I've Been Tagged!

I've been tagged, not once, but twice by both:

• Robosquirrel (People Covered In Fish)
• Gayle (My Republican Blog)

Both excellent blogs, I should immediately like to point out, so click on the links and visit them!

In any event, as it was explained to me, I must now write in some detail about 5 odd/strange/unknown habits or aspects about me and then tag 5 others. Well, in my limited blogworld, the 5 others I'd like tag in kind have themselves already been tagged; I think I'll leave that portion unfulfilled (clearly going to BlogHell, I think).

So, heavy sigh, here goes:

1. I am very anal about organization, cleanliness and, in particular, my house. This has caused some, eh, shall we say, irregularities in some relationships. I have had a very strange job over the years, located in a number of places, which can be alternately peaceful or ridiculously stressful. I have historically had little if any control over what occurs at work and there have certainly been peaks and valleys.

My home is my cave. I like to go home and, following a particularly bad day or week, pull the rock over my hole and escape within. When my home makes sense, when things are in order, when there is one aspect of my life over which I have control and into which I can flee, then my "outside" or work world can go to Hell -- as it frequently does. As long as one portion of my life is rational and controllable, I can deal with Life and the trials it distributes.

2. I am a Railroad Buff. I "chase trains." I do not build model railroads or play with toy trains. I like the real thing. I live in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Fornicalia off Interstate 80 at the 4,000 foot level, right at the snow belt. Not more than 500 feet away are the main #1 and #2 tracks forged and laid by those who built the Central Pacific Railroad. This roadbed still rests on the original CP line hewed by literally thousands of Chinese workers with nothing more than picks, shovels, wheelbarrows, black powder, horses, oxen, blood and sweat.

The photograph above is that of me in the engineer's seat of a Burlington Northern Santa Fe SD40-2 locomotive, waiting for the east CTC signal at Switch 9 at Emigrant Gap -- kindly taken by the engineer himself who requests to remain nameless.

I have been in the cab of numerous Union Pacific and Southern Pacific locomotives -- pretty much a no-no for cab crew. Even worse, I have been given cab rides on another number of occasions by kindly cab crews -- an absolute trip when you watch an engineer at work handling a 6,000-foot, 10,000-ton train up and down the mountain. There are engineers and conductors I know by name who wave at me from their cabs -- knowing that I'll be using digital photo or digital video equipment and recording their passing. I have roughly 2,000 + 35mm and digital photographs of trains, some published, one used for the cover of a train video in VHS. I also have over 50 hours of mini-DV video from a Sony VX-2000.

This is how weird I've gotten: I can immediately tell the difference between a GE or EMD locomotive by its sound; I can differentiate between the airhorns of Amtrak locomotives and freight locomotives; I can tell, unseen, if a train is going uphill or downhill from some distance by listening for a locomotive set in dynamic braking.

As far as I'm concerned, there is nothing finer than anticipating a train, watching a set of armor yellow Union Pacific locomotives approach and listening to the thoaty diesel roar of a triple set of 4,000 HP engines passing, their traction motors howling, watching the sanders at work and smelling the heady diesel fumes pouring from the hot stack of each unit. Boys and girls, now that's livin'!

3. I used to be in radio a number of years ago, both in news and music. I once worked for a large 50,000 watt AM radio station where Rush Limbaugh cut his teeth. I've performed every job in radio, from on-air talent to ops director to news editor, programmer, production room control, promotions director to program director to station manager. As a result I am well schooled in music and have a vinyl record collection exceeding 4,000 classic, valuable and irreplaceable disks. I have a CD collection exceeding 2,000. I am a treasure trove of late 60's, 70's and early 80's rock, jazz, soundtracks and electronica.

4. I cribbed the name for my blog, Bloviating Zeppelin, from Hugh Hewitt's description of the loveable, cuddly Teddy Kennedy. At the time it was quite appropos as I weighed 320+ pounds. In the past year I've gone from 320 (ahem -- kinda around there) to 235. I've gone from a size 52 waist to -- ta-daa! -- a size 42 waist last week. I did it all on Atkins and 24 Hour Fitness. I feel better than I have in 15 years. I still Bloviate but I am not quite the Zeppelin I used to be.

5. I was once a registered Democrat. In college I had hair past my shoulders and a red beard that would make Dusty Hill blush.

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This is where the tag ends because, essentially, everyone else I would have tagged has already been subject to same.

And that's the name'a that tune. . .