This was in my camera, I think it is the story of my day compressed into 10.2 million pixels. Looks familiar.
Prolog: Yesterday started like so many others. There didn't seem to be anything unusual or different at the starting gun. Just another day out of the blocks, in the rat race, and on a very familiar track. The drive into work? Unremarkable. De-caf coffee and sammich at S-Bux predictable. Just a small headache nibbling in the background almost unnoticed until undistracted.
Act One: The first hour of work, productive. The second hour the head started to ache, the hands started to tremble. By eleven it was obvious what was going on. I 'borrowed' three ibuprofen from a coworker knowing full well that it was not going to help much. I could feel the pulse of my enraged heart pounding in my wrists, chest and temples. The trembling hand told me that the jungle beat in my chest was building up a hyper-tension episode like one or two previous episodes I have barely survived. Jenni shows up for lunch and I am in throes of it. I decide to go eat and see if I can calm the raging beast in my chest and quiet the sanitarium of screaming maniacs in my cranium. It was the right call, and the wrong one all at the same time. Eating in a darkened Ikes with a hat on and sunglasses, taking deep slow breaths, and drinking about a half -gallon of water probably brought down the blood pressure a lot. Still I had to wait for the wife. I had to get to the Doctors office for the next act to play out.
Act Two: I'm sitting in exam room 3 (I think) the hat is pulled down, the sunglasses are on, the lights are off, the shade drawn over the window. Nurse Sheryl is wrapping my biceps with a velcro bag, pumping it up and getting a reading. The high end of my blood-pressure is two ticks under 160. (I 'normally' run between 120 and 125). I am doing the long deep breath thing and sitting easily in the chair. Time passes. The Doctor finishes with his scheduled patient, comes in and we discuss my occasional Migraines, the severity and the frequency. He takes another blood pressure reading, down to 154, an improvement, a plan is reached and he steps back out.
Sheryl returns with a needle for my 'hip' Toradol (sic). Loosen pants, slide slide down waist band, cool alcohol on upper buttock (hip) the sting. The injection brings a remarkable sensation. Nettles injected under the flesh, expanding nettles, or is it bee stings, lost of bee stings. I am asked to lay down for a bit in another room just to see if I don't die. Finally Jenni is led back to where I am in stupor. The nurse, Sheryl again says, We have something that belongs to you to Jenni. They laugh, nervous twitch makes my lips work a smile from an insane asylum and I start to sit up. One more blood pressure check, 146 and I'm released to the payment window. I pay in cash, they talk. I'm holding my receipt, and don't realize it. I'm waiting for a receipt I already have. eventually it dawns on me and I'm led squinting into a super-nova sunlight orgasm.
Act Three: I lay down in a very dark bedroom at home, I leave my sunglasses on anyway. It's 2:35 PM.
It's 5:45 PM I take off the glasses, and roll onto my side a pillow under my ribcage, Jenni came in to check on me.
It's 8:28 PM, I'm trying to get my regular glasses out of the case next to the bed. The head is dull and the room is soft-focus in the background watching me. I sit up. I'm better. I'm hungry.
Its 9:16 PM, I've eaten a bowl of cereal I'm back in bed. I turn on AMC, its after midnight Jenni is coming to bed, the TV is off.
It's 5:50 AM first alarm. I'm alive. Awake, and I have a foam rubber head the size of a medicine ball. Everything is dull, reactions, sensations, perceptions. I sleepwalk through the morning routine. I post an update. I post photos and I decide to do a blog, since I have something different to decry.
Epilog: 7:49 AM I'm finishing up the post and going to work, I will see if the sun is as bright as my memory of it yesterday. I am better, but the skin on my head feels like patchwork quilting applied with short staples. I'm better.
Chuck Pace ©2009 
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For the eleven or twelve people who still read my blogs on or around the third rock from the Sun I have a bit a of news about myself.
In the grand scheme of things it is less important than 5 generations of a single termites offspring in Africa releasing 5 parts per million of methane into the atmosphere in a decade, and effecting the global warming scenario, still, with billions of termites at work there is an effect on the global community. Me, I am still far less important that all the farts of a single African termite in its entire two year life cycle. Still, tonight I have reached a pinnacle of my own existence. My endeavors and accomplishments usually make no difference upon the lives of any of my family or friends, unless they bring more money or comfort into the body-collective experience as a whole.
I know that individual achievement is only relevant if it raises the experience of the collective as a unit, still I believe my own personal achievement may raise, enlighten and enrich the body politic, as it did the other citizens at the arena of my endeavor this night in the outmoded anglican calendar of the religious zealots of monotheism.
Pride may come before the fall, but it is still days before summer, so I might as well mention that tonight I bowled the best game of my 14 year league (sanctioned and unsanctioned) bowling "career."
Three years prior I achieved a high point, (kegling wise) with a mark of 257 for a single 10 frame bowling contest. Since then I have garnered only ten additional 20+ totals game scores within 12 different sanctioned and non-sanctioned bowling leagues. Never to again topple the 257 pinnacle for to better the life experience enjoyment of my fellow travelers.
Last week I entered the arena of bowling on East 10th. just south of Shadeland with a confidence and swagger not befitting my capabilities and proclaimed that I would have a 200 game that very evening. (it would be my first of the 5 weeks within the 12 week league) and low, I pulled a 206 out of my proverbial anus (I don't know which out-dated and illegal proverb per-say to attribute my collective achievement to this evening) in the very first contest of three. My teammates rallied and bolstered by my confidence and effort also improved their games and we won all 8 possible points in the contest of kegling of that evening.
With an undeserved pride in (individual) achievement, not altogether attributed to the entire citizenry, I did again this evening utter forth a proclamation that I would achieve an unheralded series collective score of above 600 as a cumulative score of three continuos bowling game endeavors.
The evenings first game started roughly only to end with a collective team effort triumphing over an equally deserving and capable opponent by just 8 pins (including a generous and system mandated handicap in an attempt to make all combatants truly equal). The second game saw the opponent team rally back and prevail by a 9 count and after two games the scores were separated by 1 pin, truly the equitable solution and system of handicapping was an accurate and a fair one. The final game in the trio of bouts found the opponent team players all failing to achieve their system ascribed averages while the team which I captain realized marked improvement ,with the first three players combining their efforts to overcome their cumulative averages by 29 pins, while I in the anchor position bested my average by 102 pins.
In the end we were able to prevail over our opponent team by a total score of 273 for three games with my (all new) best ever game of 268 and the rest of the teams collective efforts. Sadly I still failed in my unnecessary boisterous claim of achieving a 600 series with my final tally for all three games weighing in at only 597.

Chuck Pace ©2009 
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Two Art Fair days shots of the houses I lived in at Herron.
Above n the White House, (now Blue),
Below the Yellow House, now red.
Man, memory lane is getting crowded. I have been pulling in friends in facebook from all over the big blue marble, and because of the melancholy memory musings I have been up to the old campus twice for recon and to post photos, then yesterday I made another visit to the street where I lived, crossed walked, rode, run and stumbled during my college years. Yesterday was the Talbot Street Art Fair, I haven't been to one of those in at least 15 years, it is huge now. I went because I was offered free art from one of my Roberts camera store customers who I have been helping get her technical photography skills up to par so she can increase her sales and reach. I was only on the street for about a half hour, saw another Herron friend and a couple more Roberts customers too. But had to get back to the world-headquarters and mow since it looked as though rain would ruin my parade. Now my time, like my patience is limited, so I off to work will go, hi ho.

Here's the one I chose. Thanks to Susan Semenick
www. suesemenick.com
Chuck Pace ©2009 
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Me with a Superbowl ring, Awesome #1.
It is awesome how social networking thing has enriched my life. I've found a bunch of long gone if not forgotten friends from college and even high-school, and one deluded soul who claims we went to elementary school together (I was the only one there other than Jeff Shane, I'm sure). If a tree fall in a forest and nobody I went to grade school is there to get clobbered by it did they really exist?
That's why I post, to cover the really tough philosophical questions of perception and existentialism, oh, and covered bridges and cars.
Also Ron Meeks is gone, but Howard Mudd and Tom Moore are back onboard with the Colts. yea!

Coach Mudd was in the store yesterday so I got it straight from the O-lines mouth!
Time to rush off to Nikon Day at Roberts! Have a great day, come see me and I'll put a Nikon in your hand and a smile on your face.
Chuck Pace ©2009 
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From the title you might think I'm starting a fund-raiser program to fed the poor. Noble as that is, I often have to worry about just being able to feed myself and my wife. So no, that is just the title of todays post.
Muddy Boots in Black and White.
Anybody who knows me knows two things about me. I like cars and I like to drive. I like to drive so much that o my mid week days off from work I make myself little road-trips for breakfast just so I can come back through the countryside. I have to have a camera with me and the day must be fairly nice, otherwise I just go local. The vehicle of choice is either the '99 Sebring JXi convertible, or the '86 BMW 535i that I'm slowly (also know as poor) restoring. I've made trips to the Kokomo area, Matthews Indiana (where there is a beautiful Covered Bridge, another reason-passion to drive) and last week to Nashville Indiana just to have two eggs over medium, spicy diced potatoes, two sausage patties and two cups of really good coffee. I also went to see my friend Dick Schaffner's late 80's (original, real) right hand drive British Mini and to get a ride from Beanblossum to Muddy Boots restaurant in Nashville.

Above, The 86 Mini in a storage box, not running.

I tinkered with my Bimmer the night before, but it is having some issues so I drove the Vert, when I got to the storage facility where Dick parks the mini he was there also tinkering, and like my experience and disappoint with the Bimmer, he to was a little anguished at his mini Mini ride. She wouldn't start, no gumption, no go. So instead of taking a small car fast down terrifically winding roads I followed his Honda in my convertible to the restaurant. After breakfast he took me down more winding hilly roads to his home, and after that I was on my own to discover Brown county's beauty.

Figtree Fire Dept. in Helmsburg,
...they had a few more fire engines in back from other places too.
I found Helmsburg (right where they left it) and shot a few fun shots, then went back to Nashville proper and did the tourist run, ending up with a gift for my mother and another for my bride, who was diligently plodding along at work. The drive home was equally off path, to no surprise I found a covered bridge on Covered Bridge Road in Beanblossum, after that I found my way to Edinburgh and Amity before coming back to the chuckpace.com World Headquarters from the west side of the Hancock county. Who knows where I will get my breakfast on next Thursday, when I again have the day to myself. Could be anywhere, or right at home only time and weather will tell.

This Marker and grave is in the middle of a road east of Amity, the ancestors was petitioned and it wa s left undisturbed, the road splits around it from either direction.
Chuck Pace ©2009 
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June 5th, the 6th first Friday Art and Gallery walk day of 2009, but the first for the little brick gallery building at State and English. Downstairs a single artists exhibit, upstairs the buildings owners living quarters and a gathering of friends. The owner, Mr. Christopher West purchased the building some months ago with express desire to have a gallery and on this day a gallery he was having. While this event was not the first event held in the young gallery it was the first official first friday gallery happening in the young gallery's existence. This made it special, this is why Jenni and I decided it was our first stop on our First Friday events whirlwind calendar. As is always the case Yin and Yang were ever-present and the first and best day of the baby gallery was offset by a somewhat bad or possibly even worst day for a family just outside the space of art at English and State Avenues.
Both events, sharing the same stage brought out the contemplative nature of the viewers.

"Interesting, but is it in and of itself art?"
"The artists random movements make it seem more of a happenstance than a deliberate attempt to create a visual moment, but to be in the moment makes the viewer also a participant, and that is always random and unplanned."
"You may be onto something, I think All art requires a non participant's subjective opinion to validate its validity, right?"
"You're saying that art unseen, has no valid purpose?"
"No not really, creation is itself 'purpose', but if it is just a release of primal creative instinct, then why wish others to see what is created? The creator has to share or at least make others aware of the act, if not the object or idea in order for the creation to have purpose."
"So it's meaning is not as important as it's being?"
"Exactly, it has no meaning without being!"
"No, I think the guy in the Pontiac mini-van was trying to make a left hand turn and didn't see the little Chevy SUV coming with the setting sunlight directly behind."
"And the Firemen?"
"Planned, prepared and practiced behavior, a job. Poetic movements brought on by repetitious and rigorous training. Surely not art."

"Think there's more wine?"
"Probably, but I'm having a PBR?"
"Did Chris tell you the story about the place on the other corner?"
"You mean that it used to be a Pabst storage building? And that it'd make a great bar?"
"So he did."
"Yup, liked it."
"What did you think of The Shopping List?"
"Yup, liked it too."
Chuck Pace ©2009 
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Things just have a way of getting past you. Lately I've been having a lot of trouble sleeping.
More accurately, waking up has been the big problem. Reset the alarm and snooze a bit more, or on a couple of occasions sleeping through the alarms altogether. 
I actually have a lot of stuff ot post about:
The Herron reunion
My last two stellar bowling nights
Driving to Brown county for breakfast
Finding more friends on Facebook
...just now I've rebooted the computer after copying, pasting and e-mailing that las bit to myself. Computers, eh?
So I'm rambling and have to get ambling, the reboot and all took way to long. Still, this is a quick nod to whoever is still out there reading my thoughts and thoughtpukes. After this posts I have to restart the computer again, my screen saver shots are all gone and somthing else is slowing the processor down a bunch.
I will write all of those stories above an more in the next few days. Promise.
Chuck Pace ©2009 
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The NRG Lead Jammer rounds a corner alone heading for the pack.


As I walked into the Toyota pavilion I knew something was different. There was a clarity to the air. There was a buzz and excitement to the whole place. There were Stormtrooopers and Rebel Alliance members. Droids, Wookies, Fetts and even Tuscan Raiders. The Cyclone Wars were about to roll over us all, and I knew that the tide had turned. That the day was going to end up all right. I knew in an instant the funk of the last couple of hours was finished. There was a different Force at work.
I took videos of a Boba Fett, a Tuscan Raider and the R2 unit. Before I even got to my usual seating area I saw Rich trundling by with a beer. Then I headed to the beer concession to get a full beer that wouldn't have to o be poured onto the ground to appease some power wielding authority thug. Soon the crowds began to file in. The Star Wars theme prevalent and as the opening bars of John Williams music burst through the speakers the crowd went wild. Seats filled, some of them I had reserved for my friends were misappropriated by interlopers, but in the end we all got along for the better.

The bouts began with the Warning Bells vs. the S.W.A.T. team, both Jr. Varsity if you will, versions to their home towns primary Roller Girl Leagues. The Bells battled brilliantly besting the B-teamers from Allen County by fifty three points. Then some between bouts shenanigans ensued with me making nice with one of the Ft.Wayne Jammers Kiki U.Skullzin who just so happens to be the sister of our own Chatterbox friend Toni Smith. I commented to Kiki that if she wasn't Toni's twin then she was indeed a Clone, that's when I got the Clone-Wars reference.
On to the main event: The Naptown Roller Girls (NRG) Tornado Sirens vs. Fort Wayne Derby Girls (FWDG) Bomb Squad. Neck and neck action with the Bomb Squad leading through the first period. I moved to the floor and video taped a bit of the action next to my buddy Jared Haller who was adorned with so much camera gear that his straps and harnesses had him looking so much like a Rebel Alliance renegade that Stormtroopers actually came and grabbed up his wife and jailed her at one point during the action.
More half-time hi-jinx and then a nail biter final period. The Sirens were able to take their first lead of the bout with a little under 10 minutes remaining, but the scoring was back and forth with the Bomb Squad having the advantage leading into the final two jams of the night.
In the first of the last two jams FWDG Jammer Pushycat #69 was penalized and NRG Jammer Blazin' Ace, #33/6 went on to score a grand slam + 4, pushing the score to FWDG 65, NRG 78. The final jam saw the FWDG Jammer get lead jammer status but needing three Grand slams to win the bout for Fort Wayne before time ran out.
A sense of purpose inspired the crowd, everyone was on their feet willing the Sirens to hold fast to the lead. Announcers Dill and Brownie reminded the crowd that two unanswered grand slams would tie the game and three would cement a Fort Wayne victory. The final jam began, Fort Wayne's jammer garnered lead Jammer status and took off. It looked like the cards were falling Fort Wayne's way and the crowd got more vocal. Indy' blockers were all but useless in stopping her as she got the first grand slam. Penalties sent two FWDG blockers to the sidelines and the crowd was at a fever pitch.
On Ft. Wayne Lead Jammer, 'R.I.P. Tides' next pass the NRG blockers shut her down and closed her path causing her to draw a penalty to put her out of scoring while Indy's Jammer, Serial Killer '#2 scoops', never got around for scoring.
I was hoarse from hollering as were many around me when the buzzer sounded. With the ball bearings in the skate wheels NRG red-hot the game ended. Scoring yet to be tallied everyone took a collective deep breath and waited the final decision. The final score was FWDG Bomb Squad 70, NRG Tornado Sirens 78. Three days later I am hearing from others who were there that this was the best bout they've seen in three years of NRG action at the Fairgrounds!

Heather Givans suffers from Empiritis while Jon Suenram and Bec Hutton look on.

Chuck Pace ©2009 
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