Any Way You Want It

My brain is stuck on an earworm of 80s hair bands.

Shoot me.

Please.

After a couple of decades in radio, my favorite genre of music is most often “Silence”. Dangerspouse, you know what I mean. Unless required to do so, when you walk out of the studio you don’t want to talk, and God knows you don’t want to listen to music. 15-ish years later I do okay listening to stuff on YouTube, but still can’t handle regular radio programming for any period of time.

When I was on the air, it was predominantly at country stations. I am not and never was a huge country music fan, though I got to the point I could tolerate a few performers. A couple I still give a listen now and then. (Not all songs or performers. If I never hear the Randy Travis rendition of Forever and Ever Amen again, it’ll be too soon. I thought that thing would never drop out of the top-40 rotation.) I also did stints at a religious station, on public radio, and more than one station that couldn’t make up its mind as to musical genre.

You haven’t lived until you’re required to sandwich a Muddy Waters song between Tchaichovsky and the Bellamy Brothers, follow up with a Benny Goodman chaser, and wrap the lineup with Steppenwolf. It happened.

Along the way I learned a lot about the technical side of the business – it’s where I got into computers. I like to say I got elected our IT person because I knew how to turn on a computer. It isn’t far from the truth and applies to more than one station where I worked. Of course, I also learned plenty of old-school stuff: how to clean the heads of a reel-to-reel tape recorder, to manually splice tapes, to patch cables from Point A to Point B to connect a satellite feed, and in a pinch to re-solder a control panel. I’ve repaired mic cords with shorts, worked with temperamental turntables, 4-track tapes, CD players, live programming, did a top-ten show, and so on. I’ve torn down machines to clean them, from computers to turntables to tape players. I’ve kick-started transmitters in 115º heat when it meant driving up the mountain and hoping lightning bolts didn’t hit the tower while I was in the building and had my hands on the controls. I learned production, and can write and produce a kick-ass commercial that’s exactly 30 or 60 seconds long.

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Nothing mechanical or electronic intimidates me. To this day, I’ll tear almost anything down if it’s not working and out of warranty, and there’s a better-than-average chance I’ll get it going again. Note the caveat: it’s gotta be out of warranty. You can void coverage if you start messing with something in warranty.

The current blighted laptop has been a consistent and glaring exception, another reason it gets the evil eye from me on a daily basis.

I’m not saying all this because I’m superior to anybody. Far from it. I got my first job in radio in the armpit of America, going to open auditions on a dare. When I got the call saying they were hiring me, I thought it was a joke — or a mistake. We were several minutes into the conversation before it sunk in I was actually employed. I didn’t land the job knowing all this stuff, either. It was a process taking several years, and I’m immensely grateful for the education it provided as a side dish.

The radio job saved my life. It paid slave wages while teaching me not only about the radio business, but also how to convey confidence and authority in my voice; to be conscious about communication and a stickler for details; all the tech stuff; how to navigate and work through various branches of the government; and so much more. It gave me the confidence to walk out on an SOB drug-addicted husband who unquestionably would’ve murdered me. He was pulling knives and guns on me as a “joke” and I’d found a way to keep him from getting his mitts on a single penny of my paycheck, which didn’t go down well. My demise was only a matter of time.

It meant going homeless, but I escaped. I survived. My ex died of a “heart attack” a few years later. I believe that’s what was put on his death certificate, because his parents were ministers and nobody in the county cared about facts.

In reality it was an overdose. I suspected as much, but didn’t get confirmation until recently.

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Despite all my bitching about the quality of photos from my phone, turns out it does a killer job at macro photography (close-ups of itty bitty stuff). I took the photo at the top of the page on a whim – story of my life – and you can see for yourself how it turned out. Crazier still, that little acorn looks surprisingly good at full resolution, ~4600 pixels wide. (Equal to some 4x the width of this page). The acorn pendant is roughly 3/4 inch long, so it’s a wee bit blown up. The leather cord its on is 1mm, if I remember right.

My keychain photo at left was pretty decent too, even at full size. I shrunk it because nobody cares about my keys and the girly-sparkly-tinkly-bell stuff attached. I threw it in here anyway, because I’m jazzed about the discovery.

This means I can finally get a macro shot of a family-heirloom ring, which I tried unsuccessfully to do several years ago.

We know from the markings and style that the ring is high-end 14K gold with a huge rose-cut garnet. We know it’s over 100 years old and was made in the Netherlands. A couple of years ago I looked it up and found a specific style name for it – and don’t remember what it was. I seem to recall it was something like “regular family” jewelry, something downright surreal when you contrast it with the quality of the pieces.

The jewelry I have belonged to G’s mom before she died, and his sister passed it on to me. No one’s got a clue of the provinance before it came to G’s mom, who died in the 1980s. Besides the gold ring, I inherited two pieces of HEAVY 925 silver: a ginormous cuff bracelet and a necklace, both intricately worked.

I don’t believe they need an insurance rider, but we’re not sure. I need to get them appraised. At bare minimum, I’ll finally have some decent photos, though. I want to document everything for insurance purposes, especially now I can’t wear it any more.

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On a weird note, I got not one but two email updates from Dell tonight. One said my computer was delivered. (Nice try, but no cigar.) The other said it was delayed. The Dell site said it shipped today and should arrive the 12th.

The 12th sounds good, if ambitious. We shall see.

LATE EDIT: I just got a text message from FedEx saying that I do indeed have a delivery scheduled for tomorrow. Yes!!!