No One Of Consequence series and a slightly supernatural mystery I’d begun that I’m calling GhosTed at the moment.

My hope was to complete the first draft of NOOC in June and work on finishing GhosTed in July. Then after the break, dive into editing mode on NOOC in August so I could meet/beat my November publishing goal.

I told my sis that I felt I had barely finished my first draft of NOOC by the end of July and hadn’t touched GhosTed at all. I was a good month behind my self-imposed deadlines.

Not to mention my blog output had completely dried up.

Then this happened.

What the hell got into me?!?

A few words of support and questions about characters from the first book and suddenly I’m suggesting that I can have Book Two ready to roll in less than eight weeks?!?

Truth be told, I probably could. I’m going to move toward that goal, certainly. However, I’d been kicking around some feedback I got on Book One from another writer whose opinion I really value and how I could incorporate his suggestions into a version two – one of the perks of self-publishing, the drawing board is never closed! – of Book One to release in tandem with Book Two.

A less-than-eight-week timeline for both seems possible, just not likely.

Oh, conundrums.

But, while I sit in my local cafe not working on either project

…and texting with Diezel as well as my mom and sister I’m registering the relief I feel at allowing myself to drift out of focus.

Don’t worry, though, I gave Book Two a good 40 minutes of focus before letting my laptop go to sleep. At this rate, it will be ready by November.

Well, some November…

Dear Gawd, What Have I Done?!?

The Red Shirt Diaries #22

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Vacation Edition.

Step aside, Myrtle. You’re not the only allegedly domesticated animal that wants to kill me. My brother’s dog, Buster, has a different animal psychosis that may prove equally lethal to my feline frenemy’s efforts at home.

Alliteratively – definitely not affectionately – called Bastard by yours truly, he’s had nothing but vicious growls and barks for me since the second time we’ve met. How long do you think that takes to become tedious?

Yeah. Not long.

He’s vicious sounding, but I’ve never really thought he would intentionally hurt me. My uncle may think otherwise after having his fingers nipped by Bastard the first time they met. I think it was an accident. The damn dog seems pretty hapless in his predatory skills.

But you know the saying, sometimes even a blind dog finds a bone.

Still, I do try to maintain a sense of optimism. Well, about people anyway. And since Bastard is my brother’s dog…I give it a shot.

Our vacation house is a six bedroom affair, two masters down stairs and four bedrooms upstairs that share two Jack and Jill style bathrooms. My uncle and his family are sharing one set of bedrooms and my brother and I are sharing the other with my sister and brother in law.

And that’s how I died in my mind this morning.

Because my siblings insist on traveling with their dogs, they lock them in the bedrooms when they are gone so they don’t bug the rest of us. They leave the water bowl in the bathroom between, which I think is wise given the inherent doofiness of dogs.

However, that works against me when everyone else leaves before I shower for the day. I went into the bathroom to get ready for the day, cheerfully greeting Bastard when he saw me – AKA: growled at me – through my sister’s bedroom door. I also noted that the sister-unit had left two of the drawers on the vanity open while getting herself ready this morning, but really thought nothing of it…it’s just my programming from my days as an Ops Manager in a department store, those Cosmetics Girls were always reporting broken drawers and related leg injuries after running into open drawers full speed.

Until…

I poked my head into my sister’s room to say hi to her dog, Rex.

Bastard went crazy and started barking at me until I pulled my head back into the bathroom. Admonishing the insanine – insane + canine = insanine…Chrisism – to knock it off, I realized just in time that I was about to trip backward over the open drawers.

Near miss.

Fortunately, a side effect of living with Myrtle is cat-like reflexes. My life has literally depended upon them.

That could’ve been a blow to the temple or impact trauma that would not have ended well for this Red Shirt. Keeping what was left of my cool, I closed my sister’s bedroom door and the vanity drawers and took my shower, thinking about how mad Myrtle would have been if I let another animal kill me.

Better luck next time, Bastard.

The Red Shirt Diaries #22

I Should Be…

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Sleeping:

It is 2 AM, after all. But I went upstairs after dinner to charge my phone and woke up at about 1 AM. After tossing and turning for a while, I came downstairs to do something productive.

So fat – er, far – I’ve had a bowl of Kettle Chips and a Coke Zero.

Job Hunting?:

My sister asked me a few months back if I’d ever considered expanding my job search to Bend, Oregon versus just waiting for a position in Portland that I want.

Yeah, but now that your kid is getting ready to move there for college, I gotta wait a couple years so it isn’t weird.

I never claimed to be a reasonable person, a non-claim I fully embrace since the State of Oregon rejected my unemployment claim on the grounds that a reasonable person would not quit a job simply because a company failed to enforce its policies from its own employee handbook. Given that measurement, I’d rather be unemployed and unreasonable.

The thing is, now that I’m with the whole fam-damily in nearby Sunriver, all I wanna do is not leave.

Ergo, I should at least see what jobs are available here.

Reading:

I’m about two decades behind – ok…only a month -on my WordPress Reader content. I should be better about that…if only because there’s no easy way to go back a month to the last entry I read.

Scroll, scroll, scrolling I a-go!

Writing:

Yes, I know that I am writing…as a procrastination tool. I’ve got several V.O.D.s that I could be working on cleaning up – particularly one about visiting my cousins when I was young that’s been on my mind this week as I reunite with my family. The entry is about my second cousins, but having my first cousins around this week has pulled me back to it…

There’s also several new blog ideas that I’ve got in draft mode – V.O.D. stands for Very Old Draft, incidentally – that I’m putting off: a lil something about how I’m trading my time for money these days, a piece on Crazy Rich Asians that is morphing into a diversity piece as it sits being neglected and a Dating Into Oblivion update/catch up piece.

Instead, I turned on the fire, read a bit, snacked a bit and jerked this place-holder piece off into the blogosphere…I’m on vacation, after all.

Now, since I opted for caffeine over alcohol with my chips and ergo – won’t be sleeping anytime soon…back to reading!

PS: “ergo” usage count in this blog entry – 2. No, 3!

#lazywriting

I Should Be…

Farewell, Summer

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Yesterday was the first day of Fall.  It certainly showed here in the PNW, too, all cool, gray and drizzly.

Wonderful!

Another reminder of how pecadelicious – Chrisism- my body is.  With my AC set at 70 in the Summer, I’m comfortable.  With my heat set at 70 in the winter, I’m freezing.

However, I was reminded as I noted the change of seasons that I never shared my vacation story, and it’s been a month.

It’s funny, I’m about to step into my sixth decade – ok, stumble or possibly stagger – but I can still be the bratty kid that complains to my parents that we haven’t had a family vacation forever.

I really rather rely on my elder and only sister for this type of stuff.  Her three younger brothers are borderline loners – at best.  Once Mom-Donna officially retires from her holding-the-family-together duties, the mantle will be hers to wear.  Mom has tried a few slow steps back from her matriarchal role, but still steps back in with statements of the, “I’d like to host one more holiday while I still can” type.  

She’s such a Prince Philip sometimes.

The result of my mild tantrum, nevertheless, was the parental gift of a summertime family vacation this past Christmas.

Finally, after a long break we were getting the Galby clan back together again in Central Oregon’s high desert retreat, Sunriver.

It’s always fun.

Always.

We’re together under one roof again, yet still free to pursue whatever we want throughout the day, coming together each night for dinner as a group.  Everyone takes a night of cooking duties, which is enjoyable for everyone.  Dad’s night – being the patriarch – is hosting dinner out at a restaurant.  The ‘Phew, as the youngest on the other hand, dips into his hard earned Birthday and possibly allowance fundage to treat us all to pizza delivery on the night of our arrival.

It’s a good ritual.  Plus, it provides me a chance to cook for people, which seldom happens outside of MNSC.

It just occurred to me that the last couple of family get togethers in the desert have proved near – or actually – fatal.

The last trip out for a Christmas getaway a couple years back was interrupted by a Christmas phone call from my ex, Sacha to tell me he had colon cancer…a story for another time.  Maybe.

That Christmas holiday was – more importantly to me – also marred with our family’s collective concern for dad, who had recently had a coronary procedure after which he wasn’t feeling well.

The trip before that was Rib’s first family vacation.  This was maybe five years ago?  Before the pizza even arrived, we were booking a flight for him to ABQ to attend his grandmother’ funeral.  Enviably, as I tap this out in a coffee house, he is with his new beau and family at Munich’s Oktoberfest.​

​I love that this video he sent me of his family vacation was so timely as I reminisced about mine.

Beyond those recent vacation danger moments, I’d say our other vacations were reasonably trauma free.  

Well…

There was the Bike Ride Incident and The Nose Hair Situation, both of which I blame exclusively on my Black Sheep Brother.  Only one of which is near funny.  Black Sheep Bro and I went trail riding with the ‘Phew, I think he was still aged in single digits at the time.  We were having a blast leading him through the trails with a vague goal of finding a path to the ever elusive Benham Falls when he just barely nicked a fallen log that had been cut through to preserve the bike trail’s passability.

He.

Went.

Flying.Poor kid.  Right into a tree.

Little fucker scared the hell out of me and BSB before walking it off.

Talk about a dodged bullet.  I thought for sure my only nephew – at the time – was going to spend the rest of his Halloweens dressed as Stephen Hawking.

Things have changed since then.

I’d sent my bike home with mom and dad the week before after they came to town for a lunch date.  Er, doctor’s appointment.  When they picked me up, all I had to do was show up on the curb with my suitcase.

And a case of wine.

That’s a good change, in my opinion!  My sister had put in a request for some of that good stuff I’m always going out to Hood River for, so I took two bottles each from two of my favorite wineries out there.  I was reserving those for my night of cooking.  But since it’s also Summer, I rounded out my case with eight bottles of Rose.

My parents clucked their tongues at my “extra” baggage.  Not only because their car was also full of their bags, food for the week and doggie travel needs, but also because they had also brought a case of wine.

Great minds…meet the Galby clan!

We made it all fit.

Plus, a growler I’d gotten at 2.0 and Little Buddy’s wedding the day before.

And a huge watermelon The Silver Fox had gifted us.

As we made off on our way, I rationalized two cases of wine being barely enough if even four of the six legal drinkers partook with any regularity.  Really, that’s an easy three bottles a night, closer to four.

Five.  Five a night, tops.

As I mentioned, we all still take our bikes, but only my sister’s family unit rode together.  I put in daily rides, except for arrival and departure days.  It was good.  I’d spent the prior couple of weeks in spin class to trim up a bit.  But nothing prepared my ass for 15-20 mile rides in the saddle of a real bike.  My butt was less bun, more hamburger by the time I left.  But a nice 60+ mile four day stretch was good for me.  

After a successful jump start in spin, with minimal discomfort to my never-healing knee, I had aspirations of riding to the top of the Cinder Dome of the mega-volcano Newberry Crater.  Once the hills hit “straight up” status, my knee straight up refused.

Oh, well.  I still got plenty of exercise and just enough sun, even without the view from the top of the dome.

For my brother’s part, he pedaled to the store one evening, only to return grumpy or confused.  Hard to say.  He was all disturbed at how everyone he passed greeted him.  

I told you…loners.

Anyway, I’d noticed it on my rides. too.  It hadn’t bothered me, though.  I enjoy the social nicety of greeting passersby.  I was more interested in the range of greeting; from the apex vocal salutation to this:which was kind of a very minimal entry.  It was also an indictment for the homogenized environment we were spending the week in.  The darkest skin in this high desert mecca was simply overexposed and under sun screened.

This was the first time we didn’t – not a single one of us, let alone the group – spend time laying about at the pool.  There was a sister’s family rafting trip and a brother and nephew kayaking excursion, otherwise it was fairly pedestrian adventures.  Shopping in Sunriver or heading into Bend for some…shopping.

My sister and brother-in-law took the ‘Phew to look at COCC – that’s for you, Diezel.  He was considering Central Oregon Community Colkege for his first two years, but came back ambivalent.

I cannot believe I’m days away from having an 18 year old nephew!

While they were doing campus tours, the rest of us took off for the High Desert Museum.  Quite a way to spend an afternoon, with some self-improvement undertones.  It’s a nice mix of self-guided educational exhibits and nature path wanderings.

There were way more pics taken than I can comfortably squeeze into my humble blog post, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t throw something in just for Diezel’s enjoyment, so he knows he’s never too far from my thoughts.

So, enjoy, my friend and chosen family member!

Just to shake it up, no humans died or had close calls this time around.  But Buddy, my parent’s dog decided to give us all a scare, with a late day trip to the vet.  The local Sunriver vet wasn’t equipped to handle his situation and escalated him to Bend, 20 miles away.  This resulted in a doped up doggie and my parents enjoying my carbonara reheated.

But, in spite of the changes, the important things remain…

Each of us, being there, for one.  It was touch and go for me.  Mom and dad had picked a seemingly random week in August, the month that usually works for all of us.  Little did we know that we’d signed on for the biggest travel debacle in Oregon highway history: the 2017 eclipse.  

With the increase in tourists traveling in and me working at the airport, I was fairly certain I’d be asked to cancel my vacation.  The request was just to be back for the two days prior as people landed and one million tourists and 27,000 rental cars hit the road.

I was more than willing to fly back instead of risk the road trip…ODOT was tactfully suggesting that people take not only plenty of water for their travel, but also relief vessels, if you get my drift.

I don’t want to be that close to my family.  Hello, Alaska Airlines!

In addition to being there, also the food!

I think cooking for people is the simplest way to show love.  It’s demonstratively caring for them by providing sustenance.  Sharing stories and time over the table.  Figuratively or literally breaking bread together…there is – to me – no better way to illustrate family.

And every night, there we were…gathered at the table celebrating our bond.

Not a bad Christmas gift, parentals…thank you!

Farewell, Summer

The Red Shirt Diaries #13

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Apoc-eclipse Edition.

Regardless of your curiosity and enthusiasm, this is happening.

How does this fit into The Red Shirt Diaries – given that it’s really just a tongue in cheek monologue about my potential demise?

Well, a variety of ways, depending on your beliefs surrounding apocalypses and the opportunity for either mystical or man-made mayhem.

I can dispatch with the mystical variety pretty quickly…since I’ve been known to be brief never, you can feel free to be skeptical.

I guess if you run into your doppelgänger during an eclipse, you’re supposed to resist the temptation to fight them.

Now, I have no idea where this piece of advice originates or why it assumes my instinct would be to fight my doppelgänger, but let’s be honest here:  does it really seem likely that either of us would win a physical confrontation?

No.  No, it does not.

One of the other things I’ve heard is that animals will behave strangely during the eclipse.  Specifically, I’ve been warned not to respond to talking dogs.  Luckily for me, I just left all of my family dogs in Sunriver yesterday so that I could be at work at the airport during the eclipse, leaving me safe from canine kind as well as the Supreme Overlord of the Earth, Mistress Myrtle.

AKA:  The Most Disturbing Feline In the World

But just to be safe, I think I’ll steer clear of the airport’s Pet Relief Area.

Speaking of vacation…my family planned its vacation in Sunriver last year and just happened to do a Monday-Monday trip to – get this – avoid the vacation traffic that comes standard with all Summer Sundays.

Yeah, that’s Monday, August 14th through Monday, August 21st.

The eclipse is on August 21st.

Sunriver is close enough to totality that I could spit on it…and I’m not a particularly accomplished spitter.

Fretting that my family would be stuck in traffic with the anticipated hundreds of thousands of eclipse watchers – and possibly their dopplegangers – I chose to leave on Saturday versus Monday and risk being late to or unprepared forwork Tuesday.

Not to worry, my boss expected me back on Sunday.  It’s nice to be needed.

Making margaritas of the situation, my family extended their stay until Thursday.

Ah, retired life!

But, since I mentioned vacation in the path of totality, let’s delve into a more likely death scenario:  Fatality in Totality.

Obviously, I’ve already cheated death by flying home in a puddle jumper and evading totality – see TRSD 14 – but it’s still on my mind because I really can’t wrap my mind around 100,000 people surviving a weekend in a town that is normally populated with a measly 6,000 souls.

Or 12,000 soles, assuming a zero amputation rate.  Aw, hell…I’m using round numbers anyway.

Seriously, Capt Can’t has trouble anticipating bottled water needs for our five stores at PDX and its 25,000 daily travelers…and he does this every week and has 11 years experience.  How can we reasonably expect a literal small business in a small town to figure out the bottled water needs for an assumed number of people for an uncertain duration of stay during a once in a lifetime occurrence?

And would that small business want to?

It’s a big risk and logistical nightmare for a small business to assume.  This should literally be BYOEverything.

But last week – no, the week before – I was at lunch with my parents and mom mentioned seeing a story on the news about people renting semi trailers to park on the roadside, stock them with water and essentials and sell that shit right off the back of the trailer.

Those crafty bastards.

Of course, we assumed this would be strictly a cash endeavor…what could possibly go wrong?!?

And there you have the perfect storm for man made mayhem:  demand outstripping supply and a trailer – literally – full of money.

Goodbye, humanity.

Of course, by the time we were on the road, headed toward totality, we’d moved past that fear.

We realized that each of us having packeda case of wine – 24 bottles, total – that we (they, remember…I bailed out early like the corporate coward that I am) could fill our emptied wine bottles with water for the ride home.  This took care of recycling, hydration and waste disposal all in one if the historic traffic jam came to pass.

I wholeheartedly support my family’s decision to extend their stay versus risking getting stuck in 10-12 hours of traffic jam and potentially having to pee into a wine bottle in front of one another.

Our mutual reluctance to end up in that position proves we are related.

And ensures we’ll all live to see whatever the next overhyped once in a lifetime occurrence is!

In case you’re curious, by the way, we order about 13 pallets of water each week.  If I recall, a semi trailer holds 28 pallets.  So for 175,000 weekly travelers – 100% of whom do not shop at our stores, either, because they don’t have to sustain themselves like they’re trapped in a Mad Max movie – we order nearly half a semi of water.  

People camping outside in the peak of the Central Oregon High Desert?  Yeah, that’s gonna be some serious Thunderdome shit right there.

The Red Shirt Diaries #13