8-31-05

It is Wednesday, thus it is Hump Day.

I wonder who came up with that name and if there is any hidden meaning behind that. Everybody assumes that means we're in the middle of the week and after today, it's on the old downward slide.

But still, I wonder. In the old days, was every other day just a sleep day?

Better not go any further with that one.

Had an interesting trip to work this morning. Drove by one house and saw a little Chihuahua inside a fence just barking and going crazy as a bigger dog walked up to the fence, then proceeded to hike his legs and spray the little fellow.

Just another example of the big guy taking advantage of the little one.

Then, I drove by this house where this guy walked outside. He was an older man. I'd rather not say his name, not only because I want to protect his identity, but also because I don't have a clue who he is.

Anyway, he had some serious bed hair going on. Hair going everywhere. Looked like the static electricity was quite bad this morning, actually. He had not been on the Atkins Diet, if you know what I mean. If you don't, I meant that lite beer did not seem to be his preferred drink.

His gut was hanging over his shorts. He had a hairy chest and rather large man breasts. That got me thinking. Why is it okay for some old, disgusting dude to prance around outside topless?

I, personally, do not want to see this. Women can't walk around sans shirts. Why are men allowed to do this? Especially men who should not be seen without a shirt?

We need to do something about this. Write the Bushmeister or something. I realize we can't put chubby guys in jail for going without a shirt, but can't we at least fine them, or make them do community service?

I could have a child with me! Do we want to expose our children to this? Where have our morals gone? To the toilet?

I mean, really! I was just fortunate that I was able to drive away before he could turn around and show me a couple of inches of his continental divide.

Had to get some gas this morning. Actually had to pay before I could put any gas in the tank. Then, for $15, I got just over 5 gallons of gas. My wife's truck that I drive sucks gas like crazy. I get a whopping 12 or 13 miles per gallon. Yep, it has a hemi.

Tried to trade it in a couple of weeks ago. It's only a couple of years old. Low mileage, in good shape except for a little ding in the rear bumper. The dealer offered me $13,000 for the truck.

It books out for $18,000. I think I'll start walking everywhere.

Maybe I can avoid seeing fat, shirtless guys with big, male breasts.

8-29-05

Okay, I referred to this as a semi-daily blog.
It's almost been a weekly blog lately. Went to OKC over the weekend and didn't get back until yesterday.
We left Friday around noon and finally reached our homestead a little after noon.
I've been spending a lot of time working on Heavener Online and have abandoned this little blog deal.
Only heard one complaint. He said it was hard getting to sleep without reading this. Ha ha. What a comedian!
You know, there have been a lot of times over the year where I thought it would be better to live in a bigger place blah blah blah.
But usually after visiting a bigger place, I realize that in a lot of ways I am fortunate to live where I do. Yes, there are a lack of exciting things to do in the Heavtown. And the old home town has several problems, but I can still get around town in just a few minutes, if the train tracks aren't blocked, and get wherever I am going fairly fast.
Seeing the things in bigger places does make you relish what you have or don't have. We were staying downtown, next to Bricktown, so everything was fairly nice, aside from some of the old buildings that have not been refurbished.
The SBC Bricktown Ball Field, or whatever the heck it is called, is awesome. But just a short ways from there, you have a different look.
We went to a Mickey Dee's just a couple of miles away and noticed there was a security guard there. I have yet to see a security guard at McDonald's in Poteau. Sometimes, I think there needs to be some, though, especially when the students are released for lunch.
I'm not big on traffic. Ever since the old eyesight started going downhill, I can't pick up the traffic as good as I once could. Especially at night.
I prefer taking it a little slower.
Our hotel was the Radisson, right next to the Cox Convention Center, formerly...the Myriad. They built a new basketball gym right next to the old one. It's close enough to I-40 you could launch a loogie while driving by and hit the middle of the gym, not that I know that for sure.
I haven't always made the best decisions, but never been tempted to give that a try.
I went to the state school board meeting. It's actually pretty good. Learned a few things and got to hear a really cool speaker. I would give you his web site, but I forgot the guy's name. Remember, I am getting old.
He did his motivational deal, which was good, then started using chalk on a black sheet. At first, it just looked like he was coloring. But all of a sudden, you could see the Statute of Liberty, and then NYC's skyline.
It was so cool. Here was this big old guy, who looked like he was just coloring, doing this in front of a large crowd in just a few minutes.
The hotel was nice. So nice that they offered bottles of water for only $4. Right next to the old sink. Sorry, but I did not take them up on this offer.
By gosh, I'll pay $2.50 for a bottle of pop, and actually did on this trip, but will not cough up Four smackers for some dadgum water.

8-23-05

Okay, it is Tuesday and the month of August draws one day closer to being over.

It's amazing how fast this year has gone by. Kids are back in school and summer will be over sometime soon.

Derik's head is doing much better. It's still scratched up but not nearly as bad as we feared after his dreaded scooter accident. He got to stay home from school for a couple of days, so he was probably willing to trade a little pain.

I went with GoDaddy.com to get a real web site. Got the site name www.heaveneronline.com. It's not up and running, but hope to have it online soon. This will replace the one that has been hosted by blogger.

This can turn out to be a pretty cool thing if enough people get interested in it. That remains to be seen. I do believe this is the way all print media will operate in the future. With newspapers, the main costs are printing and delivery.

I won't have these problems. All I have to do is pay for the hosting. The only drawback is not everybody has internet access, but for those who do, it really beats a traditional newspaper.

After the scrimmage last Thursday, I had a picture posted and story online within thirty minutes of getting home. If somebody waited until the local paper came out, they would have to wait a week.

Currently, we have several interesting links, including weather, school, community schedule, classifieds and much more. Since I am working full time, I won't be able to cover all the events in town. The way to overcome that is to have people submit stories. We'll have to cover some things ourselves, but if Joe Blow is having something, he can send me a story and I can post it.

We even have a forum so people can post messages back and forth, just like they do on a lot of other sites. So far, we have five people signed up.

If this makes money, great. I'm not going into this expecting to make a lot of money off it, this is more of a community service that is truly needed.

8-22-05

Uh, yeah, it's been a Monday every since yesterday, even when it wasn't a Monday.

It started off yesterday evening. We had just gotten in from church. I planned to play on the computer for a while, but the wife beat me to it! The nerve!

So I went out to feed the dogs. As I was in the garage, my youngest son came outside. I didn't really pay much attention to him. So I fed the animals, came back inside and saw the wife was still hogging the computer.

I did what any man would do under the circumstances, I complained then took advantage of the free time to hit the old xBox up. Medal of Honor European Assault is the game I have been playing the most.

Yeah, I know, 42-year old men should not be playing games, but there are a lot of other things we have to do that shouldn't be a part of our agenda.

So I was kicking rear in a stage that I had been having trouble getting through for days. The Nazi's were going down left and right. Then I heard the front door open and the youngest son holler for his mother.

I recognized something wasn't right, but let the wife deal with it. That's her department when I'm involved in blowing up weapons and shooting the Krauts.

The wife hollered at me and I paused the game. He had a knot the size of a baseball on his head and scratches on his feet and hands. He had suffered a scooter injury.

I had told him several times not to be out riding the silly scooter at night. But he did the same thing the rest of the family does: they ignored me.

We had to take him to the emergency room to get his gourd checked out. I dreaded this as I had heard a lot of bad things about the hospital, but had no personal experience with the hospital in several years.

Everybody was very nice. The nurses, staff and doctor were very professional and I couldn't ask for better help.

My only complaint was my son was feeling a little sick so we asked if they had anything in case he got sick. The nurse came back with a bag, a CLEAR bag. I still thought we'd get out okay, but then he got sick and yacked in the CLEAR bag. A CLEAR bag with measurements on the side so you could figure out just how much a person vomited.

Now I personally thought this was rather gross. It's bad enough watching a person get sick, but when they have to puke in a clear bag, that's a little much.

The doctor thought he would be okay, but wanted to get a CAT scan, just to be safe. As he came back from getting the CAT scan, he got sick again and didn't quite make it to the toilet. I felt sorry for the housekeeping lady.

He's okay, just has a headache and will get to miss school for the next couple of days.

8-21-05

That little critter on the right is called a robber fly or bee killer.

There's no real reason why I posted it, I just wanted to share a picture with you.

The picture was taken on the fence out by our dog's pen. They are scary little creatures. I've seen these guys carrying around other little creatures they are in the process of killing.

Anyway, when I was but a young lad, I always felt like when a person got to be my age (42), they practically had one foot in the casket.

But something strange happened on the way to middle agedom, I realized you don't change all that much.

Now I'm not as brave as I was ten years ago. I think there is some kind of inner thought process that tells a person not to do things they would have done a few years before without even thinking about it.

Such as climbing trees, jumping over fences, etc. Now, there's something inside me that tells me that yeah, I could probably do that, but I'll regret it the next day or two.

I can still do most of the things that I was able to accomplish when I was thirty. It just takes a little longer.

I am also able to think just as well, it just takes a little longer to figure it out. Although I do not have the same memory, or it might just be selective memory. I firmly believe that I am still able to remembere the important stuff, like when a football game will be played.

I do drop the ball when it comes to stuff that I don't think is all that important, such as wife sayings. But that is probably true with all guys. The old "don't you remember me telling you that we were going to spend all day at my mother's house visiting with my kinfolk instead of allowing you to enjoy your day off" kind of thing.

Actually, that doesn't happen all that often. I have nothing against my mother-in-law. She's a really good lady. I'm just using that as an example.

My wife says she worries about me not remembering stuff. Again, if it is important, I remember it. There's like a built-in deleting mechanism in my head. I allow what I believe to be important to enter the brain. If it isn't something I am interested in, the stuff goes into the trash can.

I have not entered my middle-age crisis yet. I don't want to trade my wife in for a new model, fully realizing that isn't the thing to do, or get a sport's car. I have thought about getting a motorcycle, but have this fear of getting hit by semis without the protection an automobile offers.

The only thing that really bothers me about getting older is the worry that in ten years, I'll look back and say "If only...." Much like I do about when I was twenty or thirty.

But I guess that's life.

Speaking of life, yesterday we mowed and weedeated the old homestead. Thanks to our rain, our grass is growing like it is spring again. That pretty much killed all morning. The wife, daughter and I decided to take a quick visit to Fort Smith and see a flick.

I wanted to see The 40-Year Old Virgin, because it sounded funny and even the critics didn't trash it. But something about the topic of the movie and the "R" rating had the wife convinced that was not something a 12-year old girl should watch.

Heck, they watch crap worse than this on the Lifetime Channel all the time. Notice, I didn't link to that. Once, I blocked it so when they were skimming through the channels, they couldn't find it. That was cool.

Anyway, we talked it over and decided to go see Red Eye instead. No, this isn't something Visine can take out. Overall, it was a good movie. The only things that bothered me was in the preview, the bad guy's eyes turn red and you think he's the devil or something. That has nothing to do with the movie.

Plus, the director, Wes Craven, usually puts out those kinds of movies.

But this is a cool movie, anyway. The basic gist is the heroine is the manager of a plush ocean-side resort in Miami. She had to go to Dallas for her grandmother's funeral. Some gonad starts treating her nice and they get to talking.

Surprisingly, they wind up sitting next to each other on the flight, which is good since there would not be a movie otherwise. I won't give away any of the good stuff, other than tell you they share a bathroom on the plane, but don't enter the Mile-High Club.

By the way, we had a serious breach of Hall Family traditions Friday evening. The wife and daughter watched Beaches in our house. I was off playing on the computer and discovered they had started the movie before I could tell them that movie was not allowed in this house.

I can't watch "R" rated movies, then she shouldn't watch crap like that.

8-20-05

Yes! Football is in the air. This means fall, my favorite time of the year will be here soon. Finally, we get a break from the temperatures in the triple digits and the sweat.

This picture was taken at Heavener's scrimmage at Poteau Thursday. Drew Cheshier is the running back for the Wolves. Heavener had a rough go, but it was only a scrimmage.

Today is Saturday. There is supposed to be a cool front coming in, but I'll believe it when I see it.

If you want to see the latest local weather, check out this site. It's a link to The Weather Channel on the Heavener Online site.

Yesterday, I did my civic duty and donated blood. The previous times I had given blood, they just drained it and that was that.

This time, they hooked me up to some machine and drained the blood, but then separated out the red blood cells and gave me back my blood along with some saline to keep me hydrated.

For some people, it bothers them to do this. Others, apparently like it. The process didn't bother me until last evening. The blood dude said to avoid strenuous work, but I thought he meant for a few hours.

So yesterday evening, we went up to mow my mom's yard. The temperature was right at 100 with a high humidity. I about knuckled under twice. Had to hit the old AC for a bit or I felt like a collapse was in order.

Yes, I did survive, as you can tell my reading this. Today, it is yard day at the old Hall house. Thanks to the rains, our yard is all green and nice. I like this, just not the mowing when it is this hot.

In fact, that's what I'm fixing to do! Wow!

8-19-05

Ahoy mateys, it's Friday morning!

Only one work day left before we can sail away on the weekend.

Alas, if only I wasn't tired. The old week has weighed heavily on the Craigman. But please, no sympathy! I shall survive.

I'm a lot better than the bumblebee in the picture on the right. I was up at our pond feeding the duck yesterday and saw what looked like a bumblebee hanging from a leaf.

That's because it was a bumblebee hanging from a leaf. Being the inquisitive sort I am, I investigated. As I got closer, I saw the little green spider had bagged it a bee.

And I didn't even know little green spiders killed bumblebees. Learn something new every day, I guess. I posted this at webaperture and only had three comments.

Bummer. I thought this would bag many a response. The day before, I posted a picture of a hummingbird sitting on a stand shaped like a hummingbird. It's gotten 16 comments, a lot for me. There are some people on the site who could get 30 comments if they posted a picture of dog feces.

They have been doing it for a while and usually post excellent pictures. A lot of them take the time to post comments on other people's pictures, which I don't spend nearly enough time doing.

My compadre will be gone today, a little matter about his wife having a child. This will give him a hat trick, three kids, all girls. Not a lawn mower in the batch.

He'll also be off next week so it will be rather hectic at the old branch.


Went and watched the Wolfies scrimmage at Poteau yesterday evening.

I only got the chance to take football pictures once last year, in the playoff game against Beggs so I'm not up to snuff in this department yet.

I was fairly pleased with the pictures. It was a scrimmage so things were a little out of whack, but I got about sixteen fairly good pictures.

You may see them on my smugmug site, if you choose to take a look.

Poteau was pretty much in control of the scrimmage. The Wolfies are young in a lot of places and showed it. But Heavener will probably not face a better team this year so it should be a good learning experience.

Heavener moved the ball well on the ground at times, but struggled in stopping Poteau's shotgun offense.

Thanks for your visit. I shall return!

8-18-05

After a lot of consideration, I have decided life is a whole lot like golf.

I did give this about ten minutes worth of thought. When you're having the day I've had, that's a lot.

After all, there are good days, just like you have on the golf course. Then again, you have bad days in life, and on the golf course. With my golf game, most of the days are bad.

Actually, they aren't that bad. Especially if I get off work to go golf. Anytime you miss work to golf is a good day, even if your golf game is el stinko.

At one time, I was actually a decent golfer. Then I got frustrated and quit playing. Now, I hit the ball better when I play just a few times a year than I did when I played almost every day.

That's because I don't worry about doing this or that, I just hit the dang thing.

But anyway, I digress.

In golf, you make mistakes, as in life. I know this is hard for you to believe, but the Craigman has actually hit a few balls in the water and out of bounds! No, really! In life, I have also hit a few in the water and out of bounds.

Sometimes, I hit the ball straight. Most of the time there is a big hook or fade, just like my life. I have gone astray at times, but not many since I took the plunge a few years ago.

I actually make good decisions in golf at time. Faced with a shot over water, I will be conservative and make the right decision. There have even been a few times in my life I made the right decision. Sometimes they are just a little hard to recall.

There have been a few times when I read a putt wrong. In life, I have misread more than a few things.

Really.

Golf can be fun or it can be a disaster. So can life.

What would be cool is if in life you could have mulligans. In golf, if you really dog one off the first tee, your playing partners will let you have a do-over, or "mulligan". You can also purchase mulligans in some tournaments.

Hit a real stinker, hey, do it again! The next one will probably be just as bad but at least you get two shots at it.

There have been a lot of times in life when I wish there was a mulligan available.

I'm sure there are times when I'd mess the mulligan up, but I think my life mulligans would be a better pay off than my golf mullies.

But sadly in life, there are no mulligans.

8-17-05

Okay, I have been a little bad about writing my personal blog lately. No, I have no real excuses, although I have been busy with a bunch of different projects.

First off, this is a picture of a dragonfly I took last week at my pond. It turned out pretty good. The detail on the wings is really good. The only thing I didn't like was the white in its eyes from the flash, but if I cloned that out, it would make the dragonflies face too dark.

We got another really good rain yesterday. So it looks like our yard will need mowed all the way up until the first frost. I don't care. It just looks a lot better than when the grass is all brown and crinkly.

I finished the one book Sunday. It was wearing me out, writing two hours then going to work. Now, I am posting a book that I wrote last year. I edit a chapter at night then again in the morning before I go to work.

Mikey, Mule and Squiggy will return in a month or two to finish their adventures in the fictional town of Langford. Until then, I hope everybody enjoys my other book. It's a sports story about a coach at a small town in Oklahoma and his son.

This book is about their first season together in football. The plan is to write more books as they compete in the other sports while going through school. I'm in the introducing everybody part right now so it hasn't really got going yet. Once they get into the season, it cranks up a notch.

I've been working on another project, an online news/information site for Heavener called Heavener Online. What I would like to do with this is have people submit stories, etc., and I would post it.

It even has a forum for people to argue on! What better way to get people involved, eh?

We had a board meeting until almost five yesterday. Came home and shot some Germans in Medal of Honor: European Assault, an Xbox game that I bought Saturday. This is the same guy that I alluded to in The Old Man's Request when Mikey goes to do a story on the woman and her husband and daughters are shooting people with the games.

I'm getting pretty good at blasting the soldiers, but the tanks are a different story. My son hops right in and blows them up like there's nothing to it.

I forgot to mention the other day that our hamster numbers have grown considerably. As you may recall, a few weeks ago, we got a hamster for the youngest son to replace the one that died that replaced the first one that went to Hamster Heaven. Then, that hamster along with the oldest son's hamster, the one that had previously scared me by running between my legs while I was on the toilet, both escaped.

We found the one hamster, but the other one is still AWOL. No stink yet, so there is hope. Anyway, the one hamster is now the proud mother of seven little hamsters.

Naturally, the youngest son wants to keep all of them. I told him that probably wouldn't be a good idea with all the inbreeding that is likely to produce. He found out that the pet store will buy some back so now he wants to keep a few females and a different male and go into the hamster kennel business.

I must leave now.

8-13-05

Ah, it tis a Saturday morning and all is right with the world. The wife and children are snuggled in their bed and the house is quiet, aside from my tapping on the keyboard.

The little clock next to my laptop shows 7:19. It is actually a little fast. The clock down on the bottom of my monitor shows 7:10. I tend to go by the laptop clock as it is more in line with the other clocks in the house.

Our office is a mess. My wife has been painting the other rooms and whatever didn't get thrown away but wasn't supposed to stay in the rooms, has been added to the office. It is a mess. One of the wife's goals today, as she boldly told me last night, was to get the office cleaned today. She can only do that with my help.

Aargh! So sometime today, I'll have to mow, weedeat and clean the dadgummed office. Not the best way to spend a Saturday, in my opinion.

Last night, the youngest son and I went to the local rodeo. We represented our employer in some silly thing called a calf dressing. The basic gist is each team wants to corral a calf and put underwear on the calf. Whoever does it the quickest, wins $50 each.

Now, this sounds pretty simple and we were pretty confident that we would kick butt and take names. There's only a couple of problems, of course. The calf is more like a small cow, not the small ones you see sucking from its mother's udder.

Plus, the calf doesn't want women's underwear placed on her back legs any more than I would. The first team takes forever. Yes, we are feeling confident.

But then the second team, all women, go out through and take the calf down and put the undies on it in around 27 seconds.

We weren't expecting this. Finally, it is our time. The crowd noise fades away in antipication of a record performance. I have the rope. Swifty is going to wrestle the calf to the floor of the arena covered with dirt and animal excretion. My son will put the underwear on the calf.

As soon as the calf emerges from the chute, Swift starts pulling the calf to the ground. The officials tell us we have to pull the calf past the line first. But there isn't a line! I drag the sucker out until I hear somebody tell us it is okay.

Swifty goes to work, trying to wrestle the calf to the ground. The calf isn't crazy about this, either. Finally, Swifty has the calf in a good headlock and about has the calf down. I plow into the future steak and we put the mighty beast down. We turn it on its back and my son pulls the blue underwear snuggly up the legs and up to the tails.

We look to the official and he says it has to be higher! Calf crap, I want to say, but then help pull the drawers higher. The official says that's good, finally.

Our time is just over 28 seconds. We were reamed. Yes, we got beat by some chicks. But they had help. The only reason we agreed to embarrass ourselves in front of so many people was to win the cash, but then we were denied.

As we left the arena, heads down, nobody came up and offered me a drink or wanted my signature. It was an apt ending to what I feel was the main event. People didn't come to see the barrel racers or bull riders! They came for the calf dressing.

Uh huh. Anyway, the rest of the day was boring. It's time to enjoy Saturday to its fullest.

8-12-05

The weekend is about here and I'm zonked. Right now, I'm suffering through the end of the week blues.

It's not pretty. One hour and fourteen minutes until freedom. The customers keep filing in, but most of them are here for something else.

We have to mow this evening, then go out to the rodeo and do some silly thing where we try to put underwear on a calf. Yes, it's stupid and now I regret agreeing to do it. But if we win, each of us will win $50 bucks. Mine will go toward the old camera lens fund. That's where most of my moolah is currently going.

Speaking of cameras, click here for a picture I posted of a robber fly. They are scary looking creatures.

It is time to go. Until next time.

8-11-05

Congratulate me, if you would.

Why? Because I survived the traffic at the first day of school. I took the youngest son to school today and of course, the traffic was terrible. People were trying to go down the alley the wrong way and were parked every where, making sure their little ones were okay.

It is always a madhouse and this year, it seemed worse. Of course, it might just be because I haven't gone through this in a year.

My peace and quiet in the mornings are gone. I'll miss summer for that, more than anything. Now, the still of the morning is disturbed by loud noises coming from the wife and the children.

It doesn't seem possible that school is already starting. It just seemed like last week that it was the last day of school and we left for a trip to Branson. I can never remember a summer going by so fast. It's fairly appropriate that the summer is over, I guess. I should finish my book within the last two days. I started it early in June so every work day since then and a couple of Saturdays, I have gotten up early and cranked out a chapter.

The ending will lead into another one that I plan to write later this summer, so I need to figure out some slam bang ending. It has been enjoyable, but tough to handle, writing two hours in the morning then going through a normal work schedule.

This time was usually reserved for exercise, so that has slacked off a bit. I have another book that I will start publishing chapters, probably next week.

Last night, we went out to eat as kind of a last-day deal with the kids before they started school. We ate at some buffet in Fort Smith. We ate there a couple of weeks ago and it was much better.

That makes two trips to Fort Smith in two days. I have a quota of Fort Smith trips for a week that has been exceeded. It will be nice to stay home tonight.

Okay, here are the top news items for the day:

*A Swedish company is offering insurance for parking and speeding tickets. Seriously. For a fee of 850 crowns ($112 American), drivers are coverered up to three speeding tickets a year, provided none of the tickets are for going 19 miles an hour faster than the alloted speed limit.

So far, several thousand people have signed up. No word on plans to offer insurance for stupidity, however.

*At a California apartment complex, a man did what many of us have often considered doing after hearing a car alarm blaring. He went out in the parking lot and put three bullets in the car, silencing the alarm.

Sadly, the shooter was arrested instead of the owner of the Camry who did nothing to silence the irritating noise.

*Bad news out of Florida. Humpty Dumpty didn't fall off the wall. He was stolen!

The three-foot bronze Humpty was adorned outside a Florida beachfront home, minding his own business when thieves had the gall to steal him.

Humpty weighed 60 pounds and cost the owners $5,112 when they bought him a few years ago.

No word on ransom demands.

*Poor Palenstinians! All they wanted to do was set a record for the world's longest sandwich.

They planned on building a 750-metre long sandwich to feed the poor. Sadly, their project was abandoned after health officials warned them there was a good chance the sandwich was rotting in the blaring sun.

The previous record for a sandwich is 634 metres. They lost out on their bid to make the sandwich, but maybe they can at least learn how to spell "meter" out of the deal.

Enough for today. May you have an excellent one.

8-10-05

Okay, this is a true story. I realize that anytime you hear somebody say that, most people are prepared for a lie.

Two months ago, we had to get rid of two of our dogs. They wouldn't stay in their pen and were causing a lot of problems. Butch was the ringleader. Gabby was strictly an accomplice.

They were moved way out in the country, some 25 miles from here.

Once before, Gabby was given away, but she escaped and was back home the next day. Anyway, Gabby had always been a good dog. Butch was a good dog also, but did not need to live in town.

This morning, I heard our remaining dogs barking and going crazy. I thought there was an armadillo or something in the yard. I went out to investigate and saw a dog running through the backyard.

Something seemed familiar about her. Gabby is part-Akita and part-Rottweiller. She has the Akita tail that folds up in the back. I saw the folded up tail and could not believe my eyes.

I went to the front door and whistled. Gabby came running around to the front of the house, wagging her tail and overjoyed to be home.

She came back from 25 miles away, in the dead of summer from a place she had never been before. I had heard of dogs doing this before, but not to this extent.

We won't get rid of her again. Somehow, Gabby will remain a part of our family. We'll just have to figure out a way to keep her home and out of the neighbors' yards.

Last night, we were supposed to go out and eat with some friends. We showed up at her work and were told that it would be a little bit. We went off to Wal-Mart to kill some time.

About an hour later. they called and were ready. Not too bad, but it's typical for them. So we go eat and everything is good. As we start to leave the restaurant, she asks if we would mind going to Sears for just a quick trip.

I have been on trips with her before. Quick and her should not be included in the same sentence. So we wind up at the mall. We're walking down the row of shops and shes spots something.

So she decides to go in the store. Her husband and I do what guys typically do in a situation like that. We go to the game deal next door and shoot some bad guys. When we emerge, the wifes are nowhere to be seen.

We call and find out now the women are at some bath and body works crap. We make our way to that store and both the women want us to come in. They are trying on some lotion. We want ten more minutes and finally get out. Finally, they are headed to Sears. The guy and I stop at the book store. We're there for some thirty minutes before they call and tell us that they need to make one other stop, then go to the shoe story

I was fairly well behaved. No, really. Only a couple of comments.

Okay, here are the top stories for the day.

Two Missouri teens were trying to figure out some way to raise money for college. They decided to offer their services for a week on eBay. Their offer was seven days of work from both of them. Bidders must not have been impressed. The winning bid was $246.50. The story mentioned that they probably will not do this again.

At the prison at Guantanamo Bay, the top reads include Harry Potter and Agatha Christie. No, really. That's what the top reads are for a bunch of Aghan and Arabic prisoners. The only other book that is so popular is the Koran.

In Britain, one of the top new pop bands refused to play after the show's host mentioned that they were fat. That's fat, not phat.

A UPS driver found a delivery he never expected in the back of his truck. It was a nine-foot python hidden among the packages. The driver thought it was fake until he saw the scales. Neither the snake or the driver were hurt. The python is back with its new owner. UPS is investigating as they are not supposed to ship snakes. Other live animals, but not snakes. Especially nine-foot ones.

A 75-year old German was so shocked after accidentally running over his 73-year old wife that he did it again. She survived. No word on his condition after she got hold of him.

Speaking of snakes, in Alabama, a woman went to the post office to retrieve her mail. While she was getting the mail out of the box, she was shocked to find a 2-foot long snake in the box. Sadly, the snake was disposed of so if you have a P.O. box in Alabama, you should feel better.

Finally, in Des Moines, Iowa, a man was so angry after seeing a careless driver that he pulled the driver over. Get this, the man was arrested for impersonating a driver! Like that is wrong. What happened to Gomer Pyle's "Citizen Arrest!" It probably did not hurt that the man was also busted for driving a stolen truck.

That's enough for today. Until next time. farewell.

8-8-05

We've had rain the last two days. It's been good to reduce the temperature, but this means it's back to mowing.

My yard needs weedeated worse than a German woman's pits. Yesterday was fairly boring. Had a school board meeting last night that only lasted an hour. That's almost a record. Most of them go for a good two hours.

School starts Thursday. I like the summer since nobody else is awake before I go to work. Now, there will be lots of noise and commotion. Dookie!

My diet is still a complete failure. Yesterday, I had put on 2.5 pounds. I dropped half a pound by this morning so in the two weeks of my diet, I have gained two pounds! I guess this will have to be changed to the un-diet.

The old blood sugar is also still riding a little high. It has been down to 131 in the morning, but was resting at a smooth 154 this morning. That's not good. It should be below 120. In the past, when I've had problems I could bring it down by myself. This time, it isn't working. But I also haven't been exercising because of body aches.

Found a few interesting items in the news this morning that I'd like to share.

• A scientist has found that men do have trouble hearing women. Really? It's not that we have trouble hearing them, it's that a lot of times we don't WANT to hear them. I can have told them that without doing a lot of research.
• A Texas man plans to visit every Starbucks. I can understand somebody wanting to see a game in every major league baseball stadium. But not visit Starbucks. I, for one, am glad and a little disturbed to know I live in a country where people aren't put in jail for doing stupid things like this.
• A Macedonian man left his wife at an Italian service station and didn't realize he had drove off without her for six hours. Uh huh. Sure you didn't. I'd figure it out after the first moment of silence.
• In Los Angeles, a photographer was trying to snap some pictures of Brittney Spears' baby shower. Instead of doing the shooting, he was plugged in the leg with a pellet gun. No word on who the shooter was. If she can't shoot any better than she sings, the shooter must be somebody else.
• A business executive was jailed for molesting a woman sleeping next to him on a plane. Okay, we've got the no smoking or cell phones signs. The "No copping a feel from sleeping passengers" sign must have been on the blink.
• Sadly, a South Korean man had a heart attack and died, shortly after playing video games for 50 hours nonstop. What's the point? There is no point. If I played video games for that long, I would probably die also. But it wouldn't be from a heart attack.
• A New York radio station stopped its "slapfest" routine where women slapped other women for prizes. This happened shortly after being fined for $240,000.
• A 15-year old boy was sentenced to three days of community service for harassment. His crime? Pinching and twisting the nipples of a 13-year old boy. Who knew a titty twister was illegal?

That's enough for today. I'm still searching for the great closing lines. I would thank everybody for their suggestions and comments, except I haven't gotten any.

8-7-05

Okay, I skipped yesterday! Sorry, I was busy!

The weekend was pretty lame for the most part. Friday evening was okay. Saturday was boring. The highlight was going to Wal-Mart. Anytime Wal-Mart is the highlight of a weekend day, you know it bites.

We argued about going to a movie. It was just the wife, the daughter and myself. We were in agreement to go see a movie, just couldn't decide what to see. Finally, we decided on Charley's Chocolate Factory. I expected it to be lame, but agreed just to get out of the house.

Then the wife remembered that the youngest son wanted to see that. He was away at his grandmother's all weekend and knew he would get rather chapped if we went without him.

So we rented four movies. They pretty much stunk. The first was Upside of Anger with Kev Costner and Joan Allen. They were basically two older drunks who were miserable so they shared their miserableness with each other. I don't know if "miserableness" is actually a word, but I'm too tired to look it up.

Old Kev was pretty good in his role. He's a much better actor when he plays a goofball character than when it's a serious part. Joan Allen also does good, the movie just drags a bit.

It's sad, but I can't remember what we watched after that. It was late and I was about to fall asleep, that's about it. Oh yeah, now I remember. It was Blast!, a movie so bad they didn't have a web site to link to. This was worse than The Pacifier!

Eddie Griffin's the star. He needs to stick to his goofball roles. He just doesn't cut it as a serious actor, or an action hero. He'd say something and I thought he was trying to be funny, only to realize he was serious.

Yep, a bad flick.

Yesterday, which was Sunday, we hit church, then I came home and did yard work. I mowed the yard and took a quick swim. I was about to do the weedeating thing (with the new weedeater I bought Saturday!) when a storm hit. We got a blast of wind hard enough to turn out trampoline over.

It hit my smoker or it would have smashed into the garage. The smoker is heavy, but was turned over. The legs on the trampoline were bent, but I used my super human strength to salvage it. The trampoline landed on my crape myrtles, but only hurt one branch.

We did find one of the two missing hamsters last night. It scampered into the laundry room but we captured the little beast. The other one is still missing. That's the one that escaped the other day and scooted between my legs while I was on the toilet.

I figure we'll find this one when it starts stinking. That reminds me of our first Easter together as a family.

We did the Easter Egg thing. The youngest son was about seven then. A few days after Easter, a bad smell started coming out of the boys' room they shared. At first, I thought somebody had left a skidster on their drawers or something, but it kept getting worse. Kind of like the movie Blast.

The wife did some exploring and discored the youngest son's Easter basket in the closet, complete with some eggs!

There were bugs and maggot-looking things crawling all over them. I got to toss them out. Hopefully the missing hamster doesn't start smelling that bad.

8-6-05

I took this photo yesterday afternoon while walking around our pond. It is some kind of butterly trying to get the gunk out of a flower with its sucker. Yeah, I know, that's not the proper wording, but that's the best I can do early on a Saturday morning.

Personally, I thought it was an awesome picture. I posted it on WebAperture last night and only got five comments. Most of the people there are not real high on macro or bug shots.

This time of the year, that is about all there is to take pictures of around here. We don't have oceans and it is so dry, all the lakes and ponds are down real low. So it's either that or flowers, two groups I have been taking a lot of pictures of.

I have a lot of pictures that need to be added to my Smugmug account, but I haven't really had the time. I've been working on my book and also getting these other web sites to look the way I want.

This is Saturday. Saturdays are good for me. It is my goof off day. Sometimes my wife does not agree with that and it creates a little dissension. She feels like we should be doing something all the time. I'll usually wind up heading outside to mess around with the yard, but draw the line at working inside.

Everybody is still asleep and it's almost 9 a.m. Nice. I actually slept in until almost 8 this morning. I did wake up at my usual 5 a.m. and tossed and turned for a while before deciding it would be okay to go back to sleep. Now, I'm a little groggy but the funk is leaving.

The boys are off at a grandmother's house for last night and most of the day. Nice. We did pick up my daughter last night but she's pretty quiet for the most part.

After we picked her up last night, the three of us went to eat at The Olive Garden in Fort Smith. Nice. I had my traditional spaghetti with meat sauce. The wife and daughter had some women food that I can't spell and I'm too lazy to look up.

Then, they dropped me off at Books-A-Million while they went to some clothing store. Another nice. I was able to read and look at things for over an hour without interruption.

Came home after that, fed the dogs and checked on the computer to see what was going on in the world. I guess I'm like a lot of people, my use of the computer is cutting down on television time.

We had a good rain shower yesterday. Since it was coming down so hard, we started driving on our new driveway a day earlier to keep from putting ruts in the yard. It will be nice not having to suck in dirt every time somebody drives up our driveway.

I'm not sure if Buddy has successfully bred Daisy, but again, it won't be for a lack of trying. If I had been that persistent, I might have actually gotten lucky more in my college and single days.

That about sums things up for today. Have a good one.

8-5-05

You know, there's nothing like two weenie dogs humping to get a day started. I need to take a picture and post it so you can share in the experience.

Buddy still looks like a drunk at closing time, trying to let off a little steam. He's just a panting and drooling like crazy. His aim isn't all that great but you can't fault the little guy for effort.

Daisy is playing hard to get. She doesn't really understand why Buddy is wanting to climb on her. She's kind of like a lot of females I used to know.

Yesterday, was sort of boring, but nice. The wife started painting a bedroom last night and left me alone all night! It made for a good evening.

I played around with the web site for my online book The Old Man's Request for several hours, adding advertisers. I don't actually know if anybody will buy anything, but I get a little kickback if they do, so that would be nice.

I didn't mention it earlier, but I am very pleased that today is Friday. No work tomorrow. Enough for now, I must work.

8-4-05

I got some good news and some bad news for you.

The good news first: Last Tuesday, which was nine days ago, I started a diet. Since then, I have ate no candy, sweets, etc. I even passed on the cake and ice cream at my nephew's birthday party the other day. What dedication, eh?

Anyway, I have been weighing myself every day. This morning, I got back down to the same weight I was when I started dieting! Yeah! I'll pause while you give me a golf clap. Yep, for the first nine days of my diet, I went the other direction.

After weighing the first day, I was pleased. I expected it to be much higher. So that first day after my diet started, lo and behold (I've always wanted to write that in something), I had gained 3.5 pounds.

No, the Craigman was not pleased. But I stayed the course. No, I haven't ate the best, but I have cut down my portions and cut out the sugar stuff as that was another incentive to get my weight down as my blood sugar has been sky high.

In the past, I have always been pretty good at losing weight. It's the keeping it off part that has been difficult. After finding out that I was a Type II Diabetic in 1997, I lost almost seventy pounds. Everybody thought I had Aids or something.

Then, I got married and the weight started coming back almost as fast as I lost it. Last year, my blood sugar got so bad that I couldn't see with my glasses but could see perfect without them.

That was a pretty good incentive to go on a diet and drop the old blood sugar. I did both and lost 25 pounds, but then got a little lazy again.

One thing that is hurting me is that I can't run like I used to. When I lost all the weight, I would run five miles a day then lift weights in the afternoon. I was in the best shape of my life.

So I will keep you up to date on this, if anybody bothers to read.

Now, the bad news: Swifty beat me to work this morning! I felt like such a dolt. He's always running a little behind while I'm usually here at least fifteen to twenty minutes early.

I got ragged for this, as I deserved to me. At least they didn't switch me.

Also, just thought I'd point out love is in the air at the Hall household. We have two Dachshounds, Daisy, who is a year and a half old and Buddy, who is one year old.

Well, as dogs are accustomed to doing, Daisy is in heat for the second time. The previous time, Buddy was just curious. Not this time. Buddy's after that like a drunk with an ugly girl at closing time at a honkey tonk.

His aim isn't the best, but you have to give him kudos for the effort. His old tongue was practically dragging the ground, he had been trying to hump so much. Daisy is trying to get in the corner and hide in the dog house. She is much bigger and apt to nip at the Budster if he bugs her too much.

Before I left for work this morning (and no, I wasn't late because I spent so much time watching the dogs hump!), I noticed something strange. Daisy must have gotten a little tired of Buddy doing the humping and she had turned the table and was going to town on him.

He was so tired all he could do was pant and look at her funny.

They finished pouring the concrete for our driveway. It really does look like a small airport now. But we won't have all the dust floating around and the bumps.

This is Thursday, only two days until freedom!

8-3-05

Ahoy matey!

It's Wednesday and the week is almost half over. Hurrah, or however the crap they say that.

They're finishing up the concrete for my driveway this morning. We can't actually drive on it until Saturday. It has kept the wife buttoned up at home since for some reason she isn't fond of driving her Mustang through the pasture.

The only bad deal is once I get home from work, she's ready to hit the road whereas I'd just as soon stay at home.

My blood sugar is starting to come down a little, finally. This morning, it was 138 which is still a little high, but much better than the 180 to 200 it has been most mornings. Last week, it was well over 300 several times. I felt like a deflated ballon, still do in the evenings. But it is getting better.

I could tell that it was much better this morning. I had more energy and was even a little more creative, as you can tell if you bother to read the chapter I posted this morning on The Old Man's Request.

It's strange how one day your mind is clicking and the next day, there's like a lock on your creative process. I would classify it as the proverbial brain fart, but that is used for when a person does something stupid.

We had a birthday party for my little nephew yesterday afternoon. James is now 4 years old. The years have flown by. The little fellow was born shortly after I took my new job.

His parents have done the split deal, but he seems pretty well adjusted, just as long as he has some Hot Wheels to play with. "Wanna play cars, Unca Craig?" he always asks me.

"Go away, you little snot!" I answer, sending him off crying to my wife.

Ha Ha, I was kidding. I would never say that to a child. Instead, I either play with him for a few minutes until he gets distracted or I go with the old "I'm too busy" line that little farts hear way too much.

The weather outside is @#^%(*#(@*&ing hot, once again. We're supposed to get a little break later this week, but I'll believe it when I see it, by gosh!

Enough for today, I say! Until tomorrow, good day! as Paul Harvey is prone to say. I need a closing line similar to that. It must be short and classy. If you have any suggestions, please leave them as a comment.

8-2-05

For some reason, I've been wonder why Almond Joy has nuts, but Mounds don't.

Is it because Mounds candy bars got neutered? Or are they without sexual organs?

Since I brought up the word "neutered", it reminded me of our former Dachshound, Oscar. We got Oscar shortly after the wife and I were married.

He was a one-of-a-kind dog, the kind you always dream about. His only bad faults were he tended to sleep a lot, would rather whiz inside than outside and Oscar was rather fond of hunching a leg, but only when he had the opportunity.

Oscar wasn't ever fond of my leg, not that I ever felt neglected. But if one of the boys was lying down, he would seize the moment and go to town. Needless to say, but I'll do so anyway, the boys weren't real fond of getting hunched, especially in front of company.

After careful consideration, we decided to have him neutered. Prior to that point, Oscar had a set that was rather noticeable. He liked to lay on his back with his legs spread, showing everybody his sack.

The wife didn't like this view and this was probably the main reason Oscar became like a Mounds bar, sans nuts.

His behavior didn't change after that. He did hunch less often, but I attributed it to maturity, not the lack of his nuggets. Plus, he just seemed to be less of a dog.

After the vet performed the procedure, I asked the wife if we could keep them, but she didn't want them put over the fireplace in a jar.

Women!

We lost Oscar the Dog just over a year ago. Now, there are two other Dachshounds living with us, but life is just not the same.

Anyway, enough about Oscar and his nuggets.

We're getting our driveway concreted. As I write this, concrete trucks are dumping their loan in my front yard. This will be nice and cut down on the dust floating around.

Had an interesting experience yesterday morning. I was ruling from my throne in the bathroom, minding my own business and doing my morning reading when something flashed between my legs. No, it wasn't that.

It was black and quick. I jumped, at least as well as possible when a person is atop a stool. At first, I thought it was a mouse or a rat. Just what I wanted to tell the wife: "Hey, we've got rats!"

She freaks if a cockroach comes within a football field from our house. I doubted she would be happy to have rodents slinking through the humble abode.

I glanced it again as it ran under my wife's vanity in the bathroom. After quickly finishing my business, I went off in search of the varmint. I found it next to the dirty clothes hamper and realized this wasn't a rat or mouse, it was a hamster.

My oldest son's hamster had escaped! I chased it into the bedroom and finally cornered the little sucker. I picked it up by its tails and swatted it a couple of times for scaring me and...okay, that was a joke. I carefully picked it up and carried it back to its cage.

Work was a booger yesterday, especially in the morning. It lightened up a little in the afternoon, but it was still rough. Then, to make the day perfect, after I got home from work, my wife wanted to go to Wal-Mart!

Argh! We were going to get a swingset for my nephew's birthday, which the wife's brother wanted to go in halves on. But he didn't want to go get it, would prefer that we did.

Hmmmmmm. Something was wrong with this picture. It was like pulling teeth to even buy the stupid swingset. The one we wanted, they said wasn't there any longer. Then, the wife talked to somebody else, who said it was in the back.

It took a good thirty minutes standing in the layaway section to get the stupid swingset. Then, we were supposed to wait for one of the cart pushers to come push the cart outside. Nobody showed up so I pushed it to the front of the store without ruining any merchandise or gorging any shoppers or associates.

Finally, we were at the front of the store. The greeter called for help several times without getting any. Apparently, they were worried we would steal this huge cart and didn't trust us to take it outside and would prefer that we stood around scratching our privates until a cart pusher finally arrived.

At last, we were rescued. An actual, living cart pusher showed up to put us out of our misery. The wife did what all women do after something like this, she called to complain to her mother, who just so happens to work at Wal-Mart and who I figured had something better to do with her time other than listen to complaints about her store.

We got home and watched The Bourne Supremacy on DVD. Awesome flick, as was The Bourne Identity. I had read the books by Robert Ludlum many years ago, back during the Texas era, so called because those were the years I lived in Texas.

Somehow, they have to speed up Matt Damon during the fight sequences. Nobody can move that fast, unless they have a hamster run between their legs while sitting on the toilet.

Enough for today, I say.

8-1-05

Ugh, it's Monday. That means back to work and all the crappola that goes along with it.

Since I skipped work Friday afternoon to go golfing, that will make this day even worse. I need to become a millionairre so every day is like a Saturday. Now that would be cool.

Yesterday was a typical Sunday. I got up and wrote the special weekend edition chapter for my book The Old man's Request. Then we went to church at Poteau in the morning. It was a little rough.

We've been going to this church for six years. Some of the church ran our pastor off a couple of months ago and are now trying to dominate. They have a pastor picked out who they want, even though half the church would like to see somebody else get in.

They don't really have a problem with the pastor who has been filling in and who wants the position, but they don't want it shoved down their throats.

That pretty much burned us out on going to church there. After our pastor left, we went to different churches for a while and found one at Howe that we liked. But we had people wanting us to go back to our original church and we gave it a try.

There's like some strange feeling in the church. You go to church to feel good and get refreshed, along with the praise and worship, of course, not to get in some fight.

We ate at Burger King. Gotta love the whopper! After that, we hung around the house. I cleaned out the last flower bed for the second time this year. Last night, we went back to the church at Howe and it felt much better.

The wife wanted to go eat with some friends after the service so we went to Mazzio's. I ate a sandwich prior to church, so I wasn't hungry.

It hasn't been as hot, which has been nice. The nights actually feel good, much better than the 80 degree evenings we had last week. School is starting in a couple of weeks. It's amazing how fast the summer has flown by.

My diet is not going well. My weight is going up and down, darn the luck. The lack of exercise makes it difficult to lose weight.

It's time to get ready for work.