It Never Ceases To Amaze Me.....

Just how stupid some people are. Stupid, conditioned like sheep led to the slaughter. At this point, I'm just waiting for the nuclear fireball overhead to cleanse the planet of the infection called humanity.

Out To Sea

I have no idea that it's been so long since I posted anything to this blog. So much has changed, but so much is still the same. The job is still good, Joy's still not good healthwise. We have a new trailer, one that's much more functional than the old one. And then there's what you'll read in the rest of this post: a ten-day Mexican Riviera cruise we took at the end of February. I kept a diary of the trip, then promptly forgot about it once we got home. I found it again yesterday, finished the last few entries and edited it a little bit for clarity. Here it is!

Cruise Diary

The Preamble

This is something that at the same time I am completely unfamiliar with yet completely familiar with. I know that's a strange thing to say, but to know why I said that, you have to know me. Having lived almost half of my life out of a suitcase, driving from one casino/bar/resort/what have you to the next, I understand the nature of things here, what's going on. A cruise liner like the MV Grand Princess is very much a resort afloat with all that entails – restaurants, pools, hot tubs, cabarets, theaters and (of course) a casino. What's strange to me is the perspective. Up to this point I've always been the employee, albeit in the tertiary way that only an entertainer is. The free agency of an entertainer is liberating in some aspects, but in others – specifically job security – it can be frighteningly constraining. Now I'm a paying passenger, along with my wife Joy. Being on the receiving end of the service is something I find almost a little disconcerting. In so many words, I've never been the one that's been looked after.

But here I am, along with about three thousand other passengers and over a thousand crew aboard the Grand Princess for the next ten days, puttering down the Pacific Coast to the ports of Puerto Vallarta, Manzanillo, Mazatlan and Cabo San Lucas before returning to San Francisco. I'll do my best to write down the whats and hows and whys over the next ten-plus days, as well as how I'm feeling and acting in response to events and surroundings.

Day One – Traveling From Seattle To San Francisco, Boarding, Departing San Francisco

This day started earlier than either of us really planned. The day before, Joy and I drove down from Port Angeles to the southern suburbs of Seattle with her best friend Delane. She'll take our car back to Port Angeles after dropping us off at a place called the SeaTac Inn and “borrow” it while we're away. I'm not entirely sure I can trust her ability behind the wheel, because we have a running argument about how efficient her old Taurus wagon is, which by extension means I don't trust her driving. She claims it takes her half a tank of gas to get from Port Townsend and back, while I once drove it from Port Angeles to Seattle via Tacoma, then filled it up on the return leg in Tacoma on only six gallons of gas (slightly more than half a tank) with a resulting fuel economy of 31mpg – more than double her estimated fuel economy. I think I know who wins this argument, but Dee is a stubborn old mule.

The SeaTac Inn is pleasant enough to suit our needs, though the mattresses were far too firm for my liking. It's not at all unpleasant, but they could invest in memory-foam mattress toppers and do wonders for their reviews. We tried to get to sleep at about nine or ten that evening and wake up at about three in the morning for a three-thirty shuttle, but we woke up at midnight and simply couldn't get back to sleep for anything in the world. We took the first flight out of SeaTac at six in the morning, and touched down in San Francisco a few minutes before eight.

We were surprised to find Princess employees waiting for us as we left the baggage claim, and they helped us into a shuttle bus after suggesting we get some breakfast first. We were deposited at the Herman Cruise Terminal a little before eleven, and brought aboard ship a little after noon. We were surprised at this, because we thought that we wouldn't board until two. I think that this was the first glimpse of just how much Princess would spoil us.

We knew that the average cruise ship cabin isn't very big. Even plunking down the extra cash for an Extended Balcony cabin – nearly $1,300 per person, whereas inside cabins were going for rates in the five hundreds – had us thinking that we'd still have a pretty small cabin. But the surprise was on us when we opened the cabin door for the first time and found something pretty comparable to any motel room we'd inhabited over my years on the road. This was because this was more than just a regular EB cabin, it was actually a Disabled EB cabin. This means additional room for a wheelchair to maneuver about the cabin, ramps to the bathroom and on both sides of the balcony's sliding glass door. By cruise-ship standards, our cabin is pretty fucking spacious. By cruise-ship standards, the bathroom is pretty fucking enormous. And the balcony is pretty fucking glorious.

Day Two – At Sea, En Route To Puerto Vallarta

We rested, mostly. I think that I slept ten hours. We moved our clocks forward overnight to Mountain Time (UTC+7:00) and will move them forward again another hour to Central Time (UTC+6:00) after Thursday night. The food here varies pretty dramatically, from high-end fare in places like the Crown Room and Sabatini's to a serviceable buffet and various themed mini-restaurants on several decks throughout the ship. We've developed an affection towards the Michaelangelo Dining Room, and have begun to meet new people and proposed to dine with them on a regular basis. During the day, we were more-or-less cornered in one of the hot tubs by a really Jeebus-y couple from Stockton. Joy handled herself admirably in what was a pretty polite religious debate. All I got for my troubles was a sunburn across my shoulders.

We saw our first show tonight, a comedy show featuring a stand-up by the name of Steve “Ain't” White. As the nickname suggests, Steve ain't white. I'd never heard of him before, but he claimed to have quite a rep. I think he struggled somewhat with his show, unable to really get his show into gear for any extended length of time without having to deal with some doddering oldster wandering to their seat or some drunken heckler. Joy thought he was hilarious to the point of a coughing fit, and when he learned that we were from Washington he opined that her coughing was due to her excessive pot smoking.

If he only knew. We still bought his CD, and finished the night watching The Martian on a giant LCD screen overlooking one of the ship's swimming pools. Here's my three-sentence review of The Martian:

Matt Damon is left for dead on Mars and struggles valiantly to escape the shadow of Ben Affleck. Which as we know is impossible, because Ben Affleck is Batman. Nobody can escape Batman.

Day Three – At Sea

We bought some trinkets today. Well, not really trinkets. The ship's stores put on sales – if that's what you want to call them – in the dining rooms during their off-hours. Joy bought a floppy hat and a neck purse, which are both pretty useful things to have for our upcoming shore excursion in Puerto Vallarta. The shawl/wrap/pashmina/whatever she bought, probably less so. And how did we pay for this? With our room keys, of all things.

It's pretty ingenious, actually. Princess has a system where charges and credits to our shipboard account can be added directly by scanning our “cruise cards”, which double as our room keys. Part of our total expenditure for the trip included placing $500 on our shipboard account in advance – if only that had collected any sort of interest in the two months between booking the cruise and actually boarding the ship. The ship does not take cash or any other sort of payments while at sea, and we'd actually paid for extra packages to cover gratuities while on board, we still tipped cash for excellent service. Another perk we paid for was an unlimited non-alcoholic beverage package, which gave us both large Coca-Cola-branded tumblers that can be refilled at any bar at any time with any non-alcoholic beverage save for tea from the upscale tea lounge/library on the Promenade Deck (Deck 7).

Tonight was the first formal dinner of the trip. The ship enforces (albeit in a rather relaxed manner) what they call a “smart casual” dress code for the main dining rooms and the more upscale restaurants that aren't a part of the standard dining package, which for me means open-necked shirts and well-kept jeans or slacks. “Formal” is a pretty alien concept to me, because my first formal-dress occasion was my wedding. I'd never gone to a formal dance in school, something that still irks me to this day. But that was then and this is now, so it's time to put on the smooth suit I bought at the Van Heusen outlet store in Bend back before Christmas. An $800 suit for $180 – not too shabby if I may say so myself. My sunburned shoulders didn't really appreciate it, but I looked good enough in the mirror. We dined with a nice couple from the Spokane suburbs that we'd met the night before, and they joined us for karaoke at the Explorers' Lounge. They have a cruise-length karaoke contest going on, and given the poor level of talent last night, I figured that I'd walk away with the show. I thought I'd done pretty well, but the night's winners were a woman who couldn't carry a tune in a bathtub but looked good doing it, and a doddering oldster singing a tuneless love song to his even more ancient girlfriend. No doubt that he got a strong sympathy vote. Perhaps I should have chosen a less obscure song. Perhaps I'll go back later to compete again. I don't think my ego was bruised that badly, but no contest is truly fair – especially when there aren't any impartial judges.

And now, a few words about doddering oldsters. When we first boarded the ship, I was quite convinced that I would be the youngest person on board. And while that was eventually proven false, I'm still far younger than the average passenger. That average passenger is much, much older than me – we're talking retirement age and up – and the vast majority of passengers are white, though there is a sizable group of Chinese-American passengers on board. Very few African-American passengers – most of them being a single extended family traveling together – and a mere handful of Latino passengers. There are a few younger adult passengers, even a couple of straight-up dude-bro types. I've only encountered a couple of teenagers, and maybe a half-dozen infants and children traveling with their parents. Let's just say that an obnoxious metalhead like me tends to stand out in this crowd, albeit more because of my lack of gray hair more than anything else. The crew is a polyglot bunch – the Captain and much of the Senior Staff is Italian, though there are officers from South Africa, Croatia and India as well as other places. The only thing the Service Staff have in common is a reasonable command of English, and while the largest contingent are from The Philippines, they're a mix of people from every corner of the globe – other than the U.S. and Western Europe. While I have been told that there are eleven Americans working for the ship, I have yet to see anyone from the “first world” in a Princess uniform outside the occasional glimpse of a member of the Senior Staff. Not that I have any problems with that. As long as they do their jobs well, they could come from Mars for all I care.

One more thing. Given that the average age of the passengers is.... well, old, why on earth does the ship have a discotheque? Who would go? I know that we probably won't go. Being a DJ on a cruise ship must be a pretty boring job most of the time.

Day Four – At Sea

Breakfast in bed for Joy for the second day in a row. We've moved our clocks forward twice since leaving San Francisco, and we'll remain on Central/Mexico City time for the next several days. Being at sea, with nothing to break the tedium outside, I've noticed a few things. Watching sports is pretty interesting. Princess' cable-TV package includes a few movie channels, several news channels, and the Caribbean feeds of ESPN and ESPN2, the latter of which is basically the US feed of ESPN. But having the Caribbean feeds gives me access to sports and competitions I might not otherwise see without paying through the nose for online pay-per-view streaming. This weekend's action includes Six Nations rugby, and had we have chosen a later date for the cruise I could have watched the ICC World T20 Cricket Championships. Cricket is not everyone's cup of tea, but I've grown to appreciate the direct ancestor of baseball over the last few years.

Joy's not doing very well right now. She didn't take her meds for three days in a row, and only got back to them yesterday, taking doses in the morning and before going to bed last night. After breakfast she went back to sleep and doesn't want to get out of bed, so for the most part I'll be left to my own devices. I can deal with that.

Today the ship passes Cabo San Lucas by only a few miles on its way to Puerto Vallarta. It's kind of odd to me, but it's not my business to tell them when and where to hit port or not. We'll be in Puerto Vallarta in the morning. Hopefully Joy will be ready to go for that. We'll be on a guided tour for most of the day, then left to do a little shopping and dining along the waterfront. Since we're talking about a tourist zone, I doubt that I'll have to use what little Spanish I remember from high school. It's really shitty, one of many bad memories I have from those days.

I need to get some air.

Day Five – Puerto Vallarta

It's a pretty fair-sized city – at least from my perspective, maybe about the size Tacoma, or maybe the Reno-Sparks area. There was a little mix-up at first, as the staff charged with letting passengers disembark from the ship kept sending us from one end of the ship to the other as though one hand didn't know what the other was doing. But eventually we made it off the ship and to the row of tour buses parked just beyond the terminal's fences.

The tour we took was a pretty straightforward tour of the city – the main square, the seawall they call the Malecón, the old Catholic church of Our Lady of Guadeloupe, a drive along the coastal highway a few miles out of town, a few opportunities to shop for jewelry (this cruise seems obsessed with jewelry) and other trinkets. I was able to steer Joy away from buying some pricey opal rings, but neither of us could pass up the sandals she bought. So what if we got hosed on the price, paying fifty bucks? At least the money went to the people who actually made them, as in the people standing right in front of us. I'll take that any day over buying another shitty shirt made in China.

We finished the tour with a stop at a beachfront restaurant that seemed to not last nearly long enough to enjoy a plate of fajitas with chips, salsa and guacamole – all of which were pretty fucking good. In retrospect, I feel really shitty right now because in the hustle to pay the tab before the bus left without me – the whole meal cost 336 pesos, which at the current 17:1 exchange rate is about twenty bucks, I spaced out and forgot to add a tip. I think seeing the “$336” - yes, Mexico uses the dollar sign for their currency – gave me a case of sticker shock. The tour guide Jesús and his driver Nacho (a common nickname, usually for Ignácio) did a fine job of schlepping us yanquis back and forth, pointing out the sights, helping Joy in and out of her wheelchair. I hope they got a good chunk of the sixty bucks we paid Princess for the tour.

I felt a moment of sadness as a family of hawkers came into the restaurant (whose name I completely forgot) and set about to sell their wares to us, their daughter selling packs of gum, like right out of the George Lopez bits I heard on the comedy channels on my satellite radio. I wasn't too sad about it though, because in the forty minutes we were there they wound up making some pretty good money off of the doddering oldsters that dominated our tour group (along with everything else on the boat, but you've already heard me whine about that). The square that the restaurant sat on the edge of was holding an arts-and-crafts fair, and we both wish that Jesús and Nacho would've let us linger a bit longer there, because I'd seen some pretty cool stuff there, if only briefly. We thought about buying some 222's (that's acetaminophen with codeine) at a pharmacy at the terminal, but the fact that they wanted fifty bucks for a bottle of thirty tablets was a deal-breaker. So much for things being cheaper in Mexico.

We thought about going back aboard the boat to drop off our things and make another trip outside, but Joy's will was flagging, so we made a beeline for the hot tubs, and now we're watching Guardians of the Galaxy and Inside Out in our cabin. What the fuck is it with Pixar movies? Cute as all get out, but they have such depth to them, to the point where it's almost impossible to not cry once during one of their movies. At least they didn't show Up – half the passengers would've committed suicide after watching the beginning of that movie.

I'll be getting her up here in a bit to take her to a magic show, followed by dinner. And their karaoke contest has a second round coming up. Maybe I'll take another swing at it. I know that I'm a better singer than most anyone on this boat not being paid to perform. If the imbeciles vote for some other dementia case or talentless cougar over me, I'll just shut the fuck up and walk the fuck away. Yeah, I'm being a little egotistical about something I shouldn't be, but I was a professional singer and drummer for twenty years – I have legitimate talent. Squalling like a branded calf is not the same.

I should take a moment to talk about how much we're getting spoiled by the staff here. Last night, we tried out one of their high-end restaurants, the Crown Room steakhouse. Instead of paying for the individual menu items, we each paid a “cover charge” of $25. Sounds steep, right? You don't know how deep the rabbit hole goes, Alice. First we ordered lobster cake appetizers that could easily be entrees if they decided to put more than one on a plate. I got a very nice salad next, while Joy got a french onion soup that was easily one of the best I've ever tasted. I ordered a sixteen-ounce Kansas City Strip steak, while Joy ordered a fourteen-ounce ribeye, both cooked to a tender medium-rare – seriously, anyone who orders a steak any other way is delusional, and anyone who orders one well-done is a complete fucking moron. Donald Trump likes his steak well-done, for example. Need I say more?

And then they added the lobster. I saw four-ounce lobster tails on the menu and was perfectly fine with not ordering them, and I remember saying that I was fine without the lobster tails. But they brought them anyway. Four of them. Remember the scene from Jaws where Sheriff Brody is shoveling chum into the water and the shark pops up, and he says “I think we're gonna need a bigger boat?” That's what I was thinking at that precise moment. At the end of the day, we got a meal that would've cost us well north of $100 - $150 for fifty bucks. I can live with that.

Another one place has become a regular haunt for us, the Leaves tea house and library. This another place where you have to pay for drinks, though a pot of tea for two to three bucks is hardly a back breaker, especially when they throw in the dessert tarts and cakes that come with the tea. Meanwhile, we can borrow books from their smallish but largely complete library to peruse at our leisure. The only down sides to Leaves are that while the library is always available, the tea service is only open when the ship is at sea instead of hopping from port to port, and that there are more books by professional wrestlers (a Mick Foley novel and Dave Bautista's autobiography) in the library than there are by Frank Herbert. Not good.

Day Six – Manzanillo

From what I can see from our table at the terrace behind the Horizon Court Buffet, all the way at the aft end of the ship, Manzanillo is a port city. There's a massive container port directly in front of me (behind the ship) that's from my perspective seems to be easily on a par with the Port of Seattle. The container port has its own specific inlet of the harbor while the rest of the shoreline is studded with vacation condos. Grand Princess is berthed on the south shore of the harbor, well away from the container port and its traffic. The south shore of the harbor is little more than a series of hills, though I can see a massive set of smokestacks between a gap in the hills. I can see houses climbing up the sides of these hills, and I can imagine living in one of those houses quite easily. If only.

This is the only way we'll see Manzanillo. Joy is worn out from yesterday, and just getting to breakfast – even with me pushing her wheelchair – cost her what little energy she had to spare this morning. She'll stay in bed for the remainder of the day, though a tequila tasting in the Explorer's Lounge this afternoon has her interest piqued. That won't take place until after the ship has left for its third port of call, Mazatlan. It's over three hundred miles back up the coast from Manzanillo, so the ship is leaving port at four in order to make it to Mazatlan in the morning. I think that I'm okay with skipping Mazatlan as well. Cabo San Lucas is where we both want to get off the ship and explore. We've had a running joke that maybe we'll find Sammy Hagar passed out underneath the bar at Cabo Wabo.....

One of the things you find out about cruises that the brochures don't tell you is the chance encounters with people that you probably don't know, but have so much in common with that it's almost eerie. During dinner tonight at the DaVinci Dining Room – we were sent there because the Michelangelo was packed solid – we were paired off with a couple that had moved from the Seattle suburbs to Reno, and at least one of them had grown up in the Puyallup area. We'd learned that some beloved local shops in Reno had gone out of business, their building bulldozed. We found that John Ascuaga's Nugget – sold to new owners by the Ascuaga family only two years ago – had been sold to another new ownership group, which is never a good sign. This couple were on their forty-fifth (!) cruise, and gave us sage advice for cruises to Alaska, which we may consider in the next year or so. And they were on the whole quite a charming couple. I would only hope that the others we've dined and spoken with would think of us so kindly. But between her visible tattoos and her neo-paganism, that might be something of a turnoff for the average passenger on the Grand Princess.

I find myself thinking a lot about getting back to Seattle after the cruise is over. Of course having to deal with the security bullshit will be.... well, bullshit. Trying our best to get Alaska Airlines to move our flight up from 8:30pm to something a little more humane than spending nearly ten hours waiting at SFO for our flight home. And that flight home will be crowded as fuck. On the flight to San Francisco, we were so packed in cheek-to-jowl I swear that the poor woman next to me must have felt like I was molesting her every time I so much as moved. I kept my phone out of my pocket for the entire flight because I thought she would slap me if I even considered putting it back in my pocket. But we'll have two nights in Seattle, and we both want to go do something downtown that night if at all possible. I'll have to give my old buddy Ed Durgan a call and see what he and his wife are doing that night....

Day Seven – Mazatlan

Another day on the boat, another chance for the crew to spoil us. Neither of us planned on getting off the boat to explore Mazatlan in the first place. Breakfast in our cabin, a little sun on the Lido Deck (Deck 14) before a couple of cheeseburgers from the Trident Grill. As the sun went down over the horizon and ship left port, we watched a James Taylor concert on the giant video screen above the pool on the Lido Deck. From there we watched vocal impressionist Tony Pace sing his way through several decades worth of music in the Princess Theater. We capped the night off with another of the ship's high-end restaurants, Sabatini's. Their Italian cuisine was simply awesome, and another server left with a large tip for his exquisite service and good humor.

I'm cutting this entry short because we have to get up early in the morning to get ready to debark for Cabo San Lucas.

Day Eight – Cabo San Lucas

I think that we left earlier than absolutely necessary. We were off the boat a little after eight in the morning, well before most of the shops had opened. But the hawkers were out in their full fury, and between them and the tourist shops we spent well north of a hundred dollars on jewelry and clothing. Mostly silver bracelets, which we'll give to the kids and granddaughter, and a couple of caftans for Joy. I only wanted a hat, and that's exactly what I got. I'd also wanted to get lunch at Cabo Wabo, but it wasn't open yet, and even then it looked kinda run down. The heat began to get to us about then, and we made our way back to the tender dock after maybe an hour and a half on the ground.

However, things didn't necessarily get any better. Exhaust fumes from the tender on the return trip got to Joy, and I was able to get her back to our cabin before she got too sick. She's been asleep pretty much ever since. That's the sad truth about traveling with her – her limited energy limits everything we do. Everything.

We got our debarkation advisories delivered to us while we were away. We'll have to have our suitcases packed and tagged before 8pm Thursday night so Princess can collect them and get them ready for sending them ashore, and we'll need to be out of our cabins for good by eight the following morning. They included some tourist information about San Francisco, but we won't have much time for any sightseeing unless we can find an alternate means of getting our stuff to the airport. Which does actually bother me a bit, but not that much.

We got to see our first production show on board tonight, a Motown review called Motor City. It was a good enough show, but I was more interested in the band. This was the same house band that had played the night before for the vocal impressionist, but now they were rolling through classic Motown tunes with tons of energy. And naturally, I found the drummer to be focus of my interest. Dude was killing it. The dancers were okay, though I scarcely paid them any attention. At one point in time I apparently had a dancer in my close vicinity, and Joy asked me if I liked what I saw, and I told her I simply didn't notice her because I was completely focused on the band. The show's two male singers were okay, though my old bosses Mike Hill and Arthur Hayden would've wiped the floor with them as both singers and dancers. I'm quite sure that if Mike were sitting there with Joy and I watching the show, he would've enjoyed it, but he would've given me a few “child, please” looks as the male singers took a few liberties with lines to avoid singing notes they couldn't hit. The other passengers may or may not have noticed, but I did, and I'm sure Mike would as well. The two female singers had no such problems with vocal ranges or capacity. I did notice that they were actually stronger singers than their male counterparts – either that, or the guys' microphones weren't dialed in right by the lounge's sound tech.

Now if only the sound crew could have done something about the ventriloquist we'd seen a few hours before. Joy had told me that “hey, not everyone can be Jeff Dunham”, and I told her that she was right. Watching this guy's act was like watching him converse with a psychotherapist that existed only in his head yet had somehow leaked out into the real world. I tuned him out after about the first ten minutes of his act, when he trundled out a dummy tied to a child's lawn chair – who knew that we'd get an impromptu demonstration of the Japanese rope-bondage art known as shibari along with the act?

Day Nine – At Sea, En Route to San Francisco

Today was a good day – there's really no other way to describe it. The Leaves tea lounge and library reopened, giving us ample time to relax and read while sipping mint tea. Thank the spirits and totems that I have the Kindle app on my phone. With its Kindle Unlimited service – think of a streaming service like Rhapsody and so on, only with books instead of music – I'd started a free trial just before boarding and downloaded several books in a variety of categories to read at my leisure. Dad let me borrow a few books as well – Ready Player One was too depressing to get past about thirty pages, and I haven't gotten to the book about the rowing squad from the 1936 Berlin Olympics – so I was pretty much set. Joy found a few novels that she read for hours on end. I do like reading, but I swear that I've read more in the last week-and-change than I have in the last few months leading up to the cruise.

We got the chance to talk to Tony Pace in the Piazza, the vocal impressionist we'd seen a few nights before. He's a pretty good guy, and I think that he appreciated the chance to talk shop with a fellow professional musician instead of just making idle chit-chat with another tourist. We told him we'd catch his act again tomorrow night, and I'd make damn sure to yell “FREEBIRD!” at the most appropriate moment. That or maybe “ZEPPELIN!” or “BOWIE!”

We had our second Formal Dinner tonight, and I wore a silk jacket that had once been my grandfather's over my white dress shirt and black slacks while Joy wore a long tangerine-colored dress. We dined with our friends Jay and Joan (!) from Deer Park, and I swear to god that I've never eaten this well before, though I noticed something kinda funny. With the exception of that memorable I-think-we're-gonna-need-a-bigger-boat night at the Crown Grill, we've eaten a lot less than I was expecting to. The meals have actually been smaller in terms of portion size, which naturally allows for more courses. Appetizers every night, salads every night (though the Dining Room's interpretation of blue-cheese dressing leaves a little to be desired in my opinion – too much blue and not enough cheese), and don't forget dessert. Even their buffet was better than we were expecting, with surprisingly good Indian food available just about every night we were there, though their breakfasts were at best so-so. Most days we've had breakfast in our cabin. Nothing extravagant, breakfast muffin sandwiches and bananas with coffee and orange juice, and Joy has a bowl of cereal on top of that. Lunch is usually just a cheeseburger and fries from the Trident Grill chased with a Coke. When we're at sea, we usually follow up lunch with long sessions in the library sipping that lovely tea, a bite of cake or tart here and there while reading or playing Monopoly – Joy usually wins. We're at the point where we don't really want to get off the boat now, but at the same time I'm really looking forward to getting home and getting back to work – by the time I get back on the job, I'll have been off work for nearly three weeks. Time to get back on the horse. Time to summon the forces and get the band ready for a gig next Friday, then dive into writing new music for MCFD II: The Wrath of Crysys.....

Day Ten – At Sea

Time to say goodbyes to our favorite crew members, our fellow passengers. Time to leave tips for our steward, a patient Eastern European (Ukrainian, IIRC) named Tsvetomir, and Oni, an Indian we first met at Leaves and eventually saw waiting tables in lounges throughout the ship. The dining rooms were packed to capacity, and we were wise to make reservations well in advance. There was a final show in the theater, the impressionist and ventriloquist doing brief shows. There was a show featuring the talents of various crew members, but we chose to skip it to get an early night's rest.

Coming home from Cabo San Lucas, the seas were a little rough, six-foot rollers almost all the way back to San Francisco. But the ship handled the swells quite easily, and I found it remarkably easy to sleep in, as though Poseidon himself was rocking me to sleep. I knew I was going to need that sleep. I sure as hell will miss this ship.

Day Eleven – San Francisco, Then Flying To Seattle

I woke up a little before seven in the morning to find Grand Princess already tied to the dock at the terminal in San Francisco. We were ready to go, but they weren't ready to let us go just yet, so while we were out of our cabin by seven-thirty, we had some time to kill and availed ourselves to a last trip through the buffet for breakfast. We finally disembarked some time around nine in the morning, and by ten-thirty the shuttle bus deposited us at SFO.

And there we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Did I mention that we waited? You see, when Joy booked the trip she figured that we'd have some sightseeing time in San Francisco, and booked an evening flight back to Seattle. But the sightseeing simply wasn't going to happen, because there wasn't really an option for it. So now we were stuck with a ten-hour wait at the airport. We did our best to find an earlier flight, but were only able to move up three hours, from an eight PM departure to five PM.

Did I mention that the flight sucked? That both flights sucked? That getting through security sucked? That buying a steak sandwich for twice the price I can get anywhere else sucked? Seriously – FUCK Ronald Reagan and the trickle-down economics cult for turning the romance of air travel into something that makes cattle in a trailer en route to the slaughterhouse seem luxurious by comparison. I'm actually kinda glad that Joy's health will pretty much preclude us from taking trips like this again – air travel sucks great big floppy donkey dick. At least the hotel didn't disappoint, though I found myself walking from the hotel to the nearest grocery store late that night to buy TV dinners for the night and instant oatmeal for the next morning.

Day Twelve – Seattle

One big advantage of our hotel is location. All of about two blocks or so to the Sound Transit LINK Light Rail Terminal, where a measly twelve dollars bought us day passes between the airport and downtown. Seriously – why the hell did it take so long for people to agree to build light rail? Fast, clean, reasonably priced – who loses from this? As the train headed north, then east from the airport and down the hill toward Southcenter Mall, I felt kinda like I was watching flying a small airplane down the narrow valley, or watching video shot from a drone's camera. We spent the day wandering around the International District, getting lunch in the food court at Uwajimaya before finding our way to the Seattle Pinball Museum. Joy wasn't nuts about it at first - “what do you mean I have to pay fifteen bucks to be here?” - but after a few minutes she found that she was totally loving it the experience of playing pinball machines from the most ancient to the most modern.

It was a pretty awesome trip, I thought to myself as I lay in bed that night. My first trip to another country – I know, I've been to Canada a few times, but Victoria, BC is visible from Port Angeles damn near everyday – that barely qualifies. And with all due respect, the MV Coho is no Grand Princess. The ship was luxurious like I'd never seen before, the crew cheerful and attentive to a fault. The sights and sounds, new and unique to my eyes and ears. Just the simple act of walking out to the balcony to see the ocean slip past us, gazing out to the horizon at sky, land and ocean felt exotic beyond belief. The trip went off without a single hitch, allaying all my fears that I'd kept hidden from Joy, fears fed by lurid internet headlines of illnesses and accidents at sea.

My only complaint would be that we didn't spend enough time in Puerto Vallarta. We could have spent more time there, but I didn't trust what little of the stuffy high school Spanish I remember - “¿Donde esta el baño, señor?” - to get us anything other than mugged in an alleyway. I think we both entertained the thought of moving there, living in some little place in the hills. But the fantasy didn't last for long. I know better. Joy couldn't really handle being anywhere other than the Pacific Northwest coast for any real length of time.

Looking Back On It

It's been a few months since we got home. In fact, it's the beginning of summer now. The cruise seems like it was a lifetime ago. It almost feels like a dream. And it's a dream we both want to experience again. We're cautiously optimistic toward the possibility of going on another cruise – possibly next summer, up to Alaska. We know what we want, and what we don't want. Unlimited soda, coffee and ice cream? Oh hell yes. Do we need a balcony cabin again? Not necessarily. Flowers and fresh fruits delivered to our cabin? We can pass on that. Do we need to take as long a cruise? No, not really. And I've never been to Alaska. A big bonus to an Alaska cruise is that we have friends who have been there, and more who live and have lived there. They can give us suggestions on where to go and what to do that no guide could tell us. Another big bonus to an Alaska cruise is not having to fly to our port of embarkation. Driving to Seattle or Vancouver is infinitely cheaper, easier, and safer than flying in some overloaded sardine can. Factoring in the flights, the shuttle buses, the perks, the excursions, the tips and side trips, we spent somewhere around four thousand dollars for this trip – we figure that an Alaska cruise could probably be done for at most half that much, if not less. I think fifteen hundred bucks could get it done. Our tax returns could probably pay for it with room to spare.

And out of nowhere, my dad floated the possibility of taking us as well as my sister on another cruise to Mexico in the next few years. I could handle that – just as long as we don't have to share a cabin. Joy says I need a CPAP machine of my own now, my snoring has gotten that bad. There's no way in hell Dad or Julie could handle that.....

Holidazed

As I write this, I'm sitting at Michelle's place in Sun Valley. In and of itself, that's a good thing. It means that we got some of Joy's back Disability money. Not all of it, but enough to make a pretty radical addition to our lives - a new car. Well, not new new. But a 2013 Ford Focus five-door is nothing to sneeze at, though we very nearly did.

The plan for a new car was simple enough - simply hand over a massive wad of cash to a willing dealer. I'd already chosen a Ford hatchback/wagon, simply because they had the most options in our price range. We'd decided to put down $10,000 as either outright payment or a hefty down payment, because I had one dealership in mind and one only. Sound Ford in the Seattle suburb of Renton runs ads in the Seattle Times that border on the ridiculous - BUY A BRAND NEW FORD FOR $9,000!!!!! - and I was fully intent on getting just that, just stopping to pick up a cop of the Sunday paper and walking into their lot bright and early and saying "I want this car right here" while pointing to the ad. But just to be safe, we looked through their selection of used vehicles as well, picking out a 2013 Focus five-door similar to the one we settled on. We wound up leaving for the big city a day early and spent the night at a hotel in Auburn to be fully rested for the big day, and got there five minutes before they opened.

Did I mention they didn't have an ad in the paper that day? Or that the used car we picked out wasn't there? We bit the bullet and found a very nice Focus that was pretty close to fully tricked out that would cost us $17,599. Add in taxes, fees, and a new warranty (though the car's power-train warranty was still good) and the cost ballooned to nearly $22,000. And did I mention that my credit sucks great big floppy donkey dick? We dug into some of the cash reserves we had and added another $1,500 to the down payment and agreed to a five-year loan that would've cost us $310/month. Between Joy's SS/D and my job, we could handle that. They handed us the keys and told us they let us know who'd handle the loan in a few days. From there, we took a nice walk through Ikea before heading into deepest, darkest downtown Seattle to do some shopping at Uwajimaya. The Seahawks were beating the Forty-Niners a few blocks away, and by the time we finished our shopping at Uwajimaya and the nearby Daiso, post-game traffic was cluttering up the International District, though by the time we made it up to the more Vietnamese neighborhood above the ID on Broadway, you wouldn't have know there was a game going on.

So what were we doing heading towards Capitol Hill on Broadway, pray tell? Picking up my old friend Ed Durgan for a feast at The Crab Pot down on the waterfront. This was when the Focus' awesomeness began to assert itself, as I was able to link my new phone (Michelle's old Galaxy S3) to the car and make calls simply by pulling a lever on the steering column - a welcome-to-the-21st-Century moment if there ever was one. The Crab Pot was awesome - best crab I've ever had, and there were plenty of leftovers for Ed to take to his wife, who was busy with a tenants' meeting in their condo. The car purred along the highways home to PA, easily averaging 37mpg. We even gave the car a name: Sterling, based on its dark-silver-almost-pewter color. This car would be more than suitable for the upcoming trip to Reno to visit Michelle and the kids for Christmas. Things were going pretty smoothly, until I made one tiny little mistake: I told my dad about the loan.

He wouldn't have it, refused to let me pay a loan with a ridiculously high interest rate - remember, my credit sucks big floppy donkey dick - and instead chose to offer me a deal of his own, where he'd assume the final costs of the car, about $8,300 after we called the dealership and dropped the extended warranty. We then drew up a contract where we'd pay him a lower payment at a much lower interest rate for a much shorter period of time, saving us thousands of dollars over time. We agreed, signed, and handed Sound Ford a check the very next day. I just hope they turn off the feature that allows a creditor to shut off our car via its GPS sensor, now that no bank or credit union is involved in financing the vehicle. I shouldn't complain, but this sums up my relationship with my dad pretty easily - reading me the riot act when I need help, then rushing in to white-knight me when I don't. We could have handled the payments, with a plan towards refinancing the loan with out credit union after a year. But this is a lot easier at the end of the day.

We also bought Joy a new laptop, and we plan on buying her a new external DVD drive for it in a few days, as well as a new external hard drive some later on down the road. And Calvin just called to ask us if I'd buy him some vodka before we headed home. We can handle that, so we're getting up early tomorrow to buy him his booze before hitting a casino buffet and heading back home, stopping in Bend to visit her sister.

There's one more obstacle to face when we get home, though - buying a new home. We've been looking at new fifth-wheel trailers, and Joy's had her heart set on one in Sequim, though the remainder of her back Disability money has yet to arrive, which will likely cause us to have to buy a different rig. At least this is the best time of year to buy an RV - dealers are pretty much desperate to unload excess stock this time of year and are offering some great deals. We'll see what happens, I guess. Things are looking up for us - now if only Joy would relax a bit.....

Waiting For The Light To Change

Life hands you lots of challenges, and how you deal with those challenges determines what kind of person you are, and how people look upon you. And just when I think things are getting a little better, another challenge arises. And this time around the challenge is strictly internal. As in on my right side, sorta halfway between my bellybutton and my flank.

I'd experienced pain like this once before, bad enough to put me in the ER twice in one day, about a month ago. I was given a diagnosis of a bladder infection and a pulled muscle - not much more than a pat on the head and a take-two-aspirin-and-call-me-in-the-morning diagnosis. But then a week ago last Friday the pain returned, and I was back in the ER. This time around I was given a remarkably thorough ultrasound exam to go along with a milligram of Dilaudid through an IV, and a diagnosis of gallstones. They gave me prescriptions for Percocet and an industrial-grade stool softener/laxative, and sent me home to sleep off the Dilaudid while Joy went to fetch the prescriptions at Wal-Mart. I didn't make it more than two hours - while Joy waited for Wal-Mart's computers to get over a digital hissy-fit to get the meds - before calling her to get back to the trailer and take me back to the hospital. Another visit to the ER - yay! X-rays and a CT scan didn't do more than confirm that my gall bladder was secreting stones and otherwise going south on me. An internist came down to oversee the case and recommended that I have the damn thing removed, to which I wholeheartedly agreed. An ER nurse told me that I'd be released if I could hold down food, and brought some chocolate pudding for me to enjoy.

And this was when everything went straight to hell.

About two spoonfuls into the pudding, I found myself altogether uninterested in finishing the delightful dessert. I'd already been feeling somewhat nauseous and had a barf bag close at hand, but Joy seemed convinced that I needed a second bag and got the nurse to give her a second bag. I was halfway out of my hospital gown, only another five minutes or so from leaving the ER altogether when the pudding decided that it had no interest in letting me digest it and instead chose to commit what Major League Eating would call a 'reversal of fortune'. I barely had time to grab barf bag #1 before violently retching my guts out, nearly filling the thing. And just as I handed the bag chocolate-tinged vomit to Joy, she handed me the second bag and I obliged her by filling that bag half-full of more chocobarf. Where the fuck was all this coming from? I hadn't eaten so far that day. In fact, I hadn't eaten anything in the last eighteen hours, with only a glass or two of milk in the interim. The nurse and internist conferred for all of about ten seconds, and it was decided that I'd be admitted overnight for observation.

Have I ever mentioned that I've never been admitted to the hospital before? Ever? Even when I went in for hernia surgery, it was just an outpatient procedure where I was back home within an hour of going under the knife. To be quite honest I was scared shitless. It was already early in the evening when I was admitted, and Joy was quietly advised that she'd really have to leave when visiting hours were up at eight. It was one of the longer nights of my life, alone save for nurses checking in on me every few hours. At least I had TV - something I haven't had since June. And because I was NPO - no food or drink, just ice chips - TV was all I was getting for the time being.

I wound up having the consultation with the surgeon who'll remove my gall bladder while in bed, and she told me that her office would call me the following Monday to confirm a date for the surgery (NOTE: Still haven't heard from them - have to call them in the morning), and I was eventually, gradually able to hold down clear liquids, then a low-fat lunch before being set loose that afternoon, with a second set of scripts for Percocet and stool softener/laxatives, and a stern warning that my diet will have to change because of having my gall bladder removed. I'll have to reduce my fat intake, and eat smaller portions. Nothing I've ever really bothered to do before, so it's going to take some getting used to. and I'm not particularly thrilled about it. At least I should be able to get the time off from work. The Holidays are the slowest time of the year of for merchandisers, so much so that my supervisor in Portland actually asked for volunteers to take time off in December. After the surgeon told me that I'd need ten to fourteen days to recover from the surgery (and that I'd given the surgeon a tentative date of December 10th for the surgery), I informed her that I'd be more than willing take to time off after the 10th. I'll have to shoot her a message again soon to find out if I've been approved for that leave. Though if things get worse sooner than that, I may have to have the surgery sooner than that, and to hell with leave requests - my health comes first.

Rearranged

So here I am. What has it been, nearly three months since I last posted? I've had issues to deal with. There's actually been good news in our lives for a change. But not without sacrifice.

I had to pawn my gear. I did it a few days after my last post, needed gas money for my job with Acosta Sales & Marketing, merchandising Safeway stores overnight in Clallam, Jefferson, Kitsap, Mason and Pierce Counties. It was a necessary decision, but it hurt nonetheless. And I had to borrow money from friends and relatives to get keep our heads above water until the paychecks started to roll in. I was able to pay the finance charges on the pawn last weekend, roll it over for another three months - essentially paying Lee and his crew at E-Z Pawn to store my gear until the big money rolls in.

You heard that right - the big money is rolling in, though we're not exactly sure when. Joy finally won her Disability case, and she'll start receiving monthly checks of about $1500 at the end of November. It would be more, but Uncle Sam automatically deducts Medicare from her check. She also qualified for Medicaid, and thanks to another program she won't have to pay more than about $5 for any of her prescriptions. There was a catch, though: she had to take a deal. With her attorney at her side, the judge said (without actually saying it) that either she could take a deal where SSA would backdate her date of becoming disabled to the month of her 50th birthday (October 2010) or appeal until she turned blue in the face. She took the deal. As a result, she's only getting back Disability pay for the past four years, which amounts to somewhere in the neighborhood of $60 - 70k. It put a bit of a crimp into our plans, but only a minor one.

The first thing on our agenda upon receiving that back money hasn't changed, though - we're getting rid of my old truck. It has over 303,000 miles on it, and I recently had to bypass the truck's leaking heater core in order to keep it running. And we're making the rounds of local auto dealership both online and in person, gathering information on new and very, very late-model used Ford hatchback/wagons - and getting a lot of phone calls back from those dealers in the process. As of today, we have dealers from PA, Seattle and even Anacortes calling us on an almost daily basis, even though we told them that we're just collecting information and not able to make a purchase until that money rolls in. And it ought to be coming soon - our attorney already got his $6,000 for representing us.

So sixty to seventy grand, Joy's monthly Disability check and my job - I guess things are finally looking up for us. I just want to get my gear out of hock. I've been itching to get behind my drums for months now. And not necessarily back on the road, either. I just want to play the music I want to play with good friends and have fun every once in a while, and getting paid for it would be nice instead of absolutely necessary. We've already gotten back online, and getting TV here in the trailer is coming in the next month or so. A new trailer is also a serious possibility. That said, Joy and I have been having some fairly passionate discussions about where and what to move into. She wants to buy property out in the middle of nowhere and put a trailer or mobile home on it. My argument to that is that in her condition the last thing she needs to be out in the middle of nowhere - especially without the ability to drive. I've told her that in my opinion it's inevitable that she'll need a wheelchair-accessible apartment or condo that's on or very close to a bus line no matter where we go. She says that she wants to leave her kids something when she leaves this world, hence buying the property. I say that she'll leave her kids something when she leaves this world if she chooses to live in an apartment or condo - money.

Dreams of long vacations, cruises and restaurant binges - they're still there, but greatly tempered by reality. Fortunately for us, neither of us are into the kind of meals that cost hundreds of dollars. The most I ever paid for a dinner for the two of us was $130 (with tip) at Lawry's The Prime Rib in Las Vegas ages ago. It was worth it - a bucket-list meal if there ever was one. But these days I'd rather do the cooking myself, making luxurious meals out of average-at-best ingredients with the help of good recipes, careful technique and lots and lots of patience. The only travel I'm really interested in is seeing our grandchildren. Joy asked me if I wanted to buy a new set of drums, and I said no - I'm happy with what I have, though a new cymbal here and there would be nice, and a new snare would be much nicer.

The light at the end of the tunnel is there before us. We can see it clear as day now. Joy doesn't have to worry so much about so many things so much of the time. We're almost there.

Downsized

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I haven't posted anything in what, weeks? Months? I've been busy. And if you notice the title of this post, you should be able to figure out exactly what's been going on. It hasn't been fun, not by any stretch of the imagination. But at the end of the day we're safe and secure, and that's what really matters. But since you really want to know – or maybe nobody's actually reading this other than the occasional bot or meth addict, and the audience I'm being so conversational and chatty with strictly in my mind – here's what's been happening.

Things got rolling about four months ago, when Joy found out that my now former little brother – more on that later - was sneaking into our room to steal things. At first it was little things, paint brushes and such. But then Joy noticed that some of her painkillers were missing. We went to my mother to let her know what was going on, and she ignored us. Joy demanded that I put a lock on the door to our room, and I found one at the local Wal-Mart. A month later, the little bastard noticed the lock on the door and ran to his mother. I got a text message demanding I remove the lock from her, and barely half an hour later another message came, this one calling me deluded for believing my wife's accusations. A third message simply ordered me to move out. Now.

Did I fail to mention that I was in Nevada at the time, in the middle of a gig with Steppen Stonz at the Atlantis in Reno? They've refused to answer any of my phone calls or text messages since. And with me eight hundred miles away and unable to do anything to rectify the situation, I told Joy that I'd do what I could when I got back to town.

She wound up in the spare bedroom of a friend of ours, and I stayed with her there for a week or so, until my next run to Nevada. I spent that time trying to make arrangements for a more permanent place to stay, and we got my father to agree to buy a fifth-wheel trailer for us that we could move to a local RV park. I'd have to quit the band and get a real job, but by now I was angry enough that I was willing to overcome my general antipathy towards the normal workaday world and join in for however long was necessary. The fun part would be actually finding a job in a county with an effective unemployment rate still around fifteen to twenty percent. But more on that later.

I still had one last run to Nevada to make, and ties to sever as gently as possible. A week in Elko came first at the Red Lion, and that went pretty well, other than our keyboard player Chris deciding to bail on us at the absolute last minute. Jef Derderian came back to help us out for a few days before a new player came in to play the last night of that gig. He's a nice kid from Las Vegas named Dominico – sorry, I don't have his last name. He was another friend of Jef's, continuing that strange line of players that have passed through the band since Mike and Arthur sent Cliff packing. Miguel, Alex, Jef, Chris, and now Dominico. That lack of consistency must be driving Mike and Arthur nuts. And my impending departure wouldn't help things any. After Elko, we had a few days off before heading to Minden for three nights at the Carson Valley Inn. I set up the pop-up trailer and settled in for a few days to recover and plot a strategy to break the news as gently as possible to the guys while we were in Minden.

A string of thunderstorms was passing over Northern Nevada the day I headed up to Minden. In hindsight, I should've recognized the omen for what it was and stayed in Reno. Arriving at the CVI, I found out that I wasn't expected – nor were the rest of us. Simply put, we weren't on the schedule. I did my best to contain my shock and anger and told the manager that came down to inform me of the situation that there had to be some sort of error, and I'd let the rest of the guys know what was going on, and I told them that while I was disappointed, I wasn't angry with them and that they were doing the best they could to help a confused drummer. The manager told me that she'd give Stew Stewart a call, and I told her that I'd call Mike to see if there was some way the gig could be rescued.

Mike didn't take the news well. Y'see, he's very neat and organized when it comes to the band's calendar. Stew had given us this particular week on the schedule back in December – something I'd told the CVI – and he wrote the dates down in his calendar as Stew gave them to him over the phone. He called Stew, and the response he got back was either a study in ignorance or pure chutzpah – we were supposed to be playing John Ascuaga's Nugget that weekend. Either way, his response was total bullshit because the Nugget had closed its cabaret, new ownership deciding to move the sports-book into the cabaret's new location while the space that held Trader Dick's would now become a Mickey Gilley's Honky-Tonk, part of said new ownership's goal to move the Nugget to a country-and-western theme. Regardless of the tack of Stew's line of bullshit, we were still out a gig. And this would continue to haunt me – and it still is, and will likely do so for at least the remainder of the summer.

I retreated back to the pop-up and hunkered down for what would now be two weeks off. After some frantic searching and e-mailing, I found a buyer for the trailer. A polite young Hispanic couple handed me a sum of money that I split with Michelle and Bill before driving away with the trailer the day before I started what would be my last gig with Steppen Stonz back at the Atlantis. I informed the guys of my situation that week, and I think they handled it pretty well. I told them that I didn't want to quit the group, but I had no choice. They let me know that should I ever come back to Nevada, my chair would be waiting for me. Maybe I'll be able to take that offer up someday. But I kinda doubt it.

Upon my return to Port Angeles, my father confirmed that he'd buy us a trailer, though it'd likely be an older one that needed repairs and cleaning. The weekend after I got home, he purchased a particular trailer that an old friend of his had for sale, and he and I did our best to clean it up and make it fit for human habitation. Then we found out that it needed a new refrigerator and some work on the floors do to water damage. At the end of the day, he admitted to me that he should've bought a different trailer – any money he'd saved in the original purchase was long gone, and that he'd spent twice the purchase price on repairing the thing. And after a few fits and starts, we found a place to park the trailer.

We're living in the Peabody Creek RV Park now, just above downtown Port Angeles. And our home is an old Alpenlite 32' fifth-wheel. No cable or internet, but we're dealing with that as best as we can. My drums are stashed at my father's place for safe keeping. And after six weeks of searching, I found a job, working for a company associated with Safeway. Eventually I'll be merchandising stores in five counties, working overnight for $12.50 an hour and mileage. I actually start my orientation tomorrow, a regional manager driving up from Portland in the morning to do the deed. It's still only part-time work, but our bills are modest enough that as little as twenty hours a week should cover things nicely. We'll still require government assistance, but hopefully things will hold at least through the winter. By then, we might be in a much better situation.

Joy's attorney here in town was able to get Social Security to hear her case again – though I think a letter to our local Congressman may have helped as well. The hearing is at the end of September, and a positive result could put a not insignificant sum of back SS/D benefits in our pockets by the time her birthday rolls around, and around seventeen hundred a month in our bank account for the rest of her life. And where we go from there is up to us. Staying in Port Angeles is an option, but not my preferred option. After my mother's decision to believe whatever story her drug-addict criminal subhuman child over the truth of his criminal behavior and kick us out of the house, I chose to disown them – and I've even gone to the extent of removing pictures of myself from their house, systematically writing myself out of their history. And Joy and I have a few other surprises in store for them. Nothing illegal or physically damaging, mind you. But it will be painful to them nonetheless.

I've done my best to remain positive through all this. It isn't easy. But nothing worth having ever is, as the old saying goes. But there's a light at the end of the tunnel now. I have a job. I have a home. I have the woman I love at my side. And with luck the future will become a lot brighter in the near future. I should let go of all the anger I have towards my former family. But it's hard to do so. I want to punish them for their stupidity and arrogance. But I think watching my mother and stepfather descend into senility with only a shiftless lazy punk to look after them, a phony hipster with no desire to do anything other than sponge off of them – I think that's revenge enough for me. I have more important things to worry about. I have a family. I have Joy, her children and grandchildren. I have my friends. I'm still trying to get a local band together, though that may never come to anything really fruitful. I even got the opportunity to play a sort-of reunion with Powerlight last weekend, and that could lead to future gigs if my work schedule allows it.

But what's most important is that I need to put my nose to the proverbial grindstone and work hard to maintain what I have in front of me. I have to put the past behind me and move forward.

So Where Will I Sleep Tonight?

One more night before I can start over again. It's been not quite a weeks since I got home from Reno. Things aren't particularly bleak per se, but it ain't exactly beer and skittles here on the ranch. Joy has been holding up as well as can be expected for someone who's basically been forced to couch-surf for the last two months between our friends at the Evergreen Terrace apartments - where we're on the waiting list, by the way - and trying to maintain sanity as best she can. We're both stressed and angry at everything. But we do our best to apologize to each other before we go to bed, wherever that bed may be.

But tomorrow is a new day, and a new and more permanent residence will be waiting for us. Even before I got home from Reno, we'd been scouting out RV parks for the fifth-wheel trailer that Dad bought for us on the cheap only to wind up spending almost double what he paid for it to fix it up - much to his chagrin. We'd pretty much settled on setting up shop at Monroe Estates just east of town, but their insistence that my father co-sign for us pretty much scuppered the deal and sent us scrambling for a new location. On a lark we tried the Peabody Creek RV Park downtown happened to have spaces available and was willing to overlook my temporary lack of employment - more on that later - because of my comparative abundance of cash. In the morning we get the electricity turned on and change our address for quite possibly only a few months.

Why do I say that? Turns out that Joy's attorney has wrangled a new hearing for her Disability case in late September. Given that we're looking at seven years of back SS/D pay handed to us should the judge finally rule in our favor, even the revelation that Joy's medical bills have us $27,000 in the hole is suddenly kinda trivial.

And I doubt that I'll be unemployed all that long. A day or two before I left for Elko, I took a flyer and threw up an application onto Wal-Mart's website for any position that didn't require a lot of customer interaction - mostly graveyard-shift jobs. The day after I pulled into Elko, I got a phone call from the Port Angeles store's personnel office asking if I could come in today for an interview! After explaining the situation to their personnel manager most carefully, he agreed to keep me informed should an opening come up after I got home. The very next morning I got a similar call from the Sequim store's personnel manager, with a similar result. Then the personnel manager from the PA store called me again the following morning, only to remember the conversation we'd had forty-eight hours before and apologize profusely for waking me up from a deep slumber. And then he called me a third time two weeks later as I sat patiently between gigs in my old pop-up trailer - I guess he likes me.

By the way, the trailer is no longer mine/ours. I sold the thing to a nice young Hispanic couple, only for them to wreck the thing on the drive home. And then they had the audacity to demand their money back, claiming that I knowingly sold them a defective vehicle! I offered them my sympathy and nothing else before leaving the scene - we'd towed it down from Washington without incident, after all. I don't think they were being entirely truthful to me. Welcome to Craigslist, kids - everything is sold 'as is', and the moment they handed me the money and I handed them the title, they were on their own. I sold them a functional unit, and they knew what was wrong with it going in. Sucks that they wrecked it, but that's not my problem.

And I'm trying to get a new band started here in town. But it seems that everyone is in survival mode right now - myself included. Nothing is sacrosanct right now, anything and everything can potentially be sacrificed should I need the money. The Wal-Mart job is only minimum-wage, but the hours should be sufficient to keep us in the RV park for the time being. And at my father's suggestion I put in an app at Clallam Transit for a paratransit driver. I think I could do that. And there's always fast-food work or some other sort of temp or part-time job should Wal-Mart not be enough. I just have to bear down for the time being and get us across the finish line - which with any luck should be sometime this fall. I just have to do what I have to do, and hold on for the time being.