Update #2 – March 7, 2014

            Time again for another update to explain the dearth of postings in the last few weeks. I usually have 3 or 4 in the pipeline in various stages of completion. Due to circumstances around the house, I have burned through my backlog.

            In late January we noticed that our semi-flat roof over our bedroom was leaking due to ice dam build-up. It was leaking in the doorways of our closets, through to the basement where Zay sleeps. We called a roofer and put buckets down to catch the drips. The roofer said the ice dam in the gutter was likely backing up and causing the problem (there was over a foot of ice in the gutter and icicles hung down to the ground).

On a Friday we had a service come out with a device that used steam to cut up the ice and open up a downspout so melting ice and snow had somewhere to go.

Little did we know that that somewhere was into our bedroom ceiling.

At 2AM that night, Lynn and I were awoken by a dripping sound in our bedroom, not in one of the buckets in the closet. The drip became louder and I saw it was coming through the ceiling at the foot of our bed.

As I got up and came around the end of the bed, a whole section, about 3x8 feet, along with 5-10 gallons of ice water and soggy insulation, came crashing down on my head.

As I scrambled to pick up pieces of plaster and dry wall, I slipped and mashed my little toe, dropping a large chunk of plaster on my bare foot, cutting it.

I was drenched to the bone and went to our bathroom and shivered uncontrollably for 10 minutes while Lynn began cleaning up and throwing towels down.

           

She would have her first student at 8:30AM, so we spent the rest of the night cleaning up as best we could, dissembling our bed to get the now wet rug out from under it.

Alicia slept in her crib next to the foot of the bed where the ceiling had opened up, but the opening did not reach her crib. She was standing there looking at the hole and listening to Mommy and Daddy yell and whine. We took her out of the crib, changed her diaper, and she went to sleep around 3AM in a chair in our family room.

  I went downstairs to see what was coming through into Zay’s room, and placed a bunch of buckets and a cooler to catch the water dripping through the ceiling tiles.

He didn’t wake up until later in the morning.

About 8AM, just as we were finishing up with our cleaning, Alicia woke up, so I stayed awake to watch her as Lynn taught. I was awake until midnight that night.

About 9AM I called our insurance company and they were great. They sent out a ServPro team and they pulled down about half of the ceiling in our bedroom and about 10 ceiling tiles in the basement.

  

They then taped 5 pads onto the floor and hooked them up to a device that pulled the water out of the hardwood floor, and they put 4 heavy duty fans to move air around our bedroom and Zay’s room in the basement.

These contraptions stayed in our rooms for a week, making sleep somewhat problematic.

Lynn now sleeps on an air mattress in Alicia’s bedroom, with Alicia (it got her out of her crib at least) and I’m sleeping on another air mattress in the basement with Zay. This we will do until the weather warms up and they can replace the roof (we had an $800 repair done to the roof so that it stopped leaking; turned out it wasn’t just ice dam backing up, but the roof itself was leaking as well) and we can fix the ceiling in our bedroom.

Bills so far: $800 to repair roof, $1800 for steaming the ice off, and $4200 for ServPro. Insurance gave us $1800 to repair the bedroom, but will likely pay nothing to replace the roof (normal wear, not an event covered by insurance) which will be anywhere from $4000-$7000.

Consequently, I have not had much time to ruminate about the past, when the future is in flux.

57 – Do Ya – ELO – 1976

Do Ya - ELO

       This song takes me right back to Tom W’s room at Blackburn College in 1976. We played the living crap out of ELO’s “A New World Record” and it was always played at 11. The only other song I remember playing this loud was the Beatles’ “Back in the USSR” (especially that jet plane sound effect at the open).

       Tom had one of the better Amp/Speaker/Turntable set-ups in our dorm (very few cassette players in 1975, though I had my TEAC deck). Tom also had a master key, passed down to him from a graduating senior the year before that gave him access to every building on campus. This led to two of my favorite pranks at BU during my 2 years there (being a transfer student from Elgin Community College).

       1. One weekend, Tom got us into Hudson Hall, the three story classroom building where most classes were held. Tom, his roommate Wes W, Mike H, some visiting friends, and I carried every desk and chair from the third floor onto the roof. (I know, but it seemed funny at the time). There were 4 classrooms on the 3^rd floor as I recall, the most important being Dr. John V.G. Forbes’ (see #33 – Six Months ina Leaky Boat) tiered room used at 8:00AM Monday for US History.

       As was later reported back to us, Dr. Forbes walked in, saw not a single stick of furniture in the room (we moved teacher’s desks as well), turned on his heel and walked out to place a call to campus security.

       I was in a classroom on the second floor at the time and recall hearing a huge amount of banging and scraping at 8:30 or so as the desks and chairs were returned to the classrooms above. Someone asked, “What’s that noise all about?” I looked around like Ralph in “A Christmas Story” when the teacher asked, “Has anyone seen Flick?”, and Ralph, knowing his best friend Flick was outside with his tongue stuck to the flagpole due to Ralph’s triple dog dare, internally asks, “Flick? Who’s Flick?” glancing around with total innocence.

       2. I don’t know if it was as a result of story 1, but campus security began to lock a student into each building at night. It was actually one of the jobs of the Work Program. You’d be locked in for 3-5 hours and you could read or study for that time. My senior year at BU my roommate, Kevin K, worked security and one night he was scheduled to be locked into the Olin science building. Tom W. decided we would get in there before him and wait about an hour for him to get settled in before we would try to scare him by making noises, etc.

       We hid in the lecture hall where Biology and Chemistry were taught, ducking down behind the teacher’s desk in front of the chalkboards and waited for Security to bring Kevin in and lock him in. He came into the lecture hall and sat down and began reading as we tried not to laugh as we prepared to make noises and throw things around the room. I had a roll of toilet paper I wanted to lob around. However, trying not to laugh or make a sound became a losing proposition. Trying not to laugh only made me want to laugh more and I was about to wet myself when we finally started moaning and tossing things around the podium.

       Instead of scaring him, Kevin got pissed at us, and after having a good laugh we went back to our rooms and went to bed (it was about 2 AM by then) while Kevin stayed behind to do his job, make the building safe for the next day’ classes.

       Funny how I can recall the goofy stuff we did in our downtime so much better than classroom stuff. As I sit here I can think of about 10 things that were done to my first roommate, Big Al (#5- God’s Song), and I can remember almost nothing of 2 years of French classes.

56 – I Don’t Like Mondays – The Boomtown Rats – 1979

I Don't Like Mondays - The Boomtown Rats 

       This song takes me to 1979 and the Steve Dahl Rude Awakening on WLUP-FM. The Stever played this song a lot and he and Garry Meier talked about its back-story. A 16 year old girl in San Diego, California, Brenda Ann Spencer, shot at a school, killing two adults and wounding 8 children. When she was apprehended, she showed no remorse, her response to the question of why she shot at the school was, “I don’t like Mondays. It livens up the day.” The shooting occurred in January 1979 and the song was written soon afterward, it was released in July 1979.

       It reminds me of the writer of the song Bob Geldof, lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, soon to be St. Bob and then Sir Bob, after 1984’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and the whole Band Aid movement (which basically built on work Harry Chapin had been doing for several years, before his untimely death in 1982).

       I will discuss Harry in an upcoming song (actually number 105, so it may be awhile at my current rate).

       In between “I Don’t Like..” and “Do They Know…”, Bob Geldof starred as “Pink” in the movie version of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, another album Steve played a lot (and based his infamous parody song, “Another Kid in the Crawl” on, his take on “Another Brick in the Wall”, but Stever’s was about John Wayne Gacy).

       I was at Southern Illinois Law School when I saw “The Wall” (see #33-Six Months in a Leaky Boat) and I was not that much of a Floyd fan. I liked some of their music, but had never bought an album. After seeing the film I bought “The Wall.” (Then “The Final Cut” and “The Division Bell” when they came out; then went back to “Dark Side of the Moon”). All are albums I have yet to digitize so I have no Floyd on the Zune.

       Several years before I had attended a midnight movie presentation of “Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii” with my friend from Accu, Viktor S. and it was dull…stultifyingly dull…so dull I fell asleep, something I’d done only once before (nor since), at a showing of the film “Lucky Luciano” a 1973 snooze-a-thon starring Rod Steiger.

        I was quietly napping in the Woodfield Theater (They had comfortable, high-backed, rocking seats. Sadly, the theater no longer exists. I first saw “Close Encounters” there, the only movie I have ever sat through twice) during “PF@Pompeii” when someone lobbed a firecracker and it went off in the air about 10 feet from where we sat. It didn’t make the movie any better, but it did wake me up.

       I always thought it was interesting that Pete Townshend’s “Tommy” and Roger Waters’ “The Wall” had so much in common…

       Both main (English) characters lose their father in WWII; both are kids who are abused (Tommy by his Uncle Ernie and Cousin Kevin and the Acid Queen, “Pink” by his mother and teachers in “The Wall”); both become shut off from the world (Tommy goes deaf, dumb, and blind on seeing his father killed by his step-father, “Pink” builds an emotional wall around himself); both become the leaders of cults (Tommy’s based on his uncanny ability to play pin ball using only his sense of touch, “Pink” becomes a Neo-Nazi, or some sort of authoritarian figure ): both cults have violent, hammer-like imagery (“Tommy’s” have metal “T”s with a pin ball soldered to the top, “The Wall” has the “walking hammers” of Ronald Searle’s surreal animation); both are redeemed in the end, after a catharsis (Tommy’s acolytes run amuck and kill his mom and step dad (with the “T” hammers), “The Wall” comes down after “Pink” is put on trial* and the judge and jury find him guilty).

       Great minds think alike? (Townshend and Waters, sounds like an accounting firm)

*from thewallanalysis.com: Pink puts himself on trial - conducted by the exaggerated and personified bricks - and ultimately orders his wall be torn down when he judges himself both responsible for the making of the wall as well as capable of reconnecting with the outside world.

55 – All I Know and 60 - Traveling Boy – Art Garfunkel – 1973

All I Know - Art Garfunkel

Traveling Boy - Art Garfunkel 

       Two songs from Angel Clare, Art Garfunkel’s first solo album, that came out in1973. Along with Jimmy Webb’s Land’s End (see#41-“Walk Your Feet in the Sunshine”), it was the most played cassette during my prototype plating days at Accutronics (Accu). “All I Know” is the best version of the Jimmy Webb-penned tune and “Traveling Boy” is the first song on the album. (And the album came with a 24x36 ultra grainy, black and white poster of Artie and producer Roy Halee standing in the church where the album was recorded. You just don’t get stuff like that in CD jewel cases or anything at all if you download)

       Hearing these songs remind me of three more “Fun with Chemistry” moments at Accu.

      

       1. In the late 1970s, Accu switched their copper etchant from ferric chloride, to cupric chloride, which could be regenerated. Cupric used Sodium Chlorate and Hydrochloric Acid to regenerate (actually it creates new cupric, you need to keep bleeding off etchant as you regenerate) the acid so that the etch rate stayed constant (with Ferric Chloride, as the day went on, you had to slow the machine conveyor to compensate for the acid getting full of copper and reducing the etch rate).

      

       Accu had a 100 gallon tank near the etcher that fed the device that regenerated the cupric. It was the first time we had used hydrochloric acid (HCl) in such volume and we had purchased a gas mask in case of spillage, since HCl gas is very corrosive to the lungs.

      

       My boss, Mr. Mortimer, handed me a mask. I put it on, opened the lid to the tank, stuck my head in and took a breath….

      

       Gaaaakkkk!!!!

      

       I brought my head out and exhaled through the mask, HCl gas exiting the valve of it. I coughed and gagged ‘til I thought I would see chunks of lung on the floor. Mort doesn’t recall this, but I seem to recall him giggling a little as I retched. Turns out the filter on the mask was a dust and mist filter, not the HCl gas filter we needed. (Again, remember I was not a chemist and did not know from HCl gas, knowing only that it was corrosive to some metals).

      

       Which leads to story #2, related to #1 in that it also had to do with the HCl used in regenerating the cupric chloride. As I wrote earlier, we had a 100 gal tank of HCl near the etcher that was fed from a pump in an underground pit which housed a 2500 gallon tank of HCl.   We had the HCl brought in by tank truck.

       Several days after we began running the system, one of the operators came to me and said the pump (from underground to the 100 gallon tank) was not working.  I pressed the button on the wall near the 100 gallon tank, making sure the valves were open, etc. and verified that it was not working.

       To access the underground tank you lifted a heavy metal trap door and climbed down an 8 foot aluminum ladder to get to the bottom of the pit. I shined a flashlight down into the pit and saw a 3 ft ladder leaned against the wall, about 5 feet from where it would be of any use in climbing down.

       “Where’s the 8 ft ladder?” I asked.

       Then it hit me (as most things did, rather slowly), the 3 ft ladder had been the 8 ft ladder, but a leak of HCl had covered the floor and the acid had eaten the other 5 feet as the ladder sank into it.

       Turns out our crack plumbing contractor had used a pump with workings not resistant to acid, which had been eaten away, allowing several hundred gallons to leak out into the pit to the depth of 3-4 inches.

       Mr. Mortimer, ever the comedian, said I could go down and spread some Sodium Hydroxide and water to dilute and neutralize the HCl acid so that the pit could then be safely pumped out and the tank re-plumbed. Luckily they had a HazMat (Hazardous Materials to you neophytes out there) head-to-toe suit in my size (6’5”, 215 lbs at that time) and I put it on (with the correct gas mask this time), climbed down into the pit on a wooden ladder, and in a haze of HCl gas, spread Sodium Hydroxide (NaOH) and ran a hose until a pH probe indicated we had neutralized the acid and could pump it out.

       All this fun at $4.00/hr.

       The third story in my “Fun with Chemistry” trilogy happened when I was running my prototype plating line, a couple years later. In one of the baths, a Peroxide-Sulfuric micro etch, we used 96% pure Sulfuric Acid (H2SO4), a viscous, highly corrosive (to skin especially) liquid.

       I bought it in 5 gallon jugs that I would install a bung valve in, and then lay it on its side when I needed to get some out for use in the plating line. This day I had it on a shelf about 5 feet off the floor and as I opened the plastic valve, it broke off in my hand and H2SO4 began to chug out onto the floor at my feet.

       I grabbed the handle and pulled it from the shelf and put it on the floor. As it hit the floor, the liquid inside sloshed around and up through the hole where the valve had been, splashing my face and neck as I looked down at it.

       I was wearing safety glasses so the acid was not in my eyes and there was a large, clear water rinse bath close by and I dunked my whole face into the cooling water. I then went to a mirror to see my face covered with red circles, where drops of acid had burned my skin. It had also melted huge holes through the cuffs of my 100% polyester pants, but had not reached my socks. I rinsed the pant cuffs as well.

       At that time I was still the Process Engineer/Quality Manager and as such, still wore a shirt and tie as I plated, dealt with customers, and with internal quality issues. However, one drop of H2SO4 had struck my shirt collar and it took several minutes to soak through to my neck. By then I was being driven to Good Shepherd Hospital by my friend, Jerry B., and I had no way to counteract the acid as it burned my neck. When I got to the hospital they put burn cream on all the spots and I returned to work looking like a clown who had the tremors and had tried to apply his own white face makeup.

       None of the burns, save the one on my neck, resulted in any scarring, so I got that goin’ for me.

54 – A Few Words in Defense of Our Country- Randy Newman – 2008

A Few Words in Defense of Our Country - Randy Newman 

       A spoken word exposition with music, but it expresses beliefs closer (I think) to his own, of the GW Bush years. He’s not portraying a character/stereotype as in “Short People” or “Rednecks.”

      

                   “I'd like to say
                   “A few words
                   “In defense of our country
                   “Whose people aren't bad
                   “Nor are they mean
                   “Now, the leaders we have
                   “While they're the worst that we've had
                   “Are hardly the worst
                   “This poor world has seen”

                   “Take the Caesars, for example
                   “Why, with the first few of them
                   “They were sleeping with their sister, stashing little boys in swimming pools, and                          “burning down the city
                   “And one of 'em, one of 'em appointed his own horse to be Consul of the Empire
                   “That's like vice president or something
                   “Now wait a minute, that's not a very good example
                   “Here's one, Spanish Inquisition
                   “Put people in a terrible position
                   “I don't even like to think about it
                   “Well, sometimes I like to think about it”

       I like that line, “I don’t even like to think about it….Well, sometimes I like to think about it.”

     

       Who else (Al Stewart, maybe), writes songs about historical figures such as Tiberius and Caligula?

       Later, he “sings”:

                   “A President once said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"
                   “Now we're supposed to be afraid
                   “It's patriotic, in fact, and color-coded
                   “And what we supposed to be afraid of?
                   “Why, of being afraid
                   “That's what terror means, doesn't it?
                   “That's what it used to mean”

                   “You know, it pisses me off a little that this Supreme Court's gonna outlive me
                   “Couple young Italian fellas and a brother on the Court now, too
                   “But I defy you, anywhere in the world, to find me two Italians as tight-assed as the                      two Italians we got
                   “And as for the brother, well,
                   “Pluto's not a planet anymore either”

                   “The end of an empire
                   “Is messy at best
                   “And this empire's ending
                   “Like all the rest
                   “Like the Spanish Armada
                   “Adrift on the  sea
                   “We're adrift in the land of the brave
                   “And the home of the free”

                   “Goodbye

                   “Goodbye
                   “Goodbye”

       Not “Ha-Ha” funny, but amusing and, ultimately, a little sad.

53 – (I Never Wanted) To Be a Star – Cat Stevens – 1977

(I Never Wanted) to be a Star

            This song comes from the album that came out after Numbers, named Izitso, and it’s from the time period where Cat (Steven Georgiou) was becoming Yusuf.

            The song covers his career from pop star to breakdown to whatever he was searching for, working several song titles into the lyrics.

                        “I was seventeen, you were working for Matthew and Son,

                        “The Beatles met the queen, and I wrote, I’m gonna get me a gun, yeah yeah.”

            “Matthew and Son” being his first hit, in 1966 when he was 18, and the unfortunately titled,  “I’m Gonna Get Me a Gun” of a year later, about a kid who’s wants to use a gun “…for all those people who put me down, they better get ready to run.” In England, where this was a hit (it didn’t chart in the US), private gun ownership was illegal.

            He next mentions how the pop star existence led to his health collapse.

                        “I was on the road, sleeping between lorry lights, oh no,

                        “Stone drunk and cold, heading into a bad night, yeah, yeah.

                        “Just another bean in the star machine, here I go, here I go.”

            “Bad Night” (1967) is another song from the pop star period, prior to the health issues that led to him spending almost a year in a sanitarium to get over tuberculosis. When he came out he had written some of the beautifully introspective songs that became Mona Bone Jakon and his original songs written for “Harold and Maude”.

                         “Nature found a way, it picked me up off the dark side, yeah, yeah
                        “Showed me another day, it made me sing 'I think I see the light'”

            His conversion to Islam was going on when this song was written (based on interviews I’ve seen on VH1, “Behind the Music” (an unimpeachable source, no?)), so it’s interesting to me that he attributes his recovery to “Nature” and not Allah (or Yoda, viz. the reference to the dark side that pops up. 1977 was the year of “Star Wars”)

            It also references “I think I See the Light” (see #25) and ends with the nice thought…

                        “I never wanted to be a star, buy my mum a Ferrari car,
                        “I only wanted to run my own race,
                        “So I could win a small place in your heart”

            Call me a sap, but that he did and that he still does.

51 - Everybody Lies – Leo Kottke – 1978

Everybody Lies - Leo Kottke

            Another great sing-a-long song for my early morning, before my voice goes into its usual upper register whine.

            “Underneath the trees tonight, where little men sleep,

            All that snow will turn to ice, while their lovers creep.”

                        ***

            “We could live in Dave’s hands, at Sunnyland Park,

            And watch their little days there turning into dark.”

            Okay, Okay, I know I just made fun of Cat Stevens in my previous post for his lyrics for “Novim’s Nightmare”, but these are the type of lyrics I expect from the man whose song titles include, “When Shrimps Learn to Whistle,” “Vaseline Machine Gun,” “The Spanish Entomologist,” and “Tilt Billings and the Student Prince.”