Eclipsed

Rick Thues May 14, 2024 Uncategorized No Comments

    Episode #798 May 18, 2024     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i26VeJ49QsE 1,400 miles in four days.  Eight miles to the gallon.  Fifty cents a mile.  Aguanga to Cleburne. A dead line of interstate beckons, beckons, beckons, beckons. Tucson, El Paso, Abilene electrified gravel parking lots. Winslow, Cussler, Twain explaining everything. Arrival, rest, anticipation. Patience, as nature takes its course. Moon takes bigger, bigger bites, spitting out shadows of darkness. Chill loiters over dry Texas heat. Friends and strangers wait. Flash of green refraction. Three minute forty second synchronous alignment. Midnight noon. Lunar corona. Corona in hand. Two planets illuminate the day....

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Ricki T Thues Retired

Rick Thues May 6, 2024 Uncategorized 5 Comments

Episode #797 May 11, 2024 My plan in high school is to retire at age 40. Looking forward to such an age seems reasonably distant to my teenage mind.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc1faEHF01Q   It is 1993 and I am 40 years old. The European Union is created this year. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is appointed to the Supreme Court, the first humans are cloned, Frank Zappa dies and I am at the height of my trade show exhibit career. I am not motivated to retire. Life is pretty good. In 2001 GFB, the company I have worked at for nearly 20 years,...

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Rick and Paula Skydivers

Rick Thues May 1, 2024 Uncategorized No Comments

Episode #796 May 4, 2024 Camping at Salton Sea, laying on a cot, my 8 year old mind watches the Milky Way spread out against the night sky. Satellites streak across the sparkling inky blackness. I fly along with them.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BlK7sx6syo   I am reading Space Cat at the library in the fifth grade. Flyball floats over to me in a spacewalk and high fives the glove of my spacesuit. My neighborhood is laid out below me in my dream. I know it better from above, flying, than I do from the ground. The doodles on my fifth-grade notebook...

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RickIT iMentor

Rick Thues April 24, 2024 Uncategorized No Comments

Episode #795 April 27, 2024 It begins in Brother Tim’s freshman high school algebra class. We are solving for variables. I just don’t get it.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ags5PUDKLi8 “This is baffling to me Brother,” I say. “What don’t you understand, Rick? “Why do we perform the same operation on both sides of the equal sign?” “I hate to state the obvious, but everything on the left side of the equal sign is always the same as what is on the right side. If you do something to one side, you must do the same thing to the other.” Lights and bells...

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Rick Exhibitionist

Rick Thues April 17, 2024 Uncategorized No Comments

Episode #794 April 20, 2924 When the Disneyland Fantasyland project ends, we are all laid off.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muCl7tXmpc8 I spend the beginning of summer on unemployment doing projects at my home in Santa Ana. Bob looks for work and finds the Exhibit Place. He calls me up. “I found this great company, the Exhibit Place, in a great industry. They build trade show exhibits. You get to be a cabinetmaker, electrician and plumber. They are hiring and they pay three times the carpenter union rate. Get down here right away.” When I arrive for my interview, my other old...

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Rick the Cabinetmaker

Rick Thues April 2, 2024 Uncategorized No Comments

Episode #793 April 13, 2024 My fiancé’s father needed help in his cabinet shop, Precision Cabinets.     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-h5Qp-r_OM So, I quit Huntington Beach Trailer Supply and move to Tustin to begin work for him building custom kitchen cabinets. Fred is old school and runs a tight shop. If I ask him where the countertop draw bolts are his answer is, “In the draw bolt department.” The thing is always in the place it belongs. Fred teaches me woodworking from scratch. His patience is only exceeded by his kindness. This new career suits me well. Soon, I will be married....

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