Category: Family

Posted on

Welcome Back

As folks go back to work for the few days until New Years we begin the come down from the capitalist carnage “high”.

This year I baked cookies and tried to give of myself instead of running up the credit cards. I bought few gifts, I made the Christmas card and in general I enjoyed this Christmas as much as any other.
I got some nice material gifts but they weren’t excessive. 
I got the strongest reminder about the importance of giving of yourself when I dropped some cookies and a card off to a gentleman here in town. He was at his shop wrapping packages for his kids and appeared a bit frazzled. We’ve done business a couple of times and he impressed me as a man of honor and decency.
This guy was a Rodeo Rider until the past few years. 
He took a look at the cookies, so obviously homemade and in just a couple of steps was around the counter hugging me. “Thank you from the bottom of my heart”, he said and he meant it. The look on his face was a gift to me. 
Hell I’d even miscounted on the cookie tins so I was handing him a big ‘ol ziplock of cookies and a card nothing more. It didn’t matter to him, he appreciated the time, and that I’d made time to drop a small token off and wish him a Merry Christmas.
It was the look on his face that took me right back to Kentucky and Tennessee. 
While I’d spent time growing up in those places, I discovered a kind of people who valued your actions more than the material goods. 
Whether it was me as a scrawny 12 year old responding to a call of help from a complete strangers barn, or 14 year old me telling my best friend that he was joining my family on a sumer vacation to Florida. 
The “Worth” was in deeds not in trinkets from the store.
What a lot of folks seem to have forgotten is that when you give a gift of yourself it’s almost immediately rewarded by the look of appreciation on peoples faces. 
Jack, here in town reminded me of my roots this Christmas. Unknowingly he took me to a place in my heart and head where I got to appreciate the season again. Jacks gift was among several that I got this season that I’ll treasure. 
The gifts of time, company, companionship, and friendship as it turns out are worth more to me than  the “Made In China” stuff you can buy in the mall.
Posted on

"hi"

That is why I’m on fewer and fewer “adult oriented” social media sites.

“hi”

I hate that! I go to the trouble of creating a fairly complete profile, I specifically state who I am, my hobbies, interests, and a small bit of humorous information about me precisely so that the reader has enough to

a) Decide if they’d like to speak to me
b) Have something around which to start a conversation.

“‘sup?”

How about a complete sentence or better yet a whole thought?

Something like;

Hi there, I enjoyed reading your profile. You’re a SCUBA diver? I’m curious about it, but worry that it’s too expensive for my budget. Would you have time to give me a basic run down from your perspective?

At least there is a basis for a conversation.

Or how about a sender saying;

Dammn! you’re handsome… wanna fuck?


I could handle and respect that and at least it’s not wasting my time and burning through my patience with inane one word responses that pass as a conversation. Hell I could program my phone or computer to answer with one randomly chosen word in response to your one word “Conversation Starters”.

“what are you doing?”


This is another major time waster… how do I answer that? Would it be appropriate for me to say;

I’m taking a huge dump and wondering if I’ve got time to jerk off before I have to get dressed for that church service?


I’ve often thought about answering that way but frankly I fear the string of one or two word responses that I’d have to respond to.

I can picture something like;

“Cool”
“like to suck you.”
“ummm hot”


Of course if I look up the senders location it’s one extreme or the other. It’s always the sender is somewhere like Cambodia. Or the sender is 5 miles away and I when I say GREAT! Come on over I could use a blowjob. I’d like to see my cum dripping from your chin


Then suddenly, the conversation stops. Or there are endless excuses…

You know, if you’re going to say you’d like to suck my dick…

Put your mouth where my dick is!

Posted on

Guess I’m getting a tad old

My brother took an extended lay-over on his way to Mexico.
It was good seeing him and as always I count myself lucky to have someone like him in my life.
I picked him up from the airport on Wednesday in the rain.
The only crappy thing was a guy who was 1) an asshole 2) obviously having a bad day. I was making the approach to the terminal doing about 10 miles an hour and looking at the terminal curbside for a place to park.
Yeah I was a bit distracted and in the rain my visibility was reduced. Not meant as excuses just statement of facts.
I was, as I said driving pretty slowly (Actually the posted speed limit for once!) I’d looked ahead of me saw nothing and then out of the corner of my eye I see movement. Fuck! I think. Where did he come from? This guy was in the crosswalk and I’d have sworn that there hadn’t been anybody in that crosswalk just a second before. I must have missed him, before I can apologize… He’s hitting the side of my car with his bag.
Ya know, I made a mistake. But that is no reason to fucking damage the car.
I’ve never understood that attitude.
Yes, pedestrians have the right of way in California. But pedestrians can see something as large as a car far more easily than a driver in a car can see them. I’ve been on the other side. I’ve had close calls in crosswalks. On a bright sunny day when I make eye contact with a driver there is no excuse, on a foggy, rainy day or at twilight, you know it’s easy for me to stop and chalk it up to the driver not seeing me.
But I wouldn’t hit someones car, especially on rain slicked roads where if the driver panics and slams on their brakes there is a potential for the car to fishtale, spin, or slide dangerously.
All I can say is, dude… I hope you weren’t going to New York. That attitude of yours will get you hit by a car or get your knees broken by someone with a worse attitude than yours and a lot of pride in their car.
I’ve often thought that California should change it’s pedestrian laws to be consistent with the rest of the country.
Since we have so many foreign drivers and transplants from other states. You really can’t count on anyone to stop anymore. I guess the only advantage is that if you’re hit in a crosswalk the law and insurance is on your side, that would probably be true anyway. Of course that’s predicated on the person that hit you actually stopping. All too often now the driver splits.
On the next circuit around the airport I see my Brother at the curb. It was perfect timing. I pop the trunk, he drops his bag in and we’re on the way out to the freeway.
We had a great visit.
He’s so much like me in many ways and at the same time he’s very different. I enjoy spending time with him.
He pointed out that it’s my turn to come visit him and he’s right. I’ve never been to Minnesota, of course I question if this is the time of year to be visiting Minnesota the fall has got to be pretty on the other hand I can’t afford to get snowed in.
My brother was here for a day and a half.
The day we spent together was fun we took the day slow and checked out the Air Museum in Chino. I’d never been there and I’ll definitely go back. They’ve got a nice operation there.
I was impressed that my brother knew the model of dang near every plane in the collection on sight.
It was also surprising to me how the physical sizes of the planes was not what I expected. I’ve been around Cessnas, and private business jets but had only seen pictures of a lot of the planes in this collection.
Most of the pictures I’m familiar with give no sense of scale.

The WWII fighters were larger than I expected and that some bombers were smaller than I expected. There was a V1 Buzz Bomb on display. It was surprisingly small. At first I thought it was a mockup but it wasn’t, it had been lovingly restored just like all the other Aircraft in the collection.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have a lot of time but it was worth the visit even with a limited time. We got there later than we intended… My fault! Got a little lost, in part because the GPS in the car had no idea the street the museum is on existed. My phone on the other hand took us right to the front door… I paid $200 for a software update in the car, why????

After we left the Museum we went to a winery. He’d never done wine tasting and even though we were a bit rushed there we had some fun.
The wine tasting started a night of drinking.
My Brother will tell you that I was the instigator… Not true!
We started at the Wrightwood Inn, one of my preferred places to sit and have a drink.
Then we went to The Yodeler and had a couple of burgers. I’d had enough JD that I decided to have coke with my meal. He had a big bottle of Arrogant Bastard Ale. Then we went back to the Inn and had a few more drinks.
The thing I like about drinking in town is that I can walk home if I have too much. Thankfully, that wasn’t necessary.
5AM comes quick the morning after…
He had a 10AM flight out of LAX. add a two hour drive from here to get him to the airport. Since he’s on an international flight they recommend that the traveler arrive at the airport 2 hours prior to departure which means that he needed to be at LAX by about 8AM. We left the house slightly after 6AM. My Bro was trashed….
I’m not sure if he was hung over but he was definitely hurting…
Hey, what are big brothers supposed to do? Isn’t this a normal thing? Aren’t you supposed to put your brother on a plane to Mexico with a strong desire to yak all over the place?
He slept off & on while I dealt with traffic, and was feeling better by the time we actually got to the airport.
Now I have to figure out how I’m going to mess him up when I put him on the plane for home in a month.
I didn’t want to let him know that I was hurting too. I did alright getting to and from the airport, but when I got home I crashed. It felt like I’d been hit by a truck.
I’m doing better this morning, but I have no desire to do anything except maybe go for a bicycle ride.
Even that is questionable…
I guess I’m getting too old for long nights of hard drinking.

I’m not quite as antique as this plane. 
Posted on

Wow! Time Flies

A friend pointed out that I written anything for a week.

I honestly don’t know where the time went.

I was doing things,  working out, reading, searching for a job, etc. The days have kind of run together, this may be a bad sign.

Monday of this week all the phones and internet into town were taken offline by some Edison workers who forgot to check where they were planning to do some digging. They took out 20 T-1 and 5 T-3 lines as well as the phones and cell service when they cut through a fiber optic cable.

I was curious about what was going on. I still had cell service but then I have an unobstructed view of the desert so I think I was hitting a cell tower out there. I’d reported a problem to Verizon, then turned on the ham radio.

Interesting to follow the local Citizen Emergency Response Team. I really hadn’t thought of the situation as an emergency but as I listened to the CERT Folks I realized that 911 was also down and that there are a lot of shut-ins here in town. Without Phones, and 911 they could easily have a problem and not be able to reach anyone. The CERT folks have a plan. As I listened it sounded like there were a few bumps in the road but they all handled the situation really well. Depending on the job front and the time constraints imposed by the inevitable commute I may get involved with these folks.

Of course if my job path takes me out of the state I can always join a similar group where I end up.

My Brother is arriving today. I’m looking forward to spending some time with him. I have no great plans but perhaps we’ll head out randomly and see what trouble we can get into.

Posted on

Re-Evalution in old relationships

I’m from The South.
No, I’m not a “The South shall rise again” kind of guy. That ship has sailed and I, like most of the Southerners I know are good with it.
I was born and raised South of the Mason-Dixon line. I’m proud of where I came from. I’m proud of the freedoms I enjoyed as a child and that I was safe no matter where I was in my local environment.
I’ve been thinking about being from The South because of a rather disturbing email exchange with someone I’ve known for years. I’m astounded at how after all this time, this person is comfortable denigrating all things Southern including apparently Me.
This characterization was in response to my mentioning offhandedly and with a certain amount of tongue in cheek that I had earthquake supplies, a personal plan, at least one gun with ammo, and that my family had a loose plan to meet at a central location in the event of some serious catastrophe.
I’ve got enough in emergency supplies to feed 2 people for at least 12 days. That’s BEFORE I have to get creative with water, or start hunting. I honestly think that I should have more, but this, as a minimum will do. I also think that I’m going to be feeding several of my neighbors who for one reason or another won’t be able to feed themselves.
My family seems to have always had a motto, “Better to have a plan you don’t need, than to need a plan you don’t have.” I don’t know if I read that somewhere and am using it to describe our desire to be ready for trouble or if it was something my Dad & Granddad said.
The next series of email responses frankly blew my mind.
In the course of the emails this person painted me as an irrelevant, ignorant, ammo hoarding, gun toting, survivalist, neo-nazi, with no social conscience, who was waiting for the end times!
It was as though because I wasn’t complacently expecting for the government to simply take care of me that somehow I was “Wrong-headed”.
When someone you know takes you to task like this, you can do a few things. Get offended, Get Angry, or Re-evaluate your stance.
99% of the time, I’ll pick door number 1 or door number 2. In this situation because of the long standing relationship and the fact that I have a lot of respect for this person, I chose door number 3.
I thought about my childhood and how that had shaped the man I would become. A man, by the way that in general I’m proud to be. I’m comfortable in my skin and getting more so with each passing day.

I’m shocked every time I encounter the kind of thinking that suggests somehow the South is full of a bunch of ignorant savages.

It’s astounding that educated, “Fair-Minded”, liberal people, get away with painting a picture suggesting that everyone in, or from The South are racist, rednecks, with rifles slung over their shoulders and pistols in their ass cracks. This characterization couldn’t be further from the truth…

Honestly, as a Southerner I find the generalization offensive. Particularly when these generalizations are delivered by people that supposedly know me.