Rock-tober 21, 2024

I am weirdly attuned to Andrea’s voice. She and I were at a party years ago, and I knew the people well enough in this crowd that I was milling about comfortably on my own and not standing in a corner doing threat assessments. We were on opposite ends of this gathering when she called out to me, “Hey, Hon…” She wasn’t speaking loudly, and I wasn’t in line of sight of her. When I came around a corner asking, “Hey. What’s up?”, one of our friends who saw the exchange nearly dropped his drink.

“Lawd have mercy! Mmm-hmm. The two of y’all got some funky, mystical voodoo working between you.”

In the last years before our marriage, we were living very separate lives in different parts of the country. She was in DC working an internship, and I was in Birmingham keeping corporate IT on their toes. While far from ideal, we were making the whole long distance thing work. This was well before cell phones and unlimited minutes, so every one of our calls to each other had a clock on it. Our phone bills from all those late-night conversations were not an insignificant monthly expense. But it was worth the long hours of being tethered to a land line and getting sore from holding the receiver in the crook of my neck. I just wanted to hear her voice. I’d found that just hearing her and not even seeing her was enough to provide a salve if I’d had a less than stellar day.

I know how hard long separations can be on a kid. I went through it with every deployment of Dad’s. It’s inherently different but just as hard for a couple. Since we’ve been married, Andrea and I have been apart more than a few days exactly once. In the weeks after Dad’s death, I stayed back in Mississippi to be with Mom and Grandma while Andrea flew back to Maryland. The distance and emotional drainage I was going through were mitigated by the frequent calls between us. Once again, just hearing her voice was the balm my wrecked soul needed.

In an unfortunate irony, it’s another family loss that will bring our count of long separations to two. She’s returning to Maryland to contend with work issues requiring her physical presence, and I’m staying on in the area to both hang out with Mom and be near Andrea’s sisters in the event something is needed. The one positive development in this situation is in the intervening years since we were first married, there is no longer a cap on call minutes and my neck and shoulders are already thankful for the hands free technology that's come along.

Most of all, I'm looking forward to those evenings when, after dealing with a day's daily dose of issues, of letting the soothing voodoo spell that is her voice wash over me again.

Elton John - I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues

Rock-tober 20, 2024

We were having a rare in person meeting at work this past summer, and a pizza lunch was provided. Management sprang for a variety of sodas as well, but rather than use the dinky plastic cups provided by the pizza place, I was using my trusty Auburn branded tumbler. I believe it was originally intended as a Christmas present for Andrea, but it was Navy blue, so I coopted it.

I walked into the meeting room totally oblivious to the carnage that was lying in wait. I took a seat, laying my pepperoni pizza laden plate in front of me and setting my trusty flagon beside it. One of the guys on the team spied the large “AU” logo on its side.

“Yo, Wayne! Man, I didn’t know you went to college in Arizona!” Silence fell in the room. This guy joined the team post-pandemic. One of the casualties of being remote and not seeing team members face to face were that the frequent, spontaneous bull sessions around each other’s desks did not take place. It was in these ad hoc gatherings where we learned about each other – family, hobbies, favorite shows, and our alma mater. This didn’t really happen with remote schedules, so he could be forgiven for the error.

Another team member hastily corrected him before I stepped in. “Naw, man. That big “A” is for Alabama, not Arizona.”

The glut of pepperoni pizza was slowing my synapses a bit because I was too delayed in making a critical connection. Since this guy mistook AU for Arizona, I realized he could easily utter a more serious profanity. The belaying words had formed in my head, but I had not yet uttered them when…

“OOHHH! You went to school in Alabama!” My mind was screaming at me to stop him, but I didn’t know how. Wave him off with my hands? Yell? Throw pizza at him? It was too late. The sacrilege had departed his lips and lingered in the ether: ” ROLL TIDE!!!”

Seated to my immediate right was a guy from the Carolinas. He was a fellow SEC’er and a Gamecocks fan. And Dude utterly lost it. In a maniacal laugh that boomed in the small, crowded room, his loud “guffaws” were interspersed with obviously insincere apologies as he fought back tears.

The original instigator’s look of befuddlement was almost adorable in its innocence. “What? Wait…What did I say?” But most people were already filing out of the room quickly and silently.

By now, Gamecocks fanboy recovered sufficiently. Still snickering as he walked out the door, he called back. “He went to Auburn! So, it’s ‘War Eagle!’ and not that other thing.”

Instigator Dude just looked at me. “Oh.”

With that, I shook my head, picked up my plate and besmirched flagon, and walked out as well, leaving Dude to contemplate the foul depravity he’d so wantonly released.

Ray Charles - Hit the Road Jack

Rock-tober 19, 2024

The summer I was seven, Mom and Dad spoke those five words every kid wants to hear, “We’re going to Disney World!” My only prior experience with Disney was the park in Anaheim, CA when I was three. I have vague memories of looking sideways at the costumed characters, thinking they looked a little sus, and absolutely refusing to have my picture taken with Mickey.

Being confident I’d outgrown my muscophobia, Mom and Dad planned a sweeping, all-encompassing tour that summer. We wound up hitting not only Disney World, but SeaWorld, Crystal Springs, and Circus World. Because they were inexpensive and easy to pack, I scored souvenir pennants from all these parks. Folks who’ve hung out at my house back in the day know these continued to decorate the walls of my room all through high school (zero game – but that’s a different post).

However, for a budding nerd, I think the pinnacle of parks we hit that summer was Cape Canaveral. I’d always had a deep interest in space and space exploration, and now here I was at ground zero strolling around wide-eyed and jaw dropped at everything. Seeing the immense scale of the Saturn V up close and personal was mind blowing. Guys walking around in stark white, gold-visored spacesuits gave me more goosebumps than dudes decked out in Goofy or Mickey costumes. There’s a picture of me seated next to one of these guys on a bench. I was keeping my distance from him not out of fear but respectful awe. 

Of all the kitsch I purchased on that trip, my absolute favorite came from the Space Center. It was a Crookes Radiometer, four vanes of solar sensitive pads suspended on a needle inside a bulb under nearly full vacuum. When hit by a strong enough light the vane would rotate.

That gizmo sat in every bedroom window of mine until it was eventually broken by a stiff breeze hitting it from an open window. This is also a shameless hint for Mrs. Claus because I don't think Dude reads my lists after I sent him on an international detour back in '76.

An interesting bookend to this childhood story of rockets and astronauts happened earlier this summer. Andrea had a conference in Jacksonville, but we spent the days before her presentation on Merritt Island where we were guests of Kevin and Ann McGhee, friends of ours living the dream on the east central coast of Florida.

The McGhees were gracious impromptu B&B hosts with full Tex-Mex dinner spreads and breakfast cooked to order. They were also very capable tour guides. Our brief time with them included multiple gator and bird watching excursions, kayaking with manatees and dolphins, and a wide-ranging safari in search of a particularly elusive bobcat.

Of note on their program of events was viewing a Cape Canaveral rocket launch. Our hosts were absolutely dialed in with multiple apps tracking the weather and launch status. Sifting through the multiple data streams available to them, they knew the time and specific launch pad for lift off. Based on that intel, they deduced the best vantage point was a specific restaurant across the bay.

We arrived at the eatery, ordered our dinner, and waited. When the countdown broke the two-minute barrier, all patrons in the restaurant stood in a seemingly choreographed move and made their way to the restaurant’s bay side deck.

You saw the flash of ignition before you heard it. And when you heard it, it would be more accurate to say you felt it – a deep reverberation in your bones that caused me to involuntarily grab the railing.

Our B&B hosts continued to relay information like seasoned broadcasters, correctly describing the planned flight path and giving a surprisingly accurate countdown to the resulting sonic boom coming off the rocket.

Seven-year-old me standing in the shadow of the Saturn V could not in his wildest dreams foresee forty-seven years later he’d be watching an actual Cape Canaveral rocket launch while sipping a first-rate cabernet. Standing there mesmerized, I squinted and forced my eyes to follow the rocket until it faded from sight. The whole experience was superlative convergence of luck, the weather, the engineers sitting in mission control, and the first-rate situational knowledge of our hosts. 10/10 – I would highly recommend.

4 Non Blondes - Spaceman

Rock-tober 18, 2024

For me, one of the most profound ramifications of the Covid Pandemic was a fully remote work status. In pre-pandemic days, prior leadership was always reticent to approve remote schedules. This was reserved and granted only for extreme, extenuating circumstances like a coworker of mine who tore his ACL and was immobilized for several months.

When March 2020 rolled around and first-world knuckleheads were losing their minds hoarding toilet paper, the mandate came down from HHS to go fully remote if possible. This necessarily excluded staff involved with patient and animal care as well as facility workers who kept the campus operating, but for most of us, we were given leave to work from home. My 40-minute commute was replaced by a morning stretch and 40-second stumble to my cobbled together home office.

At first, my colleagues and I were unsure of how to work in this new dynamic. Remote water cooler conversations revealed most of us were, surprisingly, clocking longer hours because it was harder to find a definitive cut-off to the workday. It was hard to ignore a request after hours when your laptop was pinging you three feet away from where you were having dinner.

We all eventually settled into a routine and found a multitude of ways to separate work and home life.  For myself, I carved out space in a small upstairs bedroom and stocked it with a few of my favorite things. Vintage books and comics from my childhood, wooden ship carvings and a plastic plane I assembled as a kid, and mementos picked up from some of our travels were placed around the room. It looked like an eccentric recluse’s study, which is damn close to the mark.

Andrea learned how surprisingly self-sufficient this space was when she brought up a cup of coffee for me. “Oh! I forgot sugar; I’ll be right back.”

“No worries, I’ve got some.”

“You have sugar up here?!” I nodded and pointed to a sugar dispenser in front of a small collection of vintage pipes inherited from my father-in-law.

Semi-jokingly, I told her, “I am fully prepared to weather a few more years in isolation.” I pointed out mason jars full of my favorite tobacco, a humidor full of cigars, and several bottles of bourbon sitting next to my printer.

Sometimes remote work doesn’t mean work from home. I clarified this with a former manager of mine. “Wayne, I don’t care if you’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean as long as you’re reachable and able to dial in.” Copy that. Even when isolation was lifted. Andrea and I still avoided flying because of the accompanying hassles of security checkpoints, unreliable schedules, and the chance of encountering knuckle-headed fellow travelers.

When Andrea’s conference schedule resumed, if the destination was drivable, we turned them into road trips. Our current ride was delivered with an onboard modem, and I added an inverter. The result was a mobile office that allowed me to take meetings rolling down I-80 on the way to Chicago or I-95 to the Florida Keys. As a matter of fact, more than one Rock-tober entry was posted on the go with interstate scenery zipping by outside the passenger window. 

The pandemic changed our world and the resulting remote work movement spawned seismic shifts in our work culture. Vacant offices in business districts are affecting not only corporate landlords but the mom-and-pop business that relied on daily workers as their customers. Job seekers started stipulating work  from home privileges along with their salary requirements, and businesses looking to hire first rate candidates touted their generous remote work benefits.

The effects spilled over into our leisure hours, also. Multi-generation households are on the rise as families came together to weather the months in isolation. On the other end of the spectrum, the teardrop camper lifestyle, espousing small, mobile family units, hit a massive surge in interest not seen since the years immediately after WW II. Not surprisingly, I’m in the second group. Among other items on my never shrinking project list is building out a teardrop camper from a kit. I’d love for a future post to be written from a remote campsite out west. Maybe it will be in North Dakota as I check off the last state in a quest to set foot in all fifty.

John Mayer - Waiting On the World to Change

Rock-tober 17, 2024

Andrea recently said, “Wayne, of all the adjectives that could be used to describe you, ‘a flirt’ is not one of them.” That’s fair. It’s been well established in these missives that I have zero game. Throughout high school, even my car, the ‘Stang had more notoriety than me. 

Once upon a time, I thought I’d change that by sheer force of will. In Junior High, I’d heard it said that the frequent fall dances in the gymnasium were the social event for the season. One week I decided to step out of my comfort zone and attend one of these soirees. Taking a deep breath, I punched my left palm with my right fist. “Okay, let’s do this.” The afternoon of the event I polished my shoes, ironed a shirt, and picked out my favorite outdated tie. Then, decked out like a middle-aged sportscaster, I hitched a ride to school from Mom. 

The gym doors were open, and music being pumped out by some local DJ could be heard echoing inside. As soon as I stepped into the gym, I was overwhelmed by the noise, heat, and the sheer number of people swaying in the center of the floor and milling around the periphery. An acute feeling of unease began to rise, and it was more than the heat that was causing the sweat to rise on my brow. Logically, it should have been simple to walk up to a group of girls and join the conversation. Alternatively, I could have sought out a pack of people I knew and attach myself to that clique. Instead, I just looked around at the noisy cacophony and decided that this just was not my scene.

I spent the rest of that night helping in the concession stand.

Somewhere along the way, I managed to lose the timidity of youth regarding conversational ease with the fairer sex. However, I’m likely a long way from “Al Green” smooth. This was hammered home when Andrea and I were at a local restaurant back home. The hostess seated us, and Andrea stepped away to find the restroom. When our waitress checked in, I ordered our drinks. Noting Andrea’s empty seat, she asked, “Shall I come back in a bit to take your main order?”

“That’d be great! Thanks!” And I gave her a wink.

Later into the meal, she returned while Andrea had stepped away again. “Would she like another cocktail?”

“Two, please. Thanks!” And I winked once more. To be clear, I am definitively not a winker. But for some reason, on this day, something glitched in my head like a musical earworm that presented itself as an involuntary eye twitch.

This happened twice more with this poor waitress.

Near the end of the meal, she dropped off our check and scurried away quickly. Andrea picked up on the curious behavior. “Our waitress is acting a little odd. Have you noticed? She’s speaking directly to me and not even looking at you.”

“Yeah… That’s probably my fault. I kept winking at her.” Knowing an embarrassingly good story was coming, Andrea settled comfortably into her seat and took a sip of her cocktail. I sighed and relayed the events that happened mainly during her absence from the table. “It probably freaked the kid out, being winked at so much by a married dude in his fifties.”

“You!?” She started laughing while shaking her head. “You…winked?” Her incredulity was a little bothersome.

“Hey! I know how to wink! I was just making conversation and it happened. I couldn’t help it, but dammit, I couldn’t stop!” 

“OK. Show me!”

I was already self-conscious at this point, and as I complied with Andrea’s request and reproduced the offending action, I feared I looked like a cross between Mr. Spock and Sheldon Cooper attempting to do something antithetical to their core, like smiling.

Despite my efforts, I tried too hard, contorted my face unnaturally, and produced an awkward, sufficiently creepy wink. Andrea’s raucously loud laughter confirmed my fear. It’s nice to know I’m consistent. I’m forty-two years downrange of that kid at his first dance, and I still have zero game.

Grease - You're The One That I Want

Rock-tober 16, 2024

After Andrea and I pulled the trigger on the whole relationship accord and became an official couple, one of our first dates was to Chewacla State Park. After parking at the edge of the forest, we hiked a trail up to the lake. At the end of a meandering path, we found ourselves on a shoreline, taking in the tranquility and serenity of the scene.

Since we’d been friends for a while, this whole transition to “more” was relatively easy in some respects. But at this quiet, picturesque enclave, words failed us both, and we stood in awkward silence.

It was Andrea who jostled us from the quiet. “Can you skip rocks?”

Roused from my personal reverie, I tried to process her question. After more than four years of engineering classes, I could suss out the basic mechanics, but I don’t ever recall sending a stone skipping across a body of water. My internal dialogue was slightly panicked, “Oh, god, it’s second grade recess all over again!”

I picked up a small, flat rock, feeling its heft and weight. Tossing it from hand to hand, I looked to the surface of the lake and tried to do some fruitless mental calculations to get the “proper angle of incidence”. In the end, I just shrugged. Yoda’s terse wisdom won out, “Do or do not. There is no try.”

I drew my arm back, said a silent prayer to the gods of Newtonian physics, and hurled the rock with a slight flick of the wrist. To my relief and astonishment, there wasn’t a single splash and “kerplunk” indicating mission failure. There was a second splash, and then a third, and now a fourth.

Andrea squealed with glee. “Yay! Do another!”

Outwardly smiling, I was hoping I hadn’t used up my dexterity points for the day. Picking up another rock, I hurled it with greater force and managed a respectable 7 skipping splashes before it disappeared beneath the surface.

Andrea was insistent on testing my reserves of good fortune. “Show me how you did that!”

How in blazes do you teach a newly acquired pseudo skill?

I uttered some mumbo jumbo about planting your feet apart in a strong stance and sighting down the path you wanted your projectile to take. She listened intently to my ad-libbed TED Talk on the mechanics of skipping rocks and then started to scan the rocks at her feet. Being very deliberate in her choice, she held up her specimen. “Is this one OK?”

I’m thinking, pfft. I dunno. It’s a rock. “Nice! That one’s perfect, Andrea!”

Pleased with her rock-picking acumen, she smiled and took her stance. Planting her feet and squaring her shoulders, she stretched her left arm out towards the lake like Babe Ruth telegraphing the direction of his next hit.

“Remember to flick your wrist when you release.” Nodding to acknowledge the last-minute pointer, she flung her hand back.

I should have been more explicit in my instructions. On any firing range, traditionally, the safest place to be is behind the shooter. Andrea deftly flouted that bit of battle tested wisdom. She’d managed to flick her wrist and release on the backstroke of her throw, sending that rock directly behind her, where I was standing, and scored a direct hit on the family jewels.

Mortified at what she’d done so very early in our now official relationship, she dropped to her knees, covering her face with her hands. I, similarly, dropped to my knees, my hands covering something else.

She was quickly by my side and my head was in her lap. After the stars faded from my vision, I was able to look up at her concerned face and managed a smile. “OK,” I thought. “Maybe this wasn’t so bad as far as first dates go.”

blink-182 - First Date

Rock-tober 15, 2024

I'm sure Mom and Dad were thrilled, but I don't remember certain motor skill milestones like starting to crawl as a baby or taking my first steps as a toddler. However, as a kid, I do remember my frustration as I struggled to acquire three specific physical abilities. These were attaining the ability to snap my fingers, to skip, and to whistle. Learning how to do each one in turn felt like a massive achievement comparable to riding a bike for the first time.

Seeing someone snap their fingers, producing sound seemingly out of thin air was astounding. My first attempts at replicating the feat were muted disappointments until I developed the hand strength and manual dexterity. Ironically, after five decades of my hands doing everything from cranking wrenches to punching keyboards, the stiffness in my fingers is making snapping them a slowly ebbing ability.

One day for Friday recess in second grade, the day’s activity was a relay race where one leg involved skipping to the next person on your team. You learn to crawl by six months and walk by eighteen months. Where along that development timeline do you learn to skip? I felt truly inadequate because I had no idea how. Observing my classmates with a quiet desperation, I couldn’t pick it up just by watching them. When I ran my skipping leg, my inexperienced footwork made me look like a Monty Python knight riding a wooden stick horse.

Not wanting to repeat that embarrassment, I spent all weekend practicing skipping between our front door, down the walkway to our mailbox and back. Passing cars viewing all this were likely wondering at this clumsy kid continuously tripping over himself in his front yard. “Aww. Bless his heart.”

The struggle paid off, and the next recess period, anxious to show off my new skill, I was skipping everywhere - to the playground, around the playground, and during the PE teacher’s instructions for the day. Eventually, the teacher called me aside saying something along the lines of, “Wayne, let’s put on our listening ears and follow the activity instructions,” but was basically saying, “C’mon, kid. Lay off the sugar and calm the heck down.”

Despite the effort in learning the skip step, I can’t think of a single time since those recess periods where I’ve utilized that hard-won technique.

Whistling was like snapping my fingers. I found being able to spontaneously create a melodious sound without an instrument was mesmerizing. I believe my buddy Noel was trying to teach me one day, and after some initial attempts, he was giving me a tolerant, “Say it, don’t spray it,” look. I eventually did unlock that achievement, and one day I was about eight when a commercial for suntan lotion came on the TV. During the parade of bikini-clad females prancing across the screen, I let out a long wolf whistle. I didn’t understand why, but according to all the Looney Tunes cartoons I’d seen, that’s what a literal cartoon wolf would do when seeing a bikini clad woman.

Mom was standing right behind me.

“Wayne! Where did you learn to do that?!” Apparently, this was a rhetorical question. She didn’t bother waiting for a response, and the look on her face confirmed I should keep my ready answer to myself.  With one hand on her hip and the other in full on, mom finger wagging mode, she continued, “You’d better watch yourself. If you try that nonsense at the beach, you’re likely to get yourself slapped!”

 Stupid cartoons.

Whistling is yet another hard-won skill whose lack of usage doesn’t match the effort expended to acquire it. These days, wolf whistles are reserved for Andrea - usually when she’s walking away.

 

Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers - Learning To Fly