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  • jasia52
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    psych nurse
    I work as a psychiatric nurse with geriatric patients in a Virginia community hospital. I've been in psych nursing since 1986, and the Dead's music has been a stress-reducing antidote to the intense emotional and physical interactions I've had with suffering people over the years. But I like my "day job" ... it's helped some patients and is a way for me to "give back" something to a part of our society that is broken and neglected. Jay
  • mkav
    Joined:
    looking for the next thing...ideas?
    I'm currently out of work...nearly 30 years in retail corp mgt for large regional and national chains...ascending leadership roles in supply chain management, merchandising and analysis. sometimes boring but usually not. always new problems; always challenging. I read someone in this posting refer to their job as a "white collar sweat shop"... I can relate as sometimes I've felt that way but always tried to prevent that or at least refrain from perpetuating that mind-set. One always need to manage people as you'd like to be managed. As I've progressed through my career, there are 4 specific quotes from the Dead that seem to repeatedly resonate... "If you plant ice, you're gonna harvest wind." (life, not just career for this one, for sure) "...want the cup but you're chicken to race" "don't waste your breath to save your face when you have done your best: when even more is asked of you, fate will decide the rest". "Work hard in the daytime, sure get stoned at night". (for the record, "stoned" is more metaphorical than literal... stoned = playing golf, coaching my sons' baseball teams; skiing; enjoying the company of my bride of 29 years all get me stoned these days). Anyway, if anyone has a great idea how to combine my passion for Dead, baseball, golf, skiing, with my 3 successful decades of retail leadership, for a kind, or at least similarly-minded, organization, feel free to comment to this post. Thanks
  • amellowd
    Joined:
    Road Ecology
    Taking a break right now! Wildlife research and monitoring for a project that is going to construct wildlife crossing structures across I-90 in the Washington Cascades. A nice mix of office and field work.
  • AoxoA
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    ...in the strangest of places if you look at it right
    I am a public school principal. My love, nay, adoration, of what the Dead experience gave to me is a full fledged part of my daily interactions with kids, parents, teachers and fellow administrators. I enjoy the ride, never take myself too seriously, look for the best in the worst, make light out iof dark and try to be a prankster whwnever I can. Kids are usually a bit freaked out by my genuine joy that I try to bring every day and they always get a chuckle when they come to my office and I have my i-tunes playing in the background. I love the opportunty to show kids that open mindedness is important and that every body brings a little something to the party and that, my friends, is what makes the gig so much fun!!! Whenever kids ask me to signe their yearbooks I always write the same thing, a quote from Hunter Thompson: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro!" Have a wonderful day!
  • goddessj
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    It's great to see you too!
    I had no idea I'd run into you here--but no real surprise I guess, being dead.net and all... I'm still in Idyllwild, not too far from you. I did a just over a year at the newspaper in Palm Springs, then landed this gig which allows me to telecommute--sure beats all that driving and heat! Did you make the Rat Dog show on 6/28? at Fantasy Springs Casino near Palm Springs?
  • izzie
    Joined:
    Cool stuff!
    goddessj - whoa! I had to check your bio to see if you were who I hoped you were. HI!!! lovely to read from you! and chris - how incredibly cool for you. where is your film school?? I'm working from home this week - this living in San Diego and southwestern Colorado at the same time is pretty taxing stuff, but man, I love it. I'm still doing environmental management for the US Navy, which often looks like interpreting environmental policy and regulations.
  • pkpotter
    Joined:
    Great things people are doing!
    Most definetly enough talent and spirit and most importantly soul in the people here on this site to lead the planet. What a great group.I am very lucky as i get to make art pottery every day. I am a potter at an arts and craft studio and have been able to make pots since i was 13, 36 years ago. Proud of you all.pk
  • marye
    Joined:
    hey goddess!
    Welcome! make yourself at home...
  • goddessj
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    Joined:
    Blissin'
    Izzie and Marve--how totally kewl to find you and so many others here... I've been flying under the radar for the last couple of years, and when the old site went down, I was off doing other things. I'm a writer and photographer, most recently for a very small company called BlissLights.
  • garyblanchard
    Joined:
    Licensed Counselor
    I am a licensed counselor specializing in addiction treatment. I have my own approach that is affirming and positive-focused. My love of the Grateful Dead raises some eyebrows among my peers at times, but it is all about the love and the music for me. Gary Blanchard http://www.GBandFriends.com
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17 years 7 months
What is it that you do, anyway?
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17 years 2 months
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I've taken the Grateful Dead quiz thats on his songfinder link. Sometimes it's not as easy as it sounds. Kinda knocked me down a few pegs, but it is fun to play.
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17 years 3 months
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Been down so many roads. . . Papermills. Roughnecking in the offshore oilpatch (got the dislocated hip to show for it). Sold textbooks in Mississippi, Arkansas and Oklahoma. Real Estate appraiser. For the past 13 years I've been an Environmental Codes Enforcement Officer for the largest city in a small southern state. The last 7-8 years I've supervised around 7 officers. Our job is NOT to shed light, but to tell people to clean up their nasty yards - repair or remove that clunker rusting in your front yard - pick up that dumpsite you've created. . . All that and so much more! Keeps the neighborhoods from becoming so rundown. Actually helps keep the crime down. Try as they might, they can't MAKE me wear a badge. A well chosen word gets better results than a shiny piece of tin. Enough ramble. Time to go to what keeps me sane(?) - writing lyrics and torturing my guitar. . . Peace
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16 years 10 months
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I work in a lovely office during the day punching a keyboard. (which is where I am right now lol) they pay so little attention to me here , its quite hilarious really. There was one day where i did 2 hours of actual work in a 8 hour period. I swear i'm living the script from Office Space . Aside from that i'm also the editor, writer and photographer for Cincy Groove Magazine ( http://www.cincygroove.com ). I just started it not too long ago and plan on making it my day job by the end of the year. I have been shooting concert photos for 10 years and have ben a website designer for 6 years so starting the music magazine website seemed like the next logical step. I would love it if people would go check it out and let me know what you think http://www.cincygroove.com Scott
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16 years 10 months
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I'm a copier in a family printing press accually more fun then it sounds and i live 10 feet from my job :), Rina
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17 years 2 months
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I'm hooked on the written word, so a printing press sounds cool to me + you get to walk to work. Right on Enjoy the site. PEACE
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16 years 11 months
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It only has to last until the end of the summer. I work in an enormous natural foods store and I hate it. It's really because of the shitty pay. I managed a natural foods store in VT for years but now that I'm down south I took a huge salary cut. Just less than 50% to be exact. Mary is a vet tech and she loves her job. I'll quit working at the begining of August so that I can have a month and a half to chill out before I start school. There is light at the end of the tunnel!
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16 years 10 months
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i have the greatest job. i am now an assistant store manager of a paint store. something completely new for me. i have been cooking on many levels for almost 25years now and have also made a nice living making dresses, body piercing, hair wraps and jewerly and a line of kids tye dyes and batiks that we sold locally on the boardwalks and at shows. withthe times a changin' i had to sit back and figure out what i am good at. i am a bit of a hustler thanks to many years of tour and tourist and i know color!!! so i b/s my way into to a paint position and in a short time was made in store manager. i credit my years of craftful creativity and still jam out at the store. i would never be where i am today if not for the grateful dead!!and so many pro painters are dead heads!
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17 years 6 months
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Cool story of your evolution hipmoma. Welcome to the site. Good chance someone from your area will respond to your posts. I have had a few local responses, took a while.Watch those fumes. If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. William Blake
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16 years 10 months
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thanks hal!! i hope to meet some new folks. where are you from?we joke around the paint store that fumes are a fringe benefit of the business haha. truthfully though the gov has put a limit on voc regulations so there is very little stinky paint around these days.
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17 years 6 months
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hipmoma, I live in Spokane, Washington , the Western end of the Rockies. I have met folks on this site from France, Wales, England, Germany, Czech Republic, Spain and Lincoln Nebraska as well as many other places. Have met one new person from my area, we are going to get together in person for lunch and talk, funny thing is we lived about 30 miles away from each other as kids growing up in Iowa and both went to University of Iowa and now live here. If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. William Blake
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16 years 10 months
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mornin hal what do you do out in beautiful spokane??i am off to work a full week open to close as my other manager is out with mono!!! so i will clock in about 65 hours this week. fun fun fun.peace kate
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17 years 6 months
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seems to be a flood of new folks here the last couple of weeks! All finding their way here from different times and places! Amazing!
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17 years
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We all come home again. Conversation is always more interesting than recitation, so speak your mind and not someone else's.
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17 years 6 months
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hipmoma,Wow, I first wrote in this section back on June 15, page 7, was refreshing my memory here, seems like lots has gone on since then and it has been a fun ride on this site. Things are not dead in Deadland. Ok, what I do in Spokane is often try to get out of it to land my wife and I have in Ferry County, Washington, least populated county in the state and much of which is the Colville National Forest. We have solar electricity in our small house there and a yurt and are out there so to speak. About 15 miles from the nearest town, surrounded by forest and several miles off the county road. Have seen bears, turkeys, deer, eagles at our place. Hope to move there someday, but circumstances have not allowed that yet. It is isolated, but we do have good friends in the area. In Spokane I bike, walk, garden and read and watch all the incredible birds and squirrels we have in our backyard here. In the past 9 months have been ripping and burning lots of Dead and other goodies I have received from the vines. Oh for a living I am a RN in a nonprofit mental health agency. Also do lots of volunteer environmental work on forest, wilderness and endangered species issues. Sounds like a busy week for you 65 hours, wow. If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. William Blake
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16 years 10 months
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I am a 38 year old freshman at a local university here in Columbus. I have been in the hotel industry as a front desk man and like doing that. I speak Spanish and am working on my degree so I can teach or maybe land a job in a resort in Spain or Mexico. Still, English is the language everywhere, but where I hope to eventually live, Spanish will be it. Need more Sunshine then Ohio has to offer. Ohio is a great place, however. So many great folks here.
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16 years 10 months
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From the inside out. Work with Fortune 500 companies and have been able to influence, convince, shuck and jive a way for them to want to sell more of their 'green' products. Mostly energy/ water conservation, sustainable materials, indoor air quality (low VOC), etc. Trying to change the world from the inside out....hee-hee! I am one of the new folks on line and it would seem that highly optimized organic search results could be the reason for so many new people. Good links, title tags, and time do wonders for google page rank, if I could only remember what it was that I googled :-)
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16 years 11 months
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Like cosmicbadger and maye, a lot are new- I'm one of them, tho old in the sense that I always had this site as my web browser. In the pat it would conk out at times and on a few days it was out of comission altogether, so I couldn't even get on the web at work! i never signed on, just as a voyeur! Now my school district gave me a laptop and I have spent hours of time at home (like a good employee) become acquainted with it. just so happens that since it still opens up to this site- it was about time to join. As for me, I am an art teacher, this is year 25, 24 in the same district. I love it and have fun all day with the kids. And as reward lessons, we do tie dye! (and batik!) Ami
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17 years 6 months
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I own a retail and wholesale plant nursery in Monmouth County NJ . Im posting this on March 1st which is our opening day for the season and dusting off those rusty bones after a long winters nap made me feel a hell of a lot older then 42 . I guess gold will turn to grey and youth will fade away .I love what I do for a living , Ive been in the nursery business since I was 11 years old and to be making a living at what you love is a trip . LET IT GROW , LET IT GROW - GREATLY YIELD.
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16 years 9 months
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Well right out of college I was working as a full time photographer for a small newspaper. I loved it, until the assignments were drying up, and the editors didnt really care about the photos. So I left and now I work as a professional for the Boy Scouts..... its a job. Lots of nights and weekends and a ton of driving, I drive at least 2000 miles a month just for work. So I am looking for a way out, have been thinking about going back to school to teach but I need to bump up my GPA first. For fun I love being outside hiking, kayaking, etc etc, I am also a volunteer firefighter. I really enjoy helping other people.
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17 years 6 months
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i am a manipulator of images, a pervayer of lies apon the mailorder mavens of america, i push pixels around, i correct the colors that are wrong,i am a photo retoucher, i photoshop. started in print trade in highschool, learned bindery then i ran presses, the fumes will kill ya, got into prepress,much cleaner, was a 4/c stripper (no, i kept my clothes on),that is registering the 4 film negatives to each other ( put a magnifing glass on a pictue in a magazine, see the 4colors, magenta,cyan,blackn'yellow) and dot etcher(dots become pixels in the digital age) the size of the dots regulates the amout of ink going onto the paper. it is an interesting trade, always learning something new (wheel keeps turning),very techno driven. now i sit in front of a Mac, basiclly doing plastic surgery to photos of models 4 hi-end dept stores, which also gives me time to be here. peacen'love2all
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17 years 6 months
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I have been an Intensive Care Unit registered nurse for about a year now, it is great to help people who are so ill. I worked as a critical care emergency medical technician for the last 12 years on ambulances, I still do this but as a volunteer now. I also teach classes for the american heart association
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17 years 6 months
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I'm a researcher of sorts, but my passion is writing. I work from home, so I've always got one of the Dead internet radio stations playing. "Goodbye, Mama and Papa, Goodbye, Jack and Jill The grass ain't greener, the wine ain't sweeter, Either side of the hill" islandmyk@yahoo.com
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17 years 3 months
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Possibly burnt-out, not quite used-up IT/Business Systems Analyst at a big, four-year university.
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16 years 10 months
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I am kind of like george castanza from sienfeld. Have a degree in marine biology and work in the import/ export business. I am the entire enviro department for our 4 facilities across NC. It allows me plenty of time to listen to the dead at work and also to surf when I want, so not a bad gig.
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16 years 8 months
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I am a Field Supervisor for a small environmental firm in upstate NY. We deal mostly with hazardous material compliance in local businesses. I have seen some crazy s@#t that might scare some regular people. I have also done some high hazard work that might make you think we are nuts. In all reality I would love to get out of the biz and move on to bigger and better things. Most of my experience is in environmental something or other because that is what I went to college for. Happy Earth Day!
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17 years 5 months
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I wash dishes at a local restaurant. Its been almost 2 years now. "You know the one thing we need is a left handed monkey wrench....."
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17 years 6 months
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I am actually in the same industry as you, Lithoonly I work at the finishing/fulfillment end. At our place, we laminate and/or mount these gigantic graphics, then ship 'em 'round the country! My other "job" is being a volunteer at KBOO Community Radio, here in Portland, OR!
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17 years 6 months
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Otherone71 - We have a community radio station in Spokane, KYRS that was modeled on KBOO and is doing very well. My good friend Lupito took the idea and ran with it and now we have shows with many styles of music and covering many issues. It has been fun to watch what this come to fruition and blossom. If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. William Blake
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17 years 5 months
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I just finished my M.A. in counseling psychology fro Kutztown University, looking to sit for the national exam for certification this June. Looking for a job somewhere in PA. Wanna hire me? ericneifert@verizon.net
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17 years 6 months
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that make you feel?:) hmmm....i see good luck with your exam! peace
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16 years 7 months
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I'm a 19 y/o college student majoring in Math. Very new to the boards, got into the dead by listening to my dad's old tapes from the trading days of the early internet. It amazes me seeing so many people from so many different fields together.
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17 years 7 months
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and, newgen, that's always been one of the cool things for me, how all kinds of people who would probably have never met without the Dead scene converged, and in a lot of cases became good friends.
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16 years 11 months
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Today I was helping a customer who had no fucking idea what they wanted and had absolutely no clue what the fuck they were talking about. I work in a natural food store as a full service butcher. There are days when I have the most morbid thoughts about the sad reality of my day job and then there are days when I really enjoy dealing with the mindless cattle(customers). Part of my job is retrieving bags of ice for people's groceries, something that I truley LOVE to do. I catch myself poking holes in the bottoms of those bags occasionally and offering a sinister chuckle for those who give a shit, which is no one really. You see the ice machine is isolated in a room, I'm all alone back there. Just when I thought I was losing my goddamn mind, and my beautiful wife and adorable son would have to watch me soil diapers in a well padded institution, I went to check the mailbox. I recieved my official acceptance letter for film school today. I believe I am one of about ten students to get in, and one of five Americans. Tomorrow I'm going to give my two week notice, not poke any holes, and milk the cows for what they're worth because it is the first day of the rest of my life. Tears of joy, satisfaction, and relief. Stay cool folks.
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17 years 5 months
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A new chapter in your life....so cool, congrats on your acceptance into film school. Can't wait to see one of your films someday :)Peace, Gigi
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17 years 6 months
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sounds like a movie there Chris! congrats on the acceptance into film school, that is fantastic, good for you! follow your dreams..reality follows you No matter what comes down, the mission always looks the same
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17 years 2 months
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Man, that sounds wonderful! Congrats to you & your family. Can't wait to see some Dead Head Talent down the road... PEACE

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17 years 5 months
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I got a chuckle about the part where ya poke holes in their bags! LOL Keep spreading the good vibes Chris!
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17 years 3 months
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I am a licensed counselor specializing in addiction treatment. I have my own approach that is affirming and positive-focused. My love of the Grateful Dead raises some eyebrows among my peers at times, but it is all about the love and the music for me. Gary Blanchard http://www.GBandFriends.com
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16 years 5 months
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Izzie and Marve--how totally kewl to find you and so many others here... I've been flying under the radar for the last couple of years, and when the old site went down, I was off doing other things. I'm a writer and photographer, most recently for a very small company called BlissLights.
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17 years 7 months
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Welcome! make yourself at home...
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17 years 6 months
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Most definetly enough talent and spirit and most importantly soul in the people here on this site to lead the planet. What a great group.I am very lucky as i get to make art pottery every day. I am a potter at an arts and craft studio and have been able to make pots since i was 13, 36 years ago. Proud of you all.pk