I have to help reorganize this home...

My wife bought a new refrigerator/freezer for her stuff in the garage and that shifted this stuff and this other stuff and now we can bring the Korean Cabinet out to the garage and get more space for a chair in the guest room. And we don't need to do it now but soon, so I moved it this morning, I have enough that I should have done that I haven't done.

Among the things in the cabinet that we haven't looked at forever are the games, boxed games, cards and such. I come from a Canasta playing family that hasn't passed on to the next generation but in the Army I learned Spades, Hearts and Bridge (before Bill Gates was introduced to it). I also learned not to play poker nor Blackjack for money (Vietnam flashbacks).

Anyway the Stratego game, Uno, Global Pursuit and many others have been exposed to the air again. And the really important, RISK games - I had all three versions, have been known to play multiple boards and universes. I had a birthday in Germany and my wife invited my crew and friends and their girl friends and wives - lots of food, drink and fine looking ladies - and the men got the Risk boards out and we played the night away. There were some upset women, but what can I say? These were the days before electric gaming in one's pocket, we had to carry playthings in the tracks and back packs.

Just when you think you are hot, some game comes along and shows that you're not.

Why I don't need a purse... or do I?

I saw this from NFO and thought about what do I carry - the basic stuff is the watch, the wallet, the handkerchief, the folding brush comb, keys to the car and the home. On the right is the things I could carry around the home, shopping (which I don't really) and riding the motorcycle. On the left is the work related things, take-home keys for the library, DOC ID badge, pocket protector with pens, and the memory stick on a cord. There are other knife choices, but the Leatherman Wave and the Case pocket folder are basic minimum. Come to think of it there are other pistols, but I really don't carry them unless I am going shooting. Add a digital camera in a pocket sometimes, and a flashlight in a sheath on the belt for night ops. The items on the right are prohibited in a Prison Environment, the items on the left are necessary tools of Power in a Prison Environment (very little power, only a library, folks). Anywhere I would not be treated as a freeman I cannot carry the items on the right - Communist China, Zimbabwe ... Massachusetts, Illinois - you get the idea, and the number of gun fights I have ever been in are somewhere in some military history or NEVER HAPPENED, no matter what someone told you about the dangers of firearms. I am getting too old to worry about carrying a weapon, but then I stopped worrying about heart attacks and cancer once I accepted my mortality and almost ancient status. The youthful immortals can plan for a finer future, I am going to be busy living what I have left. Take care out there.

well, it is tuesday, garbage goes out day...

My dreams were of making and firing fireworks off, a very amateur production and intensely exciting when done well, and if they didn't launch the worry about them becoming just a local area bomb in place - the place one doesn't want to be. Nice dreams, and a new exploration.

The visit from the communications officer and my top two supervisors went very well, very quickly. The best part was that when movement was called the surge of inmate patrons, carrying books and questing for knowledge and being typically demanding constantly interrupted our conversation. I was busy and looked like a juggler on that pre-Swiss circus ball going around entertaining. There was a Recreations Staff guy that took pictures but I couldn't figure that out, he was shooting towards the library and the inmates, and they don't have to have pictures done and are protected, we'll see. The quickness was coming on one boat and leaving on the following one - less than an hour on island. Works for me, I had a ton of stuff that I stopped and had to go back and finish.

I am proud, I have cleaned up and shredded the dreaded procrastination pile of plenty 'portant papers. All the numbers are carefully placed in the proper digital accounting device (Quicken in this household) or hammered in furiously so the total reflects my kind of reality... I am so ahead of Wall Street, I don't have to ask for help from Congress and I am not blaming anything on the sitting or previous administrations - I blame Earl. Broad shoulders and broad belly he can bare the burden. Since the selling off on Wall Street I went looking for the closing prices in what we invested in, and are investing in, and plugged them in - it has been a while since I did that, but I did have the reports from July about the second quarter - yep, we are poorer again, sigh. Having plugged the numbers in for over thirty some years I am prepared for the ups and the downs of the market - and even with yesterday's results I am so far ahead of that just returned from Vietnam guy buying a two hundred and fifty dollar Pontiac with the wires dangling loose and the body internally rusting out (road salts anyone?)

Three weeks not taking the Doctor's recommended medicines, and I feel better every day - must be getting closer to Heaven's door than I know. I don't know anything except to go see the doctor when one is sick, wounded or ill. But if he measures you and finds you different and out of the box, I don't think taking a pill is going to help - and what one believes has much to do with the success of medicine and lack thereof....

Y'all have a great day, some lucky folks are harvesting and I just have to take out the garbage and go jog after breakfast. The mound of shredded paper I created must get to the land fill for future flaky foundations.

Way too beautiful outside to work, write or wread....

Time to disconnect and get back to work.

But I stole this for you to share, since I was preaching at the prison about how to use machine guns in pairs to keep the barrels from overheating - I am way too far from the important stuff:

'OUR Guys' and the honoring of Our Fallen. After reading it here, perhaps you could go visit LTC Phillips to catch up on his tour in Afghanistan.
~~~~~


Date: 10:21 AM 7/20/2008Subject:
An observation after a sad day in Afghanistan

I hope this e-mail finds each of you and your families well.

Here in southern Afghanistan it has been a sober day. We had a really bad fire fight. At this point I am not allowed to say much but our team had 18 guys vs 175-200 bad guys. They scored once; we scored many, many more. Yeah for the good guys.

Unfortunately, we held the first of several hero ceremonies, which occurs every time they move a body from one location to another. At each ceremony, every available service member will stand at attention and line the road, starting at our small morgue and eventually ending with his final flight home.

I am not sure folks back home know what happens at a small Forward Operations Base when a US kid dies in battle.

I am sure no one back home knows that this kid's commander, who is in charge of 7000 men, helped wash the blood from this kid's face and prepare him for the trip home. I bet they don't know that his buddies, all rough and tough and not a sissy among them, stand like brothers, hold hands, cry and exchange hugs. I bet they don't know that 250 people lined the walkway from our morgue to the ambulance just to salute this hero. I bet they don't know that one of my patients, who was also injured in this attack, demanded to be pushed outside in a wheel chair so he could say good bye to his brother. I bet they don't know that the command staff, all senior officers, marched behind the ambulance with tears streaming down their faces and carefully loaded his body onto the plane. I bet they don't know that people line the runway, stand at attention and salute the plane until it is out of sight. I bet they don't know that the FOB Commander orders each of the injured (who is able) to call home, so that their parents and wives, know they are OK, in an effort to ease the shock to the families when the guys in full dress uniforms show up at the family's home. I bet they don't know that tonight, these young men, far from home, will mourn like a family and will then pick up their weapon, wipe the tears from their eyes and head right back to the fight.

My observation: This young man has two families. The one here is already in mourning and the one back home will soon be awaken by this sad news. There are some very good men here, who care deeply for those they command and whom love each other as brothers.

Take care and let's try to live a life worthy of his sacrifice.

From: Richard's Deployment To Afghanistan

Good enough or do you really need more?

There is a lot of stuff in my life, sixty years worth and adding to that every day. Looking at some blogs I notice that one gun is better than another - or so some would say. I like my two forty-fives and if I am serious about shooting I will drag them out and wear them. I didn't feel they were concealed carry so I went looking for smaller and still troublesome to those on the other side of my pistol. Got me a 9mm, and it almost disappears - with a pocket protector with pens no one notices. Just have to watch the happy huggers. But I was reading about my pistol on blogs and I got all kinds of comment - good and bad.

So I take it to the range and shoot, and don't find any of the problems mentioned. It is double action, and I take up the trigger and look at the target and hit the target when it fires, just like I was supposed to... out of the box, into my hands with full metal jacket. It does everything I ask, if I care for it properly it should for a long time. That takes care of carrying, then the only question - as in all heroic things - is opportunity and stepping up when it knocks.

Lately I get an urge to have a military rifle (who me?) I like the M-14 (with a 10 round magazine), can use an M-16, and love the looks and feel of the M-1 Garand, and a Springfield '03 would fit me - I just know it. So I start to look and hunger and want to buy... but wait, I have two 30-30 lever actions, and a Model 70 in 30-06. What is the reason I was hungering for a military rifle? Because I could - there is no need in my life for one, I could be pleased just firing one once in awhile but don't even have to do that. Okay, maybe I NEED to have a semi automatic rifle, but you are going to have to sell me that real hard. I know how to use a machine gun and automatic fire in combat, defense or offense, but I don't need a BAR or any of the machine guns. Not until the war starts and I figure I will get all the bullet launchers and ammunition I need, because I will be more willing to step up than many... So I will fire my rifles like I fire my pistols - with love, care and affection. And they are all straight out of the box, and they all shoot straighter than I can aim them - but I don't need Olympic precision, I only need combat effective and until the lights go out, I will always have that... or so I seriously believe.

My mother wants a letter and...

I am on the blog instead, better get focused (AGAIN?), devotions, letter, bill paying (1st of the month, last half of the year for real people - first half of the year for my State Government's budget) and breakfast and physical exercise (jog, body weight boring reps, hot shower and shave).

Oops! Coffee

Multi-tasking is for fools...

I have been trying to hold too much, and on the way with everything I try to pick up another thing to bring along and then drop half of what I was carrying and begin to start all over - piling it on, the first adaptation to stress, just pile more of it on. In the 82nd Airborne we were accustomed to juggling lots of priorities, and the only important thing about juggling - was knowing which of the balls were made of glass and which could bounce harmlessly. Nice thing about the procrastination pile, that is all stuff I don't want to do anything with right now... later when I have more time, no glass balls there.

Once a much younger and forward looking fellow (ME?) I stopped every Friday to work on my charts and accounts to figure out what my Networth was, and since I had been keeping paper Cash notebooks since 1969 I could tell you at any point what my dollar value was. Just reaching up on the bookshelves and pulling one down. Oct 1973 (year of the Yom Kippur War) I owed $9595.19 on my trailer, $2803.20 on my Buick, and $70 on my color television, I had $1,191.64 in savings and Savings Bonds. Every month after that the debt went down and the savings went up. Okay, that is a simplification, but I knew where I was and where I was going and could focus. On Fridays I started watching Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser as my host and guide into the world of investment. That was about the time I started my IRAs, for tax relief and future retirement, mainly the tax relief - until Congress started messing with it, reduction of my income by whatever my wife and I could put away (up to two grand apiece) was wonderful. My advice to the young, start early, add often and use dollar cost averaging and broad market. I will mention that I don't do that stuff now. I have figured out that I can't ever retire completely, that having some money means that the government automatically wants parts of it, that piece of the pie that they are sure someone somewhere needs more than my wife and I.

One of the things I dropped was that careful accounting of my networth, not really worth the time now. I am running out of time, falling apart physically and likely mentally. I went to the doctor and had my examination and got his best guidance and a new prescription - four days later, after the blood tests (that I haven't seen) came back his office calls and leaves a message that I should call them, I don't. I will stop and talk to the doctor, next Monday on my way to work, for it is easier to dream of chasing long legged redheads, and just smile about how much nicely my motorcycle slides through the traffic and our Sunny days, my son is going to be home that evening... Best do one good thing at a time, multi-tasking means I might miss that smile that will go into my tomorrow, and that would be a shame.

Resolutions or resolution?

End of the year is about here; I have completed weeding three hundred and four items from the collection this month. Weeding is one of those terrible secrets about Public Libraries that those that love books don't like to talk about, needing space for newer and better (one hopes) circulating items. But I could use the same treatment in my home, getting rid of the excess I will never use again, or in my life getting done with those wasted minutes in a life poorly spent. Here in the prison the inmates have a sentence and time remaining to be served and they are experts at what they must do to get out any sooner, unless there is a surprise they didn't expect in their future. I have to come up with a six year plan, all I have left before I start draining the Social Security Trust Fund with the rest of the Boomer generation. I figure to also look at the ten year plan at the same time, having been granted three score and ten years as the life of a man. There are several things I won't become: a Presidential candidate, a suicide bomber, a holy man, nor a drug or alcohol addict. I do have some things I would like to do (a bucket list?) and some titles I don't have yet but would like to (a fine fellow?) and positions I could work at earning (Elder?). Well, back to regular work, buying new titles to replace the ones weeded.

Where I blog from

I was reading Kim du Toit, and he was displaying his computing area, but not what he blogs in, so it prompted me to take another picture of where I am, in the Computer Cave, standing up sipping coffee which needs a refill.