Text 16892, 172 rader
Skriven 2011-04-15 03:06:08 av Richard Webb (1:116/901.0)
  Kommentar till text 16885 av Roy Witt (1:387/22)
Ärende: Australian immigration
==============================
HI ROy,

On Thu 2039-Apr-14 17:04, Roy Witt (1:387/22) wrote to Richard Webb:

<big snip>

 RW> But, as long as we can keep Kathy healthy enough
 RW> to drive I've got my options.  I'm a day's drive with remote truck to
 RW> ST. Louis, LIttle rOck, Nashville, or NEw ORleans. SO I'll put up
 RW> with a little more winter than I'd really like. Had I stayed in SAn
 RW> Antone I would have been doing the apartment dweller and looked for
 RW> out of the way warehouse space to lease and customize for studio, and
 RW> had we still decided to buy the remote truck rig would have had to
 RW> find secure storage for it, whereas here it sits outside my office
 RW> window and I can personally keep an eye on it.  IF I'm realy
 RW> concerned about it I just let the dog out, and she can reach its back
 RW> door while on her chain <grin>. A 130 lb Rott is a bit of a
 RW> deterrent.

Roy> I'll say. A friend in San Diego lives in a mixed black/white/mex
Roy> neighborhood and has two rotts in the yard to ward off thieves and
Roy> burglers.

YEah that's most of what I was finding within the city
itself, and for reasons stated earlier a lot of the
apartment complex type joints aren't quite my thing, between hobby and
profession they just won't work.

<snip again>

 Roy>> This wouldn't be the place. There's not much public hunting land to
 Roy>> speak of and I'm not about to pay the price for a lease. I'm
 Roy>> getting too old to be trapsing through the brush anyway.

 RW> DItto here.  Were I ever inclined I could always go back to
 RW> Iowa for the season,  I"ve got two or three places I could
 RW> go to set up a stand to hunt deer, etc. back there.  wHEre
 RW> we first lived when we got here after Katrina landlord
 RW> wouldn't let us have hunting privs on it, we were out in the woods in
 RW> a mobile home.  HIS relatives got the hunting privs and had a great
 RW> stand on a trail to a lake for hunting deer. I always thought about
 RW> getting tags and setting Kathy up on the porch with a bow though,
 RW> they used to browse on the foliage in our yard in the mornings, and
 RW> bow hunting can be quite silent, he'd never know the difference, and
 RW> I'd have meat for the freezer <grin>.

Roy> Had a friend with a pond on his 2 acres and he'd shoot quail for
Roy> dinner with a .22 .

That could be handy.  There were geese and ducks on his
ponds around there too, but again hunting privs were
reserved for landlord's relatives.  tHe place was a real
dump, but it was sure nice living out in the woods, not much electrical noise
to plague the ham station, some great trees for antenna sky hooks, and a decent
tower up there.  Just
wasn't going to put any more money in fixing the place, I'd
already rewired and replumbed it, and the old guy was making sell it all
noises.  tHen when the tornado took the roof off half of it and he wouldn't
spring for newe roofing materials I said to heck with it, took down the tower
and moved.

<snip again>

 Roy>> I like being tucked away where the weather doesn't create anything
 Roy>> more than a small bit of cold nad snow in the winter and some
 Roy>> thunderstorms in the summer. The high heat isn't so bad once you
 Roy>> get used to it, kinda like being in the desert in California.

 RW> YEah I know, that was a big selling point in favor of us
 RW> just staying in SAn Antonio.  wHen we started going to that
 RW> one church there a couple of them were really encouraging
 RW> us, but I think they were looking for some help with their
 RW> music ministry program and some other stuff from yours truly <grin>.

Roy> They put ads in the paper for people like you... 8^)

YEp, and for what those gigs pay I'd want to have a good
relationship with the church, and feel real comfortable with the way it
operates, because to do that gig right one ends
up putting in a lot more time than can be justified by the
amount of compensation only.  tHey had a current choir
director/music ministry person, but more talent is always
nice for a church.

 RW> I did go out to their church camp with them a couple of days and help
 RW> renovate a couple of old buildings so they could do a little more for
 RW> some Katrina refugees they were housing out there.  After all, I
 RW> didn't have anything else to do but sit on my butt and watch the
 RW> idiot box in a motel room <grin>.  iT was something useful to do, and
 RW> the physical work was just what I needed at the time <grin>.

Roy> Anything to end the boredom.

The boredom, and to keep the mind from turning over the same old questions,
because at the time the future was looking
pretty uncertain, and a little physical work made me use
some muscles, get some exercise and turn off the brain for
awhile, where just watching the idiot box and being bored
wasn't psychologically healthy.  I might have argued more
forcefully about sitting down there, but I was avoiding
making decisions there for awhile.  ONly thing I really
wanted was to survey my burned out place, see what could be
salvaged, retrieve my dog from the boarding kennel, my van
from the parking garage and some gear that was mine from the radio room at that
hospital.  OTherwise it was sort of a
take it as it comes attitude.

 RW>> LIke south TX too, but other than Austin there's not a big market
 RW>> for the sorts of things I do, and Austin's swamped with every wanna
 RW>> be from all over the country.

<snip>
 RW> YEah, there's at least another good remote truck outfit out
 RW> there, and lots of studio stuff too.

RW> I unlocked pickup with a load like that in his camper a few years
RW> ago. His wife left him hanging with rent due on the trailer they
RW> were renting and run off with some other guy. He wasn't very happy
RW> when I showed up. 

<rotfl.  I bet not.  YOur fee was probably pretty good.
THInk last locksmith I hired ended up running me about $300
to rebuild a lockset in the back of my remote truck.

 RW> I'm where I might have to travel more, but I'm setting myself up in a
 RW> niche where I do classical style gigs and don't hassle as much with
 RW> full blown productions needing rock 'n roll sound reinforcement and
 RW> all that stuff.  THese are much easier recording gigs. But, SAn
 RW> Antone sure was tempting with the climate into early fall when we
 RW> were there. I've kicked myself a couple of times for not just
 RW> deciding to stay there and get more seriously into the housing hunt.

Roy> There are plenty of places outside of SA where they need tennants to
Roy> watch the property and they're always looking for those kind of
Roy> people.

Boy if I would have sat it out I probably could have found
something like that, then would have gladly hung out.  THat
was sort of the deal we had going when we first got here,
only thing was we had to make that place livable.

 Roy>> We just had a visiter from Minneapolis last month. She stayed a
 Roy>> week and found herself a small trailer to rent for next February
 Roy>> and March. Nancy says that she might get comfortably situated in
 Roy>> that small trailer and find herself acclimated enough to stay...

 RW> I could see how that could happen, compare SAn Antone in FEb to
 RW> MInneapolis.  Yeah I think I'd decide SAn Antone was the place to be.
 RW> Were I ready to think seriously about retire that's one place I'd go
 RW> in a minute.

Roy> My friend Andrew is from Minneapolis. Graduated from high school,
Roy> joined the navy and when he got out, he stayed in San Diego. He
Roy> moved here in 2000 to help take care of his nearly blind, deaf
Roy> grandfather. Their dinky little trailer is where I stayed while
Roy> looking for our place in Texas.

That always helps when you got somewhere to light while you
look around.  I spent about another 5 weeks here in Tn. once we got here
restoring that place to livable, as I was doing
a lot of the work myself.  But, I was as I said avoiding
making major decisions there for awhile, and Kathy's
daughter found us this opportunity, came to SA to get us in
their van and reunited us with our van, our dog and my stuff out of the radio
room.  I told Kathy about 3 days into
working on that place up here that we should have given 'em
all the one finger salute once we'd retrieve dog and van and come back to SA.

Regards,
           Richard
--- timEd 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin:  (1:116/901)