WAHOO!!!

I feel so good this morning that I feel compelled to write a blog about it. In a past blog or two I have written about my bouts with Meniere's Disease, so if you have read those blogs or know me personally to any great degree, you are aware of the bane of my life: Meniere's Disease. It is an inner ear affliction, apparently caused by stress (they think), which cause tinnitus (a ringing sensation int the ears), dizziness, nausea and lethargy. When I am suffering from the symptoms, all I want to do is lay down and try to sleep. I first experienced the disease at about age thirty and had violent episodes as often as two weeks apart. The tinnitus, nausea and dizziness would increase in intensity until I would have what I would call an eruption--when the world we seem to spin and I would become so nauseated that I would begin the vomit. I would have to keep water and a garbage bag and lots of water beside my bed--as soon as I could get to a bed--to allow me to vomit and then replace my stomach fluids so that I could have something more to throw up. Otherwise it was Dry Heaves City until I passed out from exhaustion. It is not a pretty picture and it was not nice experience.

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, I suffered with Meniere's for several years until I was called by my stake president (an ecclesiastical leader in my faith) to serve in a bishopric. When I explained my reservations about being as dependable as I thought i might need to be due to my affliction, he offered to give me a special blessing when he set me apart for the new calling. I then went more than twenty years without any serious Meniere's symptoms. Then I moved to Utah, and the very day of my arrival I experienced a Meniere's flair-up. I had been hearing the ringing during my drive from Kansas and feeling the lethargy--I had been very tired and stressed by the move and the decision to take a new job and being separated for several months from my family--and when I finally got to the place I was to stay, the proverbial fountain burst and the room began to move on me. I buried my head in a pillow and went to sleep as soon as I could.

Since then (almost three years), I have had occasional flair-ups, but nothing of the lengthy demobilizing variety of my early thirties. My recent experience has been a few uncomfortable days at a time, maybe lasting a week, but rarely ending in the dreaded vomit fest. However, about three weeks ago, the ringing began and gradually got stronger. I took a week of my vacation time that I still had left, the week before Christmas and I was generally miserable, having ups and downs the entire time. The Sunday before last I had to leave the Christmas program at church as soon as my reading part was done, because I felt so badly and the sound in the chapel was so distorted that it was adding to my misery. I made it through the Christmas weekend and went back to work on Monday and was feeling pretty miserable all day--the ringing in my right ear was pretty intense. Just as i was heading to bed I became suddenly more nauseated and ran to the bathroom vomited a bit. I then went straight to bed at 7pm and slept until 5am. The extra rest was helpful initially--the ringing was less and I felt a bit better. I went to work, but by 2pm the ringing intensified and the dizziness began again. I was driving, on my way to Lehi to look at a job that would be starting soon, when it became obvious that i should go directly home before I became incapacitated and started vomiting on myself while trying to drive. I laid down most of the evening and watched my Jayhawks play. By the end of the game, I felt like a big one was coming--the room was beginning to move. So, I went to bed and tried to keep my head low and still until I fell asleep.

When I awoke this morning I was like a new man. At this moment I feel wonderful--no ringing, no dizziness, no nausea. I actually feel like doing something without forcing myself. It is a very liberating and joyful feeling. I realize, of course, that it may be just a respite, and that the symptoms may recure in time, but right now it feels good to feel good. I need to appreciate the blessing of good health. And, we need to experience the bad to appreciate the good. I feel good! WAHOO!!!

Merry Christmas 2009

The Mundy’s are sending you a little Christmas ‘cheer’ this year –

Wow! We’re almost through with this decade! Not much has changed this year for us - Randy is still doing safety management for 2 roofing companies. He has formed a blues band with 11 members (drums, guitar, bass guitar, trumpet, saxophone, 2 keyboards, background singers) and they have performed several times. They have recorded 2 CD’s that he has for sale. He is also offering downloads on “itunes” for all his songs over the years. He finished his sculpting class where he learned to make molds of the sculptures that he creates with oil-based clay so that he can produce multiple casts of the same sculpture out of various materials. He hopes to get sales of that going shortly. He is still having some health problems with his Meniere’s (inner ear) disease and a new one related to his kidneys, but hopefully he’ll be able to get that taken care of soon. Karen is trying to get a huge amount of temple work done for family names – more than 380 ordinances done so far- because she will hopefully begin a Master’s program with Southern Columbia University online in January to get her Master of Science in Organizational Leadership. Then there will probably be little time for anything else! She is still driving her sister, Connie, to work and back 5 days a week and helping her mother. She got new glasses and also now has contacts, but found out that she has slow-growing cataracts in one eye – isn’t that supposed to wait about 20 years until that starts!!??

Jesse is still waiting on tables in Topeka at several different restaurants and he has also done some roofing for his Uncle Danny. His girlfriend is still Amanda Nelson. Tyler is still installing wireless internet 3 days a week and going to school full-time at UVU in Graphic Arts on the other 2 days. (He did our Christmas picture again this year – YEA!) Heidi is still working as a police officer at the University of Utah and as an armed security officer at the Salt Lake City Zoo. She has started back to school for her Bachelor’s in Exercise Science. She has her own apartment now and lives about halfway between our house and the University. Ingrid and Jeff are still working in Colorado and are now the proud owners of a puppy named Ginger. Dylan graduated from high school and is working part-time at Kohl’s department store for the holidays. He’s been working out a lot with weights and is as big as a bull (or so he says!).

Our hearts have been full of the blessings that we have in our lives lately – we are truly enjoying the happiness of heaven! This month we focus on the gift of the life of our Savior Jesus Christ and all that He has done for us. We can never hope to express our full gratitude for the Atonement, but we do everything that we can to show our love and appreciation for it.

We hope all is well with you and yours, and that you have a peaceful, joyful, holiday season! Stop by when you’re in town! With much love,

Randy and Karen Mundy & family

Almost Tevye

It was close. I almost went to the audition. But, I didn't.

A week ago I saw in the paper that the Hale Theater people in Salt Lake were going to be doing Fiddler on the Roof in February and were going to be holding auditions on Saturday, December 5. This was the moment I had been waiting for. For many years I had thought that I wanted to do the Tevye part in a big, quality production of Fiddler on the Roof. I had done it in small church mini productions years ago when we lived in Nashville and had been very well received by the audiences. The role was actually perfect for me and I had been very comfortable doing it. I had long thought that if the opportunity came again, I would surely try to audition. When we moved to the Salt Lake area almost three years ago, I realised that there would be plenty of opportunities to do live theater, if I wanted to. so I decided I would keep my eyes open and maybe try out for some smaller roles in other plays or musicals to see if I still had any acting chops and bide my time for an opportunity to put on the prayer shawl. I took a small part in a local community production of Sound of Music a couple of years ago to see if I had enjoyment for the stage left in me. It was Okay--I didn't embarrass myself too much. Then last year I took a big role in Smokey Joe's Cafe and thoroughly enjoyed it. The audience was very responsive to my performance. I thought "Yeh, I can do this." I would maybe go for it when the time came. Since then I have been working really hard at finishing up my two Blues CDs and getting by Blues Band, The Mundy Mourning Blues Band, ready to play out. Those things have been accomplished, so when I saw that Hale was doing Fiddler, I got excited. I wasn't sure I wanted to commit though to such a big production. I searched around and found music to take to the audition and I had some 8X10s made up, and put together a new acting bio. I even started singing If I were a Rich Man and trying to recite some of Tevye's dialog from the show to slap my Russian accent into shape. I even emailed a friend of mine who has appeared in a recent Hale production to ask about pay. I really wanted to do it, but then i went to their website to see what the dates for rehearsals and performances would be and I decided that the time commitment would be too great for me at this time. With sadness I elected to not attend the audition. Maybe it won't be my last opportunity. I hope not. It could have been great. I might have been a sensation. I would hate that the theater-goers in the Salt Lake City area would never get to see me do the Tevye stomp.

Global Warming Unraveling? YES!!!

I have to take a moment to gloat and say "I told you so" to all those people out there who had fallen for the "Man-Made Global Warming" scam. As many of us, who pay attention and seek information outside of the "mainstream media", Hollywood's guardians of the Earth, and public school systems, have learned during the past week or so, thousands of emails have been revealed that show the great lengths that the politically driven "scientists", pseudo scientists (Al Gore), evil corporations out to skin the public (Enron, general Electric, Al Gore, ...), Political stooges and patsies who don't want to be left out or are easily fooled (most everyone in the Democrat Party (Al Gore)and brain-dead Republicans like Schwarzenegger, McCain, ...) and evil leftist ideologues who want to make our economy equal with those of everybody else (The Obama administration and Al Gore) have gone to, to hide the truth from the gullible general public. The truth being: There is no Global Warming, not to mention Man-Made Global Warming. Granted, they tried to change the terminology from "Global Warming" to "Global Climate Change" because a general non-scientific observer could see that it was clearly not getting hotter everywhere, that in some recent years we got more snow and more rain and fewer hurricanes etc. Changing the name of the thing was an attempt at mollifying those who wanted to believe that America's lifestyle was bad for something, somehow, but was having a hard time arguing with people who just couldn't find any evidence of the world actually getting any hotter, when it seemed to them that it was getting cooler. That was a big give away to many of us global warming skeptics. You weren't supposed to really think about it. People like me were saying, "Doesn't the weather change all of the time? How do you prove that carbon emissions make the weather change?" Some of us remember that there were scientists in the 70s who claimed that human activity was bringing on an ice age, that temperatures were getting cooler and that one way of bringing temperatures in check would be to cover the poles with soot. Brilliant!

Well, in recent years, the answer has always been: "Most of the scientific community agrees that man's activities are causing the earth to get hotter, and if you disagree or question, you are a Holocaust denier or you think that the world is flat". If you were a scientist who disbelieved, you were called a heretic and ran the risk of being hounded from your job, and not allowed to publish in peer reviews. It reminded me a bit of the Spanish Inquisition. The truth is that there was never a general consensus among "most" scientists and the "verdict" was clearly not in. The newly-revealed emails from climatologists and others from around the world with vested interest in the climate hoax continuing, show that they were desperate to keep the public ignorant of the true facts and were willing to destroy evidence that did not support their beliefs.

If anything, the Earth is now going through a cooling period. I would suspect that this has something to do with the absence of sun spot activity in recent years. I remember being taught as a child in school that the sun, since it provided almost all of our surface heat, was primarily responsible for our weather, that sun spot activity seemed to influence some of the fluctuations in our weather. I was clearly not a scientist at the time, but that made a lot of sense to me then, and it does today, though I am still not a scientist. I also remember being taught that we had a rather lengthy cold snap called the Ice Age. Was there significant human activity during the thousands of years since that caused that long warming trend? Also, I remember hearing and reading that NASA scientists reported increases in the temperatures on some of our neighboring planets during the past few years. If this is so, then I want to know who caused it. Surely man-made global warming hasn't spread to Venus and Mars. If these other planets are also getting a bit warmer, it would make sense to me that Old Sol has something to do with it there as well as here, and not our evil oil consumption. The emails reveal that there was a lot of bullying and coercion employed to keep mouths shut about the "tricks" being used to keep the public in the dark. They show that the hoaxters were desperate to keep actual measurements and facts out of the hands of anyone who might use such information against them. And, the rush was on to get the United States on board with the treaties that would tie us up and make us weaker and less competitive in the global market place.

So what happens now that the proverbial cat is out of the bag? My guess is that the hard core believers and those with huge financial investment in the cap and trade scheme will try to say that black is white and up is down. The news media in bed with the Obama administration, will drag their feet in reporting. The politicians on the left will try to say we still need to do what we can to reduce carbon emissions, because it will still be good for the environment, even if we are not making the Earth into an oven.

It will depend on reasonable Americans standing up and paying attention, educating themselves, recognizing the hoax, demanding that these economy killing schemes be put to death and the individuals who have knowingly perpetrated this great hoax be brought up on charges and punished for their crimes.

Is it getting hot in here, or is it just me?

BLUE MUNDY (Parts 1 and 2)

Well, my BLUE MUNDY CD project is finally done. Mitch Vice and I mastered "Part 2" last night and I should get it burnt and packaged in time for our three-night show Nov. 19,20,21 in Lehi, Utah, this weekend at the Lehi City Arts Theater. I am glad to have it done. I have been working on it for the best part of four years, starting back in Kansas, before moving here to Utah. Now I can concentrate on other things untill Christmas, like a safety audit coming up for my work, shopping for Christmas gifts, and trying to book the band in some new venues along the Wasatch Front. The band is sounding pretty good. As can be seen from the poster above, we are an eleven-member group and rehearsal logistics have been problematic at best. We very rarely have been able to rehearse all together, We were able to play last moth for the Utah Festival of Arts with the full band but the background singers had not been able to rehearse with us for about six weeks prior. Even though is was fun and we sounded pretty good. This time around we will be missing one of the girl singers all three nights and one of the girl singers on one of the nights. But we will soldier on. The show must go on, unless of course it can't.

Free Masonry

It has been a few weeks now since I tackled the brick mailbox project, but I thought I would mention it when I had an opportunity. When I moved into our house two and a half years ago, I discovered a stack of bricks in the garage. The bricks looked very much like the bricks used on the house, so I thought that they were probably left over from the construction some ten years earlier. Eventually I moved the bricks outside and thought I might try to build something with them, if I had the time and could discover the energy. I think it may have been a year ago or so that it dawned on me—it actually may have been a dawning on my wife Karen and she reproduced the dawn’s light on me—that the bricks had been there because the previous owners of the house had planned to build a brick mailbox. Actually, it should have been obvious to me long ago. Probably a third of the homes in our neighborhood have brick mailboxes that match the bricks of the houses.

The idea of having a brick mailbox was an appealing one—they look cool. They are especially cool-looking when they are built by actual masons. Our neighbors down the street have a cool-looking brick mailbox built by the lady's mason father. However, masons like to be paid for their skilled work and after asking what the lady thought her dad would charge to build a brick mailbox for us, with the materials supplied by us, we determined that we would need to resort to "Free Masonry", or Do-ityourself-masonry. But, the more I thought about it, the less I liked the idea of having to build it.

Now, I am a relatively handy guy. I have worked in the construction industry my whole life. I even had my own roofing and home improvement business for many years. But, though I am a skilled roofer, a good carpenter, a fair drywall finisher and finish carpenter, and passable plumber, I stink on ice when it comes to masonry, for some reason. I also choose not to do electrical if I can help it—it seems like magic to me. As I say, I am pretty good with my hands, but the fine art of masonry has eluded me through the years.

I think part of my problem has been that literally all of my attempts at laying brick have come in the shape of repairs to crumbling brick walls. Early in our marriage I backed a moving van—at night, if that some how makes me look less unintelligent—into the corner of my in-laws’ home in La Mesa, California. This afforded me my first opportunity of making masonry repairs. The result was Okay, if you did not look directly at the spot too closely. My father-in-law was very magnanimous. He said it looked fine.

The next chance I had to improve my masonry skills came many years later at our home in Nashville, Tennessee. We had a short brick wall that contained a flower bed that ran along the length of our 32-foot in-ground swimming pool. The last ten feet of the wall had come apart. The property had sat empty for a couple of years or so and I had had to make major repairs to make the house itself livable. After we moved in, I tackled the yard, pool, fences, gazebo and, finally the little brick wall. I had pretty good success and satisfaction with everything but the brick wall. Again, if you did not look directly at it, it was fine. It also helped if you had vegetation hanging down over the edge a bit.

I think the next attempt was at our home in Topeka, Kansas. Again, we had a brick wall—this time, about four feet high that was falling apart. It was at the end of our house and was actually a big planter attached to the brick veneer that covered the lower half of the front of the house. The inside of the planter was made of cinder block and the outside was made of long narrow specialized brick that, of course, I could not find anywhere. Big sections were breaking loose where the bricks were broken in half. I either had to tear it out, or try to piece it back together. As I said, I could not find that type of brick anywhere, so I felt, to my great displeasure, that I had to try and piece it back together. It was a bear, as they say. Somehow, I was able to get the little and big (and very heavy) sections back in a semblance of a masonry wall. Of course, it had a slight—I am being gracious to myself here—bulge, and there were few—actually quite a few—places where the joints between bricks were in line with joints between broken bricks. The original color of the bricks were a pink, salmon, color, which we thought was pretty ugly, so we had decided to paint the upper wood siding of the house a light blue and all of the brick a dark blue. This made the house look much nicer and helped hide the flaws in the brick work. Again, if you did not look directly at the planter wall, or too closely at it, it looked fine.

So, having had little success, in my mind, with masonry, I was not eager to do it again. But, Karen would bring up the idea of the “brick mailbox” every now and then and she would find plans on the internet. I would groan. Finally, I conceded, warning Karen that I was not a mason and the outcome would likely not be pretty. The mailbox would be by itself with nothing else around it to take your eye off of it. You had to look at it directly to put mail in it or take mail out of it. I did not relish the thought of the mail deliverer snickering or feeling sorry for us six times a week. But I picked a Saturday to get started, but then changed to a day earlier, because rain was expected that day. With Karen by my side, we started laying brick the night before and got a few courses laid. The next day we got everything done (with almost no bickering or dissention in the ranks) except the cap. The cap had to be ordered and would not be available for a couple more days. There had been some debate about using the old mailbox or getting a new, bigger, one. After the mail lady, who came by while we were working on the project voiced her opinion that we should definitely get a bigger one—it would make her life more bearable—we opted for a new box.



I was actually pretty surprised at how good the thing looked. I told my son, Dylan, to come out and see his parent’s handiwork. He came out, admired it, said, “Cool!”, and then proceeded to grasp the top brick and tugged at it to see how sturdy it was. Of course, the mortar had not really set yet, so the few bricks pulled away. We were both astonished and speechless. At least I was for about a second. I said, “What were you thinking?” Dylan was mortified, or perhaps “mortarfied”, and I was thinking, “No, no, no! I don’t want to have to do masonry repairs again this soon!” But, I made the repairs and covered the project with a tarp to keep the rain off of it while it dried and hoped that it would be strong enough when we eventually put the cap on.

When the cap was ready, I went to pick it up and discovered that a 24” by 24” cap is extremely heavy. Since, the structure was close to five feet high, it was going to be awkward, at best, to lift the cap in place and get it centered, with about an inch to grasp it on the four sides. I was not able to lift it alone and felt like I needed several people lifting it together to get in place without having to move it around after the fact. A couple of days later, Dylan made up for tearing the top course of bricks off by bringing two of his friends over and helping me lift the cap out of the back of my track and laying it in place on the top of our new brick mailbox.



The result was really pretty good. Our new brick mailbox looks great, except on the back lower corner where the half-bricks are laid on top of each other (for the soldier row at that level) and do not quite come out far enough to be flush with horizontal courses above and below. But, if you do not look directly at the spot and stand back…

Just like the sprinkler system we installed earlier in the summer and the section of vinyl fence we installed the summer before, I could do it even better now, if I had to, but I hope

Elvis is Back in the Building!

Well, my music career is going again, with new live performances and new recorded product.
Randy Mundy & The Mundy Mourning Blues Band had its 1st official gig Saturday night (10/10/09). We were the last act to perform at the Utah Local Festival of Arts held at the Masonic Temple in down town Salt Lake. We had to start almost an hour and a half late because the other acts kept getting pushed further and further back in the schedule. This was the inaugural year for this event, so the crowd was sparse, and even more so by the time we got on stage. Even so, we w3ere a big hit with those in attendance and the folks in charge of the event. They told me they were pleasantly surprised by the quality of our performance and found it hard to believe that it was in essence our maiden voyage as a band. They said that they hoped that we would agree to repeat next year and that they would create the evening around us making sure that we would have the optimum slot and venue.

It was great fun. I was excited to have the whole group there for the performance. The band included: Bob Bailey and Steve Coltrin on keyboards; Bob Bonham on lead guitar; Eric Manning on Bass; Glen Meigs on drums; Berin Stephens on Saxophones; Jim Breardon on trumpet; and Dave Wayt, Cassie Wayt and Lacey Jackson on background and harmony vocals. I think everyone is fired up and eager to play again soon. Our next official dates are the last two weekends in November for the Lehi Arts Council, but I’ve talked to some other people about other possible dates.

I also finished up and released my 6th CD of my original music. This one is entitled BLUE MUNDY (Part 1) and includes 12 of the songs I have been working on for the last four or five years for a Blues album. It is, as the title suggests, the first installment of blues CDs. It has been a long time coming, but I feel like the work put into it has been worth it. “Part 2” will, I hope make its appearance within a month or so.

I also have a new website up and partially running after a half dozen years. I let my old one, mundymundy.com, die because I hadn’t been active with promoting my music and art, but I decided to revive the site quite awhile ago and have been rethinking how it should be and what it might promote. With the new direction of my music and a renewed interest in doing something with my sculptures, I have started a new site called randymundy.com to promote both of my interests. I guess we’ll see how it goes.