In reply to Admiral Hack (msg # 1):

So soon.

 Hi everyone it is going to be a rough day for me it is the 1 year anniversary of Robyn's passing and it is Lizzy's creation day anniversary 4 years I think.

 I am doing ok just remembering the good times.

Good Girl, that's what  Robyn would have  wanted.

 .......................

 Putting Both  here

 Lizzy's  game  BDay

 and nikki's game B-day is the 8th

 please take  2 points  for  abilities  and  2  Points  for spheres!!

Runs up to Lizzy, noses at her until she makes a lap then curls up in it, snuggling.

Mila is too big to be a lap dog but nobody ever told her this. She can curl up into an amazingly small space, though. Flexible spine...

It is always hard losing someone.  But take comfort in your memories of her and the love and kind spirit she shared with you.  those are priceless, and no one can take from you ever.  30 years from now you will think of her and smile, remembering good things and not the loss.

yeah? today is   ( the 3rd)  would have been 45 years.  It was bad  enough to lose her, but not the way she went.

 this is the 2nd of  three sad  day I allow myself... I post a You tube  video on FB  and  try to move on.. i'll feel better when i play football tomorrow.

It's the Friday before Fathers' Day, for me (at least, so far)...that was the day I got a phone call waking me up to the news that my father had suffered a major heart attack, and I should hurry to the hospital as fast as I could...

It's been just over 25 years, now, and I spend far more time thinking about the things he taught me, the fun things we did as a family...his carefully-obscured competitive streak that just popped out every so often in the strangest ways...the memories have become more sweet and less bitter...but the bitterness isn't completely gone.  And I found out that I actually handled his passing better than a few of my siblings...my brother who lived in Nevada at the time actually had something of a breakdown and had to go into counselling for a while to recover...'mad at God' for taking Dad away...and he's one of the more even-tempered members of the family...

I'm glad Robyn found you, and that you were able to enjoy each other so much in the time you had together.  Not everyone gets that chance.

Both my parents died some 30 years ago now, but I still miss them. For me, it's birthdays. I always remember them then - my father on 30 May, my mother on 20 November.

I have a good memory for dates but I cannot tell you the date on which either died.

 for me.. May 13th, the day after Mothers day, she died...June 3..anniversary.. sept  24..her B-day.

  I childe myself alot  for the posts.. but..its the only   thing i do , in that regard.

...................

 almost time for football.. I check  in when i get back

 This post was removed because the  GM is a dumbass.. thank you for your patience
This message was last edited by the player at 05:16, Mon 05 June 2023.

 Ummm Don wrong Game.

  dammmit the hell...

Aww. Shadow,
Awww  Everyone here is invited too. I'm sure there are at least a few football fans. Madison will go.

In reply to Mila (msg # 9):

For all that I tend to file away significant dates with uncanny ease, I have always struggled with birthdays in my family.  I remember my sister's is in early February...mine is in March.  The brother just older than me is April 30, the brother younger than me is April 25.  No idea when my other two brothers' birthdays are.  I think Mom's is sometime in May?  But I'm not sure...and I think Dad's was sometime in October.  Three out of eight...

I can't recall the exact date that Dad passed away...I just remember it was the Friday before Fathers' Day, and one of the reasons I remember it is I made a bad joke about him choosing a lousy way to spare us the expense of a Fathers' Day card.

That was a rough year for me, emotionally...Dad's passing was a couple of months after I found out, on the morning of my birthday, that my roommate had died in a motorcycle crash the night before...that summer, two of my closest friends (at the time) got divorced, and I was one of the few who stayed friends with both of them afterwards, when almost everyone in our circle of friends was choosing sides.  And that winter, one of the guys I'd done a few shows with in college died in a car accident.  It was a harsh year for learning about the transitory nature of life...

In much cheerier news, though, both shows are up and running!  And it looks like they're planning to use me in a very different way this year...I just got emailed notification of my schedule for this coming week, and I have no scheduled shifts...used to be that they'd have me there to take care of laundry and kind of babysit the shows when they were running, but it sounds like they aren't expecting me to do that this year...they had someone else take the dry-cleaning for the magic show to the cleaners, I'm not sure what the plan is for the evening show (started talking about it once with the operations manager, but never heard any definitive "we're doing this" statements, just a lot of "we could" proposals), but it sounds like it's not including me.  Part of me feels a little shook up by that...I've been taking the stuff to the cleaners for twenty years, now (plus two years, before that, to a different cleaner), so it's kind of become my summer routine.  That said, after twenty years, I'm ready for someone else to step in.  I just kind of wish there'd been some kind of transition plan beyond "Nope, someone else is doing it now."  That's a lot of time spent getting to know the people at those places, and having a good working relationship with them.

But it also sounds like they have other plans in mind for me for this year...I think part of it is getting a jump on preparations for Halloween stuff, plus loaning me out to some of the other departments to get some specialized work for the park taken care of.  And, if the past week has been any indicator, I'm still going to be plenty busy showing up to troubleshoot stuff in both shows.  So, it's a change...and a big one, at that, and it might give me a chance to do a few things this summer that I haven't been able to do for a long time.  So, we'll see just how it all settles in.  It would be nice to have less to do...I'm trying to get back to writing again and not being at the park until closing five nights a week would definitely give me more writing time.

::chuckles::     I  was helping  an old  guy when i was lke..12?  I didn't know  how to use  anyhting that wasn't a shovel, pick ach or    bow saw or hatched

 he  had a  tool box.. had like  5 new tools in..big  feat for the  60s.. anyway, he  asked me   for  a wrench, I picked up a  new one.. he  says " No..the  older one. it works  better.."

  He   held it up and said,".. alwasy use the best tool, that works the ebst..."

 I asked  him.." doesn't that wear our the good  tool? then you don't have it when yiou need it?"

 he looked  at me, spit  some tobacco and   gave me the old one bck and asked for the new one"..never said a work after, 'til we were  done.

 I think Roy is the  Best  tool , that works the ebst...

fighter  Pilots... I will be putting up a chart in Red..use that   for  our   flight through the city.

Will that be in Loadouts?

I should look before I ask. RTFM Madison
This message was last edited by the player at 17:21, Mon 05 June 2023.

It was a day of mixed results...*grin*

I may have mentioned it before...I've been so tired for the past couple of weeks I don't remember for sure who I have or have not told about it...but we have a cable-controlled puppet that's one of the props for our evening show (the show is Alice in Wonderland themed...the puppet is the caterpillar, smoking his hookah...we didn't have room for the hookah on stage, so the 'hose' just runs into the giant mushroom he sits on...)  It's like a mid-80s to early-90s vintage piece, judging by the style...the only thing I know about its history is that the guy who made it has passed away, so there's no one to ask for details about how it was made, and that it's been sitting in storage for several years.  The director bought it, had someone drive from Southern Idaho to Reno, Nevada to pick it up and drop it off in Farmington, Utah...

It looks cool, but it's showing its age (if you look close up, it's even more apparent).  The director had a professional puppeteer fly out to give it a once-over and train some of our crew people on how to run it, and she had some questions about it that she passed on to some of her contacts, and, well...we're now replacing all the cables that operate it...

Funny thing, though...NONE of us (including the director) have ever had to do that with this type of puppet...so we literally have nobody we can use for easy reference on best practices for refurbishing...

So, naturally, it's become my project, along with one other guy (I mentioned him to you, Don...Macyn...another jack-of-all-trades type of guy, without quite the range of experiences I've got, so when in doubt, it defaults to me...but he's a sharp guy and between the two of us, we can figure out most things...)  Today was Round One...and I'd have to call it a split decision.  We learned where most of the controls are, we learned that we can split the foam in unobstrusive locations and Barge contact cement will glue it back together pretty nicely, we learned that we should really invest in a bunch of new set-screws because the ones we've got are JUST worn enough that the correct-size hex key will spin in them, one side at a time, before they get fully tightened down, and we learned a pretty simple method for pulling cable housing through the puppet and to the control board.  We also, unfortunately, learned that we were given the wrong size cable to string through the housing...the existing stuff is 1/16", the stuff we were given is either 3/32" or 1/8", I'm not sure which, but it doesn't fit inside the cable housing....

So, after cutting one cable (which I would have cut much closer to the end, had I known in advance what we were facing), and pulling the old cable housing out/using it to pull the new cable housing, and pulling the old cable out of the old housing, we realized that our only option was to feed the old cable through the new housing and reconnect stuff, because they still had shows tonight that the puppet had to be operational for.  Jumped on Google, found some cable the right size on Amazon (I wish it was all available on one spool, but I had to order three sections of it to make sure we had enough), got the puppet put back together, and we'll attack it next week, with a clearer knowledge of what we have to cut and where we can cut it, and having a better understanding of how to string the cable inside the housing, as well.

But after psyching myself up to be in 'puppet surgery' all day, it was kind of unsatsifying to have to put it all back together after only a couple of hours and having only succeeded it replacing half of what we needed for just one of the eight cables, but I understand a lot better how the rest of it will need to be done.  So...a draw...

  I still  think it  great that your   park is this  professional as far as the shows  go... even Kennywood out in Pittsburgh> I haven't been there since my kids were teens?  but they  weren't all that  much better the   Little  Idlewild in Ligonier

 you get a chance you'll have to pop  a pic of the caterpillar.

 Pilots...  (2) more rolls..same red chart, then   we are breaking east, You can RP it out...pay attention to the  damage  chart.

Everyone , say  Happy  RL  B-day to Maddy!!!

Happy RL Birthday Madison

Thank you, Lizzy!
Thank you Admiral!

Happy BDay

Thanks partner