Mom Worked At The Silver Spur Bar in South El Monte For

about as long as I can remember. Off and on. When we lived with Mom (as opposed to living with Dad somewhere else) I used to get a lot of jobs with the Truckers loading or unloading furniture all over the LA basin/area. Yep, I was young and dumb and had a strong back and it wasn’t a thing to go out and load/unload 100,000 lbs of furniture (or whatever) in a day. Even got to drive those 18-wheelers once in awhile! And, at age 10-17 I was averaging $17 an hour. Almost got talked into a partnership a couple of times.

But I took a look around at the Trucker life and decided I just didn’t want it. Too many hours a day with too many days away from Home (wherever home was) and just too hard a lifestyle. Some of those truckers were only 5 or 10 years older than I and they looked OLD most of the time.

Had a great time with them. Wouldn’t want to be one!

So I joined the Navy instead. Wanted to be a Sonar Tech; wound up a Hospital Corpsman. Go figure.

Anywho, not much happening around here. We’re making out okay. Spending a lot of time at home. We walk and water the garden every day. Share a movie together on Friday evenings. Finally getting to spend a bit more time together while SWMBO looks for a job.

Dang laptop is still going TU. It just will not consistently recognize the radio and let me control it (the radio) from the computer. That throws off me doing most of the digital modes and keeping my log of contacts. Dang it! And I *need* the thing running just right for Field Day this coming weekend!

Friend of mine up the road is going to pay me $50 to take my digger up and pull some stumps out. Luckily they’re mostly pretty small and won’t take much work/time. He may want me to dig a curtain (French) drain in a couple of weeks. That’d be cool!

Got text messages from two of my kids today wishing me Happy Fathers day. That’s neat. MUCH better than having to talk to them! Just kidding

Spent a couple of days with a program called Calibre getting my e-book collection straightened up so SWMBO can put the books she wants on her Nook Color. Man, we must have all the Star Trek and Star Wars books ever written! Not to mention every McCaffrey, King and Koontz book available. (We read too much!)

Let’s see… Oh, getting things ready for field day. Going to take the RV. Got the new coax for my antenna and am taking extra wire. Gotta stop by COSTCO with the Clubs Checkbook for burgers/dogs/buns/etc etc sometime this week. Gotta order the porta potty also.

Was playing around on my YouTube and they have a bunch of things you can do with your video now… This is the same video I posted last week but with music added that’s available on YouTube. Kinda cool. (?)

And that’s it from just outside Belfair, WA USA! 73


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I Worked At A Book Bindery Once When I Was About 15…

A place where we assembled books/magazines/catalogs page by page then ran them through a machine that put glue on the correct edge and put the cover on it. Assembling the books/magazines/catalogs involved sitting at a large round table that rotated. You’d pull off the pages, in order, into stacks for the binder. The guy that had to run everything through the cutter had the hard part: edging all the books/magazines/catalogs without cutting a finger off with the guillotine blade that did the cuts! Do “they” even do books/magazines/catalogs that way anymore?

Not much going on around here. Pretty much SSDD. SWMBO is still looking for a job and taking on additional training for additional certifications to make her more desirable for hiring. I’m thinking about going down to the local community college and taking the “Flagger” course and seeing if I can get some work that way. Hard business to get in; but  once you do you can make a lot of money. We’ll see…

Just finished running the Mason County Sunday Evening 2-meter Chat Net. Had 9 people check in tonight. Not bad. The Net lasted the whole hour we allot for it. A couple of the guys want to learn more about PSK and other digital modes on the radio so I invited them over sometime to see how I do it. Heck, I may just set my laptop up to play a recorded session of psk31 and show everyone at the next club meeting. We won’t be able to actually transmit anything but they’d get the gist of what’s going on. Hmmm. I could even do the same thing with easypal to show them how to send pictures back and forth.

SWMBO got out and did some mowing this afternoon. I watched her from the deck out back. She also made fried chicken for dinner for us and it was yummy!

An older friend brought his new laptop and monitor over so I could show him how to spread his desktop over the two monitors. He likes to have his genealogy program running on the laptop screen and wants Firefox on the other so he can cut and paste without minimizing screens. So we took an hour for that and to install a couple of other programs he likes to use. He does pretty good for a guy that didn’t even want to use “one of them computer things.”

 

And that’s it from the Not-So-Great North West! 73


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