Spinning Wheels

The wheel of life/fate is capricious at best and does not consult those it affects; and like justice is often blind…

Home is where you hang your hat... Someone famous said that

For over half of my life my home has been in Van Nuys California (the “Valley”). The Valley has much to recommend it and much to not. Like most things in life it is about compromises. As an example it gets hotter than the hinges on the door to hell in August; at the same time everything is air conditioned (note the “hinges” beat my a/c every time!).

Before I make it sound too bad, it was the only place I could afford a house in the LA area in 1985. The joys of house ownership have faded over the years. I originally cut the grass with an old hand powered reel mower. It really was a joy to be able to cut my own (read: the bank’s) grass. In a few years that gave way to a power mower; benign neglect and the current solution, gardeners.

I have a lot of memories in that house; some good; some bad; and some very, very private moments (and no I don’t mean anything bizarre and sexual! …mostly).

During my occupancy of my valley house I:

• Aged from mid twenties to late forties;
• Watched the 73 seconds of the STS-51-L Challenger mission (the only shuttle launch I have ever seen);
• Learned to play WRG 7^th, Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Warhammer 40K (the last two a few times;
• Went from being a board gamer to a miniatures gamer;
• Witnessed the riots of ’92 (Rodney King);
• Had my two children (ok, initially I had help with that one);
• Received my Bachelor’s degree;
• Survived the Northridge earthquake;
• Spent few days trying not to exsanguinate;
• Got divorced, married, and divorced;
• Let a good woman get away;
• Learned to fire a 10lb Parrott rifle (read “cannon” - I miss that!)
• Gave my father’s eulogy;
• Watched my son enter my old Junior High School and my daughter my old High School (yes I am aware it is called “Middle School” now. I also still say B.C. and A.D. so sue me)
  
  

During that time I was employed as:

• Assistant Director of Threat Assessment and Management for a public figure protection firm (my favorite job title of all time!);

• Operations Manager for an alarm company;
• Central Station Manager for the same alarm company (same company different owners)
• Partner (chief cook and bottle washer) in an alarm company (some company, me and Jim owned it);
• Student & Father
• Radio Field Tech
• Service Manager for a radio repair/sales store
• Operations Manager for a radio repair shop (it burned down, I had nothing to do with it)
• And computer geek for my current employer.

I grew from immaturity to maturity (yeah, yeah, laugh it up!);

I am going to miss a lot of things about living here, both current things and memories…

And so, the wheel turns…

Tim, they call him...