random

funny, stories

(from two weeks ago)

Moving in the landlord showing me around opens up this huge industrial freezer in the shed, opens it up and I see vacuum packed salmon fillets it’s filled with vacuum packed salmon fillets. Feel free to help yourself, I mean don’t eat all of it, but the wife and I definitely won’t go through all of it, we won’t be here much of the winter.

Today I woke up late, nine-thirty, ate breakfast at ten-thirty, early afternoon snack of a few crackers and peanut butter. Weeks of living on ramen and beans and bread, I finally go to the huge industrial freezer in the shed. Realization at this moment: not salmon fillets. These are HUGE salmon fillets. One is like three. This made me pretty happy.

Huge salmon fillet on the counter at noon, thawed out at five. Which was good because at five the hunger came, and it came raging. Burner on high olive oil and garlic and salt in the pan, hot, in with the huge fillet sizzle crackle sizzle, put the glass lid on to keep it moist, potato in the microwave, five minutes later flip the huge fillet other side and bit more oil and garlic and salt and more sizzling and the kitchen smells so good, potato done and steaming and buttered and salmon done and crispy and up out of the pan and onto the plate with the potato.

Epilogue
Woulda been better with a good beer. Dear first paycheck, please come soon. And it woulda been even oh so much better shared, but I’m not sure how to get that done; the paycheck doesn’t help much. Oh wait actually, doesn’t match.com charge money? Hmm.

stories

(from a week ago)

Neighbor and his little boy walking out of their cabin when I walk out of my cabin to go do some business in the bath house, Hey Dave we saw a rabbit gonna go get him, the little boy dressed up in his stalking cap and jeans and boots and toting a bb gun just like the one I got Christmas morning how many years ago, Sure let me just do some quick business and I’m there. In my jeans and hoodie. It’s cold out.

My neighbor takes the road up the left and the little guy and I go right to wait, but the rabbit was too smart saw and knew he was being flushed into the blazing sight of a bb gun wielded by a dangerous 7 year old, so the rabbit doubles back past pops who doesn’t take the shot so his little boy can have another chance. They keep going, I go back to put on gloves, hands real cold, they keep going, the rabbit’s gone and the little guy’s feet are really really freezing cold Daddy I need to go back to the cabin my feet feel like ice! Daddy I can’t walk my feet are ice! So my neighbor hoists up his little boy and I carry the .22 in my right hand and the little guy’s bb gun in my left and we walk back to the cabin, I can’t feel three of my fingers even though it’s not that cold out right now, neighbor says OK lets go over to the other thicket and find another one so we go, find the rabbit highway and split and start, I’m shivering and wondering which finger I won’t feel next and then a white dash and I see where he went. Hey over here lets head back to the main road I think he stopped close by so we double back and the big white rabbit takes a few more strides toward the road then up, my neighbor still hasn’t seen him but I know I saw him, I stay put he goes up on the road and up further and back into the woods and back down and finds the rabbit. I get closer, still can’t see, Ok I can’t see him still, you see him? You see him then, ok, you take your shot. He wanted to give me a chance, but better a rabbit than a chance right? Crack like snapping a small dry branch echoes muted through dry cold air and Yup got him. Lost feeling in two more fingers on my left hand and where there is feeling it hurts like hell and now my chest feels kinda funny but not woosy because a cute rabbit just got shot, but something definitely feels not right, breathing feels funny. My neighbor goes to his cabin to grab a bite to eat and I go to the bath house to warm up and when I get in and close the door I feel really not good and my head hurts and my hands hurt where I can feel them and my breathing’s funny.

Hands under warm water, hands under warm water, things get better and five minutes later all’s well. Body into shock from cold body out of shock thanks to warm water, it’s been a while since I’ve been that cold. I step out and my neighbor’s got the rabbit on the tailgate of his truck and ready to go and he shows me how to skin and gut it, half an hour, now there’s rabbit in a pot in the fridge marinating and hearty alaska rabbit stew tomorrow. We shoot the breeze about how chicken at the grocery store is just ridiculous, how you can eat rabbit every day if you want, there’s a lot of these guys around. Go out and an hour later you have a pelt in one hand and a rabbit ready to cook in the other. Can’t even get to town and buy chicken from Safeway and get back in an hour.

Well, I will have to go to town for the veggies, but I think that’s ok.

ideas, other

Half a million dollars and four to five years of both full time apprenticeship AND weekend coursework. A lot of time and money. That’s the name of the game for an electricity or gas (power generation/distribution) company to take a worker from entry-level apprentice to proficient wireman. And except for the time consumed by weekend coursework, the power company eats that. All of it. After the fact, it is another five years for the company to break even on their investment. Ten years after a worker enters an apprenticeship program, it is finally worth it. It’s the same story for many other trades.

For government recognition of proficiency in education, you’re looking at two to three years of part time coursework and six months to a year of on-the-job training.

I’m an American and I’ll have my electricity reliable, please. Thanks.

 

other

The land of Israel is a small country. You can walk its length, north to south, in a few days, and from its central mountains you can see its lateral boundaries, the sea to the west and the river to the east. But it has had an importance out of all proportion to its size. Empires have fought over it. Every forty-four years out of the last four thousand, on average, an army has marched through it, whether to conquer it, to rescue it from someone else, to use it as a neutral battleground on which to fight a different enemy, or to take advantage of it as the natural route for getting somewhere else to fight there instead. There are many places which, once beautiful, are now battered and mangled with the legacies of war. And yet it has remained a beautiful land, still producing grapes and figs, milk and honey.
The New Testament has not been around as long as the land of Israel, but in other ways there are remarkable parallels. […] There are many places whose fragile beauty has been trampled on by heavy-footed exegetes in search of a Greek root, a quick sermon, or a political slogan. And yet it has remained a powerful and evocative book, full of delicacy and majesty, tears and laughter.

-N.T. Wright in The New Testament and the People of God

N.T. Wright’s series about the origins of Christianity are the easiest to read hard-to-read books I’ve read. This is the first of the series and the third one for me to read (..yeah). It’s work getting through these books, but the only good beer is beer won, not conceded; good things are earned, thankfully. He says that in writing this book he’s a fascinated amateur not an explaining expert..not sure I completely buy it, but I see where he’s coming from. I think that’ll actually help, make the book more readable. His “expert” work, the tome about the life of Jesus, definitely has a clearly expert tone. It is very dense, takes a lot of time to read, the bibliography is enormous, and at the end one is left awestruck.

other

Friday I left Barillas, Monday at midnight I was in Seattle for the first time in a year.

Nothing really else to say, or, so much to say and no idea how to say it that it’s better to have nothing to say.

other

I’m signed up for a Substitute Teacher orientation session in Soldotna, AK on October 20th; before one chapter’s really over the next one starts, that’s the way in the world today, and it doesn’t help my mind and heart to not be completely revuelto. Or maybe I’m wrong and it means that one chapter is really over.

other

It’s weird when clicking a button is the turning of the final page in a chapter of life.

other

The last few days are all so much that I don’t know how to write anything at all, but for the same reason I’ve gotta write something, so it’ll be the game of hell and earth and life and god in as few words as possible. Here’s what happened; what I feel and need to say will come later.

She was jumped and raped monday morning. For 72 hours she was in hell. When she slept she relived it over and over again until she woke up, then it’s this batshit scared broken semi-concious state where she thrashes and cries out until she realizes that it’s not all happening again, and she begs to not be alone and her friend would ask her if she needs anything, food or water, then she falls asleep back into reliving what’s far worse than death until she wakes up again. I’ve never seen something so terrifying and horrible, when I finally let it all out and cried and cried, I’ve never cried like that before in my life. Something change deep in my heart, the type of change that doesn’t happen but a few times in a lifetime.

She was completely disabled. To go to the bathroom, Jorge and I had to stand her up, at which point she’d pass out and we’d have to carry her fireman style (the two of us barely held up, she’s not a small girl) to the bathroom, where we’d leave her with a few of her friends and she’d wake up on the toilet and panic and cry again. She hadn’t eaten a meal since Sunday.

And yesterday morning 72 hours later she woke up and said she needed to walk. She bathed with a little bit of help from Julia and asked for breakfast. She ate, and we went to the Catholic Church. She got into and out of the car on her own. So here I am sitting a few spots down the pew from her. She’s forgiven the four men, she’s sobbing but there’s no more pain nor fear, she’s sobbing because she’s giving thanks to God and she looks at me with a smile and says David, I need to look for the people who are most needy in this world and help them, Jesus came to me in my dream and told me he didn’t want to see me like I was, he told me to get up and walk because there’s work to do, and she says this with a smile. I need to find the most needy people in this world and help them, she said. You arrived was all I could say, and she smiled and nodded.

And yesterday morning something else changed deep in my heart, the same type of change that doesn’t happen but a few times in a lifetime. She left Barillas yesterday after going to church, she left with two of her friends in a little old plane piloted by a content old gringo who doesn’t really have any home at all and in half an hour she was in her hometown Quetzaltenango for medical tests and then went to be with her family.

You can’t make this stuff up, man.