Fortune Cookie Blues

 Last night's fortune cookie:

      'You will make many changes before settling satisfactorily.'

Changes? Me? At this age? Really? Did something disrupt the timing of the universe and I drove through the drive-through window when it was supposed to be someone else and received a fortune intended for another?

A I Blues

My alexa dot device can tell me where my phone is .... it would be really helpful though if it could tell me where my keys and wallet are.

Fifty Years

Today was an anniversary.....

Fifty years of going to work at the same place.

Not exactly sure if I have another fifty in me. 

Maybe I'll now revert from my near perfect attendance ways of the last twenty-five years to the calling in on a whim and taking days off, of my early years.

I guess I've been through the "changes in attitudes" .... as Jimmy Buffet once sang.

          ..... Though the latitudes remained the same. 

Dame Time Again

Damian Lillard is coming back!!

I was shocked when I heard a few hours ago ..... and happy as hell.

I thought it might happen eventually, but figured it was still a couple years away.

If you follow basketball and have lived in this area for the past fifteen years .... or all of your nearly 70 years, you know how major this is.

I never wanted the split to begin with though I understood at the time.

I can't adequately express what I'm feeling. 

But my basketball world is right again!! 

In the Distance

It seems to be a frequent occurrence lately ....

Looking through the weekly All Music Guide list of new album releases and not recognizing a single name.

Another example that youth has passed me by and left me far in the distance, standing in a cloud of dust.

I'm proud though of my less than popular listening preferences.

The ambient and weird jazz sounds. 

The 'American primitive guitar' sounds.

Select indie-rock, Americana bands and singer/songwriters. 

Music with mandolins, cellos and acoustic bass employed.

..... and lately, the tones of a trumpet.

I like to think that if my compact disc and vinyl collection were a music store it would be a fascinating dig for someone seeking different sounds.

Changes

I sometimes think that I have become a hideous freak.

Please don't ask me to explain because I can't ..... well maybe partially I can but don't care to.

I've just become consumed with this feeling over the past year. 

Concerned with being seen out in the world by others.

Wanting to avoid places where there are shadows or reflections.

Wanting to mostly hide from the world. 

I don't mind being around co-workers because they've seen me daily all through this change in self-esteem and the time leading up to it. I feel accepted there.

But around others, I'm not so comfortable.

I saw an old classmate (first grade through high school) in the store a few months ago ..... an old 7th and 9th grade basketball teammate and someone I've crossed paths with occasionally since those school days ..... I recognized him from a distance and turned and went the other way, afraid to approach him because of this place I've come to in life and how I view myself.

Is getting older a graceful and painless process for anyone?

Does it change everyone?

Does anyone survive it intact?

Sunset Therapy

From a couple evenings ago. To my way of thinking, there's no such thing as too many gorgeous sunsets. Or that after a while they all begin to look alike. I stood there in awe. Never becoming routine, everything else in life can wait while this visual played itself out.

First Visit

Finally!! A dream that makes sense in my world.

I've been looking forward to, after a year and a half, the re-opening of a record store in town tomorrow.

Had a dream tonight about that initial walking-in-the-door moment.

Within three or four minutes, I had four albums in hand.

And I get to do it all again tomorrow!! 

And actually, looking at the time, later today.

Various Notes

• One of my fatal flaws (there's many) ...... I hear a song on the radio and automatically think, "That record would look good in my collection."
• A few weeks ago, I ran into an old friend. Last night I crossed paths with his brother, an even older friend. While we spoke, a lady approached and advised (jokingly) not to believe his stories. "Oh, I've heard them all for fifty years" I replied.
• I guess it speaks to musicians and record labels customer appreciation levels when the record being shipped from England, which was in my mailbox yesterday, arrives before the record shipping from Portland, (fifty miles away), and ordered on the same day, which still hasn't arrived.