warrin with an i

  Throwing Caution to the Wind Kathy C ounting my high school girlfriend, I have been in eight romantic relationships that have lasted more than a year. Three of those relationships resulted in a marriage. Kathy is the 5 th of those 8 relationships. Kathy became my second wife, but it is the relationship that I least understand and the one I have a difficult time explaining to myself. All my relationships between Donna, and Kris were effected by my holding on to Donna. I was not still trying to get Donna back but it was in the way of deeply loving someone else. I loved Dottie but she followed Donna and it was just too soon. Plus, Dottie was too easy. The relationship was never quite balanced. I need someone to challenge me and keep me honest. I truly loved Cyd, but Cyd was young and still finding herself and I was a little past that point. I wasn't in the best place to go along for the ride and like I said, I was still holding on to Donna. Then there was Kathy. My r...

  Becoming a Regional Software Coordinator and More 555 Capitol Mall I 'd driven down to Sacramento a number of times while I was stationed at Beale AFB in Marysville and I had passed through a few times to go skiing in the Sierra's or river rafting down the American River. But all I really knew about the area was Old Sac, the Arden Mall, and Country Club Plaza along with Tower Records and the Sam's Hof Brau next to it. The only other place in the general area I'd been was the Roseville Auction, The GBS (General Business Systems) Sacramento branch office was located at 555 Capitol Mall. The building was relatively new and a landmark building at the time. GBS had an office on one of the top floors. I came up for a weekend to look for a place to rent. Downtown looked a bit tired and run down to me, not to mention rather dead. So I decided to look elsewhere. I was not too sure where to look but I remembered Bob had indicated to me that the office would be...

My Dad and My Baseball Glove My Dad at 10 in his baseball uniform and my A2000 Wilson Glove I was born in '49. Growing up, baseball was the dominant sport in America especially in the 50's. I grew up on Long Island in New York. For most the of 50's we had the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers all in NYC, each team with its star centerfielder: Mantle, Mays, and Snider respectively. Baseball was big in my family. My dad's dad played minor league ball. He was primarily a pitcher. He also played 1 st base when not pitching. My dad was the shortstop for his high school team and he also pitched, usually in relief. He played a little baseball in the military as he was on the base team. Base commanders took great pride in their baseball team so you had to be a pretty good ballplayer to be on the team. Those teams frequently included professional ballplayers. I loved baseball. My dad and I would often have a catch together after he got home from work. However ...

Meet The Beatles I n the fall of 1963 I was 14 and a freshman at Walt Whitman High School.  A new extension had just been completed basically doubling the size of the school.  We were going to be the first freshman class to attend the high school.  Even though we would be the youngest kids in the school I was happy to be in the high school.   T he prior school year I had met my friend Eddie who I would spend a lot of time with and much of that time we listened to and talked about music.  We both really liked what was referred to as “Soul Music”.  I had grown 10 inches in the past year, 9 of those during the previous school year.  That's right, I started 8th grade at 5' 0”.  I started 9th at 5' 10”.  I got detention that year for wearing pants too short at school.  Public schools still had dress codes back then.  Short tight pants were a style that was discouraged by the school system.  Those that dressed that way were cons...

  Perry and Me Home for the Holidays M y father liked music and he like Christmas but he didn't like Christmas music. Consequently, there wasn't a lot of Holiday music in the house. Of course there was music on the radio and we did have some played around the house especially the week leading up to Christmas. But for a house of music lovers the Holiday music selection was limited. As I recall most of the Christmas music that was played at the house was by my mother and, once I became old enough, me. I mostly remember my mom's album of a choir singing mostly traditional Christmas Hymns. There was also the Nutcracker Suite and, as my sister Babs reminded me, the “Music Box” album of Christmas songs. I don't remember many pop holiday songs being played. I remember the “Sleigh Ride” song by the Boston Pops with Arthur Fiedler so perhaps we had that 1959 album but I only remember the song, not the album. I'm pretty sure there were about 3 holiday albums in t...

Enter Kathy I t was 1979. Jimmy Carter was the President. '79 was the year of the Three Mile Island Nuclear Event in Pennsylvania, China's new 1 child per family law, and the Iranian radicals attack on the U.S. Embassy in Tehran taking 63 Americans as hostage. Music that year included Pink Floyd's “The Wall”, Michael Jackson's “Off The Wall”, the Clash's “London Calling”, and Donna Summer's “Bad Girls” albums, not to mention the hit by the Knack, “My Sharona”. It was also the year Sony came out with the Walkman and the sports network ESPN was launched. I was living in San Francisco and working as a computer programmer. I was liking and doing well in my job at GBS. My social life outside of work involved hanging out with a few friends, like Mark and Larry. Like the Pisces I am, (two fish swimming in the opposite direction) I had a foot in two different worlds. I had a life in the working hi-tech professional world where people were making good mo...

  Getting Ahead at GBS I was good at what I did and in fact, I was considered to be one of the stars of the company. At that point I hadn't fully realized that, but I knew I was good enough. I came in early almost everyday mostly so I could grab a computer and get some work done while it was still quiet. Early in Silicon Valley is before 9:00 and I was there by 8:00. The company VP (Phil) generally came in about 8 and he would see me working in the computer room when he came in the back door and up the stairs to his office. Most days I would be the only one in there at that time. I n the IT world I was quite underpaid. I didn't think much of it for awhile, after all, I was making more than all my non IT friends, the friends who I spent the most of my non-work time with. But after getting to know others doing the same job I was doing and finding that their salaries dwarfed mine it began to get to me. This experience helped me to understand professional athletes want...

  Halloween and Cross Dressing in San Francisco Mark - Louanne - Me A s a young adult I loved Halloween. I used it as an excuse to be decadent, to do things I would not generally do. It was a night of outlandish behavior that could include drugs, alcohol, and smoking cigarettes. I smoked when I was young but quit for the last time when I was 25 and moved to Eugene. However I would allow myself to smoke on Halloween. I rarely dressed up as anything specific but rather would just select a hodgepodge of things that might suggest something interesting. I was never much of a planner so I would usually be stuck with whatever I had laying around or more likely whatever my friends had laying around at the time. I n the fall of 1978 I had recently moved to San Francisco and was working down the peninsula in Burlingame. October came around as it seems to every year and that meant Halloween was coming up. Lacking any imagination for a costume, I decided to dress as a woman. ...

  The Last Time I Saw Donna I t was spring in Eugene in 1977 when I got a surprising phone call. It was from my ex-wife Donna. It caught me completely off guard. I had tried to find her a time or two but with a last name of Jones and little idea of where she might be the search was futile. Once we confirmed who each of us was we settled into a comfortable conversation. Donna had ended up moving back to the Reno area and was living in Sparks, Nevada. We talked for a bit. Donna gave me her address and phone number and we made plans for me to drive down and visit her. I t was late in the day when I arrived at Donna's place. I was nervous. I wasn't sure how I would feel and also wasn't sure what to expect. Donna greeted me at the door. She looked good, pretty much just the way I remembered her. She now had a son (Joshua) from her second marriage but he was at a friend's house for the night. We sat across from each other, chatted, and had a little something ...

  GBS 3 – Letting It All Hang Out Mona and Me - GBS Camping Trip G eneral Business Systems (GBS) didn't pay well but it was a fun place to work. The company was just a little over 2 years old and still on the small side, under 100 employees. Consequently there were lots of opportunities to do many things, you could take on as much work as you could handle. It was a fast paced and loose environment. GBS had 3 or 4 branch offices. I worked at the Burlingame branch which was also the company headquarters. I knew everyone in the Burlingame office which was maybe 40 people. I also knew some of those working in the other branches as they would need to come to HQ every now and then either for training or to meet with upper management. I t was a fun work environment because pretty much everyone got along and was supportive of each other. It had a real family feel. There seemed to be little if any undercutting. We worked together and helped each other. It was not the cutthroa...