Gimme that Oscar, Heath!

It is well known that I should be winning tonight, but that ham Heath Ledger stole my shit. They totally overlooked my part as the guy in the bank that was scared and got down. It was the best 'scared' of the year, but I get no respect.

On the other hand, I have to give an award to "Jared the ex-Huge" and Subway for finally coming to their senses and listening to all of the emails that have been sent to them discussing the antiquated values they were working from when deciding to dump my main athlete Michael Phelps. I will eat there again now that they have said "Like most Americans, and like Michael Phelps himself, we were disappointed in his behavior. Also like most Americans, we accept his apology. Moving forward, he remains in our plans." Go Michael! I do not know many folks in my life who have NOT picked up the bong and said goodbye to the nights annoyances and gone on a delightful journey to Cheech and Chong-land for a bit. Why I myself as a young man was known to hit the glass princess once in a while.

After my maiden voyage with Althea (my RV), I arrived back in Seattle a few days ago having tooled about the wild reaches of Oregon for some time. The goals of the trip were accomplished for the most part, those being the following:

• Determine average miles per gallon.


• Adjust to new steering and braking systems.


• Measure time needed for full set up and break down of external hookups.


• See how she handles on foggy twisty mountain roads that lead into stamp-sized town.


• Retrieve Oregon's highest quality potables for my friends, all four of them.


• Determine if I really enjoy sleeping in a fiberglass box with only the freezing sleet outside to keep me company.


• See how my electronics hold up being bounced around for ten days straight.


• Make note of how many hours in a row I can listen to recordings of the Grateful Dead band before a spontaneous flashback occurs. (answer:14)

If I had a "Mission Accomplished" banner to hang outside my home when I returned, I would have done it... and MEANT it! Though, not all was peach cobbler and honey dust brushed lightly across Heather Kozar's bosom. Indeed I had my trials and tribulations.

Of course there was the issue with the 120V panel, which is still unresolved as a whole. Then I had to deal with the county sheriff of Noname, Oregon (still pronounced ore-eh-gohn'), who was hiding at the bottom of the twisty foggy hill right past the speed limit sign which was invisible in the fog. $264 for going 50 in a 30. It is a ticket I really do NOT need at the moment. There was no getting away from Mr. The Man, though. He could have nailed me for a bunch of other shit, but he 'gave me a break.' AND the weather sucked for the most part. Getting back to Seattle has not been much of a change, nor will it be until the middle of July. Such is life up here. But there are solutions, Jim, there are solutions.

Another odd thing that happened was the loss of a vent cover from Althea's roof. It was there in the picture of her wanting the whiskeys in Hood River, but when I was topside cleaning off her awning, the damned thing is gone. AND it is not the kind of thing you can just go buy another one of down at Piggly fucking Wiggly! What this means is the wonderful Seattle rain has been pouring into the evac fan for the LPG range. And there is some Romex hanging around as well and some high voltage tie-offs that I do NOT need getting wet. Oh! Here is a picture of her with her top down.



It was sunny here in Seattle, yes. That is NOT an altered image. But.. twenty minutes later, it was pouring rain again. One may be thinking, "really, Jim? A blue gradient?" And if one is thinking that, it shows what a master of the ESP am I! During the year of 1990, Tioga (pronounced tye-OH-gah) produced RVs in a few color schemes.





Notice the merlot, rose red and pale taupe?

Or how about the light and opera mauve...



So, I think I got the good one, HOOOONKY!

Unknown fact that I might tell someone if I were going to die : I used to run a BBS back in the early 80s called The Microchip - 6510, which ran on a Commodore 64, one 170K floppy and a 110/300BPS modem on a single phone line. I had over 100 users, but most of them used Apple ][s. We didn't care cause no one was BBSing at the time, and we were just glad to have a use for our modems. Then we ate a lot of pizza at the pizza parties and one of the nerds brought a homemade explosive and blew the hell out of a trash can lid. It was an impressive device for someone aged 11. That was Beryl. You know who you are, Beryl! I had a crush on Deana Steiner, too, as I recall. She was the 'hot nerd' girl who knew how to write programs that sat in the floppy controller RAM. Pretty cool.