Horse Manure Park

I knew it's going to be an adventurous day when I saw this... The short bus was parked in front of my favorite hang out.  Yee-haw! Okay, so I'm not exactly what you'd call politically correct, although I've usually got a pretty good filter.  The problem, as I see it, is we live in an ultra-sensitive, entitled society which has made us into a country overflowing with lazy, thin-skinned crybabies. That's strictly my opinion and it's probably an unpopular one, but the truth hurts. I'm saying all of this because today I had to go to Walmart.  And it's never pretty when I go to Walmart. However, today I tried to adopt the perspective of my niece, Stacy, who said recently (on Facebook) that she loved Walmart because it "displays an array of unique beautiful individuals of God's creation." Stacy is a good, kind soul.  She's also an ordained minister and I'm very proud of her and her accomplishments.  But my faith in the hum...

I've uncovered all sorts of treasures while organizing our new storage unit. As I've sorted through old photographs, one thing has really stood out to me.  And I've realized -- surprisingly -- that I've rarely written about it here on my blog. It is something that was (and is) a huge part of my life: my love of drumming . I hope someday the Tax Deductions read this, and if they do, they need to know that drumming was a massive part of their old man's life when he was kid. Now, I confess as I write this I do run the risk of sounding boastful. That's not my intention at all. The truth is, I used to play drums a lot .  In fact, when I was growing up, drumming was all I thought about.  It was all I wanted to do. It was obvious to me that I would grow up to be a famous musician some day. Well, at least famous in my own ZIP code... By the time I was four or five, the drumming bug had bit me hard.  I practiced and practiced, teaching myself along...

At 4:21 PM on Wednesday I officially became closer to 50 than 40.  But I still feel the same.  So far, I've been blessed with reasonably good health and I'm still pretty much psychologically sound. Age is just a number.  A shitty, dirty, no-good number. Yes, it was a watershed week. We got all kinds of things accomplished this week, including yard work, splitting wood, winterizing the house and - oh, yeah - installing a new furnace.  Well, I didn't install it, but it was installed nevertheless. So, no Valley Forge this winter.  I was kind of looking forward to it. We also moved into a new storage unit this past week.  While doing so, the Speaker of the House and I decided to bring some of our old high school/elementary stuff home and weed through it.  The idea was to throw a lot of it away.  I mean, who keeps this stuff ? I ended up going through all of it and not throwing a solitary thing away.  I just didn't have the heart. On...

Ugh. 'Twas a windy, wet, cold October day.  It rather reflects my mood right now. No, it has nothing to do with the Vikings getting shellacked by the Packers last night.  I was expecting that.  I was prepared, and being prepared is a good thing. That leads me to my news of the day. Over the last couple of winters, we've had a few problems with our furnace.  It has had several parts replaced, including last winter.  In fact, it was one of those brutal -35°F nights last December when our furnace simply stopped working. Luckily, a technician came out in the middle of the night and fixed it.  All seemed to work fine during the remainder of last year's painful winter. Then a couple weeks ago, after running for a day or two when it was chilly outside, the furnace went kaput again. This time we weren't so lucky. Two days, two technicians and five hours of diagnostics/processes of elimination/new parts later, including checking the vents ...