Bowe Bergdahl Has Been Released-

will the Army now take their vengeance for his disappearance or welcome him back to fold and use him  for intel and resistance education value- or both? Regardless, I am glad he is coming home and has this new lease on life. He must have had some dark moments over the past few years. I prayed for him like I have never prayed for somebody I don't know.

Midweek Mid morning Music Video Extra Vaganza

Once I ran to you now I run from you

It Is Only Tuesday

• Godzilla was very good. We watched it in 3D/Imax. The great thing? Even though I know Godzilla was CG there was some cool man in a rubber suit moments. They also made sure he was still a sympathetic character.
  
  
  

  

  When the Fed Ex guy  came to my door he was in an unusually good mood. I blame this cheery packaging.

  
  

  

  Their figs are great, the dates wonderful but their persimmons are not so amazing- which is why they're missing from the pic.

  
  

  

  No, he wasn't in the box but that would have been cool.

• Another really good movie: The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty. I haven't read anything but I'll guess the story was a favorite of Stiller's. Gosh, just a really, really good movie in the way they say no more good movies are made and the music was literally fantastic.
• X-Men- I'm sorry but unless you're Wolverine nobody cares.
• "New terrorist plans are discovered on  a regular basis all the while North Korea develops its nuclear weapons." A bullet point from some outdoor survival school that was linked to an outdoor site I was looking at earlier. Good grief.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Adventurer's Handbook: what I'm reading.
• Although I haven't checked the remaining storage I'm sure my Nook is less than half full at 92 books.
• The rain yesterday (05/24/2014) was refreshing, good for the wildlife and plants but did literally nothing for our lakes. My sweet rain gear from REI is en route as I write this.
• Among my recent decisions my decision to not only take some time off but also combine it with the Memorial Day Holiday was among my best. With the extra hours I worked last week and Monday off for the holiday- 4 total days off only cost me two personal hours.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• On the Russ Martin Show he correctly and geniusly compared being around the open carry nuts in a public setting to the feeling you have when you clean out a garbage disposal- when you know it is off. Something in the back of your mind knows it is wrong and you're on edge- when you shouldn't have to be.
• There are some things- lots of things we can do- it doesn't mean we should.

  

  Some kind of trumpet flower

  
  

  

  Dead skin from the green snake pictured above

Monday's Missives

• I dreamed last night I had dinner with Dabney Coleman and Corbin Bernson and some other people. Then everyone went swimming. Then the last things I remember of it are an incredibly beautiful and extremely fat woman playing footsie with me and then me running out of the water to take a huge, used condom away from a toddler.
• Corbin Bernson crept in there because I watched an episode of Psych last night before bed- the rest of that craziness? I have no Idea.
• I used to think the belief in ghosts and psychic abilities was innocent and interesting even until I saw how John Edward manipulated hurting, lost people making them believe he could communicate with their loved ones who had crossed over. Very sad- he should be ashamed. I'm tempted to say that type of activity should be illegal.
  
• I have a nephew named Corbin Dallas, if that name sounds familiar, it's the lead characters name played by Bruce Willis in The Fifth Element.
• I had coffee, Dr. Pepper, 2 small Snickers bars and an oatmeal cream pie for breakfast.
• I know, why don't I just shoot myself and get it over with.
• I'll be hitting the Bowflex today, does that make me a better person in spite of disgusting breakfast habits?
• I have a feeling that more Bowflexs sit idle and are used for nothing more than 2000 dollar drying racks for delicates than are actually used for workouts.

  

  Found during my search for a bike

• Here's my loosely associated financial/health tip of the day. In Winter especially, check Craigslist for Bowflex machines after checking the Bowflex site and learning prices. Try to go for about 50% of the retail. Also, ask around among your friends someone may have one that you didn't even know owned one and they'll give you a deal. If you get it for something around 50% of the retail or less you can use it and if it you don't like it or don't use it like you thought you might, it can be resold for everything you have in it.
  

And I Wanna Take You Down But Your Soul Cannot Be Found

And I'm here to testify To The Masses

Wear Dark Glasses Like The Cops Down In Texas

Friday's Dispatch

• I just returned from a meeting for work. What a whippin'. Literally- as in I walked out with my head down and dragging my feet as I schlepped out of the conference room.
• Chupacabra 69: the password I used for my pre and post tests.
• Chrome 69: the call sign of my flight out of Iraq. Of all my odd, obscure memories I'll carry to my grave that one may be first and foremost.
• It was maybe the best call sign in the history of ever. I wondered if the pilots dreamed it up or it was assigned?
• Morphine is one of my all time favorite bands. Their sax player could loop breathe to play as a didgeridoo is played which I had wondered in the past if it might be possible so it was interesting to hear it for the first time.

  

  Baseball that met an early end to a mower's blade. I presume the grass growing out of it was sprayed from a Hydromulcher but I don't know. The twine you see is actually to deaden the ball. There is a rubber core to make it more lively. Without the twine if a batter of any real power touched it- it would fly out of the park- every time.

• My sister in law played for the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra. 8,000: the number of dollars she sold her sax for years later.  The details are lost to time to me but as I recall it was a rare model made of or plated with silver and was manufactured in the 20s.
• A woman should not play the didgeridoo. Occasionally you see a video on the yoochoobs of a woman playing with a well known male player. The purpose of the video is to be provocative- to try and stir up trouble. In the abodiganal society of Australia the didgeridoo has religious significance and women are banned from playing. For a woman to play it would be like a non Jew to use a Menora to light fireworks or a non Christian to use a crucifix as a door stop. Maybe there was no ill intention. Maybe you aren't going to Hell over it but it is rude and disrespectful if nothing else.

  

  This corpse was so skulled out at Scarborough, by end of the day I doubt he knew his name

  
  

  

  There is a sculptor there who offers pretty good, very reasonably priced sculptures. I may buy one for a piece at my house and use it as a marker for my grave in anticipation of my inevitable but hopefully very distant death.

• Something I have done that you have not: used hand lotion to lube the knives of an office paper shredder. The crazy thing? It works way better than the purpose made oil.
• I bet James Franco is cooler than cool as a person and can be a good friend.

Wednesday's Digressions

I'm pretty sure this is the guy Don caught looking way more robust on his foray to SRF. Here, he is ready to stroke out in 90 degree heat and billion percent humidity.

• Strangest headline I've seen in a while. Grandmother dies trying to stop sword fight. from AP on MSNBC
• Learned I was recently mentioned by name at a funeral for my care of a hospice patient.
• That and my parenting are two things I probably get way too much credit for.

  

  New sandwich from Schlotski's. It looks like somebody plopped the contents of a school cafeterias garbage between 2 pieces of bread and called it good.

• I have The Class Of Nukem High pulled up to watch.
• Feel myself getting dumber already.
• Quite a feat
• Everybody needs a stormy day buddy.

Michel Petruccianni

rocks my world- what about you?

As Requested-

contact info about the Chevy truck raffle. to benefit WCS

Monday's Missives

• Dang, nature you is scary and people are dumb.

  

  My morning chemistry on 05/11/2014

• I am... a child of God, a wife to my Mr. Wonderful, a mother to two beautiful blessings, a birth doula and Lamaze certified childbirth educator, a domestic engineer, a native Texan, a Fightin' Texas Aggie (WHOOP!), a lover of reading, a darn good cook, a cycle class fanatic, a wanna-be decorator, and incredibly busy... which explains the sparseness of my blog posts oftentimes. I'm loving this life!
• The above from a Blogger profile. I wondered as I read it, Does she mean any of that? and How long before that world comes crashing down?

  

  Found during my JEEP search. Your jaw will drop when you see it.

• The First Lady needs to cool her, "outrage" over the kidnapped girls in  Nigeria. She is literally playing into the hands of the terrorists and doing exactly want they want. She is not providing any kind of call to action or whatever- Western and regional nations and Nigeria itself are doing, if not all they can- all they're going to do. She is assuming the world cares what she thinks as much as her local fans. I can guess she is also setting herself up for a post First Lady role in world politics/statesmanship.
• A connected thought: even if more is done to rescue those children- it will still play out more/less as the terrorists want- not a reason to not be involved but more reason to keep your big mouth shut about it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  

  A 1955 Chevy Weatherford Christian is raffling to fund part of their school. After I win, I'll mount some Gopros on it , start a blog and chronicle my journeys on an epic coast to coast road trip.

• The birds are singing outside as I write this (05102014 @0836) like they're happy to be alive.
• When FG awakens from her epic 12 hour slumber we will head out to Scarborough Ren. Fest.
• I like the names, Isabelle and Giselle and always have.
  
  

Here, Have Some Morphine

You speak my language and Honey White

My Day Started

with Gladys Bentley- how did yours start?

Thursday's Thoughts

• 3- the number of Easter egg hunts my kids have/will attend in 2014.
• I am eating an orange while drinking orange juice as I write this. It is refreshing but something about it seems odd.
• I have never met a person from California who didn't like fresh fruits.
• Pooping on bluebonnets
• Terminator has aged very well.
  

  

  Although it looks  like a skunk (which would be cooler than cool) the neighbor's cat had kittens. Wish I had a boa constrictor.

• I was unusually glad to see my children this evening. Imagine my surprise when they didn't make me regret even having them after they got in the car.



What I see when I look up in the morning



When I look between my legs at the foot of the bed



To my half right



Hard left



Hard right



Some random girl relaxing in the park in an ENO hammock while reading- good for her. I dig that color scheme for a hammock and have always liked black and red together.



Falling apart dead crayfish is falling apart.











• 

  I found this crowbar beside the dumpster. FG was mortified when she saw me walking back to the car with it. I gave it to a friend who is a super home handyman.
  
  
  
  

Sweet Emma

ain't gonna give away none of her jellyroll.

Wednesday's Digressions

• Some music I really enjoy that a little bit goes a long way- swing, big band, bluegrass, techno and a very little hip hop.
• Is it important to have a motto for life? I think "It is better to be hated for something you are, than loved for something you are not" is a good one.
• "Treat others as you would have them treat you" is better.
• My children's first riding toy was the tricycle I rode as a child.
• No that's not me in the picture above.
• When I hear the song Apple Bottomed Jeans I can't get it out of mind for hours or days even.
• You'll have a whole new respect- well, appreciation at least for Tom Cruise when you see him dance to that song in Tropic Thunder.
  
• I believe one of the keys to a successful, long and happy life is learning to be spontaneous without being impulsive.
• Recently FG gave me a kinda hard time about the way and number of toilet paper rolls I always buy. It is always one extra large pack,  one regular size of el cheapo and one large of a nice quality one. The cheapos are for me, the nice one for her and the three packs all together are all I can carry at one time. It is basically impossible to carry even one small pack with any amount of groceries and regardless, one small one won't last any time at all with four people using it so when I pass by Dollar General I buy the three packs- it never goes bad and call me weird but I for one don't want to live without it.
  
  
  
  
  
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Monday's Missives- Audubon

From an image search for Audubon Texas

• A place I spent many, many hours at during the days of my ute was Audubon TX an old abandoned town near my hometown of Decatur TX. In the 1880s it had a store, gin and post office. It was located North of Decatur.
• I encountered Audobon due to my friendship with a boy whose family pioneered the area. His father owned as I recall 88 acres at the point they sold it years later and maybe more when we would tramp around that place.
• After my friends mom or dad would dump us off out there we were on our own- for hours on end or if his dad got too wasted- overnight. There was a small travel trailer we always kept stocked with water and beans. Sometimes we would go to the house of an old man named Jesse James. He would give us fruit and cookies and chewing tobacco. He could spit epically and taught us how to pinch our lips together with the first 2 fingers and throw our necks into the spitting process to extend our range. It worked- to an extent. More got on our hands than the ground but what went did go, went pretty far. 
• I do not believe in ghosts but, I can tell you that place could make you wonder.
• There were great creeks to explore crisscrossing that place that had some really huge gullies tied into them. Once we were walking down into a gully that was V shaped with a sort of peninsular area not cut away by the erosion. It was fairly large and circular- say 25 feet? across. In the middle of it was a perfect looking evergreen tree. We climbed up there to check it out and when we did could very plainly hear voices coming seemingly from inside the tree. We circled it with our .22 rifles at the ready. When we crawled under the tree the voices seemed to emanate from the tree itself while getting louder and clearer. The odd thing was we couldn't understand what they were saying even though we sensed individual words and all the voices spoke very clearly. It sounded as I recall like 3 men and a woman (or young boy). The best way I can characterize it now would be listening to a language you're familiar with but, not fluent.
• That place was a hot spot for cattle mutilations back in the 70s and I've seen with my own eyes the carcasses of the animals. Sex organs were removed. Fetus's were placed in bulls stomachs etc.
• Once, we took an older kid there who wanted to hunt and shoot a coyote. We came up out of a gully as daylight was fading and there he said one sat just looking at him (we were coming up behind him). He took a shot and we ran up to check it out. He was pale and visibly shaken. He said,  It was sitting right there, right there (indicating a point less than 10 feet away) looking at me. I took a shot. I had to have hit it but, it was like it just disappeared.
• We could see the very fresh, large canine prints it left behind. He may have lied about seeing a coyote and he may have lied about it disappearing but a large canid was there at the exact spot he indicated at some point in time very recently.
• He like others, wouldn't camp out there with us once they learned enough about the place to get spooked.
• The area was supposedly also the site of an Indian murder of settlers.
• For some reason I have a very strong memory of a dead horse in the remains of the house my friends dad was actually born in. We would monitor the progress of it's decay over the days and weeks as we would come back out there to spend the day.
• There was a huge pear tree whose fruit sustained us on more than one occasion.
• It had been hit twice by lightning.

Scarborough Renaissance Festival 2014

• It is strange for us wait so long but yesterday we finally made it to SRF for this year.

  

  At the ticket booth

• So hot and sooooo humid.
• There are more furries there every year.
  
  
  

  

  I saw this girl later sitting at a picnic table- ready to die of a heat stroke.

• There is hope for this world after all- my spell check still has a problem with furries.
• There were more black people this year than I have seen there in the past. Usually you saw more black children with obvious foster parents but there were lots of black families and young people yesterday.
  
  
• That place needs lots of work. It degrades every year and shows little to none on the improvement/maintenance scale.
• People were getting stuck left and right as we were leaving. As you nose your car into the parking area the land slopes down- good for overall drainage- not good for the 90 % of cars that are front wheel drive.
• I almost bought a didgeridoo- literally, as in I turned back with an offer in mind for one but punked out. Actually, I'll get one when I find the right one.
  
  
  

  

  Taken as he was about to launch into some banter with another worker that included the phrase, In the words of the immortal Ron Jeremy...

• We had watched the Iris and Rose show a time or two (or parts thereof) but I had no idea how crude it was. To my shame I sat through multiple horrible Jew jokes. In my defense the first was more/less tame and was followed by a Catholic priest joke and then a dig on men- so, I might have been excused as thinking they were going to goof on everybody equally but no- there was 3 cruel/crass Jew jokes for every one of whatever. Some people were very uncomfortable as it was an uncomfortable situation for anybody with a sense of decency. In the performers defense (if there was one) a lot of the bad jokes were from the audience.
  
  
  
  
• Some things you don't do- because it is rude if nothing else.
• A lot of the normally and apparently this year also well cared for animals were sick. I don't know if it was something going around among them or the recent rain, high heat and humidity or what but several were sick and obviously so.

  

  They had a unicorn! I want to believe.

  
  
  
  

  

  Sickly duck was sickie

  
  
  

  

  I could  have paid the 3 dollars to see Romulus the world's biggest ass but it was more fun to sneak a peek through the crack in the fence