Update on the Flu

Well, now my wife is down in bed with that dang flu and I am much better but still coughing.  In fact, my stomach muscles are really sore from all the coughing.  If Santa brought this to us this year than next year he better bring us something really great or stay the heck away.

I don't have anything new to talk about, so this is just a short post to let you know we are still kicking.  You all stay well, you hear?

Got Blindsided by the Flu.

Sorry I have been missing in action for the last few days but I got blindsided the flu.  It was more like "hit head on and run over" than it was blindsided.  I am starting to improve, although there for a couple of days, I was beginning to wonder.  On a scale of 1 to 100, where 100 is perfectly good health, I was down to about 15 and now have climbed up to about 50.  I am still weak and have joint pains, but my fever has dropped considerably.  I think I am on the mends.  Thanks for wondering about me.  Now my wife has it, too.

I think Santa brought it to us.  You know, visiting so many homes, especially on one night and the ones with kids, he would have to have come into contact with the flu.  So, if you ask me what Santa brought me, I guess I would have to say the flu.

I did take picture on Christmas and I did promise to post them, but maybe tomorrow I will fill more up to doing that.  Now, you all stay well and have a great day, you hear?

Wondering About the Day After.

It is the day after Christmas and there is nothing left under the Christmas tree except some shiny foil icicles that were knocked off when the kids were retrieving the pretty wrapped boxes, which were quickly opened.  I must say these two wonderful kids are the best behaved and most polite children I have ever known.  We think that they sure are special and we are so very happy that they are now part of our family.  After all those hours and days of preparation, planning, and joy of trying to find the right gift that will bring happiness to all, it all came and went so fast.  Now it is all in the past.

Hay, even Santa brought me a toy!!  This toy will keep me occupied for hours and hours and offers so many different scenarios, that I sure I will still be using it until next Christmas and beyond.  Maybe I will tell you more about it in a future blog posting.  I sure hope Santa brought you what you wanted and that you had a great Christmas.  Now, have a great day, today, you hear?

A Merry Christmas and a Disapointment.

It has been a good Christmas day, a cold front moved in and with the clear skies, it was beautiful.  My wife and I got the tree set up ahead of time, shopped for just the right groceries for Christmas dinner, wrapped the gifts, and put them all under the tree.

Then my wife, after cooking all day and just took a cherry pie out of the oven, got the table all set for us, our son, and his wife and the two kids.

Then we called to see when they would be here.  It turned out my son came down with bad case of the flu.  His wife and the two children will be here however, so, although we are disappointed that he isn't going to make it, we are sure glad that they will be here.  And I think Santa Claus will be happy, too.

He is standing on a bench looking at the decorated tree.  The gang should be here shortly, so I will cut this short and sure wish you had a great day, you hear?

Wondering About Eating Out.

My wife and I and our friend Rich, had lunch to today at the Cracker Barrel.  But first, we met at Goodwill and took a look around.  We didn't get too much, just some DVD's, mostly music.  I got one recorded by one of my favorite blue grass singers, the Father of Blue Grass, Mr. Bill Monroe.

 

Then I found a couple of DVDs of one of my favorite Country Music Singers, Merle Haggard.

 

Not only did I get some DVDs of the above two stars, I also got one titled Country Gold.  It is going to take some time to listen to all of those, but I will enjoy every bit of it.  Now, you all have a very Merry Christmas, you hear?



Wondering What Was There Before?

When you go to new places, have you ever wondered what was there before?  Take some large US cities, like New York City, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Atlanta, and San Francisco, do you know what was there before there was a city built on that land?

No, I am not going to talk about those cities, I just listed them to make a point that most of us have no idea what was there before they were settled.  I would guess that most of them were wilderness areas inhabited by Native Americans and/or abundant wild life, but I don't know for sure.

Have any of you heard of Times Beach, Missouri?  No, well I haven't either and guess what, it does not exist anymore.  So, where did it go?  Well, let me start from the beginning of the end to this town.  It all started when the unpaved roads through the town caused a lot of dust so the city, who couldn't afford to pay a lot of money, they found Russell Bliss, a waste hauler, just six cents per gallon to spray its roads with oil.  So far no problem, right?  Wrong!!  The waste oil that he sprayed was actually hexachlorophene tainted with dioxin.  Dioxin is very dangerous poison that can remain in your body for more than ten years.  He mixed six truckloads of waste that he had gotten free the year before and was supposed to safely dispose of since it was tainted with dioxin.

The children of Times Beach loved to slide around in Bliss' purple-tinted goo.  Soon people started getting sick and in 1979, the EPA came to town and took soil samples and found that the dioxin was off the charts.  To make a long story a little shorter, they bulldozed the town and then in 1999, that bulldozed town was reopened as  Route 66 State Park.

  So, what was there before the State or National Park you are viting was built on that site?  Just wondering.  Now, you all have a great day, you hear?

Tonight's Sunset.

I have had a busy day and didn't get my blog written this morning.  That was not such a good thing but in a way, maybe it was.  I noticed a little bit ago that the sunset was pretty.  So, I grabbed my camera and rushed out to see if I could get any good pictures of it.  In the past, I have not done too good getting the picture I want of a sunset, so I tried again tonight.  I took four pictures, one right after the other.  It is amazing just how fast the view changed.  I will post them below in the order of when I took them.  The third one seems out of order, but it isn't.  It just changed to that color then back again to the color in the previous pictures.  Now, I will have to wonder what caused that.  Here are the pictures.

OK, short but sweet, right?  Nature can really paint some beautiful pictures, can't she?  Now, I hope you all have beautiful sunsets every day of your lives and for now, just have a great day, you hear?

Wandering to the Storage Lockers.

A friend of ours sets up at the flea market and also sell on line.  In order to keep on doing this, he has to find desirable items that are inexpensive to survive.  One way he does that is to bid on storage lockers or units that are in default on payments.  Have you ever watched "Storage Wars" on TV?  The difference is, here people bid on line after seeing a picture of the locker.  He won this current locker for next to nothing and he believed that there was nothing but junk in it, according to the picture.  My wife and I went down to help him move its contents into his other, larger storage unit just around the corner of the row and down the other side.

 
That is my Jeep in the foreground in the above picture.  Oh, did I tell you that he has a jeep almost identical to mine?  The one in the foreground in the picture below is his Jeep.

 

 In the above picture, you can see a little ways into his locker and you can see it was stuffed full.  Of course there was a lot of stuff to head to the dumpster, but there was also a lot of good stuff.  Lots of small things that sure do add up when they are sold.  After moving a lot of the stuff in the front, there were a couple of larger things come into view, one being bunk beds.

 

 But the prize and the icing on the cake was this piano.  It was in perfect shape and in tune.  A really nice instrument:

All told, I would say he made out quite well.

Well, today at the flea market, my wife made a few purchases.  Most of them small and would fit into her shopping bag, but she did make one large purchase for little money.

 

She got a whole set, 20 books, all written by Louis Lamoure.  It sure looks like we have a lot of reading to do.  I guess instead of watching cowboy movies on the Western Channel, I need to start reading some of these books.  Now, you all have a great day today, you hear?



 

Wondering About Barometric Pressure.

I wonder how many of us actually wonder about barometric Pressure unless you are a weather-man?  Not many, I assume.  OK, let me ask this question, what is normal barometric pressure?  First of all, barometric pressure is the weight of the air or atmosphere above you pushing down on you.  As you probably would guess, the lower you are the higher the pressure (since there is more air above you) and the higher, the reverse is true.  So, if you were standing on top of Pike's Peak, the pressure on you from the air would be much less than if you were standing in Death Valley.  Of course, there is also a difference in weight in hot air than in cold air, that is why cold air sinks into the valleys cooling them off in the evening first. The standard that we all use is the average sea-level pressure of 29.921 inches of mercury.

On this day, back in 2001, the highest barometric pressure ever recorded occurred at Tosontsenget, Khovsgol, Mongolia and it got up to 32.06 inches of mercury.  Wow!!  On that day people had to carry around a lot of extra weight on their shoulders, (grin).  Although it is raining here, I hope the barometric pressure gives you all the greatest weather possible and I want you all to enjoy it, you hear?

Wondering About a Number One Song.

I am making a habit of giving my age away in my blog postings, and today will not be an exception.  One of my favorite songs was at the top of the Billboard pop chart on this date in the year I graduated from high school.  That year was one of the few that can be turned upside down and still read the same, 1961, and the song was "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and it was sung by The Tokens.  That song was a lot older than when the Tokens recorded it.  Back in 1938, a group of Zulu singers and dancers called Solomon Linda and the Evening Birds made the first recording in the first recording studio in sub-Saharan Africa and the song that they recorded was called "Mbube".

Later, Pete Seeger was given a box that had that recording in it.  He was unable to understand the lyrics of "Mbube" and changed the chant to "Wimoweh".  This song went on to make millions, but Solomon Linda only received a thousand dollars via a personal check from Pete Seeger.  The song was treated as public domain.  "Sometimes you get the bear and sometimes the bear gets you", but in this case it was a lion.  Now, try not to keep hearing "wimoweh" in your head all day and have a great day, you hear?

Wondering About Blue Leaves, etc.

The other day as I was walking around my driveway, I noticed a couple of small trees.  Yes, I know there are a lot small, medium, and large trees on my place. but these were a little bit different; they had blue leaves!!  I have always enjoyed the Autumn colors especially when I lived up north in the hardwood forests of western Pennsylvania.  Yes, the leaves do change colors here in East Texas but they don't change all at once like they do up north.  The only thing is, this is the first time I have seen blue leaves.  No, I don't think I am color blind and yes, I did take pictures.

There are a lot of natural things that are the color blue, the sky for instance and there are some that are artificial, like the Blue Man Group, remember them:

But leaves turning blue?  If someone had said that they had just seen some trees whose leaves turned blue, I would ask them what they were drinking or were they wearing blue tinted glasses.  But the fact is, there are a couple of small tress or bushes beside my driveway that have blue leaves.  OK, here are some pictures:

 

 See, I told you they were blue.  Do you know what kind of tree it is?

 

I am thinking that it is a small sweet gum tree, what do you think?

 

The last picture, I believe, shows the true color the best, or does the first picture show it the best?  Actually all three show the true color and the reason that there are some slight differences in color is that they were taken of different small trees.  Now, I sure don't want you all to have a blue day, but rather, have a great day, you hear?

 

 

Wondering About the Republic of Fredonia.

How many of you have heard of the Republic of Fredonia?  On this day in 1826, Benjamin Edwards rode into the Mexican-controlled Nacogdoches, Texas, and proclaimed himself ruler of the Republic of Fredonia.  He enlisted help from a local Indian tribe and tried to take the town from the Mexicans.  (This was the first of many rebellions against Mexico and it all ended about ten years later at the Alamo.)

I have driven around the west side of Nacogdoches many times on highway 59 when heading north or northeast on trips.  It proclaims itself as the oldest town in Texas.  It is also a college town and is home to the Stephen F. Austin University.  Here is a link to university: - http://www.sfasu.edu/

There are many beautiful old homes in that town.  I guess one of these days, instead of just driving through or around that town, I will have to stop and explore a bit.  Although I much prefer to be out exploring nature's wonders, I still appreciate our history.  Now, don't have any rebellions at your place and have a glorious day, you hear? 

Wondering, Does My Spearmint Lose Its Flavor. . .

I wonder if any of you out there are old enough to remembering that song, "Does The Spearmint Lose Its Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight?  I sure do.  It was popular back in 1950, but I always remembered it, maybe not all the verses, but most of them.  Just to get you started and maybe to let that tune bounce back and forth in your head all day, here are a couple of the many verses:




Oh me, oh my, oh you, I don't know what to do
Hallelujah, the question is peculiar
It's got me on the go, I'd give a lot of dough
If someone here would tell me, is it yes or is it no?Does the spearmint lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?
If you chew it in the morning, will it be too hard to bite?
Can't you see I'm going crazy, won't somebody put me right?
Does the spearmint lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight?


Ok, do you remember it now?


This, and the song "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road,
always seem to keep playing in my head.


Now, you all have a great day, you hear?

Wondering About Ice.

It is just so very cold here this morning, it is only 72 degrees here now and I think it got down to around 69 degrees this morning, so naturally, I started thinking about ice.  Yep, you know, the solid state of water.  Most things have three states, solid, liquid, and gas, but there are a few that skip a state here and there.  Some just sublime from a solid to a gas.  Now, I wonder why it is called "sublime"?  It must make the solid feel good if doing it is so sublime. . .

The clouds just came over and the temperature dropped a degree to 71.  See:

OK, I can take weather like this.  I wonder if it will last all month.  I remember other Decembers when it did.  It is supposed to be warm all week.    Of course, January is usually the coldest month here and that is yet to come.  I guess I could let you know if it gets unusually cold or hot. . . if I think about it.

I assume that you have guessed that I don't have much of anything outstanding to tell you, but since I didn't post yesterday, I figured I better post something today so that you know I am still around.  Now, you all have a great day, you hear? 

Wondering About Carrot Juice.

I have been told that carrot juice is good for you.  Way back when I got my first job, there was a fellow there that we all thought was a health nut.  He very seldom wore a jacket and always took a swim every day of the year, and at that time, I was living and working in western Pennsylvania and the winters were really cold!!  So, with all the bodies of water frozen over, how did he go swimming everyday?  Well, he first tried to swim in creeks and ponds and such, but got really tired of breaking the ice every day.  So, he had his own private swimming pool put in.  In one corner, he mounted a heat lamp which prevented the ice from forming in that corner and that was enough to give him access to the water, in which he would swim every morning before coming to work.

This man also drank carrot juice. Not just a glass now and then through the week, but he practically lived on it.  In fact, he started to turn orange and smelled like carrots.  I don't know, but I would imagine that he drank other vegetable juices, but maybe not.  I have no idea how long he lived, since I lost contact with him when I took a salaried position.


I found this next paragraph on line at:
http://www.urbantitan.com/10-of-the-weirdest-deaths-in-history/

"A lot of people are obsessed with eating healthy and exercising, in the hopes that they can put off the inevitable a bit longer. But in some cases such dedication can be just as deadly as sitting on the couch all day eating potato chips. In 1974, Englishman Basil Brown died of an overdose of carrot juice. Brown, whose healthy eating regime involved drinking one gallon of the stuff a day, had had an orange tint to his skin for some time. But drinking one gallon of almost anything other than water a day isn’t great for your liver, and after years of the practice it finally shut down."

If there is a moral to this story I guess it would be not to do anything in excess.  In fact, that is a good motto to live by.  Now, you all have a great day, you hear?

Wondering About Joe DiMaggio.

 On this date in 1951, Joe DiMaggio announces his retirement from baseball.  I am old enough to remember him playing for the Yankees.  I also remember that they used to call him Jump'n Joe DiMaggio.  Why?  I have no idea and can't find any info on it.  Now, someone, please tell me I am not loosing my mind and that he did have that nickname!!  Maybe he could leap high and catch fly balls???

His pictures remind me of a big, fun loving kid.  Well, I was a kid when he was playing ball.  Here is a picture of him:

And another picture.  Was this one an old baseball card?

I am sure you all remember that Joe married Marilyn Monroe.  That was a very publicized affair but it sure didn't last long, only about a year.

My grandma was quite a baseball fan and always listened to the games when they were on radio.  She was a Pittsburgh Pirates fan.  I have never been interested in watching baseball on TV, since to me, it is a slow, drawn out affair, unlike football or basketball or hockey or. . . . but when I was a kid back in the '50s, I got to go to a Pirates game.  My Dad worked for H.J. Heinz Co. and they had a box right at first base.  So my Dad would take customers to the baseball game now and then.  Once, one guy couldn't make it, so I got to go along.  I could reach over the fence and touch the grass on Forbes Field.

Oh to be a kid again. . . oh yes, that's right, I am plenty old enough to go through my second childhood. . . if only, I wish.  Now, you all have a great day, you hear?

Wondering About Garbage Pick-up and Christmas Lights.

I bet you are wondering what the connections are between garbage pick-up and Christmas lights.  Well, I will tell you.  Yesterday was my regular scheduled garbage pick-up day, so in the morning, I carried a couple of full garbage cans down to the road for pick-up.  That is about an eighth of a mile from my house.  Then last night, I went down to retrieve them, but they were not empty, but when I got down there, I was very impressed with the neighbors' Christmas light displays.  So, I walked back to the house and got my camera and went back down to the road, took two pictures, and came back and put the camera chip into my computer and looked at the pictures.

Dang, I must have the palsy or something.  Those pictures were really blurry.  But, since that is all I have I am going to post them anyway.  After seeing the blog at http://littlelottajoy.blogspot.com/, I decided if she posted those shaky pictures I could post mine, too.  So try not to get too dizzy.

And one more:

See, I told you that they were blurry.  The problem was, that since it was so dark, the camera kept the shutter open for a fairly long time.  If I had known that at the time, I would have braced the camera against a fence post, but then I wouldn't have been able to get that last picture of the lights on the fence.  Oh well, you get the idea.  Now, if you don't like them, blame Lottajoy. . .Now, have a great day, you hear?

Wondering About the Change in Seasons.

Here where I live, sometimes it is hard to tell the beginning and the ending of the seasons.  One day it can be summer and the next day it can be winter and sometimes any of the other seasons.  Today, the high will be somewhere between 67 and 70 degrees with a low tonight, (actually, tomorrow morning) of 48.  So, that is pretty comfortable for me, and with the pure blue sky, it is bright and cheerful and a good day to be alive.

Oh yes, today was garbage pickup day, so I carried a couple of cans down to the road for pickup.  I noticed the trees and bushes.  Some trees were completely bare, others were still lush and green, and a few had leaves that had changed color, like this one:

And this little tree, the same kind as the leaf above but not the same tree, was changing colors:

It got down in the 50's this morning, so my wife fired up her stand-alone fireplace to take off some of the chill.  She was cold, I wasn't.  But this unit with the fake fire and a heating element with a fan looked good, so I took a picture of it.

It is right in front of our fireplace and sitting on the hearth.  It does look nice and makes a person feel real cozy.  The flames move just like a real fire.  I guess I should have taken a video but I have been having trouble posting pictures today and gave up on IE, am now using Firefox and it seems to work.  I still couldn't upload the pictures on Internet Explorer.  I don't know what the problem is, but I have three different browsers that I can use, Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer.  Now, you all have a great day, you hear?

Having computer problems

Just using my tablet to let you know that I am having computer problems and this is as much of a blog post that I am going to make today.  You all have a great day, you hear?

Wondering About Bluegrass Music.

Bluegrass music is a favorite of mine and bluegrass gospel music is the whipped cream on the top of the ice cream soda for me.  Yes, I love bluegrass and my satellite radio is set on the bluegrass station and it stays there.  In fact, I turned it on last night when I went to bed and left it on all night.  It was the last thing I heard before I went to sleep and the first thing I heard this morning when I woke up.


As I said above, my radio's tuner sits on channel 61, Bluegrass Junction, and the show The Gospel Train is on from 6:00 am till 12:00 pm playing gospel music.  After that, it plays all kinds of Bluegrass.  Bluegrass music originated in the Appalachian Mountains.  These mountain folks supplied their own entertainment and every household had someone who either sang or played an instrument or both.  When I was kid growing up in western Pennsylvania, I remember gathering around the piano and singing.  Music was always a huge part of my life.  Now, I like to play my guitar and once in awhile, even try to sing.


I used to be a good singer, but not so much anymore.  I guess old age and non-use of my singing voice has left me without one.  But, I still do try once in awhile.  At least, I don't make my pups howl.  Maybe they are just used to it.  Maybe one of these days I need to sit down and record a song or two, play it back, and see hear just how bad I sound.  Heck, why should just my wife, our dogs, and I be the only ones to suffer from my singing and playing?  Some say if you spread the pain around it is easier to take, so one of these days, I will record it and post it on my blog, if I can figure out how to do that.  Until then, you will be able to have a great day, you hear?

Wondering About Junk.

Have you ever given junk a second thought?  Like most of us, we just throw it into the trash or the garbage can, sit it out on trash pick-up day, and, Poof, its gone just like that.  But where does it all go?  Well that depends on a lot of things and what the stuff is that is thrown away and where you live and a lot of variables.  We have two different dumps in our area.  The one was closed to the public and I only see garbage trucks going into it.  The other one is open to the public but is quite expensive.  The humans on this earth are throwing away way too much stuff and the landfills are getting filled and overflowing.

But, I am not wondering about garbage, I am wondering about junk.  Yep, there are also junk yards which would be the equivalent to dumps for garbage but these are for real junk.

And some specialty junk yards only deal in certain kinds of junk, like automotive junk parts, or all steel, or all aluminum, etc.

 

Or you may think of a ship, a Chinese Junk:

 We humans have sure junked up our wold, but we didn't stop there.  There is so much space junk orbiting our planet that it has become a great danger to manned orbital or space flights.  Ever since the Russians launched Sputnik, that area for low orbiting objects has become very, very crowded. 

Especially the area where communication satellites orbit.  I am not sure if the above picture is accurate or not, but it gives you the idea of what I am talking about.  Now, you all have a great day and try to re-cycle, you hear?

Wondering About Fractals.

What is a fractal?  There are two basic designs that I am aware of.  One is created by nature and the other is created by mathematics (man).  I like fractals and think that they are really pretty.  My wife used to make cards and sometimes she would draw multi-colored fractals on them.

One way to produce a fractal is to come up with a mathematical formula and feed it into a computer and, if you know what you are doing, you can come up with something that looks like this:

Or this:

Or this:

 But nature is really very good at coming up with fractal designs, like this:

 And this next one is even better, don't you think?

But the one that nature comes up with that everyone can relate to is the way water freezes into designs, whether a snow flake or the surface of a puddle or the outside of a window.  You know, something like this:

I sure hope that we will not see that cold object in that last picture down here in warm and sunny Texas. . . but who knows, I have seen snow and ice here before.  Granted, it is rare but every so many years, there seems to be an extra cold spell blow in here from the arctic circle.  You do know that the only thing between the north pole and here in Texas are few strands of barbed wire. . . Yes, I know it is in the 70's here and the humidity is high.  Maybe that last picture will help cool you off a bit.  Now, have a great day, you hear?

Wondering, Why Do I Feel So Old??

I have a water pipe leaking somewhere under the house.  So I did the logical thing, I crawled under there to see where it was.  And yep, I found it, but it is going to be hard to get to and I don't want to do it.  I called the insurance people and the adjuster will be out in the morning.  Now, I am trying to find someone who can do the job.  That isn't the subject of this blog but how bad I feel now after just crawling under there and looking around.  Dang, I must have become one of those "old farts" I have been hearing about.  So, how about some old fart jokes, maybe laughing will make me feel better or make me feel worse.  Anyway, here are a few:

Now, that sounds pretty close to correct to me.

Then our hearing starts to go. . . 

I think this next one is so true, in some cases.  I don't think I am young, so I must be stupid.  .  .

I really got a chuckle out of this last one.

 Well, I hope I put a smile on someone's face today with these stinky jokes, but even if I didn't, I hope you all have a great day, you hear?

Wondering About Holes in the Sky.

Holes in the sky??  You may say that you have never seen any holes in the sky and that I am sounding like a bad Sci-Fi movie and alien monsters will be coming through these holes to attack and take over Earth and feed off of all living things and. . . . NO! THAT IS NOT WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT!!


So, what am I talking about?  I am talking about what appear to be holes but what are actually "Dark Nebulae".  Doesn't this picture look like a hole in the star filled sky?

Following are five more examples of dark nebula.  The first one below looks to me exactly what it is, a cloud of gas.  It would be hard to tell exactly what the other four are.  You have to admit that they are all beautiful and unique.

I have saved the dark nebula (or absorption nebula) that seems to be everybody's favorite and most people do recognize it as the Horse Head Nebula.  It does look like what its name describes:  

Well, there you have it, a peek into, but not through, the holes in the sky.  Now maybe you ought to go out on the next clear night and look up, the sky is a beautiful place even without a telescope, but the treasures you find with large telescopes always amazes me and I am sure it will amaze you, too.  Now have a good day and a good night, too, you hear?