Back to Rock n’ Roll
This story can and probably will be about two very distinct things. As you probably know by now, I write about whatever is going on in my life at the moment. Sometimes that’s about current events or something that is on my mind (or perhaps has been stewing in my head for some time) or perhaps something as mundane as my small little life of the moment. I do not write for a specific audience and I think its fair to say that the readership is very random and equally diverse. I hear from readers that they like or dislike this or that and I have to accept that since this is not required reading for anyone (except Kim, since she has to keep track of me) and I figure that if I bore someone enough, they will wave off and stop reading. As it is, I suspect that some people keep reading out of some silly sense of obligation in case I ask them some time if they agreed with this or that. I would like to unequivocally remind anyone reading my blog stories that they should only read what they like, when they like to and not worry a whit about offending me. I also think that anyone feeling that they need to keep up with my activities need to be reminded that I do not see myself as an influencer, so only read these stories if they amuse you or interest you in some way. Now that I’m done with my disclaimer, let’s get on with the story.
I’m sitting here in the parking area at USD with about two hours before my class starts. I used to go in and sit in the courtyard of the school, but this year’s cooler than normal weather makes me less interested in sitting in the cool evening air. I also see little or no interest from the students in “office hours” interaction. My open door approach is such that they call or email me whenever they want something. In fact, just now a student parked next to me asked me if he could do an extra essay to replace a bad grade he got on a prior one. I readily agreed. To me, any student who wants to improve his grade by doing extra work should be encouraged to do so. Protocol be damned. I’m an easy grader anyway since these are graduate students who are paying their own way and they deserve to be treated as adults. Anyone who does a modicum of work will get decent grades because their hiring or career path is unlikely to be governed by grades. There is no “Law Review” in graduate business school. So, I use my parking lot time to enjoy the San Diego sunshine, bask in the view of this school’s Spanish-influenced Catholic architecture, and listen to streaming songs on my Tesla “radio”. I’ve owned this car for seven years now and I’m only a little ashamed to say I still don’t understand the entertainment system very well. I know I don’t have Sirius Radio and instead I have streaming service which I don’t think I pay extra for. Sometimes it’s great to tell the car to play something and find that it can do that very easily and quickly. Sometimes it doesn’t work at all, so who knows what that’s about. At those times I just default to Bluetoothing my iPhone music, which is just fine. But if the streaming does work, it puts me into a self-defined “station” of some sort that connects to the song I asked it to play.
Right now I am listening to “Baby Love Radio” because I asked it to play some Supremes. I did that because I had asked it to play Four Seasons and after one recognizable hit, they took me off to someplace in Motown that I didn’t relate to. The Supremes seemed like a better bet, but the first song was Baby Love, so that’s the channel they assigned me to for some reason. I like the songs on the channel though they are certainly Oldies like Dusty Springfield, Leslie Gore and Martha and the Vandellas (what exactly is a Vandella? All Google will tell me is that it is of African/Congo origin), which is all fine with me. I am not so very particular about my music and unlike Kim or friends like Mike, who have very specific musical tastes, the only criteria I have is that I like some form of Rock n’ Roll that is familiar to me. Familiarity is very important to me. At some point I must have been willing to listen to new stuff, but now I want to recognize what I listen to. My kids have fed me a few more modern things along the way like Come on Eileen by Save Ferris or Viva la Vida by Coldplay. Somehow, years ago my Apple song list got merged with my son Thomas’ list and he has a far broader array of musical interests than I do (though, surprisingly, there is some significant overlap). Anyway, occasionally I accidentally wander into his playlists, usually while on my motorcycle when I choose not to stop and figure out how to get back onto my stuff. I consider it one of my musical broadening exercises, not unlike learning the American Songbook by going to Kim’s cabaret shows. Sooner or later, I always get back to Rock n’Roll eventually and I suspect I am not so very different from any of us in that I gravitate to the familiar, like I said.
The other Rock n’ Rolling I am doing these days has to do with my rock-strewn hillside. I’m not sure I chose to move out here to the high chaparral due to the rocks, but I can honestly say that I have liked rocks long before I came out here. That just makes it all the better that everywhere I look out here there are rocks of all sorts. I don’t think I ever really bought rocks before moving out here a few years ago. I certainly had never been in a rock store, other than perhaps a gemstone store when I used to travel to places like Brazil, where I made a habit of collecting agates and crystals. I think of those as designer rocks. Out here I buy work-a-day rocks and there are quite a few to choose from. I tend to like river rock rather than jagged rocks, though I have both. I use river pebbles for my pathways and gardens. They come in all sorts of sizes ranging from ¼” up to 10-15” (called “watermelons”). They also come in about a dozen colors ranging from red Arizona blend to Sonora Gold to La Paz Black. The Southwest, and especially Mexico seems to have a lot of river stone or perhaps a lot of quarries where they tumble the stones into a faux river smoothness to sell to chumps like me in Northern Mexico (aka Southern California).
I have been told that the La Paz Black does not “fit” into my landscape compared to, say the Coyote or California Gold. But someone before me on this property put in a dry creek bed with La Paz Black and then decided to use more of the same to accent various areas including all along the walkways and driveway. To me that means La Paz Black fits just fine, since I am not into replacing tons of rock for some arbitrary aesthetic. So, I recently decided that my road frontage needs a border. I do not want to put in a stone curb like some other homes in the area have. That seems both to be too much work/cost and too out of character with the naturalist approach my property has adopted with its vast and towering succulents and cacti. Therefore, I opted to buy a load of La Pax Black 8-10” “Pineapple” stones to put along the road at the edge of the asphalt. The superbag held 1.5 tons. I asked how many stones that was and the rock store guy thought I was kidding. My math told me that my frontage of 278’ less the driveway, mailbox and two pathways means I will need about 250+ “pineapples”, which is approximately how many in that bag based on my math (3,000 pounds at 12 pounds per pineapple).
It’s time now to go to class and stop Rock n’ Rolling in the Tesla, and tomorrow I will start Rock n’ Rolling those “pineapples” into place along the road. Have I amused or interested you to read which one of these Rock n’ Roll sagas ends first?