While I was working for Amdahl Corporation in Houston, there were a couple of hardware engineers who played a lot of golf. I never played regular golf with them so don’t really know how well they played but Marilyn and I did play tree golf with them in a company sponsored outing they organized.
Tree golf was supposedly their brilliant idea after one of their less than successful rounds of regular golf where they kept hitting their balls out of bounds into the trees. Their thought was that if they were going to be hitting their balls into trees, they might as well play where that was the purpose.
Tree golf’s rules were simple. In a section of woods, nine trees were marked one through nine. Each player was allowed to choose one club from their regular golf bag but that then became the only “stick” they could use for the whole game. The object was to hit each tree in order, counting the number of strokes.
In tree golf typically a lot of beer was consumed, which if truth be known is how I suspect the round of regular golf became the inspiration for tree golf. I don’t know how much beer Marilyn consumed but it may not have been that much because she couldn’t have taken that many sips and swing her stick as much as she did.
Yes, she won the duffer trophy. She was quite proud of it because she had worked so hard for it. I would have put it down to just being a good sport, which she was, but she kept that trophy around until we moved out of Houston. I can’t remember all of its adornment but I do remember the twigs that represented trees, the empty beer can, and a badly sliced golf ball, which would have been unusable anyway with the mounting nail through it.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
The Family Initiation
I don’t know how we are going to continue this and certainly don’t want to accidentally kill it by publishing it. But, my family initiation was done at my father’s parents’ house, as was my mother's over 50 years ago. Marilyn’s was done at my parents’ house, as was all of our children’s. As this story is about Marilyn, the story of her initiation needs to be included. And, at least for three of the five events, I have pictures. (But maybe my memory is faulty. I can only remember four things.)
It is important that the initiatee be either new to the family or at a rite of passage age. The new to the family person is more likely to go along, not wanting to offend. The rite of passage person is at least lighter but is also more likely to remember the initiation with fondness but the key is to remember the joining. And, most importantly, it’s fun, at least for the initiators and observers. A certain amount of gullibility is also a big help.
In Riding the Airplane, the victim (I mean the initiatee.) is blind folded and asked to step onto a table leaf, or board on bricks. Then two muscular assistants lift the table leaf and move it around, mostly in place. A third person hints that the “airplane rider” is hitting the ceiling with a heavy book and the rider is asked to jump. Even the skeptics hesitate because it does feel like you are higher than the three or so inches you really are off the ground. This is accentuated by a fourth person whose shoulder provides a convenient balance. This person squats as the board is moved around giving further evidence that the “airplane” is truly way off the ground.
Then there is the magic trick of Pinning a Cup of Water to the Wall, which the initiate will be able to do themselves once they are shown how. Somehow the person demonstrating the way to do it, in this case me because no one wanted to get the blame if it was taken badly, drops the pin. The person learning the trick usually is quite helpful and immediately bends to pick it up, after all I still had a full cup of water. It wasn’t full long and the person learning the trick was wet.
Threading a needle with one eye will be covered in a separate topic.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
It is important that the initiatee be either new to the family or at a rite of passage age. The new to the family person is more likely to go along, not wanting to offend. The rite of passage person is at least lighter but is also more likely to remember the initiation with fondness but the key is to remember the joining. And, most importantly, it’s fun, at least for the initiators and observers. A certain amount of gullibility is also a big help.
In Riding the Airplane, the victim (I mean the initiatee.) is blind folded and asked to step onto a table leaf, or board on bricks. Then two muscular assistants lift the table leaf and move it around, mostly in place. A third person hints that the “airplane rider” is hitting the ceiling with a heavy book and the rider is asked to jump. Even the skeptics hesitate because it does feel like you are higher than the three or so inches you really are off the ground. This is accentuated by a fourth person whose shoulder provides a convenient balance. This person squats as the board is moved around giving further evidence that the “airplane” is truly way off the ground.
Then there is the magic trick of Pinning a Cup of Water to the Wall, which the initiate will be able to do themselves once they are shown how. Somehow the person demonstrating the way to do it, in this case me because no one wanted to get the blame if it was taken badly, drops the pin. The person learning the trick usually is quite helpful and immediately bends to pick it up, after all I still had a full cup of water. It wasn’t full long and the person learning the trick was wet.Threading a needle with one eye will be covered in a separate topic.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Happy stressed home ownership
While the monthly mortgage payment wasn't that much more than our then current rent, it was quite a commitment. (ARMs are nice that way.) It meant we were committed to Houston. It was a larger money liability than either of us had ever signed up for. And, although we didn't realize it at the time, it was a commitment to quite a bit of work. But from the following, we should have had a clue.
After we were "committed," it was fully ours but we hadn't moved in and hadn't yet arranged for any utilities, i.e., no heat, Houston had a freeze. The water wasn't shut off during the transfer. There were spectacular ice sculptures all over the city from the frozen spray of water from the broken water mains. One of the more remarkable of them, at least in size, was just across the street from our then apartment complex.
Marilyn was always attuned to the weather and would actually listen to the reports on the radio and TV. I have always tended to tune them out like commercials. So at her insistance, after dark with the temperature falling, by flashlight since there was also no electricity, I was wrapping the pipe that fed the water into the house with Marilyn holding a flashlight so I could see what I was doing. We then turned on a couple faucets in dribble mode to keep the water flowing. We didn't figure they would notice our little wasting of water with all the mains spewing it for no purpose around the city. Besides, while the water wasn't shut off, I don't know whether or not the account had been transferred yet. Our worst nightmare was that a pipe would burst in the attic and ruin both the ceiling and floor of the affected room and running water is supposed to be more resistant to freezing.
After making sure that our new house didn't wash away from pipes bursting, we had to clean, well, wash. Eventually we would replace all of the carpet and paint all of the walls, except for the walls with the mirrored glass tiles and the paneling in the family room, but for the two of us moving in, all we did was vacuum and wash. We also rented one of those "steam" cleaners for the carpet that was every where because vacuuming alone wouldn't have made the place livable. The previous owner was a chain smoker, which might have played a role in her demise. The house reeked. I don't remember the color of the steam cleaning water but I do remember the brownish yellow runoff and worse looking rinse water as we literally Formula 409'd every square inch of the walls and bathrooms.
Part of the do it yourself steam cleaning was to vacuum the floors thoroughly. It had red shag in the family room, kitchen and the bedroom off of the kitchen. Our vacuum cleaner wasn't powerful enough to suck up coins so I had to stop vacuuming frequently to find what was causing the rattle.
It was a lot of work to move into that house on the cheap but the purchase was truly a happy event. Now that we had a house, we could start working on a family. We did so with enthusiasm, no more Catholic approved birth control, after we first rested a bit.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
After we were "committed," it was fully ours but we hadn't moved in and hadn't yet arranged for any utilities, i.e., no heat, Houston had a freeze. The water wasn't shut off during the transfer. There were spectacular ice sculptures all over the city from the frozen spray of water from the broken water mains. One of the more remarkable of them, at least in size, was just across the street from our then apartment complex.
Marilyn was always attuned to the weather and would actually listen to the reports on the radio and TV. I have always tended to tune them out like commercials. So at her insistance, after dark with the temperature falling, by flashlight since there was also no electricity, I was wrapping the pipe that fed the water into the house with Marilyn holding a flashlight so I could see what I was doing. We then turned on a couple faucets in dribble mode to keep the water flowing. We didn't figure they would notice our little wasting of water with all the mains spewing it for no purpose around the city. Besides, while the water wasn't shut off, I don't know whether or not the account had been transferred yet. Our worst nightmare was that a pipe would burst in the attic and ruin both the ceiling and floor of the affected room and running water is supposed to be more resistant to freezing.
After making sure that our new house didn't wash away from pipes bursting, we had to clean, well, wash. Eventually we would replace all of the carpet and paint all of the walls, except for the walls with the mirrored glass tiles and the paneling in the family room, but for the two of us moving in, all we did was vacuum and wash. We also rented one of those "steam" cleaners for the carpet that was every where because vacuuming alone wouldn't have made the place livable. The previous owner was a chain smoker, which might have played a role in her demise. The house reeked. I don't remember the color of the steam cleaning water but I do remember the brownish yellow runoff and worse looking rinse water as we literally Formula 409'd every square inch of the walls and bathrooms.
Part of the do it yourself steam cleaning was to vacuum the floors thoroughly. It had red shag in the family room, kitchen and the bedroom off of the kitchen. Our vacuum cleaner wasn't powerful enough to suck up coins so I had to stop vacuuming frequently to find what was causing the rattle.
It was a lot of work to move into that house on the cheap but the purchase was truly a happy event. Now that we had a house, we could start working on a family. We did so with enthusiasm, no more Catholic approved birth control, after we first rested a bit.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Meeting by accident
Over a couple months of living at the apartment, I had observed several people exiting the complex using the inbound lane with no problem, while I dutifully did the right [lane] thing.
One day I noticed that Marilyn was already at the front of the right lane. So I whipped up beside her on her left. As I was waiting for her to notice me she decided to turn into traffic and instead turned into me.
She didn't let me know she was a "little" upset that I was where she didn't expect me to be until later. I was just surprised at the amount of the corner she cut, enough to hit my car.
Her car wasn't hurt at all. Mine had a dented front fender but nothing that impaired its driving. We each hopped out of our respective cars to look at the damage, hugged, and drove away.
I can only imagine the surprise and relief of the people in the line of cars behind us.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
One day I noticed that Marilyn was already at the front of the right lane. So I whipped up beside her on her left. As I was waiting for her to notice me she decided to turn into traffic and instead turned into me.
She didn't let me know she was a "little" upset that I was where she didn't expect me to be until later. I was just surprised at the amount of the corner she cut, enough to hit my car.
Her car wasn't hurt at all. Mine had a dented front fender but nothing that impaired its driving. We each hopped out of our respective cars to look at the damage, hugged, and drove away.
I can only imagine the surprise and relief of the people in the line of cars behind us.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
"Collecting" state quarters
My mother started "collecting" bicentennial quarters soon after they started coming out. As they became scarce in circulation, all of her children started looking for them for her. One of the ways I would find them would be to gamble at the quarter slots when they were quarter slots rather than paper slots of a quarter value. One such trip, infrequent because Marilyn didn't like to gamble and I never seemed to get away on my own (which continues even now as I have yet to go gambling even with all this supposed time I have in my Life after Layoff), I found around $20 worth of bicentennial quarters.
Marilyn saw in this two opportunities: she knew that looking for specific quarters would slow my gambling down and pulling out more quarters would guarantee that I would leave the casinos with more money. So, she had me start "collecting" state quarters for her, which had yet another benefit: she got the money. She looked on the quarter fund as disaster money. It was part of her disaster preparation to maintain a little cash should some earthquake knock out electricity, phones, ... and we needed to buy something. The quarter "collection" served double duty.
Oh, when I say collection, I don't mean one of each. I mean every state quarter that made its way into my hands, made it into hers. I'm still "collecting" them.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Marilyn saw in this two opportunities: she knew that looking for specific quarters would slow my gambling down and pulling out more quarters would guarantee that I would leave the casinos with more money. So, she had me start "collecting" state quarters for her, which had yet another benefit: she got the money. She looked on the quarter fund as disaster money. It was part of her disaster preparation to maintain a little cash should some earthquake knock out electricity, phones, ... and we needed to buy something. The quarter "collection" served double duty.
Oh, when I say collection, I don't mean one of each. I mean every state quarter that made its way into my hands, made it into hers. I'm still "collecting" them.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Seeing Texas: Laredo
When I was a young singer in one of the K-12 grades’ choruses, we learned several western themed songs. One had a line about being a cowboy on “the streets of Laredo.” The reality didn’t match up to the romanticized version I had created in my mind. I don’t think Marilyn had any such romantic image. She was a consummate realist but one who enjoyed seeing new places, even places she never intended to return to again.
Part of the problem was that we traveled south in Texas in the heat of the summer. I swear it was over 100 degrees even after the sun had set. My memories of Laredo are actually three, two of which are not even of Laredo.
The first thing we did was park and walk across the bridge into Nuevo Laredo and have lunch. Marilyn asked for water and I unconsciously took a sip but no more after I noticed the water worm in the glass. I pointed it out to her before she took a sip. It would be another 27 years before we would return to Mexico.
The only thing I remember about Laredo proper is our walking around the downtown before we went back to the car to find a restroom for each of us. We ultimately stopped in a hotel where the bathrooms were in the basement. In Laredo, the physics of heat rising and a lesser temperature underground, didn’t seem to apply. We did compare notes and I learned of her techniques for using the facilities in strange locals. I still don’t know how she did it without truly sitting down. But this experience was the start of something that turned into a running travel joke between us and perhaps a goal: writing a travelogue of our travels titled “whizzing through America.”
We camped further down the Texas side of the Rio Grande at a park that I may remember the name incorrectly but believed to be Zapata Park but it may have been all the way to Falcon State Park. It was a sandy park, certainly so in the camping area. It was also hot all night. With our discovered interest in facilities, we couldn’t help but note that this park just had the equivalent of Porta-potties, well used and stinking ones.
It may have been this trip that we were tooling by the King Ranch, a ranch the size of Rhode Island, going about 80 mph on a two lane, one each way, road with literally no traffic. As we zipped through one crossroad, I thought I noticed a snake. As soon as I could slow safely I turned around and confirmed that it was not only a snake but a coiled rattler. With the windows down we could definitely hear the rattling. We stayed safely in the car, did a U-turn around the snake, rolled the windows back up to use the air conditioning more effectively, and proceeded on our way, at speed. Texas was big and our time was limited. Besides, we were in a 280Z and gas was, relatively, cheap.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Part of the problem was that we traveled south in Texas in the heat of the summer. I swear it was over 100 degrees even after the sun had set. My memories of Laredo are actually three, two of which are not even of Laredo.
The first thing we did was park and walk across the bridge into Nuevo Laredo and have lunch. Marilyn asked for water and I unconsciously took a sip but no more after I noticed the water worm in the glass. I pointed it out to her before she took a sip. It would be another 27 years before we would return to Mexico.
The only thing I remember about Laredo proper is our walking around the downtown before we went back to the car to find a restroom for each of us. We ultimately stopped in a hotel where the bathrooms were in the basement. In Laredo, the physics of heat rising and a lesser temperature underground, didn’t seem to apply. We did compare notes and I learned of her techniques for using the facilities in strange locals. I still don’t know how she did it without truly sitting down. But this experience was the start of something that turned into a running travel joke between us and perhaps a goal: writing a travelogue of our travels titled “whizzing through America.”
We camped further down the Texas side of the Rio Grande at a park that I may remember the name incorrectly but believed to be Zapata Park but it may have been all the way to Falcon State Park. It was a sandy park, certainly so in the camping area. It was also hot all night. With our discovered interest in facilities, we couldn’t help but note that this park just had the equivalent of Porta-potties, well used and stinking ones.
It may have been this trip that we were tooling by the King Ranch, a ranch the size of Rhode Island, going about 80 mph on a two lane, one each way, road with literally no traffic. As we zipped through one crossroad, I thought I noticed a snake. As soon as I could slow safely I turned around and confirmed that it was not only a snake but a coiled rattler. With the windows down we could definitely hear the rattling. We stayed safely in the car, did a U-turn around the snake, rolled the windows back up to use the air conditioning more effectively, and proceeded on our way, at speed. Texas was big and our time was limited. Besides, we were in a 280Z and gas was, relatively, cheap.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
Saturday, November 15, 2008
Traveling Marilyn (Texas)
Even though I “captured” Marilyn with a fantastic traveling vacation, I didn’t truly understand how much she loved traveling until we moved to Houston, Texas. (Come to think of it, she did take me to a Canadian Rail Travelogue documentary at The Ohio State University. That was what prompted our long and unfulfilled desire to visit Banff.) She was an unabashed tour guide. She always loved to show her visitors the sights, many of which she had already scoped out, in person. She read tour books. She read the travel section in the newspaper. She watched all the travel shows on TV. Once based in our Houston apartment, we were able to put her research into practice.
She went to the tourist spots but also liked the out of the way spots. Our first year in Houston was spent at work during the week and on the road every weekend. It slowed down when we bought our first house and slowed even more when we started having children, but it never stopped. As our children got older, it picked up again. She loved the planning, the anticipation. She made all our trips a great experience.
Over the eight plus years we lived in Houston, went everywhere in and around Houston and Texas, except Big Bend and Amarillo. She always wanted to see Big Bend in the spring for all the desert flowers, but we were otherwise occupied: new house, new children, other uses for our limited vacation time.
We did see most of the rest of Texas, sometimes several times. Many of these are worthy of separate topics:
• Spots in and around Houston, including Bayou Bend, Gilley’s, San Jacinto Inn, Johnson Space Center, Galveston, …
• Mustang and Padre Island, along with Corpus Christi. (We returned regularly to Mustang Island.)
• San Antonio
• Austin
• Several camping and cabin excursions north, west, and south of Houston
As in many of our living places, if you could find a native Houstonian, Marilyn, and because of her I also, had visited more places and knew more about the local area than they did. If she did encounter an exception to that rule, she would usually pick their brains for recommendations on where to go and what to see, of course, she would also do this with her less traveled encounters. Everyone had been somewhere and she wanted to know about it.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
She went to the tourist spots but also liked the out of the way spots. Our first year in Houston was spent at work during the week and on the road every weekend. It slowed down when we bought our first house and slowed even more when we started having children, but it never stopped. As our children got older, it picked up again. She loved the planning, the anticipation. She made all our trips a great experience.
Over the eight plus years we lived in Houston, went everywhere in and around Houston and Texas, except Big Bend and Amarillo. She always wanted to see Big Bend in the spring for all the desert flowers, but we were otherwise occupied: new house, new children, other uses for our limited vacation time.
We did see most of the rest of Texas, sometimes several times. Many of these are worthy of separate topics:
• Spots in and around Houston, including Bayou Bend, Gilley’s, San Jacinto Inn, Johnson Space Center, Galveston, …
• Mustang and Padre Island, along with Corpus Christi. (We returned regularly to Mustang Island.)
• San Antonio
• Austin
• Several camping and cabin excursions north, west, and south of Houston
As in many of our living places, if you could find a native Houstonian, Marilyn, and because of her I also, had visited more places and knew more about the local area than they did. If she did encounter an exception to that rule, she would usually pick their brains for recommendations on where to go and what to see, of course, she would also do this with her less traveled encounters. Everyone had been somewhere and she wanted to know about it.
---------
Marilyn lost her life to cancer but was able to truly "live" until the very end due to a lymphedema garment from Don Kellogg, inventor and founder of Telesto-Medtech. It is due to the "living" he provided Marilyn and through his suggestion and connection with Saskia Thiadens of the National Lymphedema Network that the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund exists. It needs other people's help to remain a living memorial of Marilyn. Please help other people receive the gift of living by donating to the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund. Thank you.
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