I’ve been looking for a theme song for this blog for a long time when one came to me over the in-store music system.  I heard it when my eldest son and I were grabbing the fixings for dinner at a natural foods grocery in Dallas a few days ago.  As the infectious beat thumped down around me, I hustled to position myself under a speaker so I could hear better.  I listened and was taken back to what was probably my social awakening as a gawky, pimply teenager.

My father had been transferred to Detroit, Michigan when I was just starting junior high.  We drove from our home state of Missouri to Motor City, as it was later to be called.  Prior to this, I had grown up in small towns and had just been living with my parents, two brothers and two sisters in an old army barracks in Jefferson Barracks, MO, which was on the Mississippi River near St. Louis.   There were eight families living in each one of these barracks, and each living space had a living room, kitchen, two bedrooms and one bath.  Needless to say, the seven of us were in cramped quarters.

We moved to a blue-collar suburb of Detroit and I started junior high.  I met a girl in one of my classes who invited me to a party at her sister’s boyfriend’s house.  We went to this party – my very first teenage party experience – and I thought I had hit the big time.  My date and I were the youngest ones there – all the other kids were in high school.  I couldn’t believe that I – a real social neophyte – was there hanging out with actual high schoolers.  And not only hanging out with them, they acted like we were a part of their crowd.

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View of field from skybox

I am posting this from inside a skybox at Qwest Stadium in Seattle.  MD and I have been up here for a few days and have been unbelievably busy the entire time.  We’ve had a little time for fun, but not much.  One meeting after an other for the last three days.  Plus, we haven’t had reliable internet service and my Blackberry is on the fritz.  My thumbball won’t work and I’m not going to be able to get it fixed until I get to Dallas tomorrow.  I can use the phone part, but can’t scroll to get emails or get online.  So, my comment answering and emailing have all been hamstrung for the past few days.

We landed in a snowstorm in Seattle on Thursday and have been battling the weather since.  Here is a photo of the Pike Place Market in the snow last night.

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A few years ago MD and I were in a product development meeting with a handful of thirty something people.  During a break, she and I were huddled together having our own little discussion about something when the meeting got started back up.  In an effort to get our attention, one of the other people said, ‘Hey, you two, we need to get going again.’

I looked up and said, ‘Sorry, we were just having fun fillin’ out the forms and playin’ with the pencils on the bench there.’

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Montecito fire (click to enlarge)

The fire in Santa Barbara/Montecito is finally pretty much controlled.  You can see from the photo I took above the giant scar the fire left on the hillside. Within this scar are over 100 houses burned to the ground. Our house is just to the right of where this picture ends.  As it turned out, we weren’t in any danger, but we didn’t know it when this all started.  The winds were howling with gusts of up to 70 miles per hour and driving the fire in our direction.  Suddenly, for whatever meteorological reason, the winds quit.  The fire then became terrain driven, which means basically that it started burning upward.  Which was fortunate for us and Oprah, since we both live sideways from the fire and not above it.

We have moved all our stuff back into the house and now have to get it back where it belongs.  And I’ve got to tend to this blog and get all the comments up.  But, now we have to leave to get down to LA for a screening of the movie FatHead.  We won’t get back until late tonight.

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