egotrip

Its a little spooky the way this thing creeps up n me every couple of years, demanding some contribution.    I'm at home, having mowed the lawn and then come inside sweating copiosly to cool off.  I will need to go back outside soon to blow off the clippings from the driveway. Kinda dreading that.

Things are good, it's Friday, two days with Jie, Farmers market, meet up with Patty and Don, nice people, the first people we have met and enjoyed going somewhere with since John and Charlene who just sort of figured out we weren't the people they wanted to spend a lot of time with, actually kinda hopeless since they have enough money to do about anything they like and we have very little. Pity, but I sort of sense Charlene wasn't clearly happy with us, we didn't quite have the charisma she desired, Anyway they are lovely people , we just cant fly off to Italy every now and then.

Patty and Don are quite different, very friendly and happy people they have no desire to spend a lot of money, they have a 2015 C7 Corvette, beautiful thing and I'm a little envious.  Jie brightens me up with stories about how she likes my car, I do too, it is reliable and unlike the Porsche it doesn't cost a heap of money to maintain.I like Don. I also would like to smarten up the sound of my car but i need advice.  People like Don ask me to start it up when its running, I hate that. maybe one day when i meet some guy who knows what he is doing.

Good Morning,

Today is Sunday, I'm sitting here thinking about mowing the lawn. First I like riding around on my mower, its a tractor, 22hP, and goes about 4mph, which feels fairly quick and is able to mow the lawn in about one hour.   Think 9.30 am on a Sunday is about right for making a lot of noise mowing.

Anyway my daughter is a bit of a problem for me and almost everyone that knows her I think.  She has this arrogance about her poor behavior, she drives me to drink, she currently thinks its hip to not call people for their birthday, Not calling is her idea of a gift. sheer arrogance.  I wonder what in particular caused this abberant behavior.   She surely cannot continue to lean on losing her kids to her first husband as a reason for weird behavior.  Now she's on a kick of seeing how far she can push her second husband in so far as buying real estate and she has at this point bought a Condo somewhere like Daytona Beach and now she's buying a slip where she can park the newest addition to her things, and never use it.

Alcoholism I think.  Never thought that would totally change ones behavior permanently but she is not all there, no common sense at all.

I just found this thing again, or it found me. I wish I had something momentous to say. Anyway Its August of 2015, long time since I was here. Jie is still the rock, funny I never thought she would be the rock, I thought I was. Sam has remarried, Bob Powers is a nice guy, she's lucky. Simone has remarried right in front of our eyes in Bartow, this year. Ray has to be a really nice guy the kids love him. Sort of wish they would lose patience with their stupid father, but if they want to love their dad it's very ok. they are so smart they probably already do expect little but if they love him still it's good. I'm glad my kids like me, it would be awful if they didn't like you. Stupid comment. I don't know if they love me, the older I get the realization that I'm a pretty cold person becomes apparent. See, both my kids have multiple marriages. that's probably due to me not being a warm giving person. I suppose so. I always thought my kids would have excellent lives, after all they are my kids. I suspect there are numerous things they have experienced that do not meet my definition of excellent. "What doesn't kill you etc" But they haven't had excellent lives , they have had misery and emotionally charged experiences to burn. So my being bright and having a good personality didn't make my kids lives excellent. I always thought it would. I'm surprised. But they are doing OK, maybe better. Being shallow didn't help. travel didn't help. Australia, PapuaNewGuinea, Hawaii, Florida. A little trip East, always East. I figured they were special, maybe even very special and they were good, bright, smart but they had my problem about making good personal decisions. So I'll try to meet my friends starting with Bobby Breedon, Johnny Minnit, perhaps Johnny Breedon, Bob Finan, Dave Foster, I know where he is, he got a little pissed off, I would guess that's why Judy left him. I must call Preston Devereaux today about two. All old best friends I never bothered to keep track of, and now don't have a clue where they all are. I've got Jie, that's what is most important, she's wonderful. I love her. Mucher. I also hope Pam is happy, I think she is, I didn't treat her right. She's basically very nice. At almost 78, I know myself. Finally. From what I see, most people never do. So It's good. Life's good, I wish I wasn't bored tho.

We had a good chat coming back from Gainesville yesterday, we went to Sherry and Julian's Wedding.  Surprising for us at the level of religion present in the people who were there, all young too, 25/30 yr olds. All strongly believed in God, actually felt God had decided for them who they should marry and why.

We don't feel like that, we feel like if your nice to people and don't screw up doing bad stuff, you'll get into Heaven.

Jie is pretty sure she's going to Heaven and i'd sure hate to finish up anywhere she wasn't, so hopefully I've passed. Dunno. So we are pretty sure you don't have to have this all abiding belief in God, don't have to pray etc, you can wing it on the premise of being basically a good person. Hope so. Although i have nagging doubts that there is such a place, that's probably sufficient to disqualify me.  Gee well no you can't go, you don't really believe there is such a place.

I always turn to the one and a half billion Chinese, how could you disqualify one and a half billion people at one stroke just because they hadn't heard of God? I mean maybe they've heard of him but never had the opportunity to find out more. Gets complicated.

So anyway that's my deep thought for the Month.

I would like to write sometimes, think I'll put it on my Google Calendar to write something from time to time, I'll diarise it for every month. Just wish I could write interestingly. What is interesting?

It would be terrific if I could think of something original to say, something pretty brilliant, after all this blog has now been around since 2006 and i'm a bit surprised how pedestrian it is.  I could write once, i recall a teacher telling me at one point I was brilliant because i wrote a thing about going to the moon or mars, she thought it was great and i was very enthused about writing but I didn't really pursue it.

Well i did when i met Jie.  Those trips to China were so great, I thought she was wonderful, I don't really know if others think she is wonderful, I hope so , I do. I wrote those accounts of our trips and how great it was to see her every five months. And it didn't even seem like a relief when I could finally go get her after three and a half years of waiting.  I was thrilled yes, but I had got used to only seeing her twice a year, I know she was fed up with waiting, she scared the life out of me one day when just before her interview came up she announced that she was sick of waiting, just sick of it and she said she didn't know if she could wait any longer.

Anyway her interview at Guangzhou came up within three months and of course she aced it and I could go get her, what a feeling it was to take her to Hong Kong, she had never been there and we stayed at the Metropole Hotel in Hong Kong and she tasted blueberries for the first time.  We flew out on United straight thru to Chicago, nice trip, a lot better than those thirty six hour trips on Asiana or Korean Airlines where I would do the Jet bLUE THING TO New York and then over the pole thru Anchorage AK.  But I remember those long trips best, I recall sitting in Seoul Korea at six oclock in the morning thinking the plane leaves for Hong Kong at eleven , i'll be in Hong Kong by four and if i can get to the place that organises the Visa before five I'll pay them to get my visa by six and i can see Jie at about eight after the bus ride to Shenzhen.  I know she'll be standing by the stairs all dressed in black and she'll be so small and beautiful and I'll be the happiest guy in the world to get in that cab with her.

Anyway I started to say I liked writing very much when I was writing about those trips, I loved the travel, we did the 24 hour express to Beijing, we did the 36 hour slow train trip to Chonqing where we got on this boat to come down the Yangste to Wuhan, Jie never complained about the fact that I didn't have much money, we got on this boat, I was the only caucasian on board, the food was so bad nobody would eat it we all went to the snack food shop on board and ate candy. Jie didn't care, we were together.  With about 500 people who were so nice to me, when I went out on the deck to look around at the scenery they would make room for me, sometimes I suspected they thought I had some really bad disease because they were so careful to make room for me. I loved writing those accounts of our trips.

I really tried hard to make those stories interesting.

I had lost this thing and now google tell me here is your blog, write something. Ok, I see i havent written anything since some time in 2007 , aand now its 2010 so i'm a bit behind, I had intended to try to keep a sort of diary of my innermost thoughts, thats not happening.

I even create paragraphs, waiting for some stray idea to hit me and create an interesting thought i could write down for posterity, nothing.

Maybe i am used up, unable to be creative any more, I should really do something, go back to college, sail the boat, go to some of the Porsche Club events, I have trouble getting energised, i do hope i am not entirely losing interest in life, I am so lucky to have Jie, i should be out there turning cartwheels in the backyard, O yeah, right i have a sore hip.

All excuses for doing very little , maybe tomorrow

Just this morning I had a blaze of light hit me in the forehead and realised for the first time that i'm kinda glad I'm getting older.

I used to be pretty stupid, messing around, always in trouble and looking for more, now its pretty cool. I dont look for trouble any more, in fact I get some peculiar satisfaction out of not getting in trouble. I even drive at about the speed limit which used to be just a challenge. Now I truck around at 80 which for me is pretty good. Except I had the Porsche up to a 100 a couple of times, but that doesn't count and anyway its nothing like as bad as Jay who had his Cayman up to 165 on the Polk Parkway. He'd a been in jail crying like Paris if he got caught.

I've never had the Tundra over 95 and I've never had the Porsche over 105. I need to find somewhere where I can get the Porsche up to 145 because I've only ever been 144 on the back of a motorcycle. Ronny Quinn and i one night down on the Swansea Straight, we went past a school when there was a PTA meeting going on at 144 two up.

The bike was a HRD White Lightning that had just won the Isle of Man TT races in 1953.

The school had the only lights on in the whole two mile stratch and I recall thinking if one of these parents decide to leave now and drive out onto the road they are gonna get a shock when ronny and i appear through their windscreen. That passed for a serious thought in those days.

I don't even get in trouble with women any more.

1. I'm boring.
2. I'm not interested in that pit of the gut shitty feeling when you go home after screwing somebody.
3. How could you do that to Jie.