Topping Her Dad at Something

I was greeted at the door by my youngest granddaughter.

"Hi Papa. Merry Christmas and welcome," she said. 

It was not her normal greeting. She was excited because Christmas Eve is when her father's family gathers at her home to exchange Christmas gifts. I was there for the food and the cookies, and to see the grandkids before they got started.

The cousins had not yet arrived. Her mom and dad were getting things ready for the evening. She was all mine to talk to and play with for a while.

A Surprise at Breakfast

It is not unusual for me to gather my family for a weekend breakfast. This particular day was a Sunday at Bar Bistro.

I started out with my usual Bloody Meal, which is a Bloody Mary topped with toast, a hard-boiled egg, a couple slices of bacon, and some other goodies skewered on a couple of toothpicks so they don’t get into the drink. Elliana and Gemma like to take those things apart to munch on until our breakfasts arrive.

The Love of Doja

I heard a quotation that everyone believes that they have the best dog in the world, and none of them are wrong. 

I don't personally have a dog right now, but I do have five grandpuppies that I love for the love they give me. 

The oldest is Sophie. I went in halves on her with my ex-wife as a Christmas gift for Elliana in 2011. Sophie is a Yorkie mix who loves us all but would bark at us if we dared to hug HER Elliana! 

Though Sophie was Elliana's dog, she has lived her life with Elliana's grandmother. She is old now, and I rarely see her. I was teased when Laura and I bought her that I just paid half for my ex-wife's dog. That is essentially what happened.

Three Songs About Ex-Girlfriends

Music expresses moods. Whether we are happy or glad, or angry or sad, there are songs for every mood.

Love is one of the most common themes in music, and many sub-themes can be derived from within that. From first kisses to mourning soulmates, the spectrum of love is covered. Of course, part of the spectrum of love are lost loves. 

Even within this sliver of the slice of music that are love songs, we can find different moods. That is the case with these three songs about ex-girlfriends. One of the songs is about reflecting on what might have gone differently, but didn't. One of the songs is about an ex-girlfriend for whom some bitterness seems to be mixed with a bit of lingering desire. 

Before we get to those, here is a song to an ex-girlfriend that is about being bitter and spiteful, and holding a grudge.

Three Songs About Ex-Boyfriends

Heartbreak comes in many flavors, and so do the songs about the people who cause broken hearts. The three songs I've selected for this post are different in the ways the singers reflect on their ex-boyfriends.

One of the songs is deeply reflective, and just a bit bitter, about love that was not taken as seriously as it was given. One is a lady straight up telling her ex-boyfriend that he messed up and is going to be missing out.

We're going to start out with a song in which the lady is going to make it known that she knows what he is doing, she is done with him, and she is really pissed off, too!

Candace, Me, and Glass Spider Tour

Each child is unique. That, certainly, is not breaking news for anybody who has known two or more children.

Candace’s uniqueness showed up in several ways. She was beautiful beyond belief, and I don’t say that just because she is beautiful to me. People would often comment how she reminded them of the Gerber baby or Shirley Temple. Her mother entered her picture in a beautiful baby contest at the local mall, and she won. She was simply stunning!

She also learned to speak at a very young age. Adults were able to have conversations with her at two years old beyond the typical two year old conversations. She could speak in coherent, complete sentences at that age. I remember the time she brought me the phone. The person on the other end told me how darling my child was and asked her age. When I told him she was two, he said he meant the one who answered the phone. I told him she is my only child, and that she is two. His comment was "I cannot believe I just had an intelligent conversation with a two year old!"

The Family Finale

This was originally published on May 14, 2020.

* * * * *

One of the things that Dad was most proud of showing off to people was how quickly he could muster the family to gather. He has been dead now for nearly twenty-eight years, and so has the family unity that died with him. It didn't have to die, but it did.

I think the erosion of the family was mostly due to regret. I cannot get into the heads of people, but I can listen to what they say and observe what they do to figure out if they are being honest. If they say one thing, and then do another thing, they aren't being honest. It isn't rocket science; it's human behavior. Actions generally reveal more about people's motives than do words.

Remembering Dad: His Newsletter Obituary

December 1992 
Issue 237 

WAYNE C. KOECKE 
1932-1992

With much of his family and several friends at his side, Wayne Koecke died at his home on December 16th. His vigil for life, and battle against cancer, ended on a snowy evening in a room by a window that several of his grandkids had built a snowman just outside of in hopes of raising his spirits just one more time. Somehow, we think it did. 

Remembering Dad: Thirty Years Ago Tonight

This was originally written on December 16, 2022.

* * * * * 

It was a snowy Wednesday evening when Dad took his last breath thirty years ago tonight. Though it was the most significant loss I had suffered in my first thirty-four years, my initial feeling was relief. We had pulled off Dad's wishes despite it being a harrowing six weeks since he suffered the stroke that really was the lung cancer metastasizing in his brain. He wanted to die at home, and he did.

It was my night to stay with him and my brother's night off. Our godfather, Loren, and godbrother, Tim, also rotated staying with us. There is no way that we could have pulled it off without them, and neither of them ever complained about the help he needed. After all, he was their loved one, also. 

Saving CUPS Part 3: Slaying the Dragon

There were many changes in the first part of 1988. The regulatory agency had a new Supervisor. John had been Betty's attorney assigned to her as counsel in the pursuit of the accounting problem. Obviously, I was not privy to their discussions on how to attack the problem created by the managers whose plan to correct a problem with GAAP would serve as a textbook example for the rule. However, John was much more vicious than Betty was. 

He went after the jobs of these four managers. His tactic was to attend a board meeting and have the manager excused. He would then present his case for dismissing the manager to the board. In the case of Jim Whyte, one of the founding fathers of the local credit union movement, he was called back in to learn he was being fired.

Saving CUPS Part 2: Explaining Contra Accounts to CPA's

One of the most difficult aspects of consulting is that people often don't want advice; they want advocacy. Certainly, consultants can never ethically accept jobs that require advocacy over sound operation. That is the function of marketing departments.

The state had imposed an accounting principle known as "lower of cost or market" (LOCOM) because of the nature of the problem the credit unions had created. Though Bert would have preferred me to figure out a way that LOCOM accounting was unreasonable, he accepted the fact that there was nothing we could do about it. 

Saving CUPS Part 1: Trapping the Moles

In a matter of two months, I left Telco Credit Union to open up a consulting business, and then closed the consulting business because Credit Union of Puget Sound (CUPS) was using me full time. I was settled into my new position as Administrative Assistant to Bert Noel when he called me into his office. 

He put a memo from the state examiners in front of me and asked me if I had ever heard of a minor infraction cited in detail. It was some really minor error in the way the credit union accounted for something. I had not ever seen such a write up before, but I also had to admit that I wasn't an accountant. I asked him what Chet or Kenny had said about it. He hadn't talked to them. He had just received the memo from the state examiner who was posted in the accounting department since the credit union had been put on the watch list for an investment and accounting problem.

Pondering Death and Its Options

Intellectually, I know that I will eventually die. However, there is this little part of me that wonders if I might be that special someone who somehow defies death. If you will excuse the source if it bothers you, Woody Allen said it best: "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality through not dying." It is natural to feel that way because of our basic instinct for survival, but it is also intellectually dishonest to hold onto the thought for anything other than fantasy.

While we hold onto those thoughts in one part of our minds, another part of us wants to be adventurous and to live life to the fullest. James Dean's self-fulfilling quote, "Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse," takes the idea to the opposite end of the spectrum of life and death from immortality. While most of us don't go anywhere near that far in our pursuit of adventure, we tend to tie the will to live to having a life worth living.

I Met a Man Named John (Newsletter published January 1999)

I have been going through boxes and stored items so that I can get rid of things that I've saved over the years that I will never need. One of the benefits of doing this is that I am also finding things that I've saved because I wanted to keep them, like old Newsletter publications in which I wrote articles about things other than industry topics and our company's services. 

Several of the articles had to do with my life as a single, custodial father of two daughters. This particular article got more positive comments when I wrote it than any other article I wrote for the Newsletter. With that introduction, here is "I Met a Man Named John," which is most likely slightly edited because I don't have to make it fit and also because I'm anal like that. 

(The thing that seems most funny in rewriting this article is that I am now about the age of the "elderly, well-dressed Black man." As I look back on things, I seem to have learned a lesson from my encounter with the man who had the riches that money cannot buy.)

Fuel Filter Fun

Kathy and Richard lived in many different places while Richard was in the military. Of course, that meant their children also moved around a lot.

Richard got stationed in North Carolina the year Tony turned eighteen. He decided to stay here in Washington rather than relocate back east with his family. Kathy and Richard gave him their 1987 Chevy Celebrity to help him with his independence, and he took a job in the family business to earn his own way.