The Kind of Music You Hear While Seeing Local Bands?

> Sad story

LOL Don't worry about it. Three decades is a long time. But thanks for the kind thoughts.

I hadn't thought about playing Billy Joel songs, my college days, or my dead friend in quite a while. BillHicksFan's mentioning Billy Joel reminded me of playing Angry Young Man, which reminded me of my college days. I started to write that response only to tell the story that in my thirties I already couldn't do some things I had done a few years earlier. While writing it I remembered my friend and added that part.

Now, nine days later, I had forgotten about this thread and my participating in it. When I saw the notification I didn't recall telling this story, instead I thought you were responding to my post above ("I'm in rural Kentucky, where country and bluegrass dominate."), in which I said that the local bands aren't to my taste. It was only when I saw your response here that I recalled those things at all.

So, it's long since ceased to be a painful memory or even a constant one. Just an occasional sad moment. Maybe that's sad in itself, he was a good friend back then but it's been so long he doesn't even seem quite real to me anymore. I hope it's the same way with your late friend.

Two mornings ago, when I brought my morning coffee to this desk and sat down to check my email, I did it the way I always do. My chair is a swivel office chair, like this one:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Flash-Furniture-High-Back-Black-Fabric-Executive-Ergonomic-Swivel-Office-Chair-with-Height-Adjustable-Arms-BT661BK/301745314

I turned the chair away from the desk, sat down in it while holding the coffee cup, and put the coffee on the floor so it would be behind me when I turned back to the keyboard. My practice when working at the computer is to keep the coffee behind me like that. When I want to take a drink I'll turn around, away from the computer, drink the coffee, then put the cup back down and turn back to the computer.

When I did that the day before yesterday, I spilled some coffee on the floor as I set the cup down. Had I done what most people do, keep the coffee cup on the desk, I might have damaged my computer. That's why I do it the way I do it. An accident is only going to happen one in a thousand times, but if you take precautions every time, when an accident does happen it will be harmless.

I started doing things that way when I took flying lessons. Before you take a plane up you check it over on the ground. And you don't trust what the gauges say. You take the gas caps off (on top of the wings) and look to verify there's gas. There are little valves on the bottom of the wings, and you drain a little gas into a clear tube to verify that moisture hasn't got into the wings and fouled the fuel. (Water is heavier than aviation fuel, and the fuel has a blue tint. If your sample is nothing but blue, you're good. If it's all clear, or blue on top with a clear layer at the bottom, don't take the plane up.)

That's how I do it with handguns. Before I clean them I unload the weapon. I take out the magazine. I look in the chamber to verify there's no cartridge left behind. Then I recheck by holding a flashlight in front of the pistol, pointing it down the barrel, and verify that I can see light coming into the chamber. If it's daytime and the sunlight coming in the window makes it impossible to do that, I'll take the gun to a darker room for that step.

I don't want to sound preachy. Maybe I'm overly anal retentive. But I figure there are some things you only need to get wrong once. When I hear stories like the one about your friend I get a little angry. A life uselessly wasted, just because he probably did nothing more than get distracted for a moment. So unfair.

Since this exchange has been something of a downer for both of us, I'll lighten the mood by telling a funny story about my flying days.

One of my fellow students, when it came time for test for his license, pulled a hilarious prank on the FAA examiner. He bought a gas sampling tube, like the one I wrote about earlier, identical to the ones in the school's planes. He got some blue food coloring liquid, filled the tube with water, then added drops of coloring to get it to the right tint. He had that tube with him, hidden, when the examiner was watching him do the pre-flight checks. After he drained the sample from the wing, he managed to momentarily turn his back to the examiner and in that instant switched tubes. Then, in the moment after when he was facing the examiner again, he lifted his tube to his lips, took a swig from it, sloshed it around in his mouth, sucked air in, et cetera, as if he was tasting wine, spit it out onto the ground, looked at the examiner and said, "OK, we're good."

He told me later that his only regret was that there was no practical way to take a picture of the examiner's reaction, to preserve it for posterity.

(to be continued)