Off to the Mall...

....but not to shop, but to walk!  I'm hanging out with a much older crowd these days...at least a couple of times a week. 

I haven't really talked much about my cardiac rehab process.  In fact, it was just two, or was it three years ago I found out that half my heart was on strike and not planning on returning to work anytime soon.  After my first stay in the hospital after a series of heart attacks over 7 months, the doctors  ran a bevy of tests on me only to discover that the bottom half of my heart appeared to be non-viable...dead.  They told me there was nothing they could do because not even a bypass would help heart tissue that was not alive.  I was sent home with a boatload of drugs, I suppose to live out my life.

Now, the Super Bowl is coming up this Sunday and if I seem a little hesitant about that it's because I suffered another heart attack after the game two, or was it three years ago and again went to the hospital.  The doctors ran a different kind of stress test on my heart and discovered that it began to work some after it was put under stress.  So they said they could help me with bypass surgery.

So at 7 o'clock the next morning, they ripped my chest open and, judging by the road map of scars on my leg, harvested veins from my leg with a rather dull scalpel and strategically placed them around my heart.  By one o'clock I was in ICU listening to the nurse tell Stacy that I wouldn't remember any of this.  WRONG!  I would remember far more of this adventure than I probably should have.  That story some other time if you're good.

I survived and as part of my recovery I actually have to excercise.  That includes walking for an hour or so three or four times a week.  So I go to the mall in the mornings and fight the traffic of mall walkers.  90 year old power walkers are not unusual, packs of blue haired ladies roaming the mall like hungry wolves looking for a steaming hot cup of black coffee.  There are some with canes, some with walkers and some young ones pushing baby strollers who, like me, are trying to get their shape back.

Today was a milestone for me at the mall.  I actually passed someone.  I think her walker might have been malfunctioning, slowing her down, but it still counts as a pass! 

I've never been much for excercise.  But your outlook changes when you find out it is good for you and may keep your surgically altered heart from giving up.  If you find that I've started attending bingo at McDonalds, then you'll know I've suffered the Stolkholm Syndrome and am now relating with my friends from the nursing home.  I'll be the one with the tye dyed afghan throw across my lap.

That is all...Peters out!

A Blast from the Past...

It's funny when you're unemployed how many things fall by the wayside.  Like, personal hygiene, a pleasant demeanor, contact with friends, the will to live, etc.  I, however, take pride in my independence and I can prove the personal hygiene thing is wrong because of a simple matter of timing.

I was relaxing in a nice, hot jacuuzi this morning, well, afternoon when my cell phone begins farting.  It farts because the kids thought it would be funny to have a farting phone, and I don't disagree with them.  Anyway, on the other end is what sounds like a telemarketer originating from somewhere around India.  I was half right.  The call was from around India but it was no telemarketer, it was Manish!  My fuzzy little foreign friend from Nepal.

Manish was with the stations in Lincoln on a work visa, going to school and being an accountant.  A brilliant man who has done well since.  The last I heard he was working for the former owner of the radio stations in Scottsdale Arizona.  He was calling me today from Dhaka Pakistan.  I love hearing from old friends.

Being from Nepal, Manish had always promised to climb Mt. Everest with me.  Don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon.  My excuse will be the $20 grand it costs to get the permit.  Forget the fact that only half my heart is working on a fulltime basis.  Kinda like me.

We had quite a group of friends there at Radio One in Lincoln.  There was Pete, who is now in Dallas, Chris who at last check was in Florida, Todd who is now in Omaha according to Manish, and the other Tim who works in Omaha but lives on his posh estate outside of Lincoln.  Some of the funnest times ever.

I'll have to tell you the story sometime about Manish and McDonalds if he'll allow me.  Until then...

That is all...Peters out!

This just in....

I had an actual employment interview today.  I think it went well.  Then I get a call out of thin air for another radio job, so I am exploring that.  On top of that, someone said this blog bloviates.  I'll take that as a compliment.

So, all in all it was a productive day.  However, having an actual in person job interview meant having to disrupt my schedule of questionable personal hygiene.  No one in the house is complaining and we are having fewer spiders and rodents coming in the house, so it may be a good thing.

I also did a little work around the house.  After plugging the toilet I  found time to plunge it until it drained.  Did I get any thank yous?  What do you think?  I cooked dinner for me and Bradyn and as I pointed out to him that when dad cooks there is no need for vegetables with the meal.  So we finshed our burgers and beer and went our separate ways.

What's going to happen to this semblance of order if I go back to work?  This job I interviewed for today requires me to work Monday through Friday.  Maybe I should just put myself up for adoption.

That is all...Peters out!

Sad day....

Another sad day in my radio world.  I mentioned in the story about the radio station getting burglarized that the station fired me shortly after that and that the BIG top 40 station in Scottsbluff hired me the next day and doubled my salary.  The man who did that for me passed away yesterday after nearly 50 years in radio in western Nebraska. His name was Mel Sauer.

Mel was no ordinary broadcaster.  Mel was an accomplished air personality.  Mel was a talented Play by play color announcer for local sports teams on the station.  Mel was a radio manager that was fair and honest.  Mel was one of my groomsmen.  Mel Sauer was blind.  We never told him his tux that day was orange.

So how does a blind guy do color sports commentary?  Theater of the mind?  The man was a BS artist!  But it worked and people admired him for it.  There wasn't anything Mel couldn't do.  He would have airstaff meetings and we would do things like turn his cigarette around in the ashtray and sometimes everyone would quietly leave the room while Mel continued the meeting alone.  He anchored the first remote broadcast I ever did in radio, from the county fairgrounds tractor pull.  Small town radio was such a hoot.  I guess I miss that stuff as much as anything in radio.

Mel died in his home in Gering on Friday at the age of 67.  
 

Speaking of danger...

We were just finishing up the morning show at KYQQ in Wichita when the station went off the air.  You'll remember KYQQ as the station where the owner is still in prison and the General Manager had to be forcefully removed from his office by the sheriff.  Anyway, we couldn't really tell what was wrong as all the transmitter readings indicated we were still transmitting.

So, Dan Holiday and myself hopped in the station van and headed for Winfield Kansas where the state of the art transmitter and 1200 foot tower was situated.  As we drove through the field to the actual transmitter building, everything seemed to be as it should.  As we got closer we noticed huge blocks of ice laying on the ground around the building.  As we sat there in the overcast cold winter morning, a giant block of ice augered into the ground next to the van.  It was hailing blocks of ice the size of cattle!  We grabbed a big sheet of plywood that was laying on the ground by the van and ran to the building. 

Inside, everything seemed to be in order.  Just, no signal going out.  Then another angus sized hail stone hit the top of the building.  It seems that, even though it was above freezing on the ground, the moisture in the clouds about 600 feet up, combined with freezing temperatures higher up were causing ice to form on the tower.  Now most radio towers have de-icers that heat up the metal and cause the ice to fall off.  Our de-icers seemed to be working quite well.  Knocking off chunks of ice that were falling to the earth like meteors. 

We could find no other reason for the station to be off the air.  We returned to the station, still off the air the Friday before Christmas.  Had we been a successful station, we would have been losing money like crazy.

Later that evening, the engineer call me from the tower and said he looked up the tower with binoculars and saw that the coaxial cable hooking the transmitter to the STL antenna that receives the signal from our downtown studios was unplugged.  He said he was in a suit and wasn't going to climb the tower in good clothes.  So, off I went into the night.

I climbed the tower that night without regard for my own safety.  Maybe it was just my own stupidity.  Luckily, I only had to go up about halfway, 600 feet.  No safety gear, forgot to take tools, not even any duct tape.  It took about 45 minutes to reach the unplugged cable.  I screwed it back in and like magic, we were back on the air.  The station was saved!

I got fired two weeks later.  Not quite as good of a bonus as I got for getting stabbed twice to save the station.  But I now knew one thing about myself I didn't realize before.  I am truly stupid enough to climb 600 feet up a radio tower without safety gear in icy conditions and talk about it like it was a brave and noble thing to do when in reality it was on the same level as sticking your tongue to a flagpole in the middle of winter.

That is all...Peters out!

 

Radio is dangerous...

It's true!  I found out how dangerous at my first job in Scottsbluff Nebraska.  The station was KNEB and the studios were in a bomb shelter outside of town, just down from the sugar beet processing plant.  Their drainage ditch went by the front door of the station and left a stench about 5 feet off the ground.  Short people were okay with it but us taller folk had to walk in all hunched over.  We all looked like one of the owners, but he never actually came out to the station.

The station was somewhat primitive with a homemade on air console, foodstuffs and geiger counters in the backroom and a World War II vintage transmitter capable of producing 50,000 watts of power.  That would have been a waste of power for KNEB as it had about as many listeners as my doorbell does.  Remind me to tell you about the time the transmitter got hit by lightning while I was on the air.

Anyway, I was the afternoon/night jock and my buddy K C Neff was the all night guy.  We signed off at midnight on Sunday nights, I think to save on labor cost and electricity.  K C stopped by the station at midnight and we decided to go into town for a quick beer before we did our production.  (a radio term for making commercials)

We returned to the station about an hour later to find the main door (the only door actually) broken in.  I backed up the 1973 Nova hatchback so the headlights were situated on the door in case the perpetrator tried to make a getaway.  Normally K C carried his .357 Colt Python with him.  But on this day it was conveniently at home.  We had a hammer,  which I gave to K C and I held onto a walnut billy club I made in 9th grade wood shop during Parent's Night. 

K C went around to the back of the station to examine and/or disable the burglar's car by knockning out the headlights.  He noticed that most of the station's equipment was already in the car.  As he was doing that, the burglar came out from around the other side of the building and approached me.  He was a short guy, so the beet fumes weren't affecting his breathing.  He came up and ask me what I was doing.  To which I cleverly replied, "What are you doing?"  He lunged at me like he was going to put me in a head lock, but instead was attempting to stab me in the stomach and in the face with the knives he held in each hand.  My reaction was swift and punishing.  I broke y cherished 9th grade wood project billy club over his head sending him reeling backwards onto the gravel and into lala land.  Meanwhile, I began bleeding from a small wound to the stomach and a small cut to my upper lip.

K C and I drug him into the station to find he had cut every phone line in the building except for the one that calls out.  All the rest were answering machines and such.  For the younger kids reading, telephones used to have cord attached to them that plugged into the wall.  You couldn't talk on the phone in the car unless you had a real long cord.

We called the police and they got there within 5 minutes and stormed in the door as I held the somewhat delirious assailant against the wall with his own knives.  I was the first target of the deputie's guns but I quickly pointed out who the bad guy was....and the puddle between my feet.

I called my folks at three o'clock in the morning and told them if they hear about it on the news, that I'm okay.  And they did hear about it on the news as it was AP's lead story that morning.

I think the guy got 6 months and we were back on the air in a couple of days.  I got a $15 bonus and was fired about two weeks later.  Don't be sad though.  KOLT, the big top 40 station hired me the next day and doubled my salary to $250 a week.  Man, that was big money back then....come to think about it, it's big money now to me! 

Yes, radio is indeed a dangerous profession.  Be careful out there!  That is all...Peters out!

That will go right to your hips!

Something has gone wrong!  Terribly terribly wrong.  It's almost like I am her and she is still her.  Or, whatever.

  I have had a banner week with new recipes!  Earlier this week I latched onto the exact recipe for the blah blah Toscana soup from the Olive Garden.  Chicken broth, onions, garlic, tasty italian sausage, sweet russet potatoes, heavy cream, all carefully blended for the most delightful soup you have ever tasted. 

This morning, I jumped out of bed at the crack of 8 and scampered into the kitchen to fix a lovely ham, potato, egg and cheese skillet for Stacy before she headed off to work.  It was absolutely to die for.  I also threw together a quick italian spiced chicken parmesan dish on a bed of angel hair pasta earlier in the week.  That was something I had to do in a hurry because I needed to get to the store and dust and vacuum.  Plus, Ive been working to get new brake pads on Carleigh's car all week. This has been a very busy week!

I'm hoping to get a little me time next week to start working out a little bit.  Stacy has been throwing hints that maybe my butt is getting a little wide.  I'm thinking Jazzercise!  I'm also planning a tupperware party and I'm thinking a maybe a pottery class. 

I have really got to tell you, if you are my friend,  you will come by my house and shoot me at your earliest convenience! 

That is all...Peters out!

I'm dreaming ...

way too much!  I have been having the wierdest dreams lately.  Probably brought on by the chest cold I'm suffering through.  A couple of nights ago I was helping David Caruso out on a CSI Miami case where this guy was turning everyone into claymation figures with a drug from the tip of his finger.  People would go to the claymation "high" then turn back into people.  I wasn't much help for the CSI folks either.  I thought the stacks of poker chips in the street were significant, but they weren't.

One time back in Wichita,  I had a very vivid dream and went to work the next morning absolutely exhausted.  I had spent the night being chased by a giant head of cauliflower.  I ran and ran and ran all night.  People still remember me talking about that on the air some 20 years ago. 

I have more than my share of the "good" dreams.  When I was recovering from open heart surgery they had me on a pain killer for my back.  (My back was really the only pain I had through the whole thing)  This pain kinller would put me to sleep almost immediately and I apparently would immediately start to dream and acting out the dream.  I would wake up and everyone would be laughing at me as I sat there and petted a dog that wasn't there.  I remember dreaming that someone was flicking me in the nose with a car antenna and of course I was swatting my nose in my sleep.  Others included, someone rolling me up in carpet, giant mosquitoes, laughing out loud in my sleep and a bunch more.  Stacy will have to fill in the blanks as I was higher than Rush Limbaugh during that time.

Dreams are good.  In the months after my surgery I visited every dead person from my past.  It was wonderful.  I don't know why I was visiting everyone, but it was the most peaceful journey I've ever taken in my dreams. 

Here is where I'd like to say I'm living my dream, but with all the bad things that we've been through in the last 4 years, if this is living the dream, I'll take my chances with the cauliflower!

That is all...Peters out!

Advantages...

to having open heart surgery! I got to thinking the other day. Now that the emotional trauma of getting my chest ripped open, my rib cage spread apart far enough to park a school bus in my chest cavity, a shoulder that only goes halfway up ruining my chances for a professional baseball career and listening to the surgeons trying to figure out what that annoying high pitched sound is, I'd say it's time to look at the bright side.

I thought I had the coolest scar ever after they unwrapped my chest. I was wrong...it got even cooler. The sutchers inside my scar, from the place where my rib cage goes together in the middle and down to about 6 inches above my navel, have come apart. I know you're thinking, poor Tim. Don't feel sorry for me. The doctors have already said they won't go in to fix it because of the risk of infection. But that's okay!

Since just some scar tissue and skin are now holding in my insides I've come up with a solution. My diaphragm is causing the area to bulge considerably and I can control the bulging, I have decided to go have a nipple tatooed onto my middle man-boob. Just think of all the kids I'll make laugh, or sick, at the pool. I could probably make it big on the circus scene as Timbo, the three boobed man! I could make the rounds of all the state fairs, get booked on Maury, Jerry Springer and Oprah. And, if I really play my cards right, Geraldo could do a complete hour show on it.

I'd include a picture, but sorry, no freebies! This thing could be a marketing marvel. The only downside to this is in a couple of years, a boob lift would cost me 33% more than the normal procedure. Damn, just my luck. Back to the drawing board.

That is all...Peters out!

3 hour wait...

...from this point! I just got back from the Disneyland of unemployment offices. Only when you get to the front of the line, there is no ride. No teacups, no flying Dumbo, no it's a small small world, just a computer terminal. A computer terminal which I have to sit at and have it make me look even more stupid!

What kind of profession are you looking to get into? Radio professional! They actually had a listing for that. The guy asks how long have you been doing this type of work. As a joke I said "on and off for 30 years". He didn't laugh, but the punk at the next computer got a pretty good laugh. So I ask, "Think that's funny? How long you been cookin' french fries?" He replied, "Haven't since I graduated from Harvard." That made me feel alot better. Not only was I above him on the social scale, Disc Jockey beats lawyer(kind of like rock, hammer, scissors) but I didn't have to pay all that money to be unemployed. My last lawyer is in prison and thats the truth!

I just want to sit back, collect my unemployment and wait for that dream job to come in. Then when that doesn't happen, I may reconsider my direction. I did look into "phone actor", but you apparently you don't actually act and you only talk to guys. I guess it's more like phone pretender. I have looked into Dominos Pizza delivery. I heard the tips were great! Plus I have experience in that area.

Now I'm depressed! I think I'll put on my walkman with the Naked Eyes cd and walk out to the mail slot and see if my check is here yet. There's always something...yadda yadda yadda...

That is all! Peters out!

Hippy Now Year....

Happy New Year! Another holiday road trip for us. We decided to head to Omaha on New Year's Eve and arrived at 11:45 pm just in time for the champagne toast. We have such incredible timing.

We got to see my nephew's son and my sister's grandson, Marsalis while he was visiting for the holidays from Mississippi where he lives with his mother and grandparents and his litttle sister, who we are not related to. He has gotten so big. Only getting to see him about twice a year, you can really see the growth. Hard to believe he is already 11. When I was 11 I was playing Hillside Little League baseball. The neighborhood kids and I had a treehouse along the railroad tracks behind the New Tower Motel, now extinct. We could watch the drive inn movies from there. It was incredible! Then one day a cop came by and accused us of shooting out windows at the New Tower and made us tear it down. We weren't the ones shooting but what did he care. I will get even with him when I am 17 and riding a motorcycle!.

2007 came in with a bang! Not really, but we haven't had time to come up with a really good story so that's all we have. Hope you have a great 2007. We're going to try to make it better than 2006 where Stacy lost her job. And better than 2005 where I had my heart surgery, and better than 2004 where nothing really disastrous happened. We are hopelessly optimistic!!!

That is all...Peters out!