Sunday, November 30, 2008

And Already....Home Again

I guess it should be no surprise to me, or about anyone else that a 4 day trip, with 2 days of it spent on the road, goes by pretty quick.
We were on the road by 5am Wednesday morning and the first couple hours were driven in the dark. By the time it started to get light we were in Indiana and headed towards Illinois at 80mph. The trip for the most part was uneventful. The weather was clear and sunny the whole way. We changed drivers a couple times at fuel stops and by 5:00 CST we were heading down 4th street in Fort Leavenworth, looking for Jen's house.
It was a secret for a couple weeks that Ri was going with us instead of Chris and as we pulled in the driveway and parked, Eric was just pulling in from a trip to daycare to pick up the boys, who seemed real happy to see Ri.
Within an hour or so of arriving we were having Mexican pie for dinner thanks to the wife. The rest of the evening was spent kicked back on the couch, playing with the kids while the women got stuff ready for the Thanksgiving feast the next day.
After a fitful night's sleep and breakfast we ran some errands to get last minute things that we needed for the big meal. When 3:00 came around we were all sitting down to eat Turkey, yams, mashed potatos and gravy, corn and rolls. It was a good feast. The rest of the day went by quickly. Me and Ri took a walk after dinner with one of Jen's puppies that Ri was bringing home and hiked up the hill a couple blocks east of their house for a view of the Missouri River. Their house is literally about 300 yards inside Kansas.
Nobody stayed up too late Thursday night cuz the Polgars were getting up at 4am to go shopping for those Walmart black Friday bargins and the rest of us were just tired out form all the eating and trips back and forth to various stores.
Friday was spent running errands during the morning and then we all made a trip out to the mall / race track to do some shopping at the Nebraska Furniture Mart. A huge freakin' place with way too many people in it for me. We were there on a mission to find a new microwave oven for the Polgar house. Not being much of a shopper I was happy to get the hell outa there and head back to the house. By the time we got back to the house it was time to take the puppies (3) to the vet for their checkups because plans had changed since we arrived. We were now bringing all 3 of them back with us. One for Ri, One for Maynard and the 3rd one for his sister.
Once everyone was back home again from the vet it was time for supper. Wanda had made a big pot of chili so we dived into that with spoons, bowls and crackers. Before long it was time to put the kids to bed and say our goodbyes then as we wouldn't be waking them up in the morning to say goodbye. I'm sure they didn't realize that was the plan at the time we tucked them in. It had been a fast two days made up mostly of eating, napping and shopping.
Saturday came too early and the girls were up and packed before I got up. We packed up the bags and made sure we had everything. Ri went and got the puppies and got them loaded in their travel bag. Jennette had said they were going to get up to see us off but when the time came to go they were still asleep so we fired up the car and headed out of town. It was disappointing not getting to say goodbye to the daughter but it didn't make much sense to wake 'em up just to say Goodbye and send 'em back to bed.
The ride back was almost as uneventful as the ride out but having 3 puppies in the car livened things up a bit. Rest Area stops took longer with having 3 puppies to keep empty and people's questions about how old?, what were they? etc....We had some snow going thru Missouri, but by the time we got back up to Des Moines it had stopped and just stayed grey and cold the rest of the way home. We got back into town about 7:30pm and made a stop at the Greens to show off the puppies and then took the two Ri wasn't keeping over to Maynards place and dropped them off. Once that was done we headed back to the house to pick up Chris and then we headed for Texas Roadhouse for a good meal after a long ride.
It was nice seeing the grandkids again. They all had grown a bit since they were here in May. I got to spend some quality time with all of them, but I never did take any pictures though....inbetween shopping trips, eating and naps I just never got started, so instead of my handiwork I'm including a couple pics that Jen sent from their photo session of a couple weeks ago.
Ryan, Ethan & Jason
Eric, Jen & the boys
It's late and I need some sleep to get ready for the grind in the morning. Had a good time, just went by too damn fast for my tastes.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Road Trip Time...

We're getting up at 4am tomorrow morning to head off to Kansas to visit with Jen and her family for Thanksgiving. Not tired enough yet to close my eyes so I thought I'd do a bit in here to kill some time.
I don't think I've mentioned it yet but after months of hunting on and off for a suitable place online to show off my camera work it looks like I may have finally found one actually worth paying an annual fee for.....it's called SmugMug and consists of a lot of nice features, including the one that sold me, a full screen slide show format. SmugMug is quite a large community too and as time goes on I hope to get more involved in it. To keep it simple for now though I've got an address to share with you if you're interested in seeing some of my pics. The basic addy is......
All my camera work can be accessed from that one link. SmugMug is set up in Galleries and from this Home page you can click on any of the galleries shown. There's not much to see yet as I'm just getting started, but there's enough there to give you an idea how it'll work.
On a different note.....while putting up some pics from my bike trip to Virginia in May of '06 I rediscovered some video I took at a bluegrass festival we attended. Back then I didn't have a way to upload the files to share 'em but nowadays I do so here are some links to several tunes by a couple different bands. If all works as planned you should be able to play these with Windoze Media player. I'd suggest downloading them first and then playing them unless you have a fast high-speed connection. Along with the music there's also a short clip of a guy we met during a rest stop who pulled in on his bike, a bike that was powered by a Chevy 350 V-8! The video is a short clip of him firing it up and gettng ready to take off.....
After getting back home from this trip I wrote to the guy running the sound board about one band I dug, Crooked Creek and he was nice enough to send me an entire album of their stuff that they'd just gone into the studio to record. Hopefully these links will work for y'all and get that foot atappin.
CROOKED CREEK
ALL 4 HYM
V-8 BIKE
Time to go get some sleep, 4am will be here sooner than I want it to be I'm sure. Cya when we return.
Tc

Sunday, November 09, 2008

It Had To Happen Sooner Or Later...

...and it finally did this afternoon. It snowed enough to cover the green grass. Ack. And if that wasn't bad enough the whole damn week ahead is suppose to be more of the same. Of course if you really want to get depressing the next 4 or 5 months is gonna be more of the same.......
This past week was pretty quiet as things tend to get this time of year. It was nice enough Monday thru Wednesday to ride the bike to work a couple last times. Which makes today's weather even that much more painful.
I wasn't feeling too good Friday morning, or Thursday night either for that matter, so I decided to take the day off work and just stay home and keep a low profile. I have my computers at work now set up so I can access them from home which is kinda cool. Now I can do some of my work from here and not have to go in......yeah, right.
This past Tuesday was the election and the country voted Democrat this time around and we have someone who as far as I know hasn't even established the fact that he's legally eligible to be president, but I guess that, like so many other things, doesn't matter these days. Nobody can say the guy doesn't have Charisma and the fact he's kinda black has given the black community a new messiah. First one since Martin Luther King I guess. They're comparing him to Kennedy which is pretty funny when he hasn't even done anything yet. I just hope he don't come to the same end as JFK. I think it's a definite possibility. Time will tell, but the next 6 months should be interesting. The economy is so freaking bad that there's talk about General Motors going belly up which will put another million people, at least, on the public dole, including me probably. Gas has gone from July's high of $4.20 a gallon down to $1.99 tonight. I'll stop on that positive note cuz I don't want to start ranting about shit I can't do nothing about. Sit down, strap in and hang on, it's gonna be a bumpy ride.
I can't recall if I mentioned it yet or not but we're planning on going out to Fort Leavenworth for Thanksgiving weekend to visit Jennette and her clan. Leaving early morning the 26th and will be back home the evening of the 29th. A short visit. What I like to call a power trip. :-)
Ah well, one day at a time.
TC

Sunday, November 02, 2008

All Wrapped Up And Put Away For Another Year

Although it's raining this evening, it's been a real nice weekend for weather, albeit about a week too late, mostly sunny and in the 60's....
Friday night was halloween. We didn't have a pumpkin or candy so we got the hell out of the house for the evening.
Saturday I woke up at 6:30am and decided to stay up and get stuff around before making a trip up to camp to close everything up for the winter. Me, Mercury and Bailey were on the road by 8:30am and after a couple stops arrived at camp just about 10. The first thing I did was put away the runway lights and put coffee cans over the posts so they wouldn't get all wet and rusty during the winter. Might make it easier come spring to find 'em again too!. After that I spent awhile pulling stuff out of the camper and the shed and getting it boxed up. Prepped the toilet, pulled up the hoses and turn off the electricity. Then, I cranked the camper down and threw the blue plastic tarp over it and wrapped it up in bungee cords to keep some of the weather off it for the next 4 or 5 unhospitable months.

By The time I had all that done it was about 12:30. The weather was so nice that I wasn't in a hurry to leave so I decided to work on the medicine wheel for awhile and managed to finish up the prepatory work by putting the dividers in. The next step would be to gather the rocks that are going in the 4 sections but that'll have to wait for next April. In the meantime I hope to work on the centerpiece and have that ready to go next spring. I haven't done much wood burning in my life but how hard can it be right?





We decided about 3ish that we'd done all we could do so we took one last look around and then headed out. Got back into town about 5 and unpacked the truck.





The rest of the weekend just kinda wasted away in between bursts of energy and naps...watched a bit of a movie this evening on Abbie Hoffman, which seemed appropriate with the election coming up on Tuesday.......hope the doomsayers aren't right about the blood in the streets predictions. I guess we'll see what happens in about 48 hours.
Tc