Interests 4

For the last Interests entry, I’ll summerise all the rest that don’t fit in neat categories like places or singers and etc.

This will be the longest one of them – points to those who keep reading, lol.

by the way, like my Christmas colors?

(12/24-26 only)

 

 

Breasts.  I like ’em.  I think I prefer them on the smaller side.  (could be because I’ve never gotten my hands on some of the bigger ones…accepting volunteers)  Lots of jokes abound about penis trucks and how guys who "fall short" seek to compensate by getting bigger trucks or more expensive cars or other things to compensate for percieved shortcomings, but NO ONE says anything about the female allegory- that women who have bigger boobs have different attitudes than women who have smaller ones, and I think this misses a real thing – that more than penis size to guys, boob size sets girls and women apart and drives them to compensate for percieved shortcomings.

I mean, they are RIGHT there and can be seen by all, unlike guys, who mostly hide their units, except in locker rooms and showers.

One of my former lovers told me that I must have been deprived of the breast when I was young, cuz I like ’em so much.  Heh.  You dames, well, you got ’em all the time and have lost sight of their power over us poor guys.  If we’re lucky, we get a pair to play with too, but if we’re single, well, it’s a catch as catch can sort of thing.

I haven’t "caught" any in a long time – thank whoever for the internet!

Cats.  I like cats.  Duh.  My name is NorthwesternCat, go figure.  When I first got online, my screen name was SouthwesternCat, because I lived in the Southwest and always remember it as a place of great beauty.  Some years back, it dawned on me that I have lived in the Northwest a lot longer than I lived in the SW, so I changed my name.

You want the real story?  It goes like this:  I was once a cat.  Really.  I got tired of lying around at home everyday and so envied my master/owner/the guy who fed me and cleaned my box, that I wished really, really hard that I could be like him and go out and explore the world I knew lay beyond the apartment doors.

I got my wish.  Boy, did I screw up!  I have a cat now, and tell him that he is SO lucky to have me to take care of him and keep him safe.  I dunno if he believes me though….

Coffee.  I love coffee.  Right now, I have one of my favorites, Sumatra Gayoland, a really bold. tasty coffee.  This year, I’ve drunk a lot of Ethiopia Sidamo coffee, an even bolder coffee than Sumatra.  I used to really like the French roasts – K* would make me a thermos of it and I’d drive the 217 miles back to Maine from Providence in 83-84, when I would drive down from the ship and visit her.  Ahh, that French roast – could drive many hundreds of miles on it.  I have driven many miles on cups of coffee.

I used to make coffee with a drip cone – in fact, I nearly always have.  I’ve been using a permanent filter the last seven years – no paper filters to find I’ve run out of at akward times, and the perma filter gives me muddy coffee, the way I love it.  The last few years though, I have yielded to my fix and have and use a French Press maker.  I bought one of those one cup jobs from Starbucks a few years ago, but this year went all out and bought myself a four cup French Press maker.  It makes THE BEST coffee.  Make it and microwave it through the day… or night, as the case may be.

Depression/ptsd/Dissociation.   Yup.  I know something about each of them.  We have been, if not "good friends", at least really good aquaintances.  Nuff said.

Digital Photography.  What a wonderful thing!  I bought a digi cam in 2004, a Nikon Coolpix 2200, and have taken nearly 4000 picures with it so far.  See below for a fuller blurb on Photography please.

History. My best subject in school.  My favorite thing to read.  What people do, how they do it, how they organise to do the things they do – all these facinate me, and history is the story of how people do all this.  My degree is in Social Sciences.  I don’t think much of people in general – think they’re more than they are – but they are facinating to study.  Sometimes I even try to be one.

Navy.  I was in the US Navy, stationed in San Diego for boot camp, moved to Great Lakes Naval Training Center in North Chicago, moved to Philadelphia for hot plant training on gas turbine engines, my specialty; then sent to Norfolk, Virginia to join the crew waiting for their new Frigate to finish building in Maine.  As an engineer, I was sent ahead of most of the rest of the crew to learn my ship, so I spent a lot of time in Maine (wonderful scenary up there), then, my ship commisioned, it and the crew (me too) were sent to our homeport, Charleston, South Carolina.  A historic place, fer sure.  My ship spent a lot of time in the Carribean – been to Cuba, the Bahamas, The Vigin Islands,  Porto Rico, and a few other places down there.  I so wish I had taken more pictures then!  It is superlatively beautiful in the Carribean.

My Navy career was not so illustrious, but I’ve done it, and have no regrets about it.

Near Death Experiences.  I was in a car wreck on April 23, 1998.  I damn near died a couple of times.  I was in a coma for weeks; intensive care, and there were points where they weren’t sure I’d live or die. 

Been there, done that.  Would just as soon not do it again.

Photography.  I have owned a camera since I was 12.  My father was a photograper who owned still cameras, movie cameras, Polaroid cameras, and wh

o had his own darkroom.  Of all the things that vanished when my parents died, I think that I miss the boxes of prints and rolls of movie film he had in the garage – and the pictures of me and my brother growing up.

My first camera was a Kodak 110 – a simple camera that I outgrew pretty soon.  After dad died, I adopted his Leica 35mm camera.  It was not a single-lens reflex camera, but had a view finder separate from the camera body.  I LEARNED how to take good pictures with that camera, which, incidentally, I owned until 1997, when I was desperately poor and sold it.

The first camera I bought myself was a Pentax ME Super.  I was in the Navy then, and bought a flash and a telephoto lens, a wide angle lens, a doubler to get 460 mm out of the tele lens, fiters and all sorts of stuff for it.  I took thousands of pictures with it, some of which we can see in the previous entry.  (I have had scanners since 1999, to scan prints and to post them here.  I have boxes of prints to scan – we ain’t seen nothing yet)

I sold the whole shebang to raise the money to move to Japan in 1993.  Me and the wife had split up, and a friend told me something then – "you can’t work on the relationship if you’re not there".  Doh! 

I put things in storage, sold the rest, and moved to Japan in 1993.  Turns out that the marriage couldn’t be saved….  The friendship could. but that took more years to accomplish, and I left Japan before that was done.  I left Japan with the camera that is in my desk drawer now, a point and shoot Nikon, that takes good pics…that I haven’t really used since I bought the digi-cam in 04.

I will have more time to take and post pics after this next week.  I will not be doing the dailies any more – just the two Sunday editions on the weekend, and the school bus during the week..  More time to sleep, more time to be here on OD, and more time to take pictures.

A darkroom?  I used to really want my own – you can do so much to pictures in the darkroom!  These days, I have a "digital" darkroom, right here on my desk.  In case it isn’t obvious, I like to take pictures, and I think I am pretty good at it too.

PTSD.  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder isn’t limited to Vietnam Vets or wars or just things like that.  Having both your parents die and being orphaned at a young age is pretty traumatic too.  Surviving an earthqake that killed thousands and wrecked my apartment too….  I know something about it.

Road Trips.  I have driven across the US seven times, on my own dime.  I have driven up and down both coasts, mostly on my own dime, and into Canada and Mexico.  I have driven all over Japan (had a drivers license there, of course).  I LOVE driving.  For my jobs since 2003, I get paid to drive.  I drive a school bus, not cause I love kids, but because I love driving.  I have driven most everything – cars, vans, pickups, 18 wheelers, Semis, doubles, dumptrucks, tractors, you name it, I probably have driven it.  (the last time I wrote that, someone asked if I’ve ever driven Mule Teams… no, haven’t driven those, but most everything else, I have)

Self Awareness.  I am pretty self aware.  I know myself fairly well, and heh, even like myself.  LOL!  The real trick is to get others interested – cuz I am a very interesting person.  (maybe more so in print than in person, sigh)

Shawshank Redemption.  Quite possibly Steven King’s BEST story. Hard choice, cuz he’s given us many to choose from, but the story he tells here is one of faith, of redemption, of the power of the human spirit to overcome adversity – and of the need to share.  Read it, or see the movie (well done) and see for yourself – it is a very good story.

Finally, Writing.  I love to write.  I really really like having Open Diary to write on.  The near immeadiate feedback is precious beyond counting.  Me an’ words, we get along.  Somewhere I missed the turn that would get me paid to write, dammit, but here, well, I get nothing but my own satisfaction and ya know, that’s pretty much enough.  The site meter I’ve been using for the past few months tells me that I get hundreds of hits a week – that is, thousands a month, tens of thousands a year – and that tells me that even if I get fewer notes than I used to, that people like what I write and keep coming back for more.

Yeah, if I got paid of it, that’d be icing on the cake, but I like the cake anyway, so it’s good enough.

Writing? I got stuff to say, and people who wanna read it.  Can I ask for more?

And you know, I have barely scratched the surface of the life I have to tell you about. 

Stay tuned.  There is more.

*****