Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Monday, February 11, 2002 7:21 AM

Lumberjack!


Thursday night sees a number of telephone calls. The final two, calls with Person L and the KM end up taking about one hour and two hours, respectively. The call with the KM is not a nice one and there will be no more voluntary or involuntary contact.

After a visit with the doctor late on Friday afternoon I decide to go home and relax (after lifting and walking, that is). But Joe and Brandon call and I'm headed off to Fire Island in Long Beach. Joe ends up leaving early and Brandon walks him home. (With Brandon to drive back to the club - Brandon not wanting Joe to walk through the nasty neighborhoods to his home alone.) Except that Brandon has given me his car keys and now, because he can't find his way back to the club and because he's scared to walk alone, I have to walk alone to Joe's apartment with Brandon's keys. I obviously make it even though some of the neighborhoods are fairly nasty - Joe living one block south of Pacific Coast Highway in Long Beach near where the hookers hang out. Though fortunately not where the heroin is.

I turn down an offer from a guy at Fire Island when Brandon and I finally get back to the club after midnight. Well, it was really an offer to hear an offer that I turned down, but close enough. I'm asleep in bed by 1am.

Saturday I'm up for a decent bicycle ride. I'm slower than usual because of the gusty wind and just because I'm a bit tired.

After the bicycle ride I spend almost $100 for canvas (For paintings, silly!) and I go to an Orchard Supply Hardware store and tell the sales clerk in gardening what I want to buy. He and a nearby customer hear the request and just keep staring at me. And he finally says, "What do you want?" And I repeat the request, slower this time and with pauses in place, "I want to buy a heavy duty, (pause) skull-point accuracy, (pause) micro-balanced axe." They both give me incredulous looks as they realized that they heard me right the first time. But this time I cannot keep it together and I start laughing first. And then they join in. And I end up buying a maul. (A maul is like an axe with a vertical striking surface on one end and a horizontal striking surface on the other.)

Saturday afternoon I try out the maul on the roots of a couple of fruit trees that I recently cut down. It is hard work. I'm sweating profusely. The tree stumps and roots are similar to teeth - just when you think that one more strike is going to knock it out, it hangs on and defies you to try and get it out. But finally I get one out and celebrate. I take the stump, hoist it above my head, and do a victory lap around the backyard - the crowd going wild as I parade around. (Do you think that I was watching the cross country skiing and speed skating at the Olympics?) Now adding to the titles - Dr. Raymund Manning: engineer, cyclist, geek, and now...lumberjack!

I turn my attention to the other stump and it is more troublesome. Finally, with my arms, shoulders, back, and hand blisters telling me to stop, I say to the stump, "Looks like you're going to live another day. Better enjoy the sunset and the sunrise because they'll probably be your last."

Saturday night I work National Polar-orbiting Environmental Satellite System costing and the article for the CSULB social worker faculty members. And I have my personal digital hub going: Working on the aforementioned material, loading pictures from my digital camera, exchanging information with my Palm Pilot, and I have the Tubes' "White Punks on Dope" cranked and on autoreplay:
Teenage had to race for the nighttime
Spent my cash on every high I could find
Wasted time in every school in LA
Getting loose - I didn't care what the kids say
We're white punks on dope
Mom and Dad moved to Hollywood
Hang myself when I get enough rope
Can't clean up though I know I should
White punks on dope

I later take Nopester for a walk. All of the neighborhood dogs are laughing and making fun of Nopester because he had a bath earlier today and I used Vivagen shampoo, a Redken product that prevents mineral deposits and prolongs the life cycle of hair, on him. All of the other dogs think that this is too phoofey. ("Real dogs use Hartz Mountain flea control shampoo.")

Sunday morning is the standard bicycle ride with the 18 year old neighbor not showing up. It is a good ride even if the wind is blowing and gusting very hard. At times I feel that I have the bicycle leaned over at thirty degrees to counter the head and side winds.

So I go after the second fruit tree stump and roots. It is amazing that it comes out relatively quickly. Geez, if I knew it was going to come out this easily then I would have continued last night. There is no parading around the arena...um...backyard because this stump is too heavy for me to raise above my head.

I continue on trenching the designated spot behind the garage for a sprinkler system. It is hard work also and I'm sweating up a storm. But I make good progress and have finished all of the main trenches when I decide to quit for the day.

Person L comes over unexpectedly, showers me with expensive gifts, we have good conversation, and go shopping at the mall. (At the mall, silly, not the maul!) The sky is ablaze with reds and oranges and purples and Person L asks, "Why is it that the sunset is so beautiful when we're together?"

And I respond with, "It has to do with the reflectivity, emissivity, and absorbtivity of the lower atmosphere. Also with the upper atmosphere and airborn particulate density relative to the wavelengths of light." Wrong answer, geek!

A final walk with Nopester around the neighborhood and more laughing by the neighborhood dogs ends the weekend. I'm in bed and fast asleep by 10:10pm. Only to get up at 5:35am on Monday morning to go run.