My Trees Hate Me

I've always loved trees. I like camping and hiking and climbing in trees but for some reason some of the trees in my yard hate me. To the point of actually trying to kill me. Yesterday my wife and I were cleaning out the garage so that we could park a car we had just bought a day and a half before. My truck was parked in it's usual spot in front of the garage door that I can't park it in because there is no room in the garage and the new car was in front of the space we were trying to clean out so we could park it inside. Our CRV was originally in front of the gate leading to the back yard but I moved it back about fifteen feet so I could try to snag a small limb that was dangling from a tree. That done, I went back to cleaning out the garage; throwing stuff away and piling others over on "my side" of the garage. When I went to get some things out of the back seat of the CRV I heard a large cracking noise that had me fuddled. I pulled my head out of the car and turned around just in time to see a tree fall a few short feet from me and smack onto the trunk and quarter panel of our new car that we've only had a day and a half.
As I took the scene in with a considerable amount of disbelief I noticed that the tree had also yanked the power and phone lines from the side of the house damaging my trim work. The power was still dangling from some fasteners that were a few feet down from the one that got yanked out and the phone line was completely on the ground. The cable wire was unharmed.
I was kind of in a state of shock but we started calling insurance and utility companies immediately. The power company had a guy over in about twenty minutes and it only took him about twenty to repair it. He was a real nice guy too. The phone company said they were backed up and might not have someone over until late the next day. In the mean time I started cutting up the tree and moving it to the street. Twenty minutes later a truck pulls up and gathers it up with this cool scoop that could pick up about fifteen logs in one bite. This guy was so good he even used the scoop to pick up a pile of pinestraw I had swept up beside the pile of logs. As soon as this guy leaves the phone company truck pulls up and fixes my phone line. If it were not for the big dent in the trunk and quarter panel of my car and the big holes and cracks in my trim on the house. No one would ever know that the trees had just tried to kill me. What I can't believe is that through all of this I and my wife did not think of running inside to get the camera and shooting of some pictures. I guess because I asked the insurance lady if we needed pictures and she said no. Pictures just left my mind completely.

I don't know why the trees hate me. This is the second tree in three months that tried to crush my cars. Lightening was a major player in that one.

I have decided it is time to get tough with the trees. I've called a few timber companies and see if they can come BUY some of the thirty odd tall pines that are in my yard. Or at least defray the cost of getting rid of them.

Jessica's Photos

Ok, I'm back and I had a little more time to look for some of the photos I was talking bout earlier.

I liked this one because I think she did a great job isolating the various elements of the photo that she wanted to keep in their original colors.

Of course this is just fun stuff for her right now but I want to give her all the support she needs to step it up if she wants to. For starters, I'm waiting for Leopard to hit the shelves and as soon as that is done I'm going to finally get a MAC. I've been working with PCs since the days of 8088s and have used them for all my art and music projects. I think a MAC is now in order if for nothing else so she and I can get comfortable with both environments.

This and That

I was supposed to go to work last night but I got a call yesterday about an hour before I was supposed to go to bed asking me to do an audition today so I decided to take the night off. I have a ton of vacation that I'm going to have to get in before the end of the year anyway. I slept the best that I could in my messed up sleep pattern condition but four am found me wide awake so I went down and did some yoga for about an hour. I don't usually do that sort of thing but it was about all I was up to and thought "yoga won't kill me". I found out pretty quick that yoga is a LOT tougher than it looks and I feel pretty good after doing it. I may have to figure out a way to incorporate more of it into my day. So here I am waiting on my daughter Jessica to get ready for school so I can get her there. Her school has these "zero period" classes that start before first period so riding the bus is out of the question. Speaking of Jessica, She has been doing some cool stuff with our new camera and Paint Shop Pro. Maybe some other software, I don't know, but I like the stuff she is doing. I was going to post a few here but I can't find the darn things. I'll have to figure out where she put them. We have twent gazillion photos and pieces of art on the PC so it gets a little tough to find what you're looking for if you don't know what it is called.
Any, I have to run. Time to get her to school.

Fast food Sign sore

After checking out my cuz-in-law Mark's blog Jabberous, I was reminded of the one thing that really stuck in my craw while on my recent trip to Germany; Fast food signs towering over the landscape spoiling the view. Don't get me wrong, I'm not against fast food or expanding capitalism, I'm just against forty foot tall signs screamin' it. Most of the part of Germany I was in was very quaint and "villiagy" with cobbleston streets so narrow that an SUV would have NO chance of getting through. Then BAM! big old obnoxious fast food signs. You'd think the cities would have made them make an effort to blend in with the rest of the area.

There now, I have that off my chest.

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Crazy Good Cartoon

My Trip to Germany went pretty well,  My Parents drove me from Hoover to Texas so I could catch a plane with my GrandDaughter Tarah.  They are a hoot to travel with!

Mom Gets the drop on Dad

We met Tarah's Grandmom, GrandPop, and Great GrandParents.  They are really nice folks and we enjoyed the visit.  After lunch at The Cracker Barrel, we headed off to Dallas-Fortworth to catch the Lufthstansa flight to Germany.  The eleven hour flight was about as enjoyable as a six foot four inch, two hundred and thirty pound man can expect on coach.  My Son Kris, Daughter-in-law Candice and GrandSon Jacob met us in Frankfurt.  When we got to their place we had a nice fourth birthday party for Jacob.

Happy Birthday!

We then spent the rest of the week mostly traveling to various castles in the area and some pretty old word cities like Speyer.  The only real bummer was that my camera broke on about the second day.  Fortunately Kris had his camera handy and my PDA takes a two meg photo fairly decently.

Besides just spending some quality time with my family, one mission of the trip was to bring back a eighteenth wedding anniversary gift for my wife who couldn't go on the trip.  I knew she had been wanting a cuckoo clock since she was a little girl and since I was in the Black Forrest region that is world renowned for them,  I figured it was the best place to pick one up.

The Cuckoo!

As trips usually go, It took forever to get here and was over too soon.  I really want to get back there some day soon with her.  She would have loved it.

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This is what happens when we get bored at work.

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Poor Charlie

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(This post would not send while in Disney World due to some strangeness with my go.blogger set up that I couldn't repair using the phones web browser.)

We finally made it to Disney World. This our view from the Polenesian. It's hard to see in the pic but that is the big Disney castle just under the palms.

Testing the go blogger on the new 8525.

The New Blogger

I converted to the new blogger today. Yea.

I don't see what the big deal was but maybe I'll come to appreciate it in days to come.

I just finished reading a "Pearls before Swine" book and loved it. I had been reading it on the comics.com for a long time before the "Birmingham News" started running it. It's one more example that writing is more imortant than the art when it comes to comic strips. The strip would be funny if the characters where just dots on a page. His main characters are cute and I love the Cajun dialect fo the aligators. It was intersting to read his forward. He really caught a good break that some folks struggle years to get. He seems keenly aware of that fact. I'm looking forward to more.