Over the weekend Patrick came over and we finally finished the tree house. Patrick was a rockstar, it was amazing to watch him work and solve the problem of how to side the super high sides of the tree house.
He built two little decks underneath the high walls by using a come along to hoist heavy stronbacks which he screwed into place to form the supports of the mini decks.
Our contribution was to erect one level of staging borrowed from teri and Brian to make a platform to side the front. We also cut and carried over to the tree house all the boards and battens. But it was Patrick who was the workhorse and climbed the high ladders on the platforms and attached the siding.
The finished tree house looks awesome!
Love Life
Going through my casette collection in the Long House I came across this tape I made 40 years ago when I was a frshman in college, almost the age Ambiana is now.. I remember taping my roomates albums and this was one of them. BERLIN had two radio hits “Sex (I’m A…)” and the Top Gun song “Take My BreathAway” but this was 1983, three years before that song. I don’t remember why I wanted to tape this album…..
…and then I popped the tape into the tape deck and pressed play. Out of the speakers came the 80’s, the synth beats, the throbbing bass, the uplifting chords and Teri Nunn’s voice sighing all about love and the many ways you can make it, feel it, be it. I knew every song on the tape. I played this tape a lot in 1983 & 84. When I said the 80’s came out of the speakers I meant not just the music but the actual 80’s as I lived them, I actually felt like I was 19 years old again all the intervening years just melted away.
Maybe it’s because Ambiana and Erika bought their plane tickets to England for August 28th and I am feeling in her that anticipation and excitement to get out into the world and experience what’s out there. That is what the 80’s were for me. Getting out there. I still feel that way which is why we travel a lot.
All the songs on Love Life are exceedingly hopeful and upbeat. They resonates completely with how I felt at that time in my life; all the things to yet do and experience. Listening to it now fires that up in me again. A Sonic Bellows setting me Ablaze for Time is coming when both Ambiana & Jakobi will be out in the world and the long hibernation of parenting will be over. Time for Colleen and I to get out there ourselves. Oh what awaits us. No empty nesting for us, time for the next phase, thing, epoch in our lives. What to do with what we have lived and learned.
The flip side o the cassette is the Go Gos 3rd album “Talk Show”. I played that side too but it is to BERLIN that I am drawn. I went and acquired the BERLIN Catalouge which I was surprised to find contained realeases throughout the 2000’s and as recent as 2019. I’ve been having small BERLIN dance parties ever since I listened to that tape. Colleen joined me last night for the full “Pleasure Victim” album. That was fun.
And yes I have a tape player; found one at a thrft store so I could listen to my cassettes collection. I got a FTY fishbin full of cassettes from the past 40 years. The BERLIN tape is probably the oldest.
