Subject: more ramblings (short!), ...well, 'was' short
Date: Dec 19 15:30:20 1997
From: PAGODROMA - PAGODROMA at aol.com


was: [Re: Washington rare bird reports & political boundaries]

97-12-19, Gene Hunn writes in reply to my seemingly endless burst of wordy
messages of late:

<< ....otherwise clearly underemployed, Richard Rowlett! >>

Yes, this is true. I'm just on a prolonged lonnnng weekend holiday right now
and thru mid March at the moment '-). When one analyzes it from this
perspective however; one being at sea for most of February thru early November
(minus that short break this past June), 7 days a weeks, day in and day out,
up to 98 hours per week or even more, non-stop, actually on the 'job' high up
there on the lofty flying bridge, and similarly so year after accumulating
years on end, well yeah, I get home eventually, and yeah, I'm ready for a
little R&R for RR, and have found Tweeters a convenient venue to dump on.
Sometimes, the subject content is even relevant!

Worst case ever!!: an Antarctic cruise a few years ago as big shot 'cruise
leader'; this elevated position sprung on me at the last second before
departure from Cape Town, thus ill-prepared in a big way for the task, then
further compounded by the endless and unheard of fine weather unbroken for
weeks at a time. Usually down there, one can count on plenty of 'down time'
(like 40-70% available research time lost to rough seas and fog) thus allowing
time to keep control, organized, and stay caught up. No way this time; 100%
full-bore non-stop, sunny and calm, warm even; every day. "Stop it!! Enough
already!" I scream! So much was involved, coordinating the research with the
Japanese and multi-vessels operation, dealing with language difficulties made
worse by those so unique screwy little 'nuances' of interpretation. 'Nuance':
a nice terminally polite 'term' that only the Japanese can and so uniquely
like to refer. Imagine how long it actually took trying to figure out that key
"English" word that the Japanese were actually trying express in fractured
Japanese-English; 'nuance', and then, the sudden dawning of enlightenment when
I did! "OOOOhhh, 'nuuu-ance'; very interesting." The very *last* English
word I'd have ever expected to come out of their mouth; 'nuance'! Mercy! It
can be even worse when multi-nationalities and languages are involved --
English, Russian, Japanese, and Spanish, and you spend hours in translating
one sentence for everyone, and then dickering over some such minor fine
usually irrelevant and ridiculous point for many more hours in the final
cruise report! Between that and maintaining constant communications to the
UK, South Africa, Australia, Japan, and the U.S., and anywhere else on Earth
that might be party, and in a constant hyperstate of playing catch-up, I was
going up to 72 hours straight without a wink of sleep, and frequently! That
cruise from hell clearly snipped 10 years off my life and I have still never
fully recovered. Obviously! '-)

By the time we hit Fremantle two months later, I was a total basket case. I
was literally left ship-wrecked there up high and dry on the beach and just
dropped out of sight for a whole month(!) before hobbling back to the U.S.
homeland, and often while there, spending days at a time seldom even venturing
beyond the confines of my hotel room or grounds. What little birding I tried
out there then during that horrible time in Western Australia, if I wasn't
occasionally lying about like an exhausted elephant seal hauled out and
molting on the popular nearby nudee beach at Swanbourne, was demolished when
my old reliable Zeiss 10X40B's, right then and there refused to cooperate and
went belly up and I couldn't focus on anything. Talk about burn out; for me
*and* my binoculars!

The frightening thing about this such abnormal lifestyle is how fast time
seems to fly by. I can be gone for 9 months, yet by the time I get home, it
feels like I had only been away for a day at the office like most everyone
else around here. You go to work one day for 8 hours and come home in the
evening; it's just the routine. What's really disturbing me at the moment,
and it's not taking you Gene, posting here to remind me, but now just even
vaguely thinking back just over the past *10* years, much less 20 or 25, and
for all that time, it feels like I've only been gone for day. I catch myself
absent-mindedly dating checks 1993 or 1987 all the time for example. It's
just that stuff piles up here, routine day to day stuff most people take for
granted and one deals with day by day in an orderly and responsible manner;
'rare bird records' for example '-). In my situation, I don't even know where
to start, and the pile just gets higher and higher, a year's worth in and
another year's worth dropped on top of the last. Still, "I am so organized",
I say again so smugly. I still have mail from 5 years ago, looking new and
neatly unopened and in the correctly labeled '1992' pile. I hope they're
nothing important like unpaid bills or a notice that I'd just won the lottery.
I can't begin to keep up with the ever changing U.S. postal rates and now have
tons of all those little add-on alphabetical stamps lying around that I don't
know what they mean anymore. Believe me; you have no idea! This life truly
is bizarre and *IS* the ultimate escape from reality! Go ask Mike Force; he's
even worse at it than I am.

This reminds me of that nutty little song/ditty/verse about "Sarah Stout who
wouldn't take the Garbage Out" from "Dr. Demento" radio fame of the
1970's-'80's. Ahhh... "Dr. D", my hero, someone out there whom I can bond
with. I have countless hours of taped radio shows stashed away at my 'other'
home, my Shurgard Storage Unit way way over and up there in Lake City. This
btw *is* even my 'official' address (no mail) on my Washington drivers license
and causes a problem when it's time to vote, and I forgot my 'real voting
home' is Lake City, and then can't find the voting site in Bellevue; like last
?? - I forget -- the stadium initiatives; when I spent a half a day driving
around all over Bellevue trying to find the bloody place and finally ending up
at the Bellevue Library for information, only then to learn that it was over
there in Lake City all along and by then it was too late!). Lake City is just
safely far enough away from me here in Bellevue, so, and god bless Seattle's
traffic morass, I don't have to feel compelled to go running over there every
day to see what lost and forgotten treasures there might be even in there.
Once or twice a year is enough.

I have the entire collection of the "Dr. Demento" albums (tapes) from Tower
Records which often accompany the oceanic voyages and we play 'em up there on
the flying bridge to entertain and bust up the tedium for all. I guess these
days though, kids are probably taping "LoveLine" off 'the BUZZ' (100.7FM)
between 10pm and 1am instead of listening to Dr. "D", huh. My, how times have
changed since I've been away :-).

Don't somebody go off complaining about 'the BUZZ' now. This is my favorite
Seattle radio station & format, hysterically funny, albeit immature and
childish as it is at times, if not occasionally just plain obnoxious, weird,
and annoying and one has no other option other than to just slam it OFF. In
my position, cruising 'all' the talk-radio formats around town (KIRO, KOMO,
some others, and KVI even, I admit - yikes!) is how I've come to sort of keep
up; a short-cut, to keeping current events in perspective, and sort of quick
way to take the nation's temperature and barometer readings which over time
gels together, discarding the obvious loonies of course, and covers my lengthy
deprivation through absence all at the same time. Then I can leave town, fly
the coup, comfortable in thinking that I'm probably reasonably current and not
missing anything of earth shattering importance.

So yeah, Gene, I'm underemployed at the moment, but always have my eye and ear
tuned to a constant lookout for all sorts of potential options out there, be
it via networking (the best route), internet postings in message boards and at
various websites, or if someone just sort of drops a little idea on my head.
So, if someone out there in tweeterland has one of those little ideas or
thinks of something, I'm all eyes and ears. I could even, heaven forbid...,
get a 'real' job. And it doesn't have to be marine oriented. I'm quite at
home doing something terrestrial as well (*except* Spotted Owl surveys --
another grim story). Otherwise, being the marine wildlife biologist;
*itinerant* MWB I hasten to add, that I am, you sure can't beat the commute!
Maybe two flights up some steps and I'm on the job, or at California's Piedras
Blancas, a 40-second leisurely stroll down the sandy lane from the kitchen,
brush off the ticks and fleas, and I'm there and on the glass. Here, it's
'round the corner from the bedroom, 9 steps (I just counted), and here I am in
'tweeterland' :-)).

God help me if I should ever decide to go off and do a website or page or
something. The comments about the Japanese remind me that I actually have
another write-up sitting in the 'holding pen' where it's been lying in state
and fermenting for a couple of weeks or so now. I'd almost forgotten, but I
think that one's "not quite ready for Prime Time Tweeters" yet. May never be.
Maybe I should just go write a book, no? Oh jeeze! The coffee water in the
pot on the stove upstairs in the kitchen has boiled dry (*again*!). You have
any idea how tough it is to unstick the pot from the burner once it's welded
in place? I shouldn't be surprised to see the fire department showing up here
any day now. I gotta move that dinging 3-minute timer down here to my home
office.

Well, it's Christmas Bird Count season now. Apart from one more post
forthcoming but also still sitting back in the holding pen (my 'draft' folder
is starting to bulge badly) and not sent yet due to a 'damage control'
interruption in the middle before I could finish it, I think I'm going to go
and take Tweeters-'lite' for a bit. It's a little *BIRDING* story for your
holidays, drawing from something on a recent Tweeters thread. Maybe Sunday or
Monday. Right now, I've gotta go take a quick little peripheral look-see
cruise around my East Lake Washington sector Lake Sammamish State Park CBC
bombing range for tomorrow. Best of Luck dear tweets and above all, have fun
on all those CBC's. :-))

This 'short' little rambler only took -- never mind -- minutes by the way.
I've been updating it at regular intervals and now I'm embarrassed to say.
Ta-ta. --Richard

Richard Rowlett (Pagodroma at aol.com)
47.56N, 122.13W
(Seattle/Bellevue, WA USA)
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
God was my co-pilot,
but when we crashed in the mountains,
I had to eat him :-))
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