The Road Goes On Forever

Happy Mardi Gras!!

2012-02-20T11:12:00.001-06:00

May the God of All be merciful on you and yours on this culmination of Celebrations known as Mardi Gras.

Furthermore, may your Lent be especially pentitive!!

WOW.....

2011-12-05T12:08:00.002-06:00

USM WINS CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIP!!

Absolutely amazing.....USM beats undefeated Houston (ranked #6) 49 - 28 in the Conference USA Championship.

Now most of you know that I don't give a rat's ass about football these days - just grew out of it, I guess. Or maybe I just got too used to living with the mediocre football we've been playing since the "hay-day" when I was in school from 1979-1983.

But the football team we had this year was simply amazing in so many respects.

The one respect that we were not amazing in was the one that counts....how in the HELL DO WE LOSE TO MARSHALL AND UAB with a team that could do what it did this past weekend?

I know it's a long season and it's hard to get up for each game.....and I'll even forgive the Marshall defeat since it was only the second game and was truly before we hit our stride and we all realized that we have something special this year.

But the UAB loss quite frankly just puzzles me. They should not have even been on the field with us and we got beat in every facet of the game. Then we come back the next week and destroy poor, hapless Memphis.

I can truly say that I did not expect to win against Houston. The same Houston that was averaging almost 53 points a game. The Houston that was going to pull our shittly little conference out of the bottom and get us some decent press for the first time in a LONG TIME.

And yet there we were, not only winning......but kicking their ass!!

WOW.

It was truly remarkable.

And I'm very sad that we don't get to go play in the Liberty Bowl this year. It's a shame that the Liberty Bowl will take the 9th place SEC team instead of the conference champion that is ranked.

But that's the problem with being a Mickey Mouse school in a Mickey Mouse conference.

None-the-less I am very proud of our football team and I certainly hope they have a great time in Hawaii at the Aloha Bowl. Them and the 200 or so USM fans that will surely make the trip!!

Aloha.....

Anybody Out There......

2011-12-02T13:22:00.002-06:00

December 2011.......already.

Wow.

What once was a very prolific outlet for my psychic (or psychotic!) energy has become almost an after-thought!

What once allowed me to empty my soul has been taken over by facebook, twitter, etc.

What a long strange trip it's been these past few years.

The economy still in shambles. The death bell tolling on our civilization?

Who knows.

What I do know is that at some point in the future, it surely will be fun to look back on this and see what I thought "back in the day"!!

So remind me to post something once a month or so!!!

Peace.

Keith "Tex" Kennedy - Hall of Famer!!

2011-09-20T08:21:00.001-05:00

September 16, 2011………..a day that will live in infamy! (or at least a day that I will remember for the rest of my life.)

That was the day that I, Keith Kennedy, Old Guy, Swimmer, was inducted into the USM Sports Hall of Fame.

It was quite a surreal moment for me.

Yes, I was a great swimmer………but that was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away!!

And honestly, I used to “define” myself by my swimming………that’s what I was – A SWIMMER – and that is what I thought of myself as. But it’s been 10 years since I was in the water and competed. So those type thoughts are no longer part of my lexicon.

My induction class was quite illustrious:

Myself – Swimming 1980 - 1984
Angela Atterberry (Jackson) – Basketball 1997-2000
Darrin Chancellor – Basketball – 1987-1991
Joe Dawson – Basketball – 1978-1982
Chris Logan – Baseball – 1990-1994
Todd Pinkston – Football – 1996 – 1999 (All Pro – Philadelphia Eagles)
Patrick Surtain – Football 1994 – 1997 (All Pro – Miami Dolphins)
Adalius Thomas – Football 1996 – 1999 (All Pro – Baltimore Ravens/New England Patiriots)
Jerry Taylor – Football 1954 – 1956 (Alumni Committee Inductee)

The induction ceremony was quite fun!! I had 57 people come for me which I was told was the largest crowd ever for a single athlete. I would say something like I’m special and have a lot of friends………but the truth is, I’m special and have a lot of friends!! No, really, I communicate well and talked several of my friends into coming to a very large party and because it was a great party………….and so they came!!

It was quite an honor to be inducted – and as I said earlier, it was a bit surreal for me. Especially since there were so many famous professional football players going into the Hall in my class. It was quite a pleasure meeting them.

My most favorite part of it was the pride I saw on my children’s faces and in their actions. My son was actually quite giddy about the whole thing and not only made several posts about it on facebook, he ran around with his camera and his beautiful girlfriend and got his picture made with all those All Pro NFL players as if he were 12 years old. And I thought that was precious!!

My athletic accomplishments were obviously long before my children were born and therefore they really had no inkling of my achievements…………..but due to this ceremony and the very nice things that were said about me at the induction ceremony, they got a glimpse of it. And for that, I am extremely gratified and a bit prideful.

But don’t worry……………I am certainly very careful with the pride thing because it is absolutely one of the seven deadly sins!!

I went up in the third position due to the alphabetical nature of the induction and from the response of the crowd, I was the hit of the show. I say that because my sense of humor is such that the softball questions that my friend John Cox, the MC of the event, asked me afforded me the opportunity to use my wit to my advantage.

Plus the fact that I love public speaking…………….It has been said that Keith Kennedy with a microphone and a crowd is a very dangerous thing!!

All in all, it was quite an honor and I have a very thankful heart that I was able to share this experience with so many of my close friends.

And in addition to all that, I was dressed to the 9’s including my size 15 gangster shoes which are pictured lovingly above!!

So my thanks to all who came and especially all who voted – you all made this old man very happy!!

25 Things I Learned In The South......

2011-08-02T08:55:00.002-05:00

1. A possum is a flat animal that sleeps in the middle of the road.

2. There are 5,000 types of snakes and 4,998 of them live in the South.

3. There are 10,000 types of spiders. All 10,000 of them live in the South, plus a couple no one's seen before.

4. If it grows, it'll stick ya. If it crawls, it'll bite cha.

5. Onced and Twiced are words.

6. It is not a shopping cart, it is a buggy!

7. Jawl-P? means, Did you all go to the bathroom?

8. People actually grow,eat and like okra.

9. Fixinto is one word. It means I'm going to do that.

10. There is no such thing as lunch. There is only dinner and then there's supper.

11. Iced tea is appropriate for all meals and you start drinking it when you're two.

12. We do like a little tea with our sugar. It is referred to as the Wine of the South.

13. Backwards and forwards means I know everything about you.

14. The word jeet is actually a question meaning, 'Did you eat?'

15. You don't have to wear a watch, because it doesn't matter what time it is, you work until you're done or it's too dark to see.

16. You don't PUSH buttons, you MASH em.

17. Ya'll is singular.

18. All ya'll is plural.

19. All the festivals across the state are named after a fruit, vegetable, grain, insect, or animal.

20. You carry jumper cables in your car - for your OWN car.

21. You only own five spices: salt, pepper, mustard, Tabasco and ketchup.

22. The local papers cover national and international news on one page, but require 6 pages for local high school sports, the motor sports, and gossip.

23. You think that the first day of deer season is a national holiday.

24. You know what a hissy fit is.

25. Fried catfish is the other white meat.

Why Guitars??

2011-07-14T14:30:00.003-05:00

I doubt anyone reads this anymore but I'll give it a whack........

I've been asked by many..........and more importantly by my wife...........why the hell are you building guitars?

I've thought a lot about that.

The quick answer is that I want too!

But beyond that, it's a desire to do something with my hands. It's a deep desire to be artistic because besides cooking amazing food (if I say so myself!) I've never really done anything "artistic" before.

Music is my first love and I've thought a lot about music in my life.

So I really decided to look academically at it and here is what I came up with:

"Imprinting" is a psychological term first introduced in the '30s by the noted German animal behavior specialist Konrad Lorenz. He found that in newly hatched geese, the first moving object that they saw was "imprinted" as a mother image. Normally this would be a mother goose.

If, however, the first animal they saw in the first few hours of life was a person, they'd follow people and identify with people for the rest of their lives. Similar phenomena held true for other species. The concept is that there are formative stages in which a lasting imprint is made. Animals can learn at many stages in life, but this learned behavior differs from imprinting, which produces permanent patterns of preference.

We tend to become imprinted with the music that was popular when we were of dating age, from age 14 up through our early 20s. Then many tend to drop out of the music scene. They acquire an expensive wife, expensive children, an expensive house and car, upward mobility and lack of free time. They can re-enter the music scene in two phases of their life. One is where their upward mobility and their job has stabilized and they have money and leisure time to once again pursue their hobbies.

We're now seeing older musicians, baby boom folk players. That's the music they liked when they were growing up, and they're taking it back up with a vengeance now. This doesn't mean that they're taking it up in exactly the same format as when they were kids. They're older, more mature, more educated, and they have more money and more stability. They're able to buy more expensive instruments and stereo systems, and they're more sophisticated.

There is a second wave of older musicians about a decade behind the first. They are rockers - the people who listened to the folk in the early '60s and the Beatles and Rolling Stones in the mid- to late-'60s and then dropped out of the scene. I expect them to follow the same re-entry pattern as the folkies. These folks are a good example of musical imprinting and the first phase of re-entry into the music scene.

What happens to people when they retire? First, they all of a sudden have a lot of leisure time, and if they've provided well for themselves they have a goodly amount of money. So one of the first things they do is to start getting into their hobbies, which are often strongly influenced by their earlier imprinting, musical or otherwise.

If these hobbies have been neglected, then they have a sudden outburst of buying, taking music lessons and getting involved in these hobbies. Five to ten years after they retire, they become less acquisitive. They already have their collections. They no longer need student instruments. Then it gets to a point where they realize they're not getting any younger, and they're getting physically weaker, they can't get around as well, their children and grandchildren aren't interested in their instruments, they are either too feeble to participate or dead and buried.

We are now faced with an interesting phenomenon in the wealthy industrialized countries in which for the first time in human history the teenage population is outnumbered by the 65-and-over population, and in which the 40-year-old age bracket is the majority of the population. The birth rate is down and the death rate is down. People live longer and reproduce slower in the same countries where guitar sales are a strong factor. The youth-oriented market is no longer the biggest segment either in numbers or in buying power.

One of the things that we see today and in the foreseeable future is that often enough it will be the second and third phases (that is to say, older people) that will sustain music manufacturers and certainly the high-priced concert promoters through the long run.

These people re-entering the market will be the ones that buy instruments in the intermediate and professional grades, whereas young people usually buy beginner grade.

The bottom line is that there is a market for good (professional grade) guitars and there are not enough good guitars around.

Thus, I build guitars!

Professional Grade Guitars......WHITE LIGHTNIN' GUITARS!!

Peace

too long.......

2011-06-23T09:32:00.002-05:00

seems like posting to a blog got to be too much for me in my new busy environment.

I VOW TO DO BETTER!!

Guitar Man

2011-04-12T14:12:00.007-05:00

Guitar Wood:

Bocote
Cordia Gerascanthus

Bocote has a Rosewood-like taptone and features an attractive, tobacco/reddish brown color with distinct, parallel black lines (it does not show the spider-webbing figure that our best grade Ziricote does).

It comes from the same family as Ziricote (Cordia) and is found in the same region (Central America to Northern Amazon).

Less brittle than Ziricote, it is a popular wood with wood turners and has had success as a guitar tonewood, though few builders have created stock models from it yet.

East Indian Rosewood/Palisander
Dalbergia latifolia

Although East Indian Rosewood had been used for guitar backs and sides for many decades, it came into common usage starting in the mid-1960s when the more well known Brazilian Rosewood became less available in the quantities needed for large scale guitar production. High quality Indian Rosewood logs were plentiful and commercially available to the major markets when the Brazilian government stopped the export of Brazilian Rosewood logs. Fortunately, Indian Rosewood was also found to be an excellent alternative to Brazilian Rosewood both visually and tonally.

The color ranges from red to light brown with golden streaks, but more often runs to various shades of purple-brown (which eventually oxidizes to a rich brown color).

The workability of Indian Rosewood is very good. It is slightly less dense, more evenly grained and more stable than Brazilian Rosewood.

It bends well by hand or machine. The vast majority of the higher quality steel string and classical guitars made over the last thirty years have been made in Indian Rosewood. Even many of the top classical guitar makers - Romanillos, Fleta, Friederich, Gilbert - prefer it to Brazilian Rosewood.

Padauk
Pterocarpus soyauxii

Padauk is a bright orange or almost crimson wood when freshly cut, but oxidizes to a darker, rich purple-brown over time - although it stays redder than Indian Rosewood.

Slightly harder and heavier than Indian Rosewood it is a good back and side wood in all respects - stable, easy to work, with a strong tone.

Noted luthier Dana Bourgeois (Bourgeois Guitars) has said that, “Padauk is the most promising replacement for generic Rosewood”.

It may be a little difficult to bend compared to the ease of bending of some of the more pliable woods.

The lumber is readily available in larger planks, so the sets are moderately priced and exhibit good, straight grain throughout most pieces.

Pau Ferro / Morado
Machaerium villosum

Also known as Caviuna, Bolivian Rosewood, or Palo Santos, this Rosewood-like wood has many names and is often imported interchangeably with other similar species.

In appearance it’s much like Indian Rosewood, but substitute browns, golds and yellows for the purple shades.

A nonporous wood, it is a dream to finish, and has a nice tap tone. It’s heavier than Indian and Brazilian Rosewood; and it machines and glues well.

Wenge
Millettia laurentii

Wenge is a large straight growing tree found from central through western Africa.
It is abundant and should be commercially available for years to come.

In 1983 this wood was first suggested to us as a guitar tonewood by maker Don Musser.

In recent years as the price of Indian Rosewood has increased, Wenge has become a more viable alternative body wood.
The grain of the Wenge sets is tight and straight across the entire width of backs and sides.

The color is chocolate brown with evenly spaced black veins.

This wood is heavier than either Indian or Brazilian Rosewood and is stiffer, but softer, with large pores.

Any binding/trim scheme contrasts well with the even, consistent color and grain of this wood.

Zebrawood
Microberlina Brazzavillensis

Zebrawood has a more boldly colored alternative to Indian Rosewood.

With about the same density, workability and resonance as Indian Rosewood, it is evenly striped overall with small alternating bands of gold-tan and dark brown.

SOOOOOOOOOO..........

By now, I'm sure you're wondering what all this wood is for. Or maybe not, maybe you've figured it all out by now.

My new thing for this year is guitars........I'm gonna help build them. Or at least give it a whack!!

My fraternity brother Mark Hodges has a big brother named Mike that can do anything - and some of his anything happens to be that he is a luthier.

Cool name for someone who repairs and builds guitars.

He's got the shop, the time, the energy and the talent.

So what am I bringing to the table you may ask?

I am bringing the stuff and the vision and the BUSINESS PLAN!!

Handmade guitars bring lots of money!!

So if you have an extra $3000 laying around, I will build you (or better said: I will get you one built and rub on it when he lets me)!

I have procured 6 sets of wood for 6 guitars. You may have notice the pictures of it above!

Shopping for this stuff has been so much fun for me because I have literally talked to folks all over the world, made some connections and formed some relationships.

Because of that, I have gotten the wood at a great price.

I have less money in the wood than I do in my last guitar so even if the two I've already presold fall through, I still get me a couple of great handmade guitars at a very small price.

Oh I love this stuff!!

I haven't decided which wood I'm going to choose for my first guitar but I'm leaning heavily towards the zebrawood because it's so cool!! And yes, those pictures above are of the actual wood I have - not shined up encyclopedia pictures!!

I'll post pictures as we go along this journey and let you know how it goes.

Magically Delicious

2011-03-17T10:19:00.003-05:00

Yes......this is my most favorite St Patrick's Day Parade photo of all time!!

And since it's St. Patrick's Day, I thought I would add some true Irish wisdom to the ole blog and set some of you non-irish straight........

St. Patrick Was Irish

Not exactly. Although no one knows for certain where St. Patrick was born, based on his own account it was most likely in southwestern Britain. As a result, it's fairly common to find various pundits gleefully commenting on the "irony" that Ireland's patron saint was actually "English." The problem, of course, is that no one in the 5th century was what we would call "English." Rather, the people living in present-day England were Romanized Celts, or Britons. So Patrick is thus more accurately called a Celtic Briton, son of a low-level Roman official.

St. Patrick Was the First Christian Missionary to Ireland

Nope. Contrary to popular belief, St. Patrick was not the first Christian missionary in Ireland, though he was certainly the most successful. Some evidence exists of missionaries traveling through Ireland by the late fourth century A.D., but they seemed to have enjoyed little success. The best-known missionary before Patrick was Palladius, sent by Pope Celestine in 431 A.D. to minister to "the Irish who believe in Christ." Many scholars believe that at least some of the deeds and accomplishments later attributed to Patrick were more likely those of Palladius (some even contend that Patrick and Palladius were one in the same). There were others as well, Auxilius and Iserninus worked in the south of Ireland while Secondinas preached in the north and east.

St. Patrick Used the Shamrock to Teach about Christianity

One of the most enduring tales of St. Patrick is that he used the shamrock to explain the mystery of the Trinity (by comparing the three leaves with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit) to the pagan Celts of Ireland. The legend is unverifiable, since Patrick doesn't mention it in his writings. Some have suggested it derives from an earlier Celtic tradition of using the shamrock as a metaphor representing a "trust in your soul," "belief in your heart" and "faith in your mind." Some missionary, if not Patrick himself, very likely Christianized this concept. Few in Ireland seem troubled by these details and the shamrock remains the Irish national symbol.

St. Patrick Drove the Snakes out of Ireland

There's only one problem with this story: Ireland never had any snakes to drive away. Separated from England (where snakes of all sorts abound) and the Continent thousands of years ago, Ireland emerged from the Ice Age snake-free. If St. Patrick were alive today, of course, we could expect that his spokesperson would come forward to offer a slightly modified legend which stretched, but did not break, the limits of belief: "Since Patrick's arrival in Ireland, no snakes have been sighted."

The Annual St. Patrick's Day Parade is an Irish Tradition

Actually, the parade was invented in Manhattan. Of course, the practice of honoring St. Patrick on March 17, traditionally understood as the day of his death (c. 493) at Downpatrick in County Down, is a tradition that comes from old Ireland. For centuries the people of Ireland marked the day as a solemn religious event, perhaps wearing green, sporting a shamrock, and attending mass, but little more. Certainly there was no massive parade like the ones found in American cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago.

No one knows for sure when the first commemoration of St. Patrick's Day in America took place. One of the earliest references is to the establishment of the Charitable Irish Society, founded on St. Patrick's Day in Boston in 1737. Another early celebration took place in New York City in 1762, when an Irishman named John Marshall held a party in his house. Although little is known of Marshall's party, it is understood that his guests marched as a body to his house to mark St. Patrick's Day, thus forming an unofficial "parade." The first recorded true parade took place in 1766 in New York when local military units, including some Irish soldiers in the British army, marched at dawn from house to house of the leading Irish citizens of the city. With few exceptions, the parade in New York has been held every year since 1766. Thus was a tradition born--an American tradition only recently adopted in Ireland itself.

The Irish Invented the Urban Political Machine

The Irish in America certainly came to dominate urban political machines, but they didn't invent them. Native born Americans began to establish political machines in the early nineteenth century, long before the great waves of Irish immigrants arrived. Indeed New York's Tammany Hall, perhaps the most famous machine of all, was first established as a fraternal society in 1788 and was quite hostile to the foreign born. It was under the skillful leadership of Aaron Burr and later Martin Van Buren in the early 19th century that Tammany became a political organization that sought the favor of the poor, immigrant Irish. Irish domination of that machine didn't really materialize until the fall of William Tweed (himself Scottish Presbyterian) in the early 1870s and the emergence of "Honest" John Kelly as his successor. Still, it wasn't until 1880 that the first Irish Catholic mayor--William R. Grace--was elected.

Most Irish Americans Are Catholic

In several polls and surveys conducted in the 1970s and 1980s, researchers discovered what at first seemed an astonishing fact: a majority of Americans who identify themselves as Irish also identify themselves as Protestant. For a nation (and an ethnic group for that matter) that had grown so accustomed to conflating Irishness with Catholicism, this announcement was greeted with disbelief. Among some Irish Catholics, the reaction was anger.

The explanation for the find is actually quite simple. Ultimately, it is a question of timing, more than numbers. Huge numbers of Irish immigrants came to America in the colonial period (indeed, 30 percent of all immigrants from Europe arriving between 1700 and 1820 came from Ireland) and the great majority of them were Presbyterians from Ulster. Of the many thousands of Catholics who came in the 17th and 18th centuries, most appear to have converted to some form of Protestantism. The Protestant descendents of these early Irish arrivals have been multiplying ever since. In contrast, the great migration of Irish Catholics began only in the 1830s (during which time, of course, many Protestant Irish continued to come). A poll conducted by the National Opinion Research Center makes this point clear: in the 1970s, only 41% of Irish Catholics were fourth generation or more as compared to 83% of Irish Protestants.

AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT, HERE ARE A FEW ODDS AND ENDS:

Leprechauns Are Cute Little Elves

Stop right there, turn around slowly, and DROP that picture in your mind of the little guy on the Lucky Charms cereal box. That jolly little imp, and his counterparts on greeting cards, pub signs, and your Aunt Margaret's stationery, bears almost no resemblance to the leprechauns of Irish mythology. To borrow a phrase from a long-dead philosopher writing about something entirely different, they were "nasty, brutish, and short." Leprechauns were grumpy, alcoholic, insufferable elves in the employ of Irish fairies. They made shoes for fairies (hence their depiction as cobblers) and guarded their treasure which to the leprechauns' eternal frustration was revealed occasionally to mortals by a rainbow. Somewhere in the course of the Irish American experience, the leprechaun took on the characteristics of the loveable, but ultimately contemptible, stage Irishman.

"Luck of the Irish" Refers to the Abundance of Good Fortune Long Enjoyed by the Irish

Really? What sort of luck is it that brings about 1,000 years of invasion, colonization, exploitation, starvation and mass emigration? In truth, this term has a happier, if not altogether positive, American origin. During the gold and silver rush years in the second half of the 19th century, a number of the most famous and successful miners were of Irish and Irish American birth. For example, James Fair, James Flood, William O'Brien and John Mackay were collectively known as the "Silver Kings" after they hit the famed Comstock Lode. Over time this association of the Irish with mining fortunes led to the expression "luck of the Irish." Of course, it carried with it a certain tone of derision, as if to say, only by sheer luck, as opposed to brains, could these fools succeed.

Mc and Mac Distinguish One as Either Irish or Scottish

Both terms designate a person's ancestry. Mac is the Gaelic term for son and Mc is merely a shorthand version. Lord Blarney, for example, Cormac Mac Carthaig (McCarthy), was son of Carthaig. Neither "Mc" nor "Mac" signify an Irish or Scottish name. Both Mac and its contraction Mc are found in the traditional Gaelic societies of Scotland and Ireland.

And while we're at it, what's with all those O's?

"O" is the Gaelic word for grandson. The apostrophe, which suggests a contraction, is a legacy of British colonialism. Misguided English bureaucrats assumed the O stood for the word "of" (as in "crack o' dawn") and added the apostrophe when compiling official records and census data. Over the centuries, many families dropped the O', which accounts for the existence of both O'Sullivan and Sullivan, O'Mahoney and Mahoney, etc. In recent decades many people in Ireland, and a few in the States, have dropped the apostrophe in favor of the more traditional spelling.

So there you have it.....all the Irish you need to know to go forth and puke green beer tonight!!

Peace.

Da Mardi Gras

2011-03-14T10:59:00.004-05:00

Drinkin' early in the morning with Slash and Lady Gaga!!

Hangin' on the fence outside the police station!

I'm not sure why I posted this picture......

We had a marvelous time at da mardi gras down in New Orleans.

If you haven't been - make sure you go.........and when you do go, don't worry about the parades, that's so overcrowded and full of "undesirables". Nope, go on down to the French Quarter, the Veaux Carre, and take it all in.

The parades out on St. Charles and Canal are full of thugs stomping on beads and running over children, drunk and disorderly.

The French Quarter is full of New Orleanians in full costume garb and truly celebrating the time of their lives!

We met some great friends that have a condo down there and we walked around and saw (and were seen!) what there was to see.

The "gayest parade" down on St. Ann was quite the scene. It really was very, very gay but for some reason, in that setting it was quite joyful!

And very GAY!!

Anyway, a great time was had by all.

Come join us next time - we'll be the sexy pirates looking for "booty"!

Peace.

Hannah's New Guitar

2011-03-03T11:43:00.002-06:00

Hannah's 21st birthday isn't until June but at the rate she kept "borrowing" my guitars I was gonna be out in a few months anyway so we decided to go ahead and get her a new one.

A special one.

A read damned good one.

Ain't it purty!!

It's much nicer than anything I've got and she looks so much better playing it than I do!!

Anyway, she was tickled to death with it.

Now I can't wait to see if she remembers it on her 21st birthday. History tells me that the "gift euphoria" will be long gone and she'll be pissed when she doesn't get anything else on her birthday.

But I know her momma and I'm pretty sure she won't!!

I have the first song she has recorded with the guitar on my itunes but I have no idea how to get it out to the public so if you want to hear it, shoot me an e-mail and I'll send it to ya!!

Peace!

Oxford Town

2011-03-01T14:00:00.003-06:00

Here is the beautiful bed and breakfast we stayed at in Oxford Town:

And here is the room where all the "magic" happened!!

Once again, my most beautiful wife gave me another amazing Valentine's Day gift.....

A secluded night at a Bed and Breakfast way out in the country where the screams could not be heard by the innocent bystanders!

We went to a B&B just outside of Oxford, MS called Castle Hill.

This place was beautiful and looked as if it were a Greek Revival Manor from back in the day......but it turns out that these rich folks built it in 2003 so they could get resort status and serve alcohol on Sundays in Lafayette County.

Not the worst reason to spend several million bucks (if you got it!).

It was a very lovely place and it was very quiet (except for the screams) and I had a great time spending some alone-time with the woman that cranks my tractor.

I have only been to Oxford once in my life and that was back in my college days for a football game that us Eagles got talked into going up there to play.

Of course, in my defense, if you've ever been to Oxford you realize that the it's not the kind of place that you'd ever pass through going anywhere. It is literally in the middle of NOWHERE.

But we tooled around the campus and saw all the lovely old houses and such.

And as bad as I HATE, Hate, hate Ole Miss......one has to admit that it is a very charming place.

It is everything that USM is not and I guess that's why we hate them so much. Well, that and the fact that they have treated us like poor cousins since time began even when we were kicking their asses with regularity.

And truthfully, it is a cool place.

But it's one that I have crossed off my list and I don't see a reason to ever go back (unless they agree to play us in football ever again)!

So thank you baby. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for saying "yes" whenver I ask. Thank you for putting up with all my crazy shit. Thank you for not screaming too loudly!!

I love you madly.

Always have and always will.

Happy VD!!

Why Shit Happens - From a Religious Point of View

2011-03-01T13:56:00.003-06:00

Shit has a reason.......here are a few:

Taoism: Shit happens, go with the flow.

Hare Krishna: Shit happens Rama Rama Ding Ding.

Hinduism: This shit has happened before.

Islam: Shit happening is the will of Allah.

Zen: What is the sound of shit happening?

Existentialism: Shit doesn't happen; shit is.

Buddhism: When shit happens, is it really shit?

Confucianism: Confucius says, "Shit happens".

7th day Adventist: Shit happens on Saturdays.

Protestantism: Shit won't happen if you work harder.

Catholicism: If shit happens, you deserved it.

Jehovah's Witnesses: No shit happens until Armageddon, and it won't happen to us.

Unitarian: What is this shit?

Mormon: Shit happens again & again & again.

Judaism: Why does this shit always happen to us?

Pentecostalism: Praise the Lord! There is no shit!

New Age: Shit happens and it happens to smell good if you open your heart to it.

Rastafarianism: Let's smoke this shit!!

The Richest One....

2011-02-21T22:46:00.003-06:00

The song that Wes Lee and the other amazing musicians sang that brought a tear to everyone's eye at Mike "Big Daddy Blue" Chambliss benefit was "The Richest One".

I think it's my new favorite song.......

If I had a dollar for every time
You broke my heart and messed up my mind
I’d be the Richest One
I’d be the Richest One in the world

If bad times paid interest
I’d have you to thank
I’d be driving a new car
Have money in the bank
And I’d be the Richest One
I’d be the Richest One in the world

But money can’t buy love
The kind I dream of is so hard to find
A good woman's touch
In the morning when I rise
And baby I’d give up every single dime

If teardrops were diamonds
From the African mines
If heartaches were silver
My whole life would shine
And I’d be the Richest One
I’d be the Richest One in the world

I’d have yachts in the Riviera
Mansions in Spain
Oil wells in Texas; big diamond rings
I would go where I want to go
Do what I wanna do; be what I wanna be
And I’d be the Richest One
I’d be the Richest One in the world

Wow....just wow!

"Big Daddy Blue"

2011-02-21T11:05:00.002-06:00

I spend yesterday doing some of my favorite things with my most favorite person in the whole wide world.

We showed up at Sideline’s at 10:30am to participate in a Poker Run to start the benefit for Mike “Big Daddy Blue” Chambliss.

Big Daddy was a local musician who was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer less than 2 weeks ago.

He died just a few hours after we started the benefit………but he would have liked the party going on for him and I like to think that this way, he even got to see it for himself!

To see the musicians on stage talk about him and break down and cry made for a very emotionally charged atmosphere. Music, at its core is emotional anyway, but to add this type of meaning on top of that was something to behold. Truly it was.

But as usual, I’m getting way ahead of myself.

We started the poker run and went to a few bars and had a libation or three. The nature of a poker run is to get a card at each place you stop and at the end, whoever has the best poker hand is declared the winner.

Guess who pulled 3 aces……..yep, me!!

You see, I’m the luckiest som-bitch in the world. I have the woman of my dreams as my wife and I can also pull aces out of a deck with regularity. The truth is, “ I am the man”!

Of course, I donated the winnings back to the benefit because , well, it was a benefit and that’s what we are called to do.

Anyway, we finally got back to Sidelines on my bike and it was time to go home and take a nap. That is very important for a Sunday afternoon.

My baby needs her rest and it’s my job to make sure she gets it.

Sometimes that means I have to shush up little giggly girls but this time it meant taking her home on the motorcycle and putting her in the bed for a few hours!!

When she got up, we showered and got all decked out in our finest club clothes (and wow, did she look awesome!) and went back out. We got there just as her favorite, crotch tingling musician got on stage for his set.

If you haven’t seen Wes Lee play a set, it’s something to behold. The man has stage presence and he literally throws everything he has into each performance.

I enjoy his shows so much. And he had so many “guest” musicians including Dusty Chambliss, Big Daddy’s son playing guitar with him. There were horns, saxophones and every kind of guitar you’ve ever seen. It was quite a show.

There were a total of 7 bands that played for 11 hours and everyone donated their time and talents to making sure that this thing went off in a big way.

There we auctions of all kinds of stuff. Hell, I bought a 4-foot long broad sword that Conan the Barbarian would be proud to swing around!!

Anyway, it was great to see an entire community come together to literally celebrate the life of one of our great musicians and it was a fine thing to see.

It was one of those community events that makes you proud to be a part of the kind of community that puts on stuff like this.

I love my life.

Peace!

Thanks Man......

2011-02-15T08:41:00.002-06:00

Very pumped about this......finally, spending money on something badly needed.

PRESIDENT'S NEW BUDGET PROVIDES INCREASES FOR
TRANSPORTATION

The White House today (February 14) transmitted a proposed budget to Congress calling for $3.73 trillion for fiscal year 2012 which begins on October 1, 2011. In the cover memorandum to Capitol Hill, the President states that the Administration's proposal would reduce the deficit by $1.1 trillion over ten years while still making investments in infrastructure, technology and education.

For the Department of Transportation the proposed plan provides $128 billion, an increase of $53 billion compared with what was enacted in FY 2010. Highway spending would increase to $69.7 billion, almost 70 percent more than the $41.1 billion in FY 2010. It also calls for a six year $556 billion surface reauthorization plan to modernize surface transportation infrastructure.

The plan proposes to merge rail spending with the Highway Trust Fund which currently funds most highway and transit spending into a new account to be called the Transportation Trust Fund. The Administration also reprises the creation of the National Infrastructure Bank, which would be funded through the newly reconfigured trust fund.

The Transportation Trust Fund would be comprised of other accounts, including transit programs now funded from the Transportation's discretionary grant program known as TIGER.

What is not in the budget is the source of monies that would go into the new trust fund. Already the 18.4 cents-per-gallon tax on gasoline, with levies on diesel fuel and truck sales cannot support current obligations.

The budget plan also points out that the, "current framework for financing surface transportation investments is not financially sustainable, nor does it effectively allocate resources to meet our critical material needs." It goes on to say that the President is committed to working with Congress to ensure that funding increases for surface transportation does not increase the deficit.

A breakdown of the DOT budget including allocations for their offices and programs can be viewed by clicking on this link: http://www.nitl.org/Budget2012.pdf.

Palinisms - WTF?

2011-02-04T13:00:00.003-06:00

Since I'm so short on inspiration I figured I'd give you some of the Republican Party's inspirational leadership........

Enjoy!

"His theme last night in the State of the Union was the WTF, winning the future, and I thought, OK, that acronym, spot-on. There were a lot of WTF moments throughout that speech." -on President Obama's State of the Union address

"We can have individuals and individual character traits within politicians, being able to be made manifest in the way that we express our views."—on the strength of the Republican party,

"You have 435 House members. You have 100 senators. You have nine Supreme Court justices and one president. You add up that number and you look at those 500-some people and you realize they are the ones making the decisions that affect our everyday lives and affect our opportunities to either create more jobs or see unemployment continue to stay consistent at the level it is or even grow, unfortunately, in the future."—on President Obama's State of the Union address

"I've been accused of dividing within establishment in the Republican party, too, for some years now, and I don't see it as division."—on whether Rep. Michele Bachmann is creating divisions in the Republican party

"We don't just have the fighting instincts of a bunch of sheep like I think a lot of Democrats do."—on President Obama's State of the Union address

"That was another one of those WTF, when he has so often repeated this 'Sputnik moment' that he would aspire Americans to celebrate, and he needs to remember that what happened back then with the former communist USSR and their victory in that race to space, yeah, they won, but they also incurred so much debt at the time that it resulted in the inevitable collapse of the Soviet Union."—in response to President Obama's State of the Union address

"Both of their messages, too, those conservative common sense messages that they had on how to get the economy back on the right track were really good. They were sound. They were sound because they were in opposition to President Obama's message."—on Rep. Paul Ryan's and Rep. Michele Bachmann's State of the Union responses

"The media's definitely a major part of the problem, if there's a problem with incivility in this nation, definitely, because so many in the media, the lamestream media picking up on what goes viral with lies and innuendo and rumors that are out there in the blogosphere and elsewhere, for the lamestream media to pick up some of these things and run with it without getting facts, that perpetuates the problem that we have with some negative discourse in this country, so definitely the media is a big part of the problem and I certainly would like to see a lot of that changed."—on President Obama's State of the Union address

AND MY OWN PERSONAL FAVE:

"We need to cut these things that aren't constitutionally mandated, that are kind of on the periphery, the fluffery, like NPR and National Endowment for the Arts. Those are obvious."—on President Obama's State of the Union address

It should be noted.......that ALL of these "quotes" came from one short interview on Greta von Susteren on Fox 1-26-11.......ONE SHORT INTERVIEW.

If this is the future, let me chew my leg off now.

Peace (for now)

Fine Predicament We Find You In......

2011-01-20T14:52:00.008-06:00

Obviously this little fellow is just a plain ole ass in a hole!

Which, I guess dictates that this is an elephant in a hole.....?

And this fine dog is up a pole!

And this little piggie cried "weee weeee weeee".......all the way home?

What the Fuck.......the cow has a car on his head!

And this poor horse is "up a tree", so to speak.....

And finally, this fine feathered friend is so obviously sowing what he has reaped since he has been captured by the very bread he has pecked.

So the question has to be........."How is your day"!!

Peace!

Say It Ain't So.......

2011-01-19T15:40:00.006-06:00

Roy Roger's Ain't Ridin' Tonight.......

The Roy Rogers museum in Branson, MO went out-o-bidnez and they sold EVERYTHING.

They sold freakin' Trigger for $274,000 - yea......we're talking about a STUFFED HORSE!

They sold his (stuffed again) border collie for $250,000...........WTF??

But for me, the horrible thing is that they sold his car. His unbelievable car.

I would die for this car!!

Of course, I really didn't have the $254,000 it sold for - but if I had, I'd a wanted it!!

Here is what they said in the cataloge about the car:

Nudie Cohen, the famed "Rodeo Tailor to the Stars," first gained prominence in the early 1950s as the personal tailor for Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, making national headlines with the $10,000 gold lamé suit he created for Elvis Presley in 1957. From the 1950s to the 1980s, requests for Nudie's work piled up from a multitude of top stars, ranging from Gene Autry to ZZ Top.

By the early 1960s, Nudie added his signature treatment to a number of Cadillacs and Bonnevilles -- eventually creating a total of 18 Nudiemobiles. This indescribable vehicle is one of only nine that are known to exist today, each one uniquely personalized with its own arsenal of non-functional but authentic armaments and chrome-plated embellishments.

Beginning with a stock 1964 Pontiac Bonneville Convertible, Nudie removed all traces of the original interior material and carpeting, replacing it with exquisitely hand-tooled leather. Then came the application of hundreds of genuine collectible silver dollars, along with chrome-plated pistols, horseshoes, miniature horses and rifles. Some of these items acted as functional replacements for interior and exterior door handles, switches and controls. Nudie worked out the mechanics of six-shooters to the point where the pull of a trigger on the gear shift works the gears, other pistols open the doors and two more pistols on chrome stands replace the front seat arm rest. Still another pistol sounds the horn and two more open the doors from the outside. Two derringers are also employed replacing the emergency brake release and the other works the directional lights. In all, Nudie has used 14 guns in Roy's western car. Externally, the six-foot wide Texas longhorns on the front end of the vehicle leave an imposing first impression, while the rear of the car has a full Continental trunk treatment. Natural-stocked rifles are mounted on the rear of the car, one on each fender and one mounted on the trunk lid. The six-foot wide Texas longhorns on the front end of the vehicle leave an imposing first impression, while the trunk of the car is emblazoned with the name ROY ROGERS.

For an extra front-seat rider, Nudie has placed a fabulous silver saddle between the bucket seats, decorated with rhinestones and 150 silver dollars.

Nudie gave this car to Roy in the 1960s as a token of their friendship wanting Roy to know "how much he loved and respected him." Roy and Dale rode in their Nudiemobile in several parades.

So, the moral of this story is that when I die, please sell my fantabulous pink motorcycle for as much as you can and throw a big ole party for all my rowdy friends!

Peace........oh, and "Happy Trails", y'all!

Demotivational Christianity

2011-01-18T09:22:00.002-06:00

This letter was in the Waco, TX newspaper on November 18, 2010......

Put me in charge of food stamps. I’d get rid of Lone Star cards; no cash for
Ding Dongs or Ho Ho’s, just money for 50-pound bags of rice and beans,
Blocks of cheese, and all the powdered milk you can haul away. If you want
Steak and frozen pizza ..... Get a job.

Put me in charge of Medicaid. The first thing I’d do is to get women
Norplant birth control implants or tubal ligations. Then we’ll test
Recipients for drugs, alcohol, and nicotine and document all tattoos and
Piercings. If you want to reproduce or use drugs, alcohol, smoke or get tats
And piercings .... Get a job.

Put me in charge of government housing. Ever live in a military barracks?
You will maintain our property in a clean and good state of repair. Your
“home” will be subject to inspections anytime, and possessions will be
Inventoried. If you want a plasma TV or Xbox 360 ..... Get a job and your
Own place.

In addition, you will either present a check stub from a job each week or
You will report to a “government” job. It may be cleaning the roadways of
Trash, painting and repairing public housing, whatever we find for you. We
Will sell your 22 inch rims and low profile tires and your blasting stereo
And speakers and put that money toward the “common good.”

Before you write that I’ve violated someone’s rights, realize that all of
The above is voluntary. If you want our money, accept our rules.. Before you
Say this would be “demeaning” and ruin their “self esteem,” consider that it
wasn’t that long ago when taking someone else’s money for doing absolutely
Nothing was demeaning and lowered self esteem.

If we are expected to pay for other people’s mistakes we should at least
Attempt to make them learn from their bad choices. The current system
Rewards them for continuing to make bad choices.

Alfred W. Evans, Gatesville, Texas

So while I agree with the heart and soul of this letter........I'm not sure how it corresponds with my Christain beliefs.

We are called to give all we have to those who don't. It's plain and simply stated and there is no argument there from a biblical perspective.

But what are we to do with those that "milk" the system.

We all recognize the "institutional poverty" is a very real thing. It's why 14 year old girls hurry to have babies - so they can get on the "payroll".

It's the motivation to have more and more.

All the while, it continues to feed the poverty cycle.

And while it is certainly true that folks can escape that cycle, most don't.

The motivation is just not there.

So how do I feel about it........

Truthfully, it depends on what side of the bed I got up on.

Peace.

Heaven Waits

2011-01-10T11:02:00.005-06:00

Just learned of the passing of Major Richard Winters on January 2' just a few weeks shy of his 93rd birthday.

I can only imagine that he was greeted by all of his men as he entered triumphantly through the prearly gates.

The Band of Brothers finally has their commander back!

When asked if he was a hero, he would answer, "no, but I served in a company of them".......

God Speed, sir.

Here is the article from the USA Today:

PHILADELPHIA — Richard "Dick" Winters, the Easy Company commander whose World War II exploits were made famous by the book and television miniseries Band of Brothers, died last week in central Pennsylvania. He was 92.
Winters died Jan. 2 following a several-year battle with Parkinson's disease, longtime family friend William Jackson said Monday.

An intensely private and humble man, Winters had asked that news of his death be withheld until after his funeral, Jackson said. Winters lived in Hershey, Pa., but died in suburban Palmyra.

The men Winters led expressed their admiration for their company commander after learning of his death.

William Guarnere, 88, said what he remembers about Winters was "great leadership."

"When he said 'Let's go,' he was right in the front," Guarnere, who was called "Wild Bill" by his comrades, said Sunday night from his South Philadelphia home. "He was never in the back. A leader personified."

Another member of the unit living in Philadelphia, Edward Heffron, 87, said thinking about Winters brought a tear to his eye.

"He was one hell of a guy, one of the greatest soldiers I was ever under," said Heffron, who had the nickname "Babe" in the company. "He was a wonderful officer, a wonderful leader. He had what you needed, guts and brains. He took care of his men, that's very important."

Winters was born Jan. 21, 1918 and studied economics at Franklin & Marshall College before enlisting, according to a biography on the Penn State website.

Winters became the leader of Company E, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne Division on D-Day, after the death of the company commander during the invasion of Normandy.

During that invasion, Winters led 13 of his men in destroying an enemy battery and obtained a detailed map of German defenses along Utah Beach. In September 1944, he led 20 men in a successful attack on a German force of 200 soldiers. Occupying the Bastogne area of Belgium at the time of the Battle of the Bulge, he and his men held their place until the Third Army broke through enemy lines, and Winters shortly afterward was promoted to major.

After returning home, Winters married his wife, Ethel, in May 1948, and trained infantry and Army Ranger units at Fort Dix during the Korean War. He started a company selling livestock feed to farmers, and he and his family eventually settled in a farmhouse in Hershey, Pa., where he retired.

Historian Stephen Ambrose interviewed Winters for the 1992 book Band of Brothers, upon which the HBO miniseries that started airing in September 2001 was based. Winters himself published a memoir in 2006 entitled Beyond Band of Brothers.

Two years ago, an exhibit devoted to Winters was dedicated at the Hershey-Derry Township Historical Society. Winters, in frail health in later years, has also been the subject of a campaign to raise money to erect a monument in his honor near the beaches of Normandy.

Winters talked about his view of leadership for an August 2004 article in American History Magazine:

"If you can," he wrote, "find that peace within yourself, that peace and quiet and confidence that you can pass on to others, so that they know that you are honest and you are fair and will help them, no matter what, when the chips are down."

When people asked whether he was a hero, he echoed the words of his World War II buddy, Mike Ranney: "No, but I served in a company of heroes."

"He was a good man, a very good man," Guarnere said. "I would follow him to hell and back. So would the men from E Company."

I Love My Wife!!

2011-01-04T10:47:00.015-06:00

I know it comes as no shock to most of you........but I love my wife.

Here is what I sent to her today in a text message which pretty much covers most of it and something I tell her all the time (much to her dismay for some reason.....)

I love you. I desire you. I need you. I can't breathe without you. I want to worship you the rest of my life. I can't believe you're my wife. I want to show the world how amazing you are. I see you in radiant beauty even with my eyes closed......

And yes, I could go on and on!

I try, so hard, to explain to people that life is not about simply "existing" or "getting by". Life is about living........and living abundantly.

And I know how hard it is. You get into a routine and that routine seems to rule your life.

But what if you looked at it differently each day. What if you truly woke up and gave thanks for your blessings each and every day.

What if you not only recognized, but celebrated those blessings and made each moment a party instead of just life.

Wouldn't that take away the drudgery that most folks have to deal with in their day to day lives?

So I say, if you love someone - tell them!

Shout it from the roof tops.

Make love as often as you can.

Use touch instead of words to exemplify your feelings.

And if you don't have that in your life.........stop what you're doing and go FIND IT!

I love my wife. And my wish for everyone is that they could find someone to love and celebrate like I do.

If we all did that, I promise you that this world would be a much happier place!!

Peace.

New Year's Resolution

2011-01-03T15:06:00.002-06:00

I read the following today on someone's new year's resolution.......

"I spent an hour at Best Buy this morning and walked out without buying the item I came to purchase. My son needs a laptop, they had the model I wanted in stock, unfortunately they only had one sales associate for the ten people milling around the computer department. I was number two in line, but the guy in front of me had three million questions and didn’t seem to give a shit that others were patiently waiting for attention. The manager I hunted down didn’t seem to give a shit either. I bought the thing from the company direct online after I got home. Free shipping, too.

Lowes didn’t schedule anyone to staff the paint department at ten in the morning last Tuesday. After a futile, thirty minute wait for the manager to find someone to mix up a can of white, I headed over to the ceiling fan section and discovered nobody on staff there either. The small Benjamin Moore store got my paint business and a local lighting company snagged two hundred bucks in a quick exchange.

Macy’s shoe department gave me a migraine. Two harried girls trying to wait on fifty women does not make for a pleasant shopping experience. At Marni’s, a little jewel box of a local shop, the charming owner waited on me and had three less pairs of shoes in stock when I walked out the door thirty minutes later.

The checkers at Target and Walmart appear to be drugged on Thorazine, deciphering the balkanized Spanglish or Ebonics at fast food drive-thru’s is an endemic pastime and suffering the illiterate thugs working the return desk at any big box store is a brutal nightmare.

I am tired of being treated like rabble, a cockroach annoyance that must be endured by the hired help when I choose to take my time and money to shop at these anonymous places of business. Yes, I’ll spend a little more out-of-pocket going local and small, but at least I won’t feel enraged, disgusted or abused when I walk out the door. I might even feel quite satisfied after spending my money."

How's that for putting it out there?

I feel the same way......oh I do......and do a pretty darned good job of what I like to call "local shopping".

I spend the vast majority of my grocery dollars at the Corner Market owned by my friend Forest Roberts. I spend pretty much all of my fine dining money at my friend Robert St John's, Purple Parrot restaurant.

I spend 80% of my fast food dollars at Wards instead of McDonalds.

And I could go on and on - but the truth is, I could do better.

I HAVE to go to Sam's. I can't help it - they have what I want and need for my cooking mania. I slip into Wal-Mart once a month for the "essentials" for the bathroom and find myself stocking up on staple items because it's so much cheaper.

But each time I do that, I swear I find myself feeling sick about it.

I shop on the internet because I can find exactly what I want and always get it cheaper than if I got it in a store.

And truthfully, since so many home-owned businesses have been pushed out by the big boys, there are lots of things that I just can't find locally anymore.

But, with all that said, I am still going to make a push this year to work even harder at supporting my local establishments.

It's better for me, it's better for my community and it's certainly better for the economy as a whole.

How about you??

Peace

Happy 3rd Birthday Baby Boy!

2011-01-03T13:32:00.003-06:00

Here is my sweet grandson - less than a day old being held by my amazingly wonderful wife who takes my breath away.........

Here is my sweet grandson who just turned 3 years old and his crotchety old, old Papa who likes to eat nails and scream at people........

So the moral of the story??

The moral is that "everyone" always says time flies........and I guess it does although my strickly logical brain realizes that each minute has 60 seconds, each hour has 40 minutes, each day has 24 hours, etc......

But our "perception" of the passage of time certainly changes as we age.

Used to, "in olden days", it would take YEARS to get to Christmas break when you were in elementary school.

Now it's like "wow, it's here already......seems like we just finished last year's"!

And in this corner of the "my how time flies" category is the fact that my beautiful baby boy is now 3 years old!

Seems like just yesterday he was born and now here we are having a little celebration for him last night in honor of the completion of his third year.

And OMG, he was very happy.

He got a big Tonka dump truck and 5 other pieces of "earth moving and road building" equipment. Plus a bike.

A very cool bike which he couldn't figure out for the life of him how to make it work!! I'm sure that will come in a very short amount of time.

Now I can't wait for year 4 - I'm sure that whatever it brings will be interesting as well.

Life is like that.

Peace

Christmas 2010

2010-12-29T15:50:00.013-06:00

Here's just a few shots of our Christmas. I like to record these things for posterity (and also for future blackmail attempts on the young ones!)

I hope yours was a magical as ours was.

We are blessed beyond measure.

I could fill up a blog about how much I love this woman - oh wait.....I already have!

Here's my girls........mighty early in the morning!!

Here's the youngest........and the cutest!

Obviously we had a little pirate problem at Christmas - here's the sword fight to prove it!

It's hard work unwrapping all these presents.....sometimes you just gotta strip!

Hey, hey, hey........I GOT ONE!!

My kids.......version 1.0

Now I've got to tell you......this boy LOVES him some dinosaurs - ROOOAAARRR!

Here is my baby with HER baby!

Now this is the "reason for the season" - best picture yet!

Is this the future daughter-in-law.......only The Shadow knows........muahhhhahahaha

That's some GOOD SUGAR!

Hey.........what the hell is Santa Claus doing with my damn wife!!

So that's it folks...a little picture review of Christmas 2010.

Just keepin' it real

Peace

Happy New Year - 2011 edition......

2010-12-29T14:44:00.004-06:00

It's been a crazy year.

The economic recovery hasn't been so recover-ful.........yet.

But on the bright side, I'm healthy, wealthy and wise! (at least in my eyes - which are the only ones I can actually see through)

I am still crazy in love with my wife.

I see people that I will love forever each and every day of my life.

I am still employed and still the boss.

My children are all alive and mostly well.

I miss my parents but realize that we all grow old and I am at peace with the entire mortality issue.

I still have hope for my country.

I love the Lord my God with all my heart.

I have seen miracles so often that sometimes I have to remember that what I just saw was miraculous.

As I look around the world we live in, I realize more and more each day that we live in the most amazing place.

Consequently when I hear all the folks who belly-ache each day about how "bad their lives are", well, I just want to slap the shit out of them and tell them to go hang out in Central America, or Africa, or pretty much anywhere else and then come back and see how "bad" you've got it.

Yes, as I end 2010 and look forward to 2011 I can say that it could have been better - but then again, what did I do to make it better.

Like most folks, I get out of it pretty much exactly what I put into it.

So what do I want to do for the next year (you know, the dreaded "resolutions"!)

Well, I'd like to lose 40lbs.

I'd like to exercise more.

I'd like to be a better husband.

I'd like to be a better father figure to several folks.

I'd like my grandson to live a different life than I think he will have to live.

I'd like to be more faithful to several things.

But mostly, I'd like to win the powerball, retire, take my wife and travel the world in a bus.

So that's all the news that is news........

In closing, I'll sing one of my favorite Rolling Stones songs - written by Brian Jones in 1968 but rewritten by Mick Jagger in 1970 in honor of Brian's death after he was found "not floating" in his swimming pool:

Saw you stretched out in Room Ten O Nine
With a smile on your face and a tear right in your eye.
Oh, couldn't see to get a line on you, my sweet honey lover

Berber jewelry jangling down the street,
Making bloodshot eyes at every woman that you meet.
Could not seem to get a high on you, my sweet honey love.

May the good Lord shine a light on you,
Make every song your favorite tune.
May the good Lord shine a light on you,
Warm like the evening sun.

When you're drunk in the alley, baby, with your clothes all torn
And your late night friends leave you in the cold gray dawn.
Just seemed too many flies on you, I just can't brush them off.

Angels beating all their wings in time,
With smiles on their faces and a gleam right in their eyes.
Whoa, thought I heard one sigh for you,
Come on up, come on up, now, come on up now.

May the good Lord shine a light on you,
Make every song you sing your favorite tune.
May the good Lord shine a light on you,
Warm like the evening sun.

So there you have it......and may the Good Lord, shine a light on you!

(and try not to be found dead at the bottom of your pool this year!)

Peace!

Jesus......

2010-12-27T22:25:00.005-06:00

As far as I'm concerned, religious faith isn't something you believe; it's something you live, something you do.

Anything less is an intellectual fad rather than something really meaningful and life-changing.

Therefore it is very cool to read about a church in Alabama that seems to grasp that reality.

Here's a brief symopsis of what the pastor says:

We American Christians have a way of taking the Jesus of the Bible and twisting him into a version of Jesus that we are more comfortable with.

A nice middle-class American Jesus. A Jesus who doesn’t mind materialism and would never call us to give away everything we have. A Jesus who is fine with nominal devotion that does not infringe on our comforts.

A Jesus who wants us to be balanced, who wants us to avoid dangerous extremes, and who for that matter wants us to avoid danger altogether. A Jesus who brings comfort and prosperity to us as we live out our Christian spin on the American Dream.

Jesus has different priorities. Instead of congratulating us on our self-fulfillment, he confronts us with our inability to accomplish anything of value apart from God. Instead of wanting us to be recognized by others, he beckons us to die to ourselves and seek above all the glory of God.

In my own faith family, the Church at Brook Hills, we have tried to get out from under the American Dream mindset and start living and serving differently.

Like many other large American churches, we had a multimillion-dollar campus and plans to make it even larger to house programs that would cater to our own desires. But then we started looking at the world we live in.

It’s a world where 26,000 children die every day of starvation or a preventable disease. A world where billions live in situations of such grinding poverty that an American middle-class neighborhood looks like Beverly Hills by comparison. A world where more than a billion people have never even heard the name Jesus. So we asked ourselves, “What are we spending our time and money on that is less important than meeting these needs?” And that’s when things started to change.

First we gave away our entire surplus fund - $500,000 - through partnerships with churches in India, where 41 percent of the world’s poor live. Then we trimmed another $1.5 million from our budget and used the savings to build wells, improve education, provide medical care and share the gospel in impoverished places around the world. Literally hundreds of church members have gone overseas temporarily or permanently to serve in such places.

And it’s not just distant needs we’re trying to meet. It’s also needs near at hand.

One day I called up the Department of Human Resources in Shelby County, Alabama, where our church is located, and asked, “How many families would you need in order to take care of all the foster and adoption needs that we have in our county?”

The woman I was talking to laughed.

I said, “No, really, if a miracle were to take place, how many families would be sufficient to cover all the different needs you have?”

She replied, “It would be a miracle if we had 150 more families.”

When I shared this conversation with our church, over 160 families signed up to help with foster care and adoption. We don’t want even one child in our county to be without a loving home. It’s not the way of the American Dream. It doesn’t add to our comfort, prosperity, or ease. But we are discovering the indescribable joy of sacrificial love for others, and along the way we are learning more about the inexpressible wonder of God’s sacrificial love for us.

So how amazing is that?

Congratulations to Rev. Platt for choosing to follow the Master more closely, along with his congregation. I'd love to visit his church if I find myself in the area. I think I'll feel right at home. I'm pretty sure Jesus does, too. He's among friends there.

May the Peace of Christ be with you........

Here is the link to the story on CNN.

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/12/23/my-take-why-my-church-rebelled-against-the-american-dream/?hpt=Sbin

Here is the church's website:

http://www.brookhills.org/

P.S. - you'll have to copy and paste these links to your browser.......it seems I've never quite learned how to make a link do the click it thing!!

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T22:43:00.002-06:00

I hope each and every one of you were as blessed as we were this Christmas!!

It really boggles my mind just how lucky we are.

May God bless you as she has blessed me!!!

Peace

My Wife is Amazing

2010-12-21T09:18:00.003-06:00

One of my wife's best friends died last week. That's her on the far left in the picture. Her name was Alicia and she was an amazing person.

Alicia worked for my wife for serveral years until she got too sick to work. She was on her third round of breast cancer, which is an incidious disease.

She beat it twice but the third time, it was just too much. It spread to her brain and to her skin and bless her heart.........it was simply horrible.

This past weekend, she was laid to rest. And she deserved her rest more than anyone I can ever remember.

And she was laid to rest in an elaborate ceremony.

She was black........which means that it is very different from a cultural perspective. And for those of us that were there, it was an amazing celebration.

I wish I was black sometimes so I could claim some of that because it is just so cool to me - but alas, I'm a lily white boy!

My beautiful, amazing wife stood up to speak for her friend at the funeral. Now there were many speakers and some were wonderful.........but my wife was quite simply amazing.

Her heartfelt eulogy was the best I've ever heard. She not only maintained her emotions which I know were way out of hand, she also remained dignified and classy while doing it. She brought humor, love and very important spiritual points to bear in a presentation that just blew me away.

I know that I love this woman and almost everything she is and does is amazing to me - but this was simply graceful and so full of love that it left me in tears.

I wish I could let her know how special she is to so many people. What a rare gift she is for all of us.

Yet each time I do, I am minimized because "I see her through rose-colored glasses" as she says.

Well, the truth is the truth.

My woman is amazing and I love her so much.

Merry Christmas Baby.

400 Years in the Making......

2010-12-21T09:17:00.003-06:00

How cool is a total eclipse of the moon?

Very cool, that's how!!

I wonder if the wise men could follow that or not??

Peace on Earth folks.........Peace on Earth!

Trouble Again!

2010-12-14T11:41:00.002-06:00

Isn't this what got him in trouble in the first place??

2010-12-10T15:38:00.001-06:00

visited 39 states (78%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas....?

2010-12-10T14:33:00.002-06:00

You know, some folks are scared of clowns and some are scared of Santa......but what in the hell is this picture.

Smooth freaking me out!

Merry Christmas???

What If It Was Real.....

2010-12-10T14:31:00.001-06:00

Move Over........or die

2010-12-10T14:30:00.000-06:00

Ahh yes. My old driving companion.

People call you by many names. The left lane, the passing lane, the fast lane.

It pains me to see people abuse you the way they do. Folks these days ignore the fact that you are meant for a specific purpose. Passing a slower moving vehicle or vehicles.

You are not to be cruised in. And you are CERTAINLY not to be used by the ass-hat who chooses to go 20 MPH SLOWER than everyone else around him.

You are not to be used by trucks. You are not to be used by buses.

My old friend, people have forgotten the bygone era in which you were empty for miles, only used for brief moments by those of us who caught up to a driver who was traveling slower than we. I could move into your loving embrace, make my passing maneuver and move back out into your neighboring lane, thereby allowing anyone who might be going faster than me to pass me in the same manner.

Alas, it pains me to see the abuse heaped upon you, left lane. You suffer such abuse from the humble Prius, whose driver insists upon traveling at 55 miles per hour no matter how long the line of cars behind. Ach, and the little old lady from Pasadena who thinks you are her personal lane to do with as she wishes, no matter whom she pisses off in the process.

Oh, poor fast lane. I regret that things will never be the same between us. But it is not your fault.

It's not you, it's me.

I can't stand to be stuck behind such slow-pokes. Instead, I usually drive with your lovely sister, the country back road. I did not choose her because she is more beautiful than you are, although she is. I chose her simply because she allows me to keep moving at a steady speed (most of the time) without the stop and go that you are burdened with.

Alas, my old traveling companion, we do not see each other as much as we once did. I will continue to drop in from time to time, but it will usually be when I'm on a long trip and away from that ugly traffic that scars your hide.

I just ask that you remember one thing, oh fast lane...

To me, you will always be number one...

Diner for 8!

2010-12-04T09:42:00.002-06:00

We had a little dinner party at my house last night with some friends and I've got to say that is was just short of fabulous!

Here's what we had:

Appetizer Course

Cheese Platter (Gouda, Cheddar, Provolone)
Brie with Kahlua Pecan Glaze

served with blanc de blancs champagne

Salad Course

Iceberg Wedge Salad with Blue Cheese and Grape Tomatoes
Blue Cheese Dressing

served with cakebread chardonnay

Main Course

Lebanese Herbed Lamb Kabobs with Mint Sauce and Mint Jelly Glaze
Marinated Beef Kabobs
Grilled Onions and Peppers
Grilled Asparagus with Balsamic Vinegar Glaze
Grilled Corn with Chipotle Chili Butter
Grilled Pineapple with Brown Sugar
Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Pomegranate Seeds, Almonds and Molasses
Honey Buttered Sweet Bread

served with la crema pinot noir

Desert Course

Rasberry and Blueberry Cobbler with Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

Now I've got to also say that the "hit" of the party was the brussels sprouts with the pomegranate seeds......it was the shiznitz! My wife, well, let's just say that's all she ate and she ate a bunch of it!!

I did burn the bread........to the point where it set off all the fire alarms in the house and boy was that loud! I guess that I will never out grow burning the bread!

Anyway, a good time was had by all. And even though I continually get into trouble because I spend all my time cooking and don't eat......I'll keep doing that because that's what I enjoy. If I have a dinner party, I want everyone to wake up the next morning and say "wow".

And I'm sure they did that this morning!!

Peace

Happy Thanksgiving!

2010-11-23T13:05:00.001-06:00

I see it's been almost a month since I last posted.......life is busy and I suck.

SO WHAT!

Anyway, here's a Happy for your Thanksgiving!

Peace.

Why?

2010-10-26T12:19:00.001-05:00

Why would a boy beat up a girl?

I don't understand that.

Men are physically superior and should not need to show that.

Girls are precious.

Girls that you love are extra precious.

Why, oh why would a boy beat up a girl?

And what should a father do?

Prayer is needed for my patience.

Lots of it.

Hug Your Children!

2010-10-21T08:58:00.003-05:00

Last night, we cooked dinner for our friends (and brand new parents) Eric and Laura.

Oh My God!! That 5 day old baby, Ms. Eva Katherine was scrump-de-li-icous!!

And watching my wife hold that baby and seeing the look on her face was simply amazing.

What is it about babies that are magic?

They smell different too so is that part of it?

I have no idea, but I can tell you that it is a miracle. An absolute miracle when a child is born.

I can't remotely fathom how this can happen.

And looking at the Postsecret I put on this post I can certainly understand how a person would lose all kinds of faith in everything with the death of a child.

So I say unto thee......Hug your children! Hold them in your arms and in your heart.

Realize the miracle that you have helped create and recognize that you are part of that miracle.

People who lose themselves in the busyness of their lives are missing out on one of the most fundamental joys of life.

Those that complain about how much time their children take up are not seeing the world as it was meant to be seen.

There will be time for life later.......now, let's just spend our gifts of time and money on our children.

If everyone did that, don't you think the world would be a better place!!

Peace/Selah

RED!

2010-10-18T23:40:00.003-05:00

Me and Little Eddie went to see this movie tonight........and it was fabulouso!!

We both agreed that it was, beyond any shadow of a doubt, the best movie we've seen all year.

It was a fun, fast, not too terribly unbelievable, action comedy movie ever!

OK, well, maybe the action wasn't too terribly believable but it was FUN.

And maybe not the best one ever.........but certainly the best one we've seen in a long, long time!

The premise was some old spies from the CIA were being knocked off and when they got to Bruce Willis, well let's just say that he was probably the man NOT to mess with.

Him, John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Helen Miran, and most of all..........Mary-Louise Parker (who I just happen to think is the second hottest woman on the planet behind my most amazingly excellent wife........ahhh, my wife - have I mentioned how much I love her and how I still can't believe she lives with me? NO, well, she is amazing and I love everything about her........but mostly, I love the fact that she loves me!!)

John Malkovich plays a nutcase who was unknowingly fed LSD every day for 11 years...and he played it as well as it could be played.

Well, I'm sure you probably don't care about the movie - I'm sure that it's just my recommendation is all that you're after........so you have it.

Now go see it!!

Peace/Selah

WTF??

2010-10-14T18:11:00.002-05:00

Headlines SCREAM:

Ole Miss picks bear for new, un-Confederate mascot??

Now I don't give a shit about Ole Miss one way or another......but jeez!

This is stupid as hell.

I remember when we went from the "Southerners" to "Golden Eagles" back in the 70's.

And I remember thinking that was stupid.....but we were trying to rebrand ourselves.

Ole Miss is just trying to get the world off their ass for being redneck hate mongerers.

So Hoddy Toddy boys and girls....ooohhh look - it's black bear!!

WTF indeed!

Why Not Me Lord??

2010-10-12T12:37:00.001-05:00

Woman wins millions from Texas lottery for 4th time

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct 12, 2010 – CORPUS CHRISTI, TX - Once, twice, three times a Texas lottery millionaire -- now it's four. All thanks to a Lottery e-book she purchased online.

Joan R. Ginther, a native of Bishop, Texas, made her fourth appearance Monday at lottery headquarters in Austin to collect seven figures, lottery officials said.

What is so amazing is that she thanks her multiple winnings to her purchase of a lottery e-book at: http://lotto-riches.uniquelibratattoos.com/ .

Ginther, 63, won $10 million, the top prize in Texas Lottery's $140,000,000 Extreme Payout scratch-off ticket she bought for $50, pushing her total wins to $20.4 million.

It was her third time to win on a ticket from a Bishop store, and second one at the Times Market there.

"This is a very lucky store," said Bob Solis, store manager.

Store owner Sun Bae is the one with the lucky hand, Solis said. "Sun sold both the winning tickets to the woman."

The store, which sells about 1,000 lottery tickets daily, now is eligible to receive a bonus of $10,000 for the second time. Ginther says she was so extremely thankful that she purchased the e-book at: http://lotto-riches.uniquelibratattoos.com/ .

In 1993 Ginther first won a $5.4 million share of an $11 million Lotto Texas jackpot for a ticket bought in Bishop. She opted for annual payments of $270,000 (excluding tax charges) for 19 years. The cost of her lottery ticket could not be determined.

On year 13, while visiting Bishop to care for her father in 2006, Ginther won the top prize of $2 million in the Holiday Millionaire game thanks to a $30 scratch-off ticket.

Ginther requested a lump-sum payment of about $1.5 million, after the 25 percent taken by the commission for taxes.

In 2008, she collected a $3 million prize in Millions and Millions, another scratch-off, at the same Times Market where she won this week. That scratch-off ticket's cost also was not reported.

Ginther, who now lives in Las Vegas, requested minimal publicity, according to the Texas lottery commission, and could not be reached Friday.

PostSecret!

2010-10-11T12:33:00.001-05:00

CORRECT!

2010-09-27T15:59:00.001-05:00

Turns out, Bob Dylan was right......the answer my friend, is blowing in the wind!

VOTE

2010-09-27T15:46:00.004-05:00

We need change....oh my GOD, do we need change.

I'm sick of politics. I can't believe what it has become.

The polarization of our society.

Right...left......rich.......poor.

People with "christian" values advocating the abolition of the very tenents of Christianity.

We need change!

I'm not nye-eve enuff to believe that one party or the other will fix anything. It will take all of us to fix stuff. And the answers are hard. Politics is hard. Trying to decide what is best is hard.

But it's even harder when these people are posing for something I don't quite understand.

The Democrats have fucked up their chance by attempting to differentiate themselves by doing their important things first. They fucked it up so bad that people may even think that the Republicans were any better fiscally......oh, they were most certainly not.

The Republican Party has jumped right back into the fray by being just as stupid, in public.

Their new 'Pledge To America' is the platform upon which they hope to regain control of the House, and perhaps also the Senate, this fall.

Unfortunately, it's so deeply flawed as to be highly suspicious.

Don't forget, this is the same party that spent like drunken sailors under President Bush, ignoring the true needs of the economy and the American people in their rush to patronize their support groups and special interests.

Sure, the Democrats have done even worse since they took over in 2006, but that doesn't excuse earlier Republican failures.

The Pledge To America is short on substance and specifics, long on rhetoric and vagueness. A few examples: (with some thoughts thrown in for entertainment)

"An unchecked executive, a compliant legislature, and an overreaching judiciary have combined to thwart the will of the people and overturn their votes and their values, striking down longstanding laws and institutions and scorning the deepest beliefs of the American people." (Yep - this has been going on for decades, under both parties.)

"An arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites makes decisions, issues mandates, and enacts laws without accepting or requesting the input of the many." (Ditto.)

"Rising joblessness, crushing debt, and a polarizing political environment are fraying the bonds among our people and blurring our sense of national purpose." (Neither political party has a clue about a 'sense of national purpose'. Both are all about how their party sees our national purpose.)

"With this document, we pledge to dedicate ourselves to the task of reconnecting our highest aspirations to the permanent truths of our founding by keeping faith with the values our nation was founded on, the principles we stand for, and the priorities of our people. This is our Pledge to America." (What took you so long? Given your past record of ignoring all these things, why should we trust you to honor them now?)

"We pledge to honor the Constitution as constructed by its framers and honor the original intent of those precepts that have been consistently ignored – particularly the Tenth Amendment, which grants that all powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." (This, from the party that gave us the Patriot Act, which rode roughshod over the Constitution? And that's just one example. Given that neither party has made a single move to repeal such unconstitutional legislation, why do I have a problem believing this blather?)

"We pledge to advance policies that promote greater liberty, wider opportunity, a robust defense, and national economic prosperity." (Great rhetoric, but no specifics whatsoever. These are empty words. Give me specifics!)

"We pledge to uphold the purpose and promise of a better America, knowing that to whom much is given, much is expected and that the blessings of our liberty buoy the hopes of mankind." (Ditto. Shakespeare would classify this as 'full of sound and fury, signifying nothing'.)

I could go on for pages in similar vein, but I'll spare you. Basically, the Pledge To America is a feel-good document that's long on promises, short on specifics, and clearly impossible to implement so their promises amount to little more than a public relations exercise.

Plus you'll notice that they didn't say a word about all the obstructionist policies they've put into place. It's OK if the country shuts down as long as we make the Democrats look like idiots......I AM SO SICK OF ALL THIS SHIT!

Once again, I appeal to all those who will vote this November: don't vote for the party - vote for the individual.

More than anything, and more than ever, we need honest, upright men and women in Congress and the Senate who will faithfully represent our interests, our views and our priorities in the government of this nation.

I don't care which party such a person happens to belong to. If he or she is a good, sound, honest, upright person, whether or not I agree with all his or her policies, I'll vote for them.

If they're just party hacks, time-servers seeking the next rung up the political ladder . . . to Hell with them!

We've had enough of the likes of John Kerry or John McCain, Nancy Pelosi or John Boehner, to last us several lifetimes.

We need fresh blood in Washington!

Peace............in my lifetime!

A New Week.....

2010-09-27T12:16:00.003-05:00

Had a wonderful weekend.....Hannah came home from Asheville!

It was great to see her - we often forget how much we miss someone until they show up and leave again.

She quit her WalMart job and so did her roomate so I'll be very interested to see how this turns out.

But her momma was happy and in my world, that's really all that matters!

Birthday Weekend!

2010-09-20T11:57:00.002-05:00

Wow, I love it when my wife has a birthday.

It ALWAYS becomes a celebration that exceeds whatever expectations we may have had before it gets started.

I love, love, love her birthdays!!

It started with a Saturday trip to Mobile where we checked into the Renaissance Riverview Hotel right there on the bay....a corner room, no less.......and, well, we did the birthday thing....over and over!

Then after a hot, soapy bath, we headed out for birthday dinner with friends at Ruth's Chris Steak House where we had the most amazing meal.

It would be very hard to describe how wonderful this food was, but oh it was so wonderful!!

The birthday girl started with a chopped salad which was quite possibly the most amazing salad I have ever seen in my life. Every component was chopped up the same size (small) and formed by a mold of somekind into a very cool presentation. Then came her "osso bucco ravioli"......OH MY GOD, that was an amazing dish....

I got a wedge salad with blue cheese, a filet mignon, rare and we had several side dishes such as creamed spinach and lyonaise potatoes...and I'm not sure what else because honestly, at that point I was in heaven!

It was quite simply just amazing. Again, words fail me as to how good this meal was! We also had a very nice bottle of Spanish Rioja that I ordered which made everything go down just fine as well!

And after all that goodness......we decided that we needed an after dinner drink which was called a "Chrissy". It consisted of Haagen Danz Ice Cream, vodka, frangelica and who knows what else. All I know is that is was "Oh My God Delicious"!

After all that, to say the least, we were extrememly FULL. So it was nite-nite time!

We got up Sunday morning and worshipped in the birthday kind of way and then went shopping. Lots of shopping. We both had a great time and bought enough to fill up the SUV so I guess it was a successful shopping trip to say the least!

Then we got home in time to go eat dinner at Eric and Laura's. Eric, who treats Paige like his step-mother just had to go out and cook her a meal for her birthday and it was also amazing!!

We had prime rib (pictured above in all it's glory!), grilled asparagus, amazing risotto, green beans and lastly, the best pound cake I've ever tasted with homemade whipped cream and maserated strawberry compote.....yum!

So we ate enough over the course of this birthday where I can tell you that we don't need to eat another bite for the rest of this week (but I bet we do!!).

And if you haven't had an opportunity to say happy birthday to my beautiful wife yet, please take the time to do so because she's quite a remarkable woman and I love her with all my heart!

Peace, I'm outta here!!!

KK

Snake in the Grass

2010-09-14T09:03:00.003-05:00

I walked out the back door at 8pm last night and what did I see......

Yep.

To my credit, I didn't scream like a little girl.

But I did run back inside and slam the door with what I'm sure was a horrified look on my face.

I hate snakes.

And sticks that look like snakes!

Peace (and watch where you step)

Grits and Grace

2010-09-14T08:57:00.002-05:00

As I was walking up the road to the house I noticed someone sitting on the porch.

The closer I got I realized it was God.

“Come on up and sit with me and I’ll tell you what I brought you”, he said.

I walked up the steps to the porch, took a seat in the rocker and said, “You brought me something.

What is it, God?”

He replied, “I brought you some Grace”.

“Oh God, you know I don’t deserve any Grace today”.

He says, “I know you don’t, but I love you so much and I wanted to bless you, my child”.

The Greek word for Grace is “favor”. Grace is God’s favor given to us when we need it most and perhaps least deserve it.

There is a story about a northerner who stopped for breakfast in a country restaurant in Georgia.

He ordered eggs, sausage and toast. When his plate arrived he noticed a pile of white stuff. “What’s this?” he asked.

“Why sir, them is grits”. “But, I didn’t order them”, he protested. “Oh, you don’t order grits they just come,” the waitress responded.

We don't order grace......it just comes!

So enjoy!

Happy September!

2010-09-10T08:53:00.002-05:00

So much for my vow to post more......

It's been a very busy couple of weeks. I don't think I got anything accomplished of note, but the "stuff" of life seems to be flowing faster.

So instead of posting something humorous here, I'm thinking I'll go through my inbox on my desk and find more "stuff" to do....

Peace/Out

Things That Will NEVER Be True At My House

2010-08-23T14:16:00.001-05:00

I can do both!! ALL NIGHT LONG......

Bunco!

2010-08-23T14:15:00.000-05:00

I think I need one of these for the next Bunco party at my house.....

Shit I Wish I Had Done

2010-08-23T14:13:00.001-05:00

Some folks are just more clever than others!

Gender Bias

2010-08-23T14:11:00.001-05:00

Sometimes it's just a turn of a phrase that makes things come into focus much clearer. You could say that it's the difference between right and wrong......

Perspective

2010-08-23T14:10:00.002-05:00

Have you ever noticed that sometimes it's quite simply your perspective in relation to what you're looking at that defines what you actually see??

If "It" Makes You Happy...."It Can't Be That Bad.....

2010-08-23T13:58:00.002-05:00

Spent an awesome weekend in Memphis with my wife and a couple of my girlfriends......

Miss Colby Calliet and Miss Sheryl Crow - both apparently looking for men in all the wrong places because they don't have any.

As for me, well, I've got all I can handle so I told them both "no"!

But the concert they put on was quite amazing. We had a blast dancing, singing but not so much fun sweating.

Outdoor amphitheaters sound great, and I'm sure they are in the proper climate, but on an island in the middle of the Mississippi River in August....well, that's just way too damn hot for any fun whatsoever!

But we made it through with the help of much beer and water!

So what if we were "glistening" just a bit when it was over.....

Actually, we had to peel all of our clothes off when we got back to the hotel because we were both just "ringing wet" (as my grandmother used to say!).

And speaking of hotels, we staying in the Madison Hotel in Memphis and it was just amazing! It used to be an old bank and it was 17 stories tall with a outside deck and bar on the very top with an amazing view of the city and the river.

Each floor had maybe 8 rooms on them which made for some extremely personel service that was great in this day and age of cost cutting. We will go back!

We also had fun with my lawyer and my stock broker and their assorted women.

It was just a good trip all around and if you get a chance to see Sheryl Crow on her current tour, I would highly advise it because she is rocking hard for a 48 year old chick!!

Peace

Yadayadayoohoo!

2010-08-16T10:52:00.002-05:00

Wow, it seems like it’s been forever since I’ve written here.

I know it hasn’t be F O R E V E R……….but it has been a while.

Sorry.

Sometimes the inspiration is huge and sometimes it’s not even there!

So much has happened since I last wrote that there is not enough inspiration in the world to cover all the shit that has gone on, but I will hit the high points!

We had our reunion of all the classes from the 1970’s. It was so much fun. Both nights included my beautiful wife entertaining the masses.

She gets on to me about me saying things like that but they’re true!

And all of you folks that know her well understand the truth of them as well………

It was just a blast. It was great to see all those people. Even though, many of them I see all the time, it was somehow special in that setting. And of course, there were those folks that I literally hadn’t seen in 35 years there as well. And that was very cool!!

Some folks looked old and some looked just like they did last time I saw them. Some were fat, some were skinny……..It really does take ALL KINDS!!

Anyway, it was a blast, blast, blast!

This past Friday was Bunco for the girls. I went out and then hid in my room until it was over. But whatever happens at those things, I can assure you that a good time was had by all judging from the mess when it was over!!!

Saturday was the Norah Jones concert in New Orleans. It was great! I loved hearing her sing and play. She has one of those sultry voices that is full of gravel and seems to call you out with each song. Just wonderful.

Next weekend is Sheryl Crow. That will be great too. I just know it!

So, here is your lazy blog post. Hope you enjoyed it.

I certainly feel less guilty now!!

Peace.

So, So, So Hot!

2010-08-12T11:48:00.002-05:00

We all need to remember to be careful out there!

Epic Burn

2010-08-04T16:56:00.002-05:00

It's been 11 days since I've gotten back on my 1400 mile motorcycle trek and my left arm is still burned beyond recognition.

I'm not sure if it will ever get back to normal....whatever that is!

It had been so long since I took off on the road that I had completely forgotten all the important stuff I learned a long time ago when I became an open road adventurer.

But I can assure you that it won't happen again.

I have my handy dandy "oh shit" list tucked away in a safe place for next time.

Now all I have to do is remember where the safe place is.

Peace!

wishing.....

2010-08-04T16:55:00.003-05:00

Hello Blog......

2010-08-03T10:32:00.001-05:00

So much for my resolution to post more.....

more later.......??!!

Thank You God

2010-07-27T14:03:00.002-05:00

I thought I was gonna die..........I really did.........but I didn't...........and when I wake up enough, I'll tell a story about it..........

Smokies......

2010-07-21T14:15:00.004-05:00

I'm heading out on Friday for a ride in the mountains.

Preliminary plans include a Friday ride from Hattiesburg to Cleveland, TN (420 miles)
Saturday morning ride through the Smokies through Deal's Gap and ride the Tail of the Dragon, head to Cherokee and finally onward to Asheville (260 miles)
Sunday morning leave Asheville and take the lower route back through the Smokies through Gatinburg and go all the way to Nashville (300 miles)
Monday morning get on the Natchez Trace and ride it all the way from Nashville to Jackson and then hit Hwy 49 and come my tired ass home (480 miles)

It's only 1460 miles, but those miles through the mountains are hard miles, not interstate miles. You go 30 mph up and down those switchback roads and keep your attention focused on what is right in front of you. Zaps all your phychic energy!

Then the Natchez Trace thing where the speed limit is 50. I've got 360 miles of that until we jump off north of Jackson. That'll be an easy 9 hours on the trace so we'll see how that works out with us old guys!

Looks like we have 5 going for sure - but we'll see who shows up at the Waffle House Launch Pad at 7am on Friday!

Pray for peace and justice and Keith!!

Daydream Believer

2010-07-21T12:55:00.002-05:00

When I was a little kid, whenever I'd watch historical stuff on television or at the movies, I couldn't help but inject a little modern life into it.

Of course, at my age, modern life meant pretty much World War 2 stuff.

Take for instance, what would have happened at the battle of the Alamo in Texas in 1836 if our boys had a few M1 - 50 caliber machine guns. Say one each on the north and south walls and 2 each on the east and west walls. How do you think the Mexicans would have faired with their 7000 troops against our 182 men?

What if there had been a tank or two at the grand battles in The Lord of the Rings?

So next time you're feeling helplessly trapped in a historical drama - feel free to borrow my ploy and just imagine what if.......

Peace!

All I Want for Christmas......

2010-07-19T11:37:00.001-05:00

Movies......

2010-07-19T11:18:00.004-05:00

I took two "hot" 11-year olds to the movies on Friday night.

I know, it's quite a thing for us older guys to land such young chicks, but when you've got, you've got it!

Anyway, we went to see the new Disney movie "The Sorcerer's Apprentice".

It got hammered by the critics and didn't do very well at the box office this weekend.

So this post is not about artsy-fartsy movie review shit but all about personal musings for me.

I liked it.

I liked it alot!

It was funny, had some great one-liners, the cast was good, it has the very hot chick from the Matrix (you know, the French lady that played the wife of the Marovingian which the big puffy lips - yummo!)and was very good and light fare for a Friday night.

I had read the reviews before hand and really, don't pay that much attention to them but they were just brutal. They were univerally brutal about the acting, the story, the action, blah, blah, blah.

And here I am, Mr. Middle America, who absolutely enjoyed it!

Plus, the popcorn was hot, the icee was cold and even though I was forced to eat at McDonalds before hand by the "hot" 11-year olds, I had a very lovely evening (especially because my dates refused to sit with me!).

So I just don't understand why these serious movie critics who gush lovingly at "the hurt locker" (which I thought sucked ass) can poke so hard at a movie that obviously is just a fun Disney movie.

It says something about something I reckon!

So go to the movies this week. Take someone you love. Sit together if you want to. Hold hands even!

But above all, don't be so damn serious about everything and just enjoy yourself.

Take your mind off of all the shit that goes on in the world these days and just have a good time!

Jeez.

Peace.

World War 2 Posters - Blast From the Past!

2010-07-14T15:12:00.023-05:00

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY BABY!

2010-07-12T10:49:00.002-05:00

It was 3 years ago today that the unthinkable happened…………

She said YES!

Although it was quite an ordeal to get those words out of her mouth, I endeavored to persevere and was rewarded by a squeaky “yea, sure, OK if you can make it happen on July 12 I’ll do it”.

So let’s go back, let’s go back, let’s go way on way back when………… to July 12, 2007, the day the woman of my dreams said YES to this love-struck boy!

For those of you that may not recall the “story”, here is a brief recap.

I finally got her to agree to go marry me so I set it all up for a Las Vegas adventure, and then it began.

The adventure and everything else!

We left Hattiesburg in plenty of time to get to the airport in New Orleans and board our plane (because you don’t need to take any chances with stuff this important!). And as we were waiting in a very long line to check our luggage, we started to hear grumblings from Continental. Those grumblings soon turned to disgust and anguish as the truth of the situation was made evident………oh yea, “the flight had been cancelled”.

Then the fun we call “rebooking” began.

We finally waited in that long line long enough and we got booked on a new flight out the next morning at 6am.

This of course meant that we would have to be back at the airport at 4am.

This meant that we would have to get up at 3am.

This meant that we wouldn’t get much sleep for our big day!

But the 6am flight was going to get us to Vegas in plenty of time to do what we needed to do so I was still very happy!

So now all we have to do is go find us a hotel room for the evening in New Orleans…….

And without boring you with the gory details, just know that it took us visits to 5 hotels before we found one that had a vacancy – and it was right in the middle of crack central.

So we were entertained all night long.

And I mean that as sarcastically as I can mean it!

So after a non-restful night at the crack motel, we got to the airport the next morning at 4am and got all checked in. YEA FOR US!

We boarded the flight which then preceded to sit on the runway for an extra hour waiting on pilots………then we finally flew to Denver………..where we sat for a few more hours waiting on someone from Bumfuck, Egypt to come fix a mechanical problem with the plane.

Somehow, after all that, we finally got to Vegas about 2 hours before our wedding.

Please believe me that this is the short version of what happened. I have left out many other things, or as my wife was calling them at that time “messages from God”!

Because you see, my beautiful wife conditionally agreed to marry me contingent on any “signs from God” that she shouldn’t marry me…………

Getting the picture yet?

When we finally got to the amazing airport in Vegas, the limo I had booked wasn’t there because we had been rescheduled so many times and we were so late…..

“Hello, God, are you there”?

I eventually got the limo thing worked out and at this point, even my sunny disposition was taking a beating. I asked, no BEGGED the limo driver to hurry to the marriage bureau so we could get our marriage license………..so he took a “short cut” – which somehow caused him to slam on brakes and shoot our champagne bottle across the limo, crash off the glass and then spray all over us and the limo…..

“Why God, why”?

There was a very humorous story at the marriage bureau where an 85 year-old Jewish diamond merchant from New York was getting a license to marry a 25 year-old black hooker named “chastity” but I’ll leave that story for a cocktail party!

We got our license and then when we finally get to the hotel we had less than an hour before our “appointed time” on the roof of the Stratosphere for our ceremony.

And wouldn’t you know it, because we were so late, our room had been given away!

I had to sweet talk (bribe) a manager to hook us up………..so let’s just say that by this time, my wife was pretty much in tears and emotionally rinsed.

We get to our room and change quickly into our wedding attire and hurry up to meet with our preacher.

We finally felt like we were back on track and everything was going to be fine. So we took the elevator up to the roof of the tallest building west of the Mississippi River where I find out that my beautiful woman is more scared of heights than I am.

She really looked kind of green around the gills………

So we go out to the observation deck to do our thing and the preacher asks someone walking by if they wouldn’t mind being a witness to the ceremony. And the guy looks at us and says “NO” and keeps walking.

Well, I thought that was the last straw. She was about to jump off the damn building.

But we finally got someone to say “YES” and we did the deed and the rest, as we like to say, is history!

It’s fun to look back on that and remember how crazy it was. But mostly, for me, it’s fun to look back and realize that on this date in 2007, every dream I ever had came true for me.

I can’t state it strongly enough how important this was for me.

Our lives are marked by events and you judge yourself by those events. We end up dividing our lives as “stuff that happened before and after that event”. It is in that way that we realize the truly important things in our lives.

This was my moment of clarity. My time where everything I had ever gone through in life finally made sense to me. I could literally and figuratively see for miles and miles – even through space and time.

So thank you my darling. Thank you for everything you have done for me, everything you do for me and everything that will come in my life.

I owe you all.

And I give it gladly and take that responsibility on my broad shoulders and will never consider any of it to be a burden.

It’s simply who I am.

I love you so very much.

Happy Anniversary Baby!

Peace.

And God Said.........

2010-07-09T14:00:00.003-05:00

I can't ever decide whether or not I believe in providence or not. I guess it depends on my mood.

But there are some signs that pretty much can convince me that it would be a good idea to go back to bed........

Peace?

Happy 6th of July!

2010-07-06T12:54:00.003-05:00

Hope everyone's 4th of July was as wonderful as mine was!

And in wonderful, I generally mean very quiet and time spent with the one you love.

Because if we're judging success like that, then I had a very successful long weekend!

I love being at home with my wife and not having much to do because then I get to spend time with her.

And that just cranks my tractor!

We did scurry off to the coast on Sunday the 4th to have dinner with my cousins from Baton Rouge. We went to the "pan-oriental" restaurant Tien at the Imperial Palace and it was quite good. I was happy we went.

But it was a quick trip. We left around 5pm and got home by 11pm so no muss, no fuss for the Kennedy's!

Now onward to this week.

I find that Tuesday's after a long holiday weekend are more like Mondays than a regular Monday. But like most days, all you have to do is grin and bear it and it will be over before you know it!

I'm planning a motorcycle trip for this coming weekend to the Smokey Mountains so we'll see if that happens or not.

But until then I bid you.......

PEACE!

Soccer, the good, the bad, and the British....

2010-07-02T09:24:00.003-05:00

Here is a little primer on Soccer:

No matter how much we Murkins (that's Americans to you that aren't from the south) continues to emerge as a competitive World Cup nation,there is little doubt that the international perception of American soccer will always be looked down on.

Why? Because Murkins don’t even call the sport by its proper name, of course.

We don’t call it “football.” They call it “soccer.”

Here in the good ole USA, "football" is that game that dominates the fall and the winter each Friday night, all day Saturday and most of the day after church on Sundays......and these days it seems to also be on Tuesday's and Thursday's as well .....and "football" features men so large they should come with their own zip code, so fast you have to use instant replay to see them move, so graceful that you could imagine them dancing in a ballet - but I digress.

Elsewhere, football is football. The round-ball sport, the beautiful game, with its biggest prize, the World Cup to be handed out on July 11.

Soccer? Pah, a silly American term created by a nation that has its own national obsession.

No country has been snootier toward the USA’s use of the term “soccer” than England.

Before the opener between the USA and England, the Sun newspaper even ran a spoof front page urging the English team to win the “soccerball world series.”

But let’s agree British humor is different than ours and take a halftime break here.

Coupled with their team’s humiliating exit from the World Cup it might be another rude awakening to the Brits that soccer isn’t an American term, it is actually an English one.

And it isn’t some modern fad that shows disrespect to the world’s most popular sport either. Nope, it dates back to the earliest days of the game’s professional history.

Indeed, until the last few decades, even Englishmen would routinely refer to their favorite pastime as soccer, just as often as they would say football.

Clive Toye was an Englishman who moved to the U.S. and became known as the father of modern American soccer. He is the one that brought the Brazilian legend Pele to play for the New York Cosmos.

Here are his thoughts on the matter:

“Soccer is a synonym for football,” said Toye, who helped launch the North American Soccer League in the late 1960s. “And it has been used as such for more years than I can count. When I was a kid in England and grabbed a ball to go out and play … I would just as easily have said: ‘Let’s have a game of soccer’ as I would use the word ‘football’ instead. And I didn’t start it.”

But if that's not good enough for you,you can check the etemology and find that to get to the beginning of the origin of “soccer” we must go all the way back to 1863 to a meeting of gentlemen at a London pub, who congregated with the purpose of standardizing the rules of “football,” which was in its infant years as an organized sport but was growing rapidly in popularity.

Those assembled became the founding members of the Football Association (which still oversees the game in England to this day). And they decided to call their new league "Association Football", to differentiate it from Rugby Football.

Still with me? Because now we must go back to the English humor.

A quirk of British culture/humor is the permanent need to familiarize names by shortening them. “My friend Brian Johnston was Johnners,” said Toye. “They took the third, fourth and fifth letters of Association and called it SOCcer.

So there you are.”

So forget that English condescension and carry on calling it soccer, safe in the knowledge that you’re more in tune with the roots of the sport than those mocking Brits.

God Save the Queen!

Pace

Breathe......

2010-06-29T16:59:00.002-05:00

Sorry if you thought the last post was a bit, um, forceful.

But there are some things in this world that are just wrong and when we can come out of the shadows and make them right, well, it just makes me real darned happy.

God Bless Us - each and every one!

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!

2010-06-29T15:56:00.002-05:00

Or maybe the proper title should be "Gun Control is Over!" but the witch thing just sounded better to me......

The simple, undeniable truth is that gun control does not work. It did not work and it will not work. It can't work because it makes no sense and there is no more political capital to be gained from it. It all started when Regan got shot and ended yesterday with a slam dunk for the people of Chicago and a wonderful condemnation for "Da Fuerer Daley" (the asshole mayor).

Then they created a new term called "assault weopons" which basically meant anything black that was semi-automatic and worked their way into automatic pistols (which are not automatic but semi-automatic or self-loading as they used to be known).

This is no different that those fanatical folks against abortion that created a new term called "partial birth abortion". There is not medical term like that. It doesn't even make sense but from a marketing standpoint, they hit a homerun because it sounds so much worse than a "plain ole abortion".

Fucktards, I swear this world is full of fucktards......

Strict gun-control policies have failed to deliver on their essential promise: that denying law-abiding citizens access to the means of self-defense will somehow make them safer. But the criminals still had no problem getting guns......imagine that.

When you make guns illegal, only illegal people will have guns......yea, that's true.

But really, this should come as no surprise, since gun control has always been about control, not guns. And don't you ever believe otherwise.

Back in the olden times, our history tells us that racism created gun control in America. That's right, it wasn't Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton or a Democratic consipiracy that invented it.

It was rednecks.

Confronted with the prospect of armed freedmen who could stand up for their rights, every state across the South instituted gun-control regimes that took away the ability of blacks to defend themselves against the depravity of the Klan.

Fast forward to the 1960s, when a century of institutionalized racism began to come to an end thanks to tireless work from so many brave people (almost all of them were Democrats.....oh the horror!).

And while racism was no longer the driving force, social change, the drug trade, and the assassination of several national figures turned gun control into an article of faith among "progressive" politicians.

They saw the elimination of guns as the only way to counter the rapid increase of crime in inner cities so we got the typical knee-jerk reaction just like prohibition in the 1920's. See how that worked out as well.......

Truly onerous, draconian gun control came to fruition only in a minority of jurisdictions, predominantly those run by the old time Democrat machines. The places that wanted, no NEEDED to have control in order to make that machine work.

The District of Columbia enacted a registration requirement for all handguns in 1976 and then closed the registry so that all guns not on the books could never be lawfully owned in the District.

Chicago followed suit in 1983.

Chicago is an evil, festering place that borders on Nazi Germany. And I mean that with all it's connatations.

Since the Heller case flatly invalidated Washington DC’s handgun ban two years ago, Chicago has served as the gun-control capital of the United States.

Not coincidentally, Chicago is a dangerous place to live. Real goddamned dangerous.

Want to know how dangerous?

The weekend of June 17, 2010, 52 people were shot, eight fatally. Yea, you read that right. FIFTY TWO PEOPLE WERE SHOT IN ONE WEEKEND!

Local politicians frequently ponder calling out the National Guard to patrol Chicago’s streets.

And sometimes they actually do it.

Well, the Supreme Court decision yesterday decides it once and for all (at least in our generation) that Chicago can't do that shit.

Nobody can tell someone that they can't have a firearm to defend their home, their family, their stuff.

And I truly believe that once the criminals figure that out, and people start getting shot back at for acting a fool, that we will see the statistics go the other way.

Then what will the dumbasses at the Brady Communist Coalition do for a living.

Peace.

Foot Fetish......

2010-06-29T10:44:00.003-05:00

As most folks who read this knows, my wife has a foot "thing".

Most folks that have a foot "thing" are sick and twisted because feet and women's shoes get them off.......and that's not what I'm talking about here.

No, her's is the opposite. She is completely grossed out by feet. Doesn't want one to touch her. She screams and slaps if they do. I wear socks during sex so I don't get tangled up and accidently, in the heat of the moment, ruin it by touching her with my foot!

So when I saw this card on Postsecret I thought it was just perfect.

Now if my wife ever reads my blog again, she can see this so she'll know the yin to her yang!!

Peace

the needle and the damage done......

2010-06-24T22:14:00.002-05:00

Just so you'll know.........I'm fucking friends with Neil Young on Facebook.

So all of you can suck it!!

Religious Shit

2010-06-21T11:49:00.001-05:00

Taoism: Shit happens, go with the flow.

Hare Krishna: Shit happens Rama Lama Ding Dong.

Hinduism: This shit has happened before.

Islam: Shit happening is the will of Allah.

Zen: What is the sound of shit happening?

Existentialism: Shit doesn't happen; shit is.

Buddhism: When shit happens, is it really shit?

Confucianism: Confucius says, "Shit happens".

7th day Adventist: Shit happens on Saturdays.

Protestantism: Shit won't happen if you work harder.

Catholicism: If shit happens, you deserved it.

Jehovah's Witnesses: No shit happens until Armageddon, and it won't happen to us.
Unitarian: What is this shit?

Mormon: Shit happens again & again & again.

Judaism: Why does this shit always happen to us?

Pentecostalism: Praise the Lord! There is no shit!

New Age: Shit happens and it happens to smell good if you open your heart to it.

Rastafarianism: Let's smoke this shit.

And that's all I've got to say about this shit..........

Peace

Father's Day

2010-06-21T11:11:00.002-05:00

We had a wonderful Father's Day at my house.

I was up early and at church by 7am to get the pipes warmed up to sing loudly (and hopefully on key since there were only two of us singing)!

Hurry back home for brunch with the In-Law's - which was very good and it was all ready when I got there so I didn't have to do anything but eat!

Right after brunch I started cooking for my family dinner at 5 that evening.

I made 3 kinds of sauces for 3 kinds of eat:
- Napa BBQ for chicken wings
- Carolina Mustard BBQ for huge beef spare ribs
- Teriyaki for skirt steak

Of course, I had to smoke the ribs and grill the chicken and steak but it's all about the sauce when you do it right!

Then I did some potato salad that my son requested and some butter beans for my beautiful wife.

And that was about it!

My beautiful wife deviled me some eggs since that's my favorite food group and it was father's day (so I get what I want - hahaha)!

It sounds simple but I seriously cooked from 11am until 5pm. And by seriously I mean that I was sweating and grunting.

Which made my wife think I was crazy, (since it was father's day she said I should rest!) but the truth is that I love doing stuff like that.

Even though I'm sweating and cussing and grunting, I find cooking complex things very relaxing and it's what I would do if I had a choice of what to do (and I did have a choice since it was father's day!)

And I must say that I pretty much hit it out of the park on everything. It was a magnificent meal (even my beautiful wife agreed!) and was enjoyed by all.

So I kept busy most of the day. Later that night, as all was quiet so I had time to think back, way back.........

I was waiting for the arrival of Wonderful Samantha and her "cute as he can be" son, Thomas to arrive (they are staying with us this week during the torturous time that they call "Vacation Bible School" but I call "Hell Week").

And in that quiet time of thinking back, I had a moment to reflect on father's day.

It always seems like a "Hallmark Holiday" to me.

That is to say that it seems to be an afterthought of mother's day. You know, we honor the mom's so we should throw something out there for the dad's as well!

But be that as it may, it certainly causes those of us who have lost our father's to death, remember those happier times.

The times when all we had to do was exist within a world that our parents made for us to live in.

The times when our biggest responsibility was to clean our rooms and take out the garbage.

And in those reflections, I find myself a bit misty at the simple pleaures that we all took for granted back then.

I miss those times. I can reach out and it seems like they are close enough that I could just touch them.

But they're not - they're actually a long damn time ago and much water has passed under the bridge since we lived them.

Now we are the ones responsible for the environment.

We have the awesome responsibility to make sure that everything goes well.

We have to be the ones that make the decisions that everyone else has to live by.

And honestly, that just simply gets old some times.

Therefore, it is with full knowledge that I realize that I hide in things like cooking.

I love it, it occupies my time,

I enjoy the smiles on people's faces when they eat it.

Quite possibly, it's the only true talent that I have left.

You see, there is no where to hide as an adult (unless you count bad things like drugs and alcohol where so many folks hide - but that's not for me).

You're stuck out there on the front lines......it's your turn have the responsibility to make the environment.

The truth is that I'm luckier than most............because I love my wife.

Oh yea.

I could literally just curl up beside her like a dog and just be. She is the place where I can go to simply "be".

But she finds that a little irritating and "clingy", so I try to give her the space she needs. But even if I'm just in another room watching TV while she is reading, I get the peace I need just from being near her in the same house.

I can't quite imagine life any other way, so I'm very thankful that I can lose myself in her.

She truly is my shelter from the storm.

But every once in a while, when it's quiet and everything is still, I miss 1975 where everything was a mystery and you were nervous about what to wear to school the first day because you knew it would set the tone for the rest of the year.

I miss deciding which girl to "hook up" with for the summer.

I miss getting excited of things that make no sense to me in my world today.

I miss being able to decide who you wanted to be without any strings being attached.

Now what I don't miss, is all the hard work that went into that.

I certainly don't miss studying and homework and all the other things that went with growing up.

But I do miss that environment that I lived in...........where I was safe and the decision that had to be made were done by someone in another room.

And I do miss my father on father's day.

Even with the joy I have received from being a father myself - I miss being the child from time to time.

Especially on father's day.

Peace

I Love This Girl!!

2010-06-18T10:39:00.004-05:00

Can you tell??

Did you ever notice??

What did I do to deserve this kind of gift??

Oh yea, I love this girl!!!

Nashville Cats

2010-06-18T08:57:00.003-05:00

And this is why, dear people, that when we have disasters in the south, that we don't really have a problem with looting as they do in California and other "civilized" places!

Megan Fox!

2010-06-17T14:39:00.000-05:00

And like Forest Gump say........"and that's all I've got to say about that"

VOTE EARLY AND OFTEN!

2010-06-15T21:58:00.004-05:00

VOTE FOR A NICKNAME FOR SARAH PALIN'S NEW TITS!!

Sarah's Palins.
The Denalis.
The Nome Domes.
The Igloos.
The You Betcha's
The Klondikes.
The Best of America.
The Prude 'Hoes.
The Exxon Val Double-DDs.
The Ketchi-Cans.
The Mammilla from Wasilla.
The Sled Puppies.
Seward's Follies.

You may choose three in ascending or descending order (depending on your politics, of course)!

Peace
***special thanks to grant miller media because stealing is the sincerest form of flattery***

The Solar System......

2010-06-14T22:59:00.003-05:00

Today, Jimmy Dean died......famous for his song "Big John".......famous for staring as a compatriot of James Bond in "Diamonds are Forever"........famous for staring in his own variety show on network television before I was old enough to know what the hell that was.......but most, famous for powering the entire universe as we know it.

Technically, he sold his sausage company to Sara Lee years ago - but as we all have learned in just the past year, Jimmy Dean Sausage Breakfast Sandwiches literally fuel the solar system.

I MEAN OUR OWN VERY OWN FUCKING SOLAR SYSTEM! AS IN THE SUN AND ALL OF THE PLANETS THAT REVOLVE AROUND IT!

So now what do we do? I mean seriously........what's gonna happen when they don't get their sandwich each morning to start their day??

We've all seen what happens when they get lethargic. They wobble off thier axis's and smash into each other at worst or just sit down where they are at best. Either was it spells disaster of a Mayan 2012 kind of flavor to it.

So I'm begging all of my readers to let's all get together and do something (yea I know that when I say "all my readers" that just means the 3 of you that are left - hell, my wife doesn't even read it anymore......but soon, after the universe falls in on itself.....even that won't really matter anymore - will it?!!)

So write your congressman and let him know that we demand that something be done to head this problem off before it's too late.

And if something bad does happen, just remember where you heard it first.

Not that there will be any "history" books left to write my name in.

Peace

Come a Rain

2010-06-10T12:04:00.000-05:00

Jesus was a pagan
Woody was a punk
Gandhi was a soldier
Hendrix was a monk
Leonardo was an alien
Plato was a scream
Vincent was a flower child
Elvis was a dream
Kurosawa was a samurai
Achilles was a gimp
Django was a miracle
Rasputin was a pimp
Piaf was a siren
Callas was the sea
Martin was a king on earth in all his majesty

Come a rain, come a rain now

Confucius was a joker
Kafka was a spook
Rumi was a homey
Bukowski was a duke
Fellini was a scientist
Dante was a thug
Buddha was a cowboy
Amelia was a stud
Einstein was a psychic
Stalin was a hick
Marilyn was Marilyn
Picasso was a trip
Marley was a preacher
Columbus was a dope
Houdini was a rascal
Hank Williams was a ghost

Come a rain, come a rain now

Parrot of a Purple Hue.....

2010-06-09T14:19:00.002-05:00

I had dinner with my beautiful wife and some friends and aquaintances at the Purple Parrot last night.

I love fine dining. love, Love, LOVE it!

I especially love it when I'm not the one cooking it.

And I do so love me some Purple Parrot. I know I've mentioned here before how unlikely that Robert St John is as a uber-successful restaurateur - but he is. And he is quite simply a visionary and a lucky son-of-a-bitch too!

But be that as it may, I love eating in his restaurant.

I love how I'm a frequent flyer and get special attention which is very impressive for visiting folks who are with me. It makes it seem like I'm special - which I'm not! But it does show to those of us who live in or around the food world, how well trained the staff is there.

This is not simply a "get your pad out and go write down the order" kind of place. No-no-no, they train, train and train their wait staff.

Each day they get to taste the specials and they sip the wine pairings (and spit, theoretically) before the shift starts. The chefs are there to go over what is fresh and good and what they need to try to sell before it goes bad in the cooler!

Yep, these 20-something-year-olds become part of a noble industry and they take their place at the top of that industry in our little town.

After ordering an amazing bottle of Pinot Noir (the really good stuff because it was on someone else's expense report), we got the rundown of the specials for the evening.

But I really didn't care because I had my heart set on the Osso Bucco! Osso Bucco is a shank (usually a baby cow or veal as we like to refer to it).

But alas, at the end of his soliloquy, he began to apologize profusely because they had just run out of osso bucco..........

And he did this announcement in such a way that gently let me down; "Mr. Kennedy, I know that's what you wanted to eat but if you snooze, you lose because it's all gone-gone!"

Shit!

And since Osso Bucco takes an entire day to braise, there obviously was not an option to obtain the amazing veal shank..........

So I went with one of the new menu items which was a flank steak.

Now flank steak is the stuff the Mexicans use to make their fajitas, and even though it is just now catching on in America, I am wise to it having eaten and cooked it on many occasions.

I got it mid-rare and it was served already sliced on a bed of sweet potato hash with bacon and other goodies in t.

And Oh My God, this dish amazing.

A-Fucking-Mazing I tell you!!

I don't have the words to describe the feelings I got when I tasted it.

But of course, I'll try........

Heavenly, out of this world, unbelievable, organismic - OK, I'll stop there!

The wine was fantastic, the food was delish, and what's next.....?

Oh yea - DESERT!

We got some white chocolate bread pudding, some creme brule and the sorbet trio (mint green tea, raspberry and another one that slips my mind). I coupled all of those selections with a brandy alexander and wow, did I sleep good last night!

But for me, again, the best part of it was being there with my amazing wife, who was all dressed up and beautiful!

And while I sat there and pondered my circumstances, I most certainly understood that I am truly the luckiest boy in the world!

And I didn't even need a burning bush or any kind of verification from outside sources to let me know that my life is blessed from heaven. As usual, I just soaked it in and celebrated my good fortune!

Now tonight.......tonight is a return to "normal" for me. I'm having chili dogs and tater chips with my college boy guitar coach and my almost 11 year old darling step daughter.

I love the fact that I can switch gears like that in just a day's time!!

So my wish for you is that one aspect of your life (the one you want most of all) will be fulfilled in such a way that you too can feel like the luckiest person in the world.

That's all we can ever ask for.

I did ask the woman of my dreams thirtyeleventwentysix times and finally got the "yes" that I had been waiting for all my life.

I hope your's works out too!

Peace

The Second Coming

2010-06-09T12:17:00.003-05:00

Last night we finally got the much anticipated debut of the most hyped athlete since Ken Griffey, Jr came out.

Poor Stephen Strasburg - way too much pressure to put on a 21-year-old kid.

No way he could live up to all that hype, right?

Whatevah bitches......

Strasburg didn't fall short of the hype.

If anything, the hype fell short of him.

Fourteen strikeouts. Not a single walk. An electrifying performance, including an unforgettable final inning in which he struck out the side while all of Nationals Park roared with every pitch.

Last year's No. 1 overall draft pick put on a dazzling display of power pitching in his major league debut Tuesday night, clocking 100 mph with his fastball and baffling hitters with nasty curves in the Washington Nationals' 5-2 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates.

"He pitched," Nationals slugger Adam Dunn said, "probably the best game I've ever seen pitched."

Here is a stat that just blew my mind - 65 of his 94 pitches were strikes

I've been catching a lot of guys," said catcher Ivan Rodriguez, patting Strasburg on the shoulder, "but this kid is unbelievable."

Strasburg's fastest pitch in his debut hit 101 mph. However, his fastball AVERAGED 99 mph. Holy Shit Wow-Wee!

His changeup clocked in about 91 mph. 91 mph is faster than most major league pitchers throw their fast ball!

The starter opposing him, Pittsburgh's Jeff Karstens, throws a fastball that touches 88 mph. Although, in fairness to Karstens, Strasburg's fastball also touches 88 mph. It just does so while accelerating on the way to 101 mph.
In compiling his 14 strikeouts, Strasburg struck out every batter in the Pittsburgh lineup at least once.

Pirates shortstop Ronny Cedeno, who went down twice, said after the game: "It was nasty, all of it, everything he did. That kid is going to be the best pitcher in the National League."

Strasburg retired the final seven Pirates batters he faced.

ALL BY STRIKEOUT!

He truly seemed to get better with the more pitches he threw.

The game took only 2 hours, 19 minutes. For all the superlatives thrown at Strasburg, the thing I like best about him is that he works fast.

He actually made it possible to watch an entire baseball game and still be a normal member of society!

Crazy, right? It almost takes two hours and 19 minutes of a Yankees-Red Sox game to get you to A-Rod's first at-bat!

Strasburg said after the game, "It's kind of like when you get married. You kind of go into it wanting to remember everything — and once it's done, you can't remember a single thing."

Strasburg relied on his curveball early because his fastball was a bit wild. But by the end, he couldn't miss with his heater.

Like I mentioned earlier, he fanned the last seven batters he faced, and he struck out all nine Pirates starters at least once - every one of them!

The day was nicknamed "Strasmus" — and it was the biggest baseball event in the nation's capital since the sport returned in 2005 after a 33-year absence.

To go real deep into history, one could argue that Strasburg had the most anticipated Washington rookie pitching debut since Walter Johnson at the long-forgotten American League Park on Aug. 2, 1907.

So I truly believe that we saw history being made last night. I was one of those who just knew that this kid was so built up that the only place he could go was down. And yet he rose even higher than imagined.

As a long time umpire, I have had the best seat in the house (behind the plate) for hundreds, maybe thousands of baseball games. The level of competition grows by leaps and bounds as you move up. From 14 year old ball to high school ball is huge. High school to college is bigger than that. Then you can go to semi-pro, farm league, A, AA, AAA and finally to the major league.

The statistics go something like this:

100 players to start at age 14:
10 of those 100 go to college
2 of those 10 go to the lower leagues of pro ball
less than .001 of those 2 make it to the show (major league)

The odds are truly staggering that the stud in your local youth league will make it all the way. In my 42 years of baseball I have known many that played in college and maybe 5% of them went on to play minor league ball. I know 2 that were called up to the "Show" during a playoff run or as an injury replacement for a short time.

And conservitavely I have figured that my exposure is around 9000 baseball players!

So clip out the article in the paper today and tuck it away - because I think that your grandchildren will have something valuable to put on ebay when they get ready to retire!!

Peace y'all

Dinner and a Movie!

2010-06-08T15:05:00.002-05:00

I had a most fantabulous weekend!

Decorum prohibits me from going into TOO much detail, but suffice it to say that my wife rocks my world (among other things)!

We had a little dinner party on Friday night for some friends of my wife (who are now my friends – believe it or not!).

And, of course, I put on my apron and became the Kitchen Bitch Extraordinaire!

(I wonder if I can trademark that title………)

Anyway, it was a simple meal:

Appetizers:
- grilled sausage in homemade bbq sauce
- skewers of grape tomatoes, fresh basil from the herb pot and cubed cheese all covered with balsamic vinegar and my wife’s tender love and care.

First Course:
- wedge salad with green onions, bacon and homemade blue cheese dressing.

Side Dishes:
- fresh green beans right out of the garden, simmered in beef consume’
- extremely small new potatoes boiled and then roasted with fresh rosemary and parmesan cheese in virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Main Dish:
- whole beef tenderloin crusted with sea salt and course ground black pepper which was grilled to a perfect 105 degrees on the Big Green Egg cranked up to 750 degrees - accompanied by fresh whipped cream horseradish sauce which takes that perfect piece of meat to an entire new level of deliciousness!

(now for those of you that don’t know your meat, that’s simply a whole, trimmed out filet mignon that looks like a horse dick and has been cooked rare and juicy and then allowed to rest for 15 minutes and then it’s sliced thinly for ease of consumption).

Desert:
-OH MY GOD! Fresh berries (a layer of blueberries, a layer of raspberries and a layer of blackberries in a martini glass) covered in a homemade vanilla custard!

Now the OH MY GOD part of this desert was quite simply the vanilla custard. And for posterity’s sake I will describe that in more detail and then I’ll dare you not to be horny, um, I mean hungry after you read it!

2 cups of heavy cream, 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract and the roe scraped from the inside of 4 vanilla beans – all of this heated to a simmer (do not boil or you’ll ruin it!)

12 egg yolks and a cup of sugar in the mixer

Slowly mix the egg yolks and sugar together and then with much love and desire, pour the hot cream very slowly into the mixer as it mixes on slow (must be done very slowly so as not to cook the egg yolks – scrambled eggs don’t make for a good custard!)

After all of that is incorporated into one thing, pour it from the mixing bowl into a double boiler and heat, stirring constantly for about 15 minutes until it gets thick (but not too thick, you’ll need to be able to pour it).

When it gets to the consistency you want it to be, put the bowl in an ice bath to stop the thickening process and refrigerate until cold. (It’s best made the day before)

I’m telling you true, when I poured that custard over those berries in the cute martini glasses, it was as if I was a porn star and was putting the pedal to the metal with all of those folks. I have never in my life heard people moan like that with their clothes on!

Anyway, with all of that and several bottles of wine, I can safely assure you that it was a good night with a very happy ending!

Then on Saturday, in the midst of horrible thunder storms, my beautiful wife agreed to go have a date with me at the theater.

We saw “Get Him To The Greek” and I loved it!

I normally don’t like these kind of movies because they’re a bit too sophomoric for my taste (if you can imagine that), but this one was fabulous.

Russell Brand was great as a rock star – he played Aldous Snow, the same guy he played in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. And he played it well. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience right down to the blue icee, the popcorn and holding hands with the woman of my dreams.

So here’s to hoping your weekend was as fabulous as mine!

Peace

Bury Me on a Dark, Cloudy Day

2010-06-08T08:26:00.001-05:00

Shot of Gary Coleman's casket!

Whup-Ass

2010-06-02T15:08:00.000-05:00

Now this is a big ole can of whup ass..........

Rules To Live By

2010-06-02T14:23:00.001-05:00

1. Don't pick a fight with an old man. If he is too old to fight, he'll just kill you.

2. If you find yourself in a fair fight, your tactics suck.

3. I carry a gun because a cop is too heavy.

4. When seconds count, the cops are just minutes away.

5. A reporter did a human-interest piece on the Texas Rangers. The reporter recognized the Colt Model 1911 the Ranger was carrying and asked him 'Why do you carry a 45?' The Ranger responded, 'Because they don't make a 46.'

6. The old sheriff was attending an awards dinner when a lady commented on his wearing his sidearm. "Sheriff, I see you have your pistol. Are you expecting trouble?" "No Ma'am. If I were expecting trouble, I would have brought my shotgun."

7. Beware the man who only carries one gun.. HE PROBABLY KNOWS HOW TO USE IT!!!

More Memorial Memories

2010-06-02T08:53:00.002-05:00

My friend Kelly Grayson is one of the best writers I know and he captured the essence of what I tried to pray for my family as I said Grace before the Memorial Day meal.........so I borrowed it!

Most of us will spend the weekend grilling burgers and visiting with relatives, or lounging on a beach somewhere, or watching a baseball game in an opulent stadium, overpriced beer and hot dog in hand. And most of us will have forgotten the meaning of the day.

So when you partake in your Memorial Day festivities this weekend, try to remember a few things.

When the smoke from the grill blows into your eyes, try to imagine the terror of the young pilot as the smoke fills the cockpit of his F4 Wildcat, spiraling into the sea off Guadalcanal.

When you sample those pork ribs, remember the Iowa farm boy whose life blood stained the surf at Normandy.

When you eat a bite of potato salad, think of an Idaho preacher’s kid who died with a prayer on his lips, asking God to forgive him for the enemy soldiers’ lives he had taken.

While you enjoy the warm summer sun on your face, take a moment to think of the frozen bodies of American soldiers strapped to jeeps and tanks at the Chosin Reservoir.

When you welcome your niece’s new boyfriend to the table, remember the black kid from Mississippi who died right beside his white buddies in Vietnam, though he wasn’t even allowed to eat in the same restaurants back home.

When you scold your misbehaving grandchild, think of the little boy whose only knowledge of his father will come from stories told by family, because Daddy died on a dusty street in Fallujah while he was still in the womb.

When you fetch your wife another glass of tea, think of a young wife living in base housing at Fort Benning, as she hears the news that her husband died at Ia Drang.

When you invite Grandpa to say grace before the meal, think of young men cut down by a hail of fire from a Maxim at Belleau Wood.

When you reflect with pride on your daughter’s recent graduation, think of a young woman cartwheeling into the sea in her F14 Tomcat after a failed carrier landing.

When you look with distaste at the tattoos on her new boyfriend, think instead of the former gang kid from Detroit who found a way up and out of poverty in the Army, only to die from an IED blast in Baghdad. And remind yourself that what matters is how he treats your daughter, not the ink on his arms.

Whilst you enjoy your beer and bratwurst, remember the 19 -year-old Army private who died in a training accident in Grafenwohr in 1960, one of many young men who knew they’d be little more than a speed bump should the Russians ever come pouring through the Fulda Gap. Yet still, they served.

When you sit at the table, think of a Navy Captain, a husband and father, who died at his Pentagon desk on September 11. His death was no less honorable.

If you’re traveling today, think of the passengers of United Flight 93, for in a field outside Shanksville they became the first soldiers in our war on terror.

When your boys fight, as boys will do, remember the boys on both sides who died at Gettysburg.

If a loved one can’t make it to the gathering today, think of Mrs. Bixby and her five sons.

While your kids play in the pool this afternoon, think of other kids not much older, trapped below decks as the Arizona went under at Pearl Harbor.

If you have bemoaned the layoffs of friends and co-workers in the recent economic crisis, think of the Navy SEAL who lost every single one of his teammates on a rainy night in Kunar Province, Afghanistan.

When you take a shower tonight, think of young men reeking of machine oil and sweat, desperately trying, and failing, to surface their wounded submarine somewhere in the Pacific in 1943.

**********

I tell you of these things not to spoil your appetite or your day, but to remind you that the things we enjoy in our lives are made all the sweeter when you consider what made them possible.

Remind yourself also that your sacrifice is infinitely easier. All you need do is sacrifice a moment of your time every few years to pull a lever. The way to honor a dead soldier is not simply to fly a flag on Memorial Day. Vote to preserve the freedoms they died defending. Elect leaders worthy of those rough young men and women who stand ready to do violence on your behalf.

And stop by your local Veteran’s Cemetery and put out some flowers on the grave of your choice. It need not even be the grave of someone you know.

Bring your children along, and explain to them why. It’s important.

Memorializing

2010-06-01T12:25:00.004-05:00

I had posted a tribute to my father on facebook over the Memorial Day weekend.

And since facebook isn't exactly a place to record your thoughts for posterity, I figured I would slip it over here in blogerville where at least I can look back at some point in my future and see what I was feeling as I run head first into my 50th birthday!

Keith Kennedy respectfully ponders his father on Memorial Day and wishes that he could thank him for his service.

Thank him for all the bullet holes and broken bones in his body.

Thank him for all his sweat and tears that spilled on the ground in so many continents around this world.

Thank him for the mental and spiritual scars that I can't even begin to imagine having to deal with.

Thank him for all of the tours of duty in places that have names I can't pronounce

Thank him for the courage it took to earn that Green Beret that he wore so proudy.

Thank him for his 200 jumps out of a perfectly good airplane and for his patience as he would take me to the jump zone so often to watch him and his troopers jump.

Thank him especially for the times when he would pull rank on a warrant officer and let me ride in a jump seat on the plane that took them up.

Thank him for the memories of the many times when his aide would come to our house and say "the major will not be home today - and then not seeing him for 3 months and having no idea where he went or what he did (but being so happy when he would return).

Thank him for the fact that at one time or another every single one of my friends got to watch him sleep with his eyes wide open!

Thank him for the sadness he must have felt for having to take all of this to his grave without ever being able to share them with anyone else because even on his death bed, he was still obeying orders that were classified as "Top Secret".

Thank him for keeping all of the horrible nature of war bottled up inside of him so it would not spill over to others around him.

Thank him for always remembering his fallen comrades on Memorial Day because I could see how heavily that weighed on his heart and I never minded putting you to bed after you had consumed enough whiskey to dull that ache that I never knew.

Thank him for the fact that he was brave enough to live with all those things and never used any of them as an excuse for anything in his life because there was no room for PTSD in his generation.

So thank you dad, from the bottom of my heart.

And I'd also like to thank every other soldier that sacrifices things we will never know of......

And may God Bless our tropps and let us never forget.....

I surely won't.

Peace

No Soup For You!

2010-05-30T21:58:00.002-05:00

It's been a piggy kind of holiday weekend.

Saturday night was 100lbs of crawfish with all the trimmings. I went all out on the seasoning and apparently it was a huge success. My wife kept going on and on about it.

Of course, the ironic thing is that I hate them so therefore I wouldn't know a good one from a bad one - even if it bit me in the balls.

But I will not only take the praise she heaped on me, I will also take the fact that she ate for almost 2 hours as confirmations!

Then today, as our Memorial Day cookout continued to grow in scope, I got up at 7 and got the smoker loaded up. And I do mean full!

4 boston butts and 6 racks of rib went in. The ribs came out after 4 hours and the butts stayed on for 9. After the ribs came off, I sauced them, wrapped them in foil and put them in the oven for 2 more hours. OMG they were good.

Then I got the grill cranked up. The Big Green Egg was loaded up with the old lump charcole and I let it cook for an hour before I started putting the meat on. It was 700 degrees when I put 5 lbs of cajun sausage on there to begin with.

Needless to say that I got enough fire from the hot grill with the sausage on it that it burned off all the cobwebs I had in the corners of the garage!

Then I threw on some pork tenderloin with a pepper crust and glazed it with an oriental orange/ginger sauce and wow - was that good. On a grill that hot, I got it medium rare in literally 2 minutes!

After that, it was time for the chicken wings and legs. I had cooked them in the oven for an hour so they were already done, I just sauced and crusted them on the grill. Did 5 turns on them and when I pulled them off, that homemade bbq sauce had formed a huge coating that was stuck on the bird. That was my favorite part of the meat extravaganza....I loves me some yardbird!

Of course, we had all the trimmings as well. I did some slow cooked baked beans. 4 hours of magic happens when you take the time to make the beans happy.

We also did some oriental crispy slaw which was delish. It's the slaw with the crushed up ramen noodles in it. It was truly the shiznitz. Furshizzle it was!

And then it was the ubiquitous tater salad. I chose to do a German variety. Made a great sauce with vinegar, sugar, celery, onions and creole mustard. PLUS a whole pound of bacon, boiled eggs and, oh - I've got to stop because I'm getting hungry all over again........and I'm still stuffed!

But for me, it truly was about the family coming over. I don't have much family anymore so truly, my wife's family is it for me. And I love cooking for family during holidays. It was so good to have people in the house that are connected in such a deep way. Of course, we only invited the ones we liked so that left many of them out. At least they'll never know what they missed!

I love my wife so much......so much......and by virtue of that, I love her family too. Some are a bit crazy, but don't we all have that in our own families!

So as we cruise into the actual Memorial Day tomorrow, I pray that everyone will stop and remember all of the brave folks that have done so much to keep our way of life available to each of us.

God Bless the United States of American.......and no one else!

OK, I stole that from Chris Rock movie where he was elected president.....

So sue me.

Peace

Grandparent Stories.....

2010-05-28T13:57:00.001-05:00

1. She was in the bathroom, putting on her makeup, under the watchful
eyes of her young granddaughter, as she'd done many times before. After
she applied her lipstick and started to leave, the little one said, "But
Grandma, you forgot to kiss the toilet paper good-bye!" I will probably
never put lipstick on again without thinking about kissing the toilet
paper good-bye....

2. My young grandson called the other day to wish me Happy Birthday. He
asked me how old I was, and I told him, 62. My grandson was quiet for a
moment, and then he asked, "Did you start at 1?"

3. After putting her grandchildren to bed, a grandmother changed into
old slacks and a droopy blouse and proceeded to wash her hair. As she
heard the children getting more and more rambunctious, her patience grew
thin. Finally, she threw a towel around her head and stormed into their
room, putting them back to bed with stern warnings. As she left the
room, she heard the three-year-old say with a trembling voice,
"Who was THAT?"

4. A grandmother was telling her little granddaughter what her own
childhood was like. "We used to skate outside on a pond. I had a swing
made from a tire; it hung from a tree in our front yard. We rode our
pony. We picked wild raspberries in the woods."
The little girl was wide-eyed, taking this all in. At last she said, "I
sure wish I'd gotten to know you sooner!"

5. My grandson was visiting one day when he asked, "Grandma, do you
know how you and God are alike?" I mentally polished my halo and I said,
"No, how are we alike?'' "You're both old," he replied.

6. A little girl was diligently pounding away on her grandfather's word
processor. She told him she was writing a story.
"What's it about?" he asked.
"I don't know," she replied. "I can't read."

7. I didn't know if my granddaughter had learned her colors yet, so I
decided to test her. I would point out something and ask what color it
was. She would tell me and was always correct. It was fun for me, so I
continued. At last, she headed for the door, saying, "Grandma, I think
you should try to figure out some of these colors yourself!"

8. When my grandson Billy and I entered our vacation cabin, we kept the
lights off until we were inside to keep from attracting pesky insects.
Still, a few fireflies followed us in. Noticing them before I did, Billy
whispered, "It's no use, Grandpa. Now the mosquitoes are coming after us
with flashlights."

9. When my grandson asked me how old I was, I teasingly replied, "I'm
not sure." "Look in your underwear, Grandpa," he advised "Mine says
I'm 4 to 6."

10. A second grader came home from school and said to her grandmother,
"Grandma, guess what? We learned how to make babies today." The
grandmother, more than a little surprised, tried to keep her cool.
"That's interesting." she said. "How do you make babies?"
"It's simple," replied the girl. "You just change 'y' to 'i' and add
'es'."

11. Children's Logic: "Give me a sentence about a public servant," said
a teacher. The small boy wrote: "The fireman came down the ladder
pregnant." The teacher took the lad aside to correct him. "Don't you
know what pregnant means?" she asked.
"Sure," said the young boy confidently. 'It means carrying a child."

12. A grandfather was delivering his grandchildren to their home one day
when a fire truck zoomed past. Sitting in the front seat of the fire
truck was a Dalmatian dog. The children started discussing the dog's
duties.
"They use him to keep crowds back," said one child.
"No," said another. "He's just for good luck."
A third child brought the argument to a close."They use the dogs," she
said firmly, "to find the fire hydrants."

13. A 6-year-old was asked where his grandma lived. "Oh," he said, "she
lives at the airport, and when we want her, we just go get her. Then,
when we're done having her visit, we take her back to the airport."

14. Grandpa is the smartest man on earth! He teaches me good good
things, but I don't get to see him enough to get as smart as him!

15. My grandparents are funny. When they bend over, you hear gas leaks
and they blame their dog.

Kitten Survives!

2010-05-27T13:42:00.003-05:00

Most of my avid readers out there know that I have a problem inadvertantly killing kittens - certainly not out of cruelty, just simply as a result of certain functions I must do in order to survive in a day-to-day world.....

But here's one that got away!

A Persian kitten gave her owners the shock of their lives when she emerged from the washing machine, dizzy and bedraggled after surviving a full cycle.

Brendon Rogers, from Manly Vale, Sydney, said four-month-old Kimba, a white, fluffy kitten, must have climbed into the front-loader machine when the door was open and curled up on the dirty clothes -- unbeknownst to his father Lyndsay who turned the machine on for a cold wash.

They were both amazed when the cycle -- including a high level spin -- finished and they opened the door to pull out the clothes to find Kimba in the machine.

"We could hardly believe our eyes when she emerged, looking like a drowned rat," he told Reuters.

Although Kimba was alive she clearly needed help so they rushed her to the vet where she was put on an intravenous drip and treated for shock and hypothermia.

Her eyes were also badly affected by the detergent and needed treatment.

"It is just amazing that she survived but we reckon she's used all of her nine lives," said Rogers.

Holy Shit!

2010-05-27T13:24:00.002-05:00

Holy Shit! Willie cut off all his hair........oh his mojo is gone.

He'll be dead in a month.....

Earl......I Mean Oil

2010-05-27T09:32:00.018-05:00

the first picture is how South Louisiana is supposed to look, the next 15 pictures are how it looked this week.....

I have never worked in the oil business so I don't know a lot about what needs to happen. But I can count and I know we're on day 35 since this happened and the oil is still streaming into our waters.

And I want it stopped!

This is a disaster of biblical proportions and we won't even begin to know the effect for quite a while.

This will make Katrina look like a thunderstorm before it's over.

So today, I'll be praying that the first picture, taken in Venice, LA will not be labled "the good ole days".

Peace

Heart News!

2010-05-26T10:30:00.002-05:00

Got a good report from the doc this week.

After much looking and poking from the inside and out, they found no heart disease in me. No blockages, no plaque, no problem.

Now we're going to stay on the heart medicine for a few months and go back and get another echocardiogram in August to see if my enlargement has changed any.

It could be that I really do just have a big heart!

But all my pressures and stuff are normal so it appears that I'm not going to die anytime soon.

It's weird when you start thinking about mortality. You get older and folks around you die for all kinds of reasons - but still you feel like you always have so you don't think about it much.

Kind of makes you wonder if the folks that died thought about it either........

But when they start messing around with your heart, I'll tell you for sure that you start to worry about it.

You think of all the things you didn't do that you wanted to. All of the unfinished things in your life. I wonder if we ever get them done?

Somehow, I don't think so.

I'm sure we go until we can't and then we just lay down and die.

I have had relatives that lived a full life and just wanted to die so they could rest and I truly do understand that.

But I'm so happy with my life that I can't even contemplate that.

Which may be is why we jump out of bed ready to face the day each morning.

Who knows???

All I know is that I now have one less thing to worry about so color me happier than a clown at a birthday party!

Peace

Hot, Hot, Hot

2010-05-26T10:27:00.002-05:00

I'm pretty much sick of this hot weather already........and it's still May!

Waking up to all the humidity and then watching it go above 90 before I even get a chance to wake up good just ain't fair.

What ever happened to Spring?

Did I miss it by going to sleep one night or is Al Gore freaking right?

Either way, I'm bound and determinted to win the Powerball tonight. All 190 million dollars.......and when I do, I'm going to buy me a ranch in Wyoming and every April, I'm going to move up there until Septmember or October and then come back down here where the temps will be a bit more reasonable!

Peace

More Birthday!

2010-05-20T11:50:00.002-05:00

I had to share the best card I got........normally I don't reproduce other folks thoughts because I have so many of my own........but this was good!

Front of the card says: Happy Birthday

Open it and it states: you're one year closer to finding out if there really is a god and heaven and angels and shit.....or if worms are going to slowly eat your decomposing ass while you rot in a box. Good luck with that!

How's that for a getting older philosophy!

Osso Bucco

2010-05-20T10:07:00.002-05:00

In the constant continuation of my birthday "week", I had a good day yesterday.

My most incredibly beautiful wife bought me a Bose Acoustic Wave Stereo system with an I-Pod dock and it is absolutely incredible. It now sits in the kitchen where it will keep me company as I make amazing dishes for folks to eat!

It maybe the best present I've ever gotten (except for the relationship I have with her, which for me, is what defines my very life!)

Then some of my friends took us to the Purple Parrot for a belated birthday dinner.

And OMG was it good!

As you may have guessed from the title of this post, I had the Osso Bucco and it was simply to die for!

We had a wonderful bottle of Biali Black Chicken Zinfindel.

The girls both got the pork chop with the cheese grits and that was very impressive as well.

The other boy had the veal chop..........Oh man, I need to stop these descriptions now because I'm getting very hungry all over again!

So I am very happy today because I had a wonderful celebration!

Even if I did drink too much.......

So remember, if you forgot to celebrate my birth, it's still not too late!

Peace