Places to go, people to see, things to do

KITTENS LOOKING FOR GOOD HOMES

We have 7 adorable kittens (5 boys and 2 girls) who need a good home. Their mother showed up at our doorstep and we took her in out of the rain.
See the kittens in action
If we didn't have too many cats already, we could bear to part with these little rascals.

July 28th is National Day of the Cowboy.

JULY 26, 2007
Somebody loaned L~ a copy ofThe Road by Cormac McCarthy. She read it and loaned it to me despite it being an Oprah book. I wasn't a few pages into before it reminded me of something interesting.

I was in the Army in Desert Storm. At some point, somebody decided that soldiers should be responsible for their own body bags, so we were each issued a body bag. That was also the time that the Pentagon decided that the standard olive drab body bag looked to depressing on TV. It was bad enough they had bodies in them, right? So my body bag was lemon yellow with black straps. I may still have it somewhere.

I got to keep my body bag when I went back to Germany. One thing about body bags is that they are designed to keep moisture and such inside them. That also means they retain heat very well, should something warm and alive be inside. So in Germany, I would slide my sleeping bag into my body bag and stay very warm on those cold winter nights at Grafenwoehr.

JULY 26, 2007
Exercise and Poker
I am gearing back up for fitness. I bought a new book, The Abs Diet: The Six-Week Plan to Flatten Your Stomach and Keep You Lean for Life (and you can get it for about half what I paid for it at this link, dang it!). It says folks will lose an AVERAGE of 20 pounds in 6 weeks on their plan. That is a pretty extraordinary claim and I am going to put it to the test. I am going to drag L~ along with me. I will prepare her meals and make her work out with me. It would be awesom to do together.

I also got an email today from a guy at Mr. Poker Chips. AS you know, for some time I have collected playing cards and recently have been acquiring poker chips, so I have looked at a lot of online and brick-and-mortar stores. Mr. Poker Chips has an excellent selection and some great prices. There are a couple of card decks in his section I may have to pick up. They also do custom cards, which is a project I have wanted to work on for some time.

Be sure to check them out. Once I make a purchase, I will give you notes on service and quality.

JULY 22, 2007
Harry Potter and the Billion Dollar Franchise
We took Hank and met some friends to see the new Harry Potter movie. While it was good, the books are too long and detailed to be movies any more. They need to be a mini-series, or better yet, just a series. Imagine seven years of Harry Potter, with each book developed into a full season of shows. It could be done, but it would have to be done well.

JULY 21, 2007
We wored oursels out today. It were a hot one. Me, the little woman an' Hank were gonna run out the the pasture, ride the horses and work on the barn, so's I thought. Instead we lollygagged around, met her mother for lunch, bought $50 of used paperbacks (I bought nearly the whole Easy Company series), went to one of the cousin's house to give birthday present to the other cousin. The little cousinettes were there and thanked me profusely for fixin' their computer last weekend.

So we finally ended up at the pasture. Once again, we forgot Missy's shot. With all the rain, the drive to the barn was all mud and tore up by James' tractor and the horse's hooves. It is a real mess. I am trying to figger out what to do about it.

The project for the day was leveling the floors of stalls. That turned out to be such a chore, we only got one done - and not quite to the degree I thought we would. Those floors are practically clay, so we had to chop out the high spot with the mattock, grind the clay and fill it into the low spot.

L~ took the speed saw and begin trimming the tallow trees that were growing from edges of the barn. She did the back half of the barn, then started washing the horses. I left Hank to work on the stall floor and started trimming the trees on the front side of the barn.

It were hot, so I peeled my shirt off, but left my hat on. Well, I were out there longer than I thought and my back is a might pinker than I'd like. Still, it is an excuse to make L~ rub lotion on my back.

In the evening, we went to Dimassi's then to Half-Price and bought another $30 of used books. I found a hardbound collection of pulp Westerns and L~ bought a bunch of her-type-of-books.

JULY 20, 2007
My Kind of Day
Today is my kind of day. We were awakened at 5:00 AM by a flash of blue-daylight and house shaking thunder, followed by torrential rain. Driving into work (and I didn't leave until 8:00 AM) required headlights and wipers at full blast. There was no flooding, but there will be. It was great!

We watched Mad Men on AMC last night. It is about Madison Avenue advertising execs in the 1950's. It is a very stylish show.

JULY 15, 2007
Voluntary Human Extinction
For quite some time, I have been a supporter of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement and have been doing my part by not reporducing.

Now this esteemed organization has gotten a mention on MSNBC and has some scientific support for its principles, maybe it can gain some momentum.

Of course, those who know me know I find VEHMT's methods too slow, too passive.

Imagine a world where the streets are not crowded, the beaches are not covered with human waste, concrete is replaced by greener and firelfies once again light up the night, rather than neon and your nearest neighbor is a mile away.

JULY 15, 2007
The Occasional Samaritan
L- was working in the front yard in the evening and I had gone out to watch when we heard a thunk, the sound of breaking glass and a brief profanity. Looking up the street, we saw a bicyclist sprawled in the street and a plastic shopping bag now filled with broken glass.

We did not exactly spring into action - I don't have a lot of spring in me anyway - but when it looked like he was taking too long to get up, I made my way over to help.

It turned out to be an intoxicated and most likely mentally defective (and not in a special ed kind of way, but a let Social Darwinism take its course kind of way) young man biking home from the local liquor store with a bottle of wine. He had pretty much landed on the bottle and had a few stitch-worthy slices on his arm. Blood was running pretty freely down his arm, so I push his bike down the block to our place while L- called for paramedics. I hosed him off in the driveway, then got a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. That had to hurt, but he was not feeling much pain, his nervous system being numbed as it was all the way to the top.

The guy didn't want EMT to come out because he had warrants and it took L- all she could do to convince him not to run off. In retrospect, we would probably be doing him a favor if we had let him bleed to death.

After the ambulance arrived, some folks drove by and said the had seen the guy fall a couple of times before his final spill. Then a car drove up and a couple of people got out who claimed to be his parents. We believed them. Who else but his parents would claim him? Apparently they lived down the street from us.

It also turned out one of the paramedics lived about a block or so away. We chatted with them for a while afterwards, swapping war stories.

JULY 14, 2007
Manure

I spent 2 1/2 hours or so shoveling manure Saturday. That's what horses are good for: eating and pooping. Half the barn is stalls and the other half is more or less open. The horses like to use that area as their toilet. See, horse will run around in the pasture all day long and as soon as you put them in a trailer or a stall, plop - they poop.

Somebody told me that when folks think a horse is colicky, the first thing you do is put them in a trailer. If they don't poop, something is wrong.

Anyway, nobody had cleaned out the barn in some time and since now 4 of the 5 horses living there belong to us, I figgered it was my responsibility, and being a soldier, I am used to repetitive physical labor and doing jobs that no one else thinks need doing. I wore a big ol' blister on the palm of my hand, then tore it open, and because I was wearing the wrong socks under my boots and working my feet funny racking, I have two small blisters on the inside of both ankles.

During all that, Jerry the farrier came out and did all the horses. He is an all right guy; someone we can count on when the revolution comes.

Today, though, I am a bit sore. A lot of hip and lower back action shoveling and raking. And for all that, I did not finish, but will be doing more again next Saturday most likely. That barn needs a lot of work. I reckon we will do some riding as well.

The Texican

I was going to post a link to the Tyler Candle Company, but there is nothing there, so check out your local Hallmark shop. They have a scent called "Texan" that smells like cedar. Very nice.

Wull, ah'll be durned. A Friday the Thirteenth done snuck up on me. Good think George found his way back to the house, although, nows I think on it, the creeping gray doom had escaped from the gray tower and were roaming freely. Gracie snuck back into the white room were she would be safe. Still, I reckon there may be heck to pay when I get back to the hacienda.

JULY 10, 2007
Boy howdy! Former Nazi Brownshirt, Pope Benedict XVI is just making hisself more pope-ular than ever by reaffirming that if you are not in the Catholic Church you cannot go to heaven.

Considering that the Catholic Church is the wealthiest organization in the world, I guess he can say what he wants, since he is also supposed to be God's ONLY spokesman on earth.

Patrick Leahy calls out a renegade cowboy.

Patrick Leahy's letter to President Bush on Executive Privilege

And here a legal expert calls out the Posse for being worse than the Cowboy.

The 'Presidential Records Act Amendment of 2002' and other procedures for invocation of executive privilege

NEWS FLASH! The bumbles have escaped!
I was brushing my teeth this morning and I heard some tiny little mews. Looking into the hallway, I saw one of the kittens heading right for me. When I went to get L~ to warn her, we found two had escaped from the enclosure.

When we put Josie in the nursery (those kittens wear her out), it is like Ewoks attacking an AT-AT. Eventually the force of numbers just knocks her down and she gives in to the milk vampires.

Well, it is the magical day: the 7th day of the 7th month of the 7th year - and on the 7th day of the week no less.

I am lucky so far. L~ is making blueberry pancakes. It is not raining, Life is good.

One thing I learned in the Army is that you can only get so wet and after that it does not matter. So when the drizzle turned into a downpour while I was sitting on top of the horse trailer with the pressure washer, there really was not anything to do but finish up what I was doing. I only ended up getting half the trailer done because it started really, really raining and we had to get Dee (Dreamy Boston Moon) back to the pasture.

But that is not how the day started. As I said, it started with blueberry pancakes and a hot, humid day from the get-go. From all the rain, the middle of the pasture looked like a lake and the drive from the gate to the barn was anle deep mud that was rutted and pitted like some alien landscape from the horses and the tractor.

Everybody but Annie (Blue, Mia, Dee and Missy) were covered with mud. Blue, usually the water buffalo, was second cleanest and Dee as a mess.

Building the new stall weren't so much work after all, mostly a singly 2x10 had to be put back up. I had to remove all the old nails (which I have gotten quite good at) then hammer it back into place. We needed a rake to level out the floor, but I guess we'll have to do that next weekend.

After that, we headed to Uncle James' to get the trailer and stall Ringo, a quarterhorse gelding who is great for trail rides, then back to the pasture to load up Dee and take her to James to give her a cleaning then load Ringo. We headed of to Jack Brooks, saddled 'em up and road around the arena a bit, but it was so hot, the horses were huffing and puffing. Some other folks showed up and we chatted with them for a spell, rinsed the horses off, then back to James were they got cleaned some more fed and I started washing the trailer.

On the way home, we decided to stop at the house on Rymal and see how it looked after all this rain. It look great. Then we headed to Tractor Supply in Alvin, where we knew James and Gina were going. They had just loaded up some pipe fence sections for a small pen, then they went back in with us to look for a feed bin. Didn't find nothing.

Now we are home and getting the mud off and going settle in. I forgot my hat so my head is burned. Ouch

JULY 6, 2007
My word but we have had some rain here. I 'spect I'll be hammering in the rain mañana

JULY 5, 2007
I reckon most a y'all know L~ is a cat herder. Above is the latest in the corral.

JULY 5, 2007
Howdy, y'all. We had us a wet Indpendence Day. I reckon some folks someplace had some fun doing something, but we lounged about a did a whole lotta nuthin'.

We was going to do some riding early, but the rain put the kibosh on that. The farrier was supposed to come out and work all the horses, but he called in sick. I am just going to have to have Uncle James teach me how to do it myself. Since the farrier wan't coming out and since it were raining, we din't go build the stall for Dee neither.

Saturday, come hell or high water, we are heading down to do it though.

JULY 4, 2007
Aces & Eights, from Kenzer & Co., is by far the best looking Role-Playing game ever produced. With a simulated hand-tooled, red leatherette cover with gold spine markings that match Time-Life's The Old West series of books.

Aces and Eights looks a lot like the Time-Life books was well, richly illustrated with Charles M. Russell paintings, as well as other period artwork and photographs. The weapons section is particularly impressive with photographs of most every weapon listed, and what appear to be period drawings of the rest.

One of the nice features of game play is the Shot Clock, a reworking from the looks of it of Biohazard's Killer Crosshairs where you overlay a polar grid over a target to determine where your shot hits. Your die roll determines how close to the bullseye you hit, then a draw of a playing card determines the quadrant and deviation from center. Very nicely done.

Another cool feature is the conduct of combat in tenths of a second. This allows for some incredible fast draw action.

The 400-page book includes a remarkable alternate history of America in which the Confederate States win the War for Southern Independence, Texas remains a Republic, the Mormons have carved out their own independent region, Mexico still controls much of the West and there is an Indian nation in the middle of it all. If you cannot come up with adventures in a place like that, you are not trying.

That being said, there are some real oddities. Aces & Eights is like two game systems merged together. Combat mostly revolves around shooting and uses a completely different set of rules than the skill system. While skills are rated from 0 to 100 (with 100% mastery being completely unskilled and 0% mastery being a Master - what the hell?), there are no guns skills! This is a Western game, but you cannot "learn" how to use a gun. Each character has a d4 Accuracy, modified by a bonus from the Dexterity and Wisdom tables and standard circumstantial modifiers (darkness, range, etc.). The only way to "improve" your gun skill is to survive gunfights, giving an experience modifier. There is no way to create an exhibition shooter except to go shoot people.