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2005
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2002
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Then
1966

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NOW

Sunday, February 01, 2004

The days are becoming less urgent and more routine. I’ve completed the primary repairs, that is, we now have reliable power, water and phone. The chores ahead are daunting and when I give them too much thought, discouragement sets in. I’ll be installing new plumbing and wiring to a 10,000 gallon water tank which will be placed 1,000 feet from the house. The technicalities of the job are easy; the hard part will be getting these new components underground. Hand digging only.

We still have the burned rubble of two large buildings to clear. Catherine and I don’t see eye-to-eye on that process and it looks like we’ll be doing it her way. That means slowly sifting through the ashes looking for anything salvageable. I’d prefer the 1 day “skip loader” method.

The good news is that I’ll be retiring within the next 6 months and that will give me the opportunity to work full time rebuilding the property. With 23 years of service and some retirement incentives offered by the state, I’ll be able to swing it.

________

Lately I’ve been reading a lot about Buddhism. A large part of the philosophy deals with centering the mind on the “present moment” while letting go of thoughts about the past and future. Considering the amount of time I’ve spent sniveling about my past, the thought of “just dropping it” is alluring.

________

With our property completely denuded of growth, I’ve taken the opportunity to build some hiking trails to areas that were previously inaccessible. Last weekend I assembled a park bench at a “lookout point” high up a hill on our east border.

 

THEN

July 30, 1967 Sunday

I've been really working hard lately and its been extra hard because I have a bad cold.  Ron has the same thing and is taking an extra day off tomorrow. That makes it hard for me but at least I earn some extra money.

With the cold its been murder trying to sleep.  I spend half the night awake and when I do sleep, my dreams are so weird I'd almost rather stay awake.

I smoked the fried banana the other day. Donovan has a song called "Mellow Yellow" which is  a satire about the silliness of all the drug excitement these days.  Just the same, some kids at school are actually doing it so, being a blind follower, I gave it a shot. All I got from it was an icky mess that gooed up my pipe.

An interesting thing happened the other day at work.  A dog was brought in and I noticed on the card that the address was 1001 Olive Ave.  Guess who lives there?  Right, the girl two houses down from me.  The name of the family is Nixon but in order to get more information I had to sneak to the front office and look up their files.  It seems they used to live in another house in Coronado but it was probably just temporary. I'm almost certain they're new in Coronado because they're not in the phone book or year book.  They also have a Florida license plate.

Anyway, I found out that her dog is named Tom.  Never know when that information might be useful.

August 4, 1967 - Friday

I've been working full time lately and really enjoying it.  I don't know how much longer I'll be able to keep it up.  I haven't done a thing else and things are beginning to fall apart around here.

August 7, 1967 - Monday

Today I bought a clock radio to replace my old alarm clock.  Saturday it didn't go off and I was an hour late for work. Needless to say, Ron was kind of mad and has cooled off on being nice to me.  He's still doing the same thing to Mary and after two weeks he's still giving her the silent treatment. Things have been pretty hard at the hospital so maybe after a while, things will calm down.

Barry was telling me that I'd be the perfect person to live alone on a desert island.  I guess I have got a pretty rotten personality and its been bothering me a lot lately.