GreenEye Wire

One of my friends sent me this commercial on YouTube…funny commercial, but I want the music! Anyone know who sings this?

I have been asked over and over again by my friends in Russell how it came to be that Hans, the German foreign exchange to Russell High School in 1987, came to visit me in Dallas just last month. Everyone assumed that somehow we were great friends when we both went to high school together and we just kept in touch.

That couldn’t be further (farther?) from the truth.

In high school, I think I said maybe 5 words total to Hans the entire year he was there. The truth is, he scared the crap out of me because he was a Senior and I was a lowly Freshman. (Interestingly enough, I learned later that he was actually a Sophmore in age, but as a foreign exchange student he was put in with the Seniors — even after he ‘graduated’ from Russell High, he still had to go back and finish 2 more years of school in Germany.) Then, there was the fact that I was painfully shy and really didn’t talk to anyone, so I really didn’t get to know Hans at all. We had one class together, Band, and I sat in the front row ‘Frigid’ flute section and he was back in the back with all the Boneheads in the Trombone section. And, he was dating Katrina H. who was a cheerleader and absolutely drop dead beautiful. Anyone who saw Katrina was pretty much blind to the rest of us.

So, when I saw he was a friend of my friend Ang Skogen on Facebook, I figured he might not remember me if I added him as a friend. So, I wrote him this little note. This was about November 2008.

Hi Hans,
You may not remember me, but I went to Russell High School with you when you were a foreign exchange student in Russell, KS. I was a freshman when you were a senior.
-Heather Reisig

I figured he probably wouldn’t remember me, or if he did, maybe he’d only have heard of me. I didn’t expect to hear back from him. In fact, at the time, I forget that we both had a class together.

A few days later, I got this note from him:

Hey Heather,
sorry for answering your message so late. Hope life has been good to you! And of course I remember you. Even though I remember you as a rather quiet person, but maybe i´m wrong about that. ….didn´t you play flute in band?
…

I laughed when he said the part about ‘being a quiet person.’ He sure had me pegged. We started emailing and chatting back and forth, and when he said he was coming to the States in February to celebrate his host parents 50th wedding anniversary, I told him that if he ever wanted to see Dallas to let me know. I didn’t think he’d take me up on it, but he did.

And that’s how Hans met Heather.

Oddly enough, it surprised me that we got along so well, as we are complete opposites in almost every way. For example, when it comes to people, he prefers to socialize with them and talk, while I’d prefer just to sit on the sidelines and watch them and will do most anything NOT to talk to them. He loves playing or singing music, and plays various brass instruments, the recorder and the oboe. I usually prefer silence or maybe a music soundtrack without words. I’d bring a laptop with me on a trip, he’d bring the oboe to practice. He likes beer, I like wine. I’m a computer geek, he’s absolutely not. And on and on. And yet, somehow, we get along famously. I know I shall value his friendship for a long time.

Broadcasting legend Paul Harvey died today, at age 90, in a Phoenix hospital. — Time.com

The first time I saw his picture was today when I read his obituary. I thought about putting his picture on this post, but somehow, no picture could do his voice justice.

As a young child, I would either ride with my dad in the tractor while he was working, or, later on, we would work the fields together. And we always listened to Paul Harvey speak about this or that. His voice was unmistakable. It was soothing and fascinating at the same time.

Paul Harvey. The name makes me think of sitting in the shade of the pickup while eating sandwiches or crunching on apples in the field with my Dad; the smell of diesel and dust in the air and the ubiquitous Kansas wind dancing through the prairie grass and the sound of pump jacks ‘pop pop popping’ in distant fields.

I loved his ‘rest of the stories’. I remember that my Dad and I hanging on his every word. Even if you didn’t agree with everything he said, you couldn’t help it: his voice was that mesmerizing.

I remember one story he told involving a 5′ 5″ 135 pound woman who lifted a car off of her child when it backed over him. She pulled every muscle in her body, but was otherwise healthy.

The rest of the story?

Four months later, she gave birth to a healthy baby.

And there were so many more. It was the closest thing, I suppose, to the radio shows of old. And usually at the end of the ‘Rest of the Story’, we’d have a good chuckle. We’d put our empty sandwich bags back into the lunch box and toss our apple cores into the ditch for the coyotes. And we’d start the day again.

Paul Harvey always ended his radio show with

Paul Harvey *Pause* Good Day!

So I say: Paul Harvey — Goodbye.

Here ya go Hans. I’ve included the lyrics so you can sing along. If you practice, you might be able to sing this song to that particular woman who did you wrong. By the way, you don’t two-step to this song — it’s a waltz.

You say you were wrong to ever leave me alone
Now you’re sorry, you’re lonesome and scared
And you say you’d be happy if you could just come back home
Well here’s a quarter, call someone who cares

Call someone who’ll listen and might give a damn
Maybe one of your sorted affairs
But don’t you come ’round here handin’ me none of your lines
Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares

I thought what we had could never turn bad
So your leavin’ caught me unaware
But the fact is you’ve run, girl that can’t be undone
So here’s a quarter, call someone who cares

Call someone who’ll listen and might give a damn
Maybe one of your sorted affairs
But don’t you come ’round here handin’ me none of your lines
Here’s a quarter, call someone who cares

Yeah here’s a quarter, call someone who cares

Let me start this post by saying that I’m in a real peachy mood and I am going to curse gratuitously.  You have been warned.

Here I am all excited to post about my friend Hans coming to visit me this last month and then I try to work with my images and I can’t find any of them.  Well, it turns out that if you use Shoebox as your photo organizer AND you try to  move photos outside of the program — that is you move them in the Mac OS, you will screw everything up and you can’t find anything.  Oh, the photos are there, but they are scattered all over hell and back.

OK..so I looked at the help files.  The help files in Shoebox say that if you do happen to move the photos using the operating system instead of through the program, you can fix things simply by “Importing the new file into Shoebox.”

Well, that short of works.  Except that the new “top” file is called “Imported”… and it fucks up the old file system you so neatly set up.

So instead of your files being by date  — Say February 23, 2009 — like this:

2009 > 02 > 23

You have

Imported > 2009 >02 >23

And your “2009 > 02 > 23″  file is full of broken images.  This doesn’t really help matters.  Add to the fact that Shoebox express won’t import more than 1,000 images is just the cherry on top of the shit sundae.

So I upgraded to Shoebox Pro and was told in my nice paypal screen that all I need to do is start up Shoebox and my program will auto register and download the new program.  That didn’t happen, so I tried to download the “Pro” program manually but was told to buy the program again.

All of this has given me a headache.  Thankfully, Hans was kind enough to leave me some German chocolates and beer which I will eat/ drink to sooth my nerves.  I’ll try to tackle this tomorrow.