Monday's Missives

My new hiking boots gave me a case of toelio

Found on kitchen counter

I don't know what this piece of metal with a tree growing around it is (other than a workers comp claim for a future lumberjack) but I know where 2 are nearly exactly alike that are 4-5 miles apart.

Peek a boo I still see you, you idiot human.

Green brier shoots that grew up 2+ feet under  bark of tree then popped out.

The world famous Scottie dog tree of Holland Lake Park.

• Staind- Fade
• You are awesome! You rocked my world babe- the last text message I received.
• Bubba Ho Tep and 3000 Miles To Graceland: 2 of my favorite movies.
• Found a bulletin board for veterans of the Cold War who served in 11 ACR in Germany a few years ago. One guy posted a memory of someone blasting an air raid siren siren which was featured as an effect in a song by Def Leppard and cited another guy as the culprit. It was actually me and it was a Triumph song. It is interesting though, that someone else would get the blame/credit since I went to great lengths to disguise my involvement in such delinquency. When the halls of the barracks were empty I would open the door to my room after already opening the window and blast the siren effect on my awesome stereo and at the right moment ease my door closed and hop in bed. Within oh, about a second the CQ (charge of quarters) would be hollering Alert! and pounding on the doors.
• Leppard is hi lited by spellcheck- good grief. What has this world come to?
• 03152013 at 0337 and I'm wide awake. My back is hurting something fierce. 
• Multiple times a year I dream about getting ready to go train with the Guard at Fort Hood. It always involves rain, fear of not being ready in time, forgetting a combination to where my gear is stored, being pulled off by somebody to do something else, my figuring out a way to get away from them and then finally I almost always train for a very short time and then I get hurt and go to the hospital. It will often have a sequence entwined where I'm on a work study detail with another student at a college. They will often be a foreigner. Someone will hassle us and attempt to assault me then the dream switches back to the Hood sequence. Details vary every time but I have been having this basic dream for years.
• Most people probably don't consider back lit keys when they look at laptop features but it is practically a necessity for me.
• I think the name of my new Bushmaster is Isabella but I'm not sure. It will be necessary to spend more time with her and get to know her a little better.
• I read somewhere about 4 guys working at a post office in the US who quit and went to work as PMCs (private military contractors) in Iraq together. I hope that story is true.
• My nursing buddy and I disagreed recently about the preferential way more attractive people are treated and how we all do it whether we would like to admit it or not. Somewhat testily I said, You can't know what it is like- you have always been pretty. She didn't look at me the same for days.
• Giving a sideways compliment is an old Southern standby of a term. Sideways compliments can actually be negative or positive in nature, for example one woman may say to another, Those are nice shoes- they make your feet look smaller... A positive example would be the aforementioned compliment used as a statement of fact while making a point. It was truthful and nice but also meant to disarm to gain an advantage- a sideways compliment.
• Molly Pitcher never existed, it is shameful the way our history undermines the French contribution to the winning of the US independence and the mythologizing of the actual contribution of the colonists guerrilla tactics during the Revolutionary War are all things I was aware of but I had never seen these points made in a clear concise way until this morning. 
• Multiple politicians have changed their views on same sex marriage when they learned their child was a homosexual. How could they do that? They didn't already know their stand would hurt people far flung from them in ways they couldn't comprehend? Do they make any of their decisions rationally based on the facts they have at hand or do they work at a purely emotional level? What would they change their mind about next time? If a relative lived in a country where the US makes drone strikes would they suddenly stop their support for those strikes? What would any other group have to do to get their attention?