Road Trip

Wow!! I lost 20 lbs in July. It could have been more, but I wanted to keep it reasonable for my first month of this plan. ‘Piece of cake’ too! I mean this is the easiest diet plan ever. I copied it right out of the US Congressional playbook. Here’s how it works. To keep it easy I didn’t put any eating restrictions on myself so I ate lots of everything I wanted. My thinking was that by doing that I would only gain a maximum of 40 lbs. But what happened was that I only gained 20 lbs. In effect then I lost 20 lbs. Like I said, a ‘piece of cake’! In August I’m going for 30. Why mess around?
I watched Gene Sperling on Fox News Sunday this AM. He’s one of Obama’s economic guys. I had to have Kat run outside and get the duct tape though. My head was about to explode after just a few minutes and I was going to need several wraps. But then I got it! It was Bush’s fault. All except for what was caused by the Japanese tsunami. Well geez! Why didn’t he just say so? I’m sure I can scrape up a few more tax dollars for a worthy cause. I’d just spend it on gas or something I want. It’s like a favorite bumper sticker I use to have. “Work Harder! 10 million people on Welfare are depending on you.” Arrgghh !!!
  Kat and her latest.

“ROAD TRIP”. That’s what you hear from us every other day, or so, when we’re kind of stuck here in Texas Hill Country. With the weather, meaning temperatures in the 103-106 degree range, we don’t spend much time outside. If I try hard I can get outside until about 11:00 and then it’s AC time. That kind of sucks because my schedule says that morning is computer time. Then just about the rest of the day would be outside for some maintenance or woodcarving, maybe a walk or sit in the shade and read, whatever? But if I try that schedule now I’m screwed for going outside. It’s all inside on AC. And regrettably I’m old, stubborn, curmudgeonly, and set in my ways. So to change my schedule is tough. As a result I don’t get much outside time. Not enough anyway. And if I do it’s usually woodcarving. And if you’re thinking I could get outside in the evening, think again. I think it’s still in the 90’s until after midnight. There’s a new sheriff in town.


Soooo….. The one saving grace is a ‘Road Trip’ We hop in our new Ford Escape and take a tour of Hill Country or something. Go run over rattlesnakes or tarantulas, maybe do a few laps around Wal-Mart. Yesterday we drove 50 miles to Uvalde, TX for dinner at the Golden Corral only to find it was closed. So we ended up at a place called the ‘Kettle’ which was marginal at best. We should have opted for the Texas ‘Stop Sign’. Know what that is? DQ, as in Dairy Queen. Every town in Texas with more than a population of 25 has one. I think our favorite was in Blanco. Drove 30 miles to that one more than once. By the way, the DQ Belt Buster burger fits nicely into my new diet.  Anyway, we like the Escape and it has been a savior here in the heat. I suppose we could head north but I just finished my last check-up on the cataracts so now it’s late and the heat extends in every direction from here for 1000 miles or more and gas prices are not going down. So I guess we’ll ‘tough it out’ and take a few more ‘Road Trips’.
After a couple of weeks at Canyon Lake COE park we ventured to Bandera, TX. The ‘Cowboy Capital of the World’. I don’t really understand all I know about that? We were there though. Even made the last day of the annual celebration; just by accident. We missed the rodeo though. But it seems to me, based on what I saw, that Molalla, OR, could stake just as good a claim to being the ‘Cowboy Capital of the World’. “Just Sayin’! Maybe Bandera had a couple more cowboy antique stores or a museum. Or maybe it’s just Texas vs Oregon? Not that it’s not a nice town. It is! And Texas is great! I just don’t get the Cowboy Capital thing? And the barbecue place was crummy. The ‘DQ’ was good though. You saw that coming huh?

An EPIC post. Or, on seeing again.

Talk about an overused pronoun. “Epic”. Don’t miss the next exciting episode, “it will be epic”! In an ‘epic’ address to the nation yesterday President O……… Bull crap !!!! I got your ‘epic’ !!!! It’s all about as epic as this installment of my blog. But! I suppose it just ‘is what it is’? Just the latest buzz word in use by the media. Still it bugs me. At least the overuse of ‘hero’ is winding down. Don’t get me wrong we do have some current heroes. It’s just that mostly what is defined as heroic is merely dieing or gaining attention in any situation that the media can paint as requiring sympathy. I require a little more substance from ‘my’ heroes.  And it doesn’t hurt if they’re in the military.  Not a requirement though.  Has anyone out there made the same connection I have between Cialus and Dr. Seuss? Every time I hear that commercial for Cialus, the one that says, “Cialus for all day use”, or something like that, what I hear is “Cialus, the littlest Seuss for youngest use”. Now that I’ve written this I need to look it up. I’m sure I remember reading a “littlest Seuss for youngest use” book to the kids. OK, as it turns out it was one of my favorites! ‘Hop on Pop’, subtitled, the simplest Seuss for youngest use’. Close! Regardless, I still here the Seuss thing in my head when that commercial comes on. That just ain’t right !!! Maybe I should call the FCC, FTC, FAA, CIA or maybe NCIS or something? Well it works for atheists and downtrodden minorities. OK, that was kind of lame. True but lame. Anyway now that I’ve shared my little limerick, you’re  stuck with it too. Ain’t it grand?

So I’m a little more than a week into my after cataract surgery experience. All I can say is ‘’’’ HOLY CRAP”” !!!!! I CAN SEE !!!!!

I’ll tell you, if you haven’t done this you have no idea. There are colors, there is clarity, there is definition, I can do things again. I knew my vision was bad, but ….. I had no idea. We went to Wal-Mart last night and I didn’t even need my glasses. I could read the expiration date on the milk and sour cream with no magnification. I drove and could read all the road signs and billboards. In the distance I could make out what was out there instead of a green or brown background. I could look at the car instrument panel and read the odometer, clock, and all that stuff. To all my woodcarving friends I can carve and see detail again. It is so much easier to carve when you don’t have to do it using the Braille method. Easier on fingers too. LOL, just kidding. I do still require reading glasses but the magnification I use is reduced about by about a factor of four and my eyes don’t get tired and itchy like they did. My eyes, make that eye, must be 20 years or so younger. And I still have the left eye to do. It’s incredible!!! Now I have to get off my ass and work on getting the rest of me to feel a little younger. Going to play Pickleball a little later and expect to be able to see the ball again. Can’t wait.

 

Day One                                                   Mine                                               Hers                           

TTYS

And have a Happy Fourth !!!

One and a wake-up

For the uninitiated that’s one day, Sunday, and one wake-up on Monday morning and then cataract surgery.  That is of course military overseas timekeeping.  Counting the days to rotation back to the U.S.  In my day it would have been returning to the ‘land of the round eye’, or the ‘world’.  Now it would be getting out of ‘towel head or sand #&%$*@ country, or something crude like that.  I even have a short timers calendar on the wall.  I take it down every day and cross off a day.  What this should all say is that I am very ready to have it done.  As I mentioned to daughter Wendy, being almost blind really sucks !!!!!   Can’t drive, can’t play Pickleball, can’t carve and can’t even do this without increasing the font size and squinting a lot.  I had a real scare yesterday.  I had charged my Sony Reader which allows me to enlarge the font to the point I can read comfortably, that’s large or extra large right now, and then it wasn’t working.  Panic !!  I played around for a few minutes and got it going, but it was a real scary situation.  Most importantly getting the surgery behind me means getting back on the road.  This is killing the gypsy in us.  I like Texas a lot. But six months in south Texas is enough.  And now the temperatures are hitting 100o plus.  104o yesterday and forecast today.  Put that together with a freaking ‘Hot Flash’ and the only place safe for me is the shower or the pool.  And now the water is warming up !!  We’re so thin blooded now that last night it got down to 80o and we had to turn on the heat !!  Anyway, we should be out a’ here around the 7th of July.  Waiting till after the 4th so we don’t have to fight crowds or make reservations at a park.   And when we get back on the road maybe I can change the subject?  Or……………….Not !!!

                                                                                                  

I watched the Republican debate from  New Hampshire.  Pretty good I thought.  Obviously every one of them would be better than Obama.  Crap, Our Jade would be better than Obama.  But, I’m not crazy about Romney.  He is just a little too much of a RINO.  He’s got the health care issue in Mass. and does he really believe in Global Warming.  Then Rick Perry and Sarah were not there.  If you saw Sarah on Fox News Sunday two weeks ago you might feel a little better about her.  She was really good.  I know she has some negatives, but who wouldn’t after the way she has been savaged by the media.  She is still my favorite and would have the biggest ‘pair’ in the race.   I hope she gets in.  We’ll see?  One thing is certain.  This time around the Republicans need to pick their candidate and not allow the media/Democrats to do it like they did McCain.   And you know they are already trying.  Part of my queasiness about Romney.  What’s he gonna run on?  I’m not as bad as Obama.  Anyway, he may be their guy.   Stay strong!

And they’re going to release 47,000 convicts in California because overcrowding is cruel and unusual.  I’d like to get a poll on that from the US Military and Veterans.  Do I really need to say more?  Well here !!!!  I lived in a few WWII barracks, slept in a forty man bay, peed in 10 man trough, crapped in a row of six or more shitters, and showered in a eight shower head stall.  All with no privacy.  That was state side.   In Vietnam the shower was on the base perimeter where they occasionally shot at us and our latrine was an eight man outhouse where your stuff fell into cut in half 55 gal. drums and was pulled out and burned with kerosene by GI’s.  That was the officers quarters and it had about a 20 man bay.  And California convicts are overcrowded?  BS!  I hope you remember this when California wants a bailout.  Crap and expletives deleted,  I wouldn’t piss on ‘em if they were on fire !!!  Damn !!!  Ask me how I really feel. 

I put away my Ohio State shirt for a while.  Apologies to the Buckeye Nation but I’d just rather not until it’s all straightened out.  I’m certain there is plenty of blame to go around.  It can’t be easy running a major college program with all that money and temptation surrounding you, let alone all the tattooed prima donnas you would have to deal with.  But !!  Lots of other colleges do it and I think for $2.5 million a year it ought to be doable.  Just not by Tressel I guess.  I was never really a fan of his anyway.  I hear lots of excuses and he did it for his guys and all that, but in the end I think that there were rules, everybody knew the rules, and the rules were not enforced, by Tressel.  That being the case there were no rules.  A rule not enforced is not a rule.  At best it is something you can point to and say here is the rule and so we’re OK.  So now the axe will fall and a lot of people who had nothing to do with this will be hurt, including fans.  That’s the bad news.  The worse news is all the responsible parties are or will be gone.  In that regard the NCAA really sucks.  It is real good at punishing the wrong folks.   Maybe they could get USC and OSU together and play in the Toilet bowl.  Crap !!

Nuff’ said !  This time !!!  

Kat’s latest

Memorial Day

I hope y’all had a good Memorial Day weekend………. Yeah I know this is posted and written after the fact but I made notes. So it’s legal. I have to make notes and wish I did it more often. All too often I think of something neat, nice, or witty to write and then by the time I sit down to do it, it’s gone. I know there was something but damned if I have a clue as to what it was. Occasionally even if I have a note I don’t even get enough down to make sense of it.

Sooooo…….The weekend. We didn’t do much. I watched the Indy 500 as I always do. Pretty good race. And then the rookie, what’s his butt(?), crashes into the wall on the last turn. Talk about a bummer. Bum…..mer!!! Can you ever forget something like that? Will you ever live it down? And of course… no you can not. I know! Many years ago in the service. Here’s a good Memorial Day story. Well it is service connected. Anyway, I played lots of flag football in the service. We (our little Aviation maintenance company) had a good team in France and went all the way to the regional finals in the US Army Europe competition. Then in Ft Wolters when I was a TAC ( TAC officers were like drill sergeants only of course we were Warrant Officers) the officers had a team and we played against all the Warrant Officer candidate companies. We went all the way to the finals and lost. But I missed that last game. Another bummer! Anyway, I played in the backfield in those days being a little (that’s generous) lighter and quicker than I am now. So on a particular play I was on defense playing against one of the opponents receivers. I had the guy covered all the way. I mean I’m in perfect position. No way the opposing quarterback even makes the throw. Except that he did. So there it is. I cut in front and there is nothing in front of me but about 70 yards of green to the end zone. I step in, make the catch, and aaaarrrrrggghhhh !!!!!!!! I drop the ball !!!!!! I mean I make that catch even today and almost walk to the end zone. But in 1968 I dropped it. And I still remember it. That was a crummy flag football game and I still remember. Imagine if it’s something like the Indy 500.

Our good friend Karen from Bill and Karen also Winter Texans and Pickleballers called to wish me a good Memorial day. How nice was that?  Really nice! I missed Obama laying the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns but I did hear a lot about him going from that right to play golf. I wasn’t surprised. He really just doesn’t get it. Oh, I’m sure I played more than one round of golf on Memorial Day, but then I was never Commander in Chief. All of that got me to thinking of GGGrandpa Absalom Sines who marched off to fight with the Union at the age of 59. That was in 1862. He was killed at the Battle of Stones River a year later. Six of his sons also fought with the Union and three were killed before the war ended. In addition my dad served, I served, my daughter Heidi served and even going all the way back to GGGGrandpa Benjamin Sine(no S back then) who we think served with Andy Jackson in the War of 1812. Speaking for them all, “we deserve a little more respect from the current Commander in Chief”. ‘Nuff said!!

I also have in my notes something about getting in a little trouble from Jade. It seems I was negligent in my duties and was reported to TFPS for cruel and unusual treatment. That’s Texas Feline Protective Services. I woke up, put Jade out on her string and went back to bed. It wasn’t until later after being awakened by an outside commotion and almost being hauled away that I was made aware of my error in not checking Jade’s dish before putting her out. She woke me specifically to be fed, not put out. I got away with a warning this time. I’m told that next time it could be much more severe. Check the food dish dummy!  Cats !!!!

Send Raspberries

I just made some scones and clotted cream to go with them. HMMMMM !!!!  But we didn’t have  raspberry jam. Damn! Still awfully good though. I don’t know if I had ever tried clotted cream before, and maybe there are different recipes? Don’t know? The recipe I had is from Linda here in San Antonio. Our friends from Mission. Her recipe calls for cream cheese, heavy cream, sugar, and vanilla. I’ve heard and read about it but don’t really know if I’ve had any. But, now that I have, I will again. But I do need some raspberry jam. Aw man! Now I’ve done it. I just flashed back to freezer jam in Oregon. Sister in Law Heather got me started on strawberry and raspberry freezer jam and it’s just about that time of year back home. And nobody has raspberries and strawberries like the Northwest. I use to make quite a bit. Oh well !!!  I guess it would be pointless to say ‘send freezer jam’.

So if you have been following the news you probably know more about tornados than you wanted to and have been keeping an eye on the weather and the location of friends and family. Who wouldn’t? And my heart goes out. But I was going to mention Israel and Netanyahu. Somehow I don’t think Benjamin Netanyahu is going to be on the Obama Christmas card list. But as a couple of people have said from the media that I listen to, ”maybe we can find a birth certificate for Netanyahu somewhere in Hawaii”? Just a thought I know, but wouldn’t it be nice. Our choices seem to be narrowing. It’s not ‘blowing my dress up’ but maybe it will work out. Who knows, maybe the girls will get in the race.  Pawlenty doesn’t seem too bad, and Herman Cain is certainly interesting. Not qualified enough for you? Maybe that’s exactly what we need. Somebody not qualified enough to get advice from somebody who is, and not so freaking egotistical that they can’t. And there is nobody on the Republican list, no matter how far down, who is not more qualified and less egotistical than Obama was at this point in the last election process. My political affiliation is still ‘Tea Party’ so I’m hopeful the girls will get in.

I was cogitating on Israel and all that yesterday and got to thinking of what I know, how I know what I know, and where the process got its start. Almost has to be from Leon Uris and “Exodus”. Then I got to thinking about some other books by Uris and others that would be good to reread. Stuff like ‘Mila 18’. ‘Armageddon’, and then ‘Winds of War’ and ‘War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk. Care to join me???

We are still at Stone Creek. I had my preliminary check up for cataract surgery last Tuesday. All is well in that I am a good candidate and on the schedule to have it done on my right eye. I’m going to South Texas Eye Institute and the VA is footing the bill. I have the second appointment for measurements and things on the 9^th and the actual surgery on the 20^th. I am really looking forward to it. I’m not a complainer I don’t think, but it is just getting hard to see clearly. If I close my left eye it’s literally like looking at the world through the bottom of a Pepsi bottle. I’d say Coke bottle but they’re green. It’s getting bad enough that Kat is doing most of the driving and I’m not doing a lot of finish carving. The fine details are getting difficult. I think the weather is causing some allergy problems too, but it is surprising how quickly my vision has seemed to deteriorate. My doctor is a nice 30ish lady that on first blush I can trust. So I’m ready. On the prostate issue I have a CT scan on the 14^th at Audie Murphy and then a consult with my doctor on the 22^nd to go over . Maybe then we can do a little traveling. That would be nice.

For the Record

Or in this first case, one for the record books. I’m talking about a record ‘hot flash’ for me. It started last night around midnight and lasted ‘till around 7:00 this AM. It seemed that way anyway. It was a warm muggy night in South Texas. But I survived and I’m ready to write. Hooo…waaaaah !!!!!!! I know that’s what you were thinking.

I watched Sarah last night on Hannity. Is she the only Republican possibility with a pair? Her and, oh what’s her butt! Damn! Writers block! The other female possibility in the race. Seriously, Sarah Palin and ‘what’s her butt’ are the only possible candidates for President who have any Huevos. I loved it a couple of weeks ago when Sarah said the other Republicans needed to learn to ‘fight like girls’. Sad, but true. In deference to my young Grand Nephew, Tim, Ron Paul would qualify as having a ‘pair’. But! While I subscribe to the Libertarian view of fiscal and social politics, I have a bit of a hard time with his stance on defense, though surprisingly, you might say, not on drugs. I’ll handle that if my reader[(S) get it?] throw things at me. Michelle Bachman !!!!!!! Whew! So ‘for the record’ I am a fan of Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachman. I know that they haven’t ‘declared’ yet, but I can hope.

And, ‘for the record’. How could you not be political right now. Gas is $4.00 a gallon and we can’t drill of refine yet we send money to Brazil so they can, unemployment is a steady 9% or 10%. And that’s a low ball estimate. Housing is in the tank, the southern border is non-existent. You might draw a line in the sand with more authority. High school graduates can’t read at a 5^th or 6^th grade level, and we’re spending money like drunken sailors. All the while the press and mainstream media seem to be fine with it. ‘For the record’ I’m ready for a ‘change’. This ‘change’ just ain’t working out. ‘Throw the Bums out’!

In my other lifetime as a Manager of a large workforce, on election day, I use to walk around at quitting time and remind my people to not to forget to vote. I’m going to have to renege on that. I think that now I would rather most folks just stay home. Maybe we would fair a little better. And my people were ‘union members. Damn! Maybe it’s all my fault?

Here’s another ‘for the record’. Why do I write this stuff? Well, it keeps family and friends informed of our whereabouts and condition, and I can do it ‘en masse’. Plus, I enjoy writing and having and expressing an opinion, but mostly I really do ‘do it’ ‘for the record’. I never knew my mom or much about my family at all until I started genealogy and getting on line and asking questions. As part of that I found a couple of diary’s of my moms and read them. They weren’t long or greatly informative but it gave me a little insight. From that, I learned that someday, someone of a current or future generation is going to want to know more about a predecessor. So I have done the genealogy and that’s the basics of it. But now I write because the basics just doesn’t seem adequate. So you see I have to write about what is on my mind. Someday it will provide someone who is interested a pretty good glimpse into who and what I/we were. “For the Record”

Now I have to send an email to let you all know there are some new posts to Randy’s Blog. Didn’t do it last time because I was not quite done with my thought. And now it will kind of serve as a test to see who checks to see if I’ve written something recently. Oh yeah! I’m checking on you. And what I’m finding is, it doesn’t really matter what I write ‘cause maybe there’s nobody out there. Hello…………… Is anybody out there? Send me a comment. Hellooooo!! Be nice though, for I am in control.

Who is John Galt?

Once in a while I just have to write about what’s on my mind. Or maybe I do that most of the time. But then most of the time I use restraint. I have always been told it was inappropriate to talk too much about politics and religion. That’s what ‘they’ say. The mysterious ‘they’. I use to hate it when that phrase was used, especially by my wicked stepmother. But then I had a hard time accepting anything she said. So…. the mysterious ‘they’? It must be ‘the powers that be’, like a wicked stepmother, or the news media, or maybe a political party or administration, that don’t want you to question some of the crap they put out because it really won’t stand up to any scrutiny i.e. It’s not polite to talk about and thereby question especially politics and maybe religion. Well ‘horse pucky’, if we can’t talk about it and learn to understand it, we are probably doomed to whatever pap ‘they’ put upon us. So at times I just must talk politics. And to be clear, I said “I was told it was inappropriate’, I didn’t say I believed it!

So! Who is John Galt? I am proud to say I learned who John Galt was way back in either 1962 or maybe 1963. I was in the Army in France at a small installation about 80 clicks east of Paris, Brienne La Chateau. There wasn’t a whole lot to do in my free time except drink and read. So when I wasn’t drinking, I was reading. We had a little library on base and I made pretty good use of it. I read Ayn Rands “The Fountainhead” and then “Atlas Shrugged”, along with all I could get of Ian Flemings 007 stuff, and Edgar Rice Burroughs. And I think that is where I started reading Robert Heinlein. It was during the latter part of my formative years and it just filled my ‘tiny brain full of mush’ with the newfound principles and ideas that I have held to forever. And to be a little more precise, reading those authors didn’t change my beliefs but they did better define and cement them. I had always been conservative, my family was, and in those days before the education system took over the job, we all pretty much held to the beliefs of our families. So I was a Republican and believed in the concept of limited government and self reliance. For me it fit. I didn’t like school so much, other than athletics, but I did read a lot. And I read things that encouraged the principles of conservatism. The books of Heinlein and Rand fit that mold to a tee. Lazarus Long, Howard Roark, and Hank Rearden are the characters more people should relate to. Heinlein’s “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” is one of the best. But I’ll leave it up to you. To bring this to a close, WHEW !!!!!! John Galt in “Atlas Shrugged” said something to the effect and I paraphrase, ‘I will not return until the lights of New York City go out’. Now the movie is out and the timing is pretty good. Maybe they can finish the movie before the lights really do go out !!  I fear the time is closer than we think!

Here is something from Heinlein.

"The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’
‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome."
— Robert A. Heinlein

 

Remember……………………………  “I was just thinking” And damn, I really didn’t get very political at all. But I think the inference is there! I’ll try to weave more into my writings next time.