Google Maps

I had two interesting experiences with google maps in the past few days. On Saturday, I traveled to Fort Worth, Texas, to attend the Aledo Texas High School Graduation on Monday evening. My niece was an honor graduate on Monday night. Saturday, I was ready to put google maps in the dog house. Somehow, after I told my droid X where I wanted to go, the destination got changed and we arrived at our location which was about thirty miles from my brother’s house near Aledo. Today all was forgiven. At Gurdon, we had to leave I-30 due to an accident on the road ahead. Thanks to google maps, we were able to find an alternate route thru the country side and avoided waiting with all the slow moving traffic. Along the way, we happened upon an old iron bridge and a photo opportunity. I will be giving google maps another try later, but next time, I will double check my destination.

Isn't Arkansas Weather Great?

I love living in Arkansas. I was born here and have lived here for all but three years of my life that I lived in Anchorage, Alaska. I believe I appreciate life here more now than I did before Alaska because I made the decision to move back. After those three years in Anchorage, I vowed to wear shorts outside every month. This week, I haven’t been tempted to fulfill my vow for February 2011.

We live our lives at such a hectic pace, at least until the first snow flake falls. Then, in Arkansas, everything comes to a slippery, sliding halt. During three school years in Anchorage, our sons missed one day school due to snow. It was so different. Snow events like the one yesterday are mere inconveniences when your city is prepared. We, in the south, are not ready, so we have days like yesterday and today.

With any luck, by Tuesday it will all be gone and we can either look forward to the next snow or dread the same.

This is my first time to blog using my new BlackBerry.
I'm still trying to get used to the layout of my Pearl flip phone.
I typed much faster in high school.

There is a dog in my bed!

Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m talking about a real dog. She is seventy-six pounds of canine energy that has completely changed life around the old homestead. John got married. Jeff moved out. For a while, we were empty nesters. While Jeff was out of the house, he got Maggie. . Jeff came back. Maggie is somewhat Labrador Retriever and somewhat something else. She was so small and cute and adorable when we first saw her. By the time Jeff moved back home she wasn’t so small, but still cute and adorable. She has chewed up a couple couch pillows when she got bored, but by and large she has been a good dog.

When I met Fran, she was afraid of dogs, especially large dogs. During the first twenty years of our marriage, nothing changed. Then she met a little white dog named Sandy. For some reason, they developed a connection that continues today. Maggie was at least as big as Sandy when she and Fran met. By the time Jeff moved back in, Maggie was becoming a big dog. Jeff moved back home in March and it was too cold for Maggie to live outside in the house Jeff built for her. The weather warmed up, and so did Fran’s heart. During the summer it was too hot for Maggie to live outside. She is now a seventy-six pound lap dog. Maggie is most content when she is within your reach. If you are sitting on the couch, she is likely to jump up in the seat beside you so that you can pet her. Maggie eventually learned to jump up on the bed and she now thinks it is her bed.

Maggie is much calmer now than she was when she first came to live with us. There are times when I think she actually understands us when we talk to her. I know she likes us. She tries to lick us to death.

Some day Jeff and Maggie will move out again. We sure will miss them.

Happy New Year!

It is winter today. Saturday it felt like spring. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. From June 1993 until June 1996 our family lived in Anchorage, Alaska. It was a tremendous experience to live in “The Last Frontier” for three years. There, we experienced winter from early September to late April. The boys learned to ski, skate and play hockey. We lived through one winter with 120 inches of snowfall. I spent a month in Fairbanks where the temperature never got above minus 30 degrees. We enjoyed the winters after we adapted.

The summers were glorious with almost continuous daylight. We rode our bicycles along trails throughout the city and along the coast. The boys and I hiked the Resurrection Trail across the Chugach National Forest. We rode in a car loaded on a flat car of a train, past seven glaciers, through tunnels to a town that was served only by rail. We saw some beautiful sites. We walked across glaciers, skied past moose and fished for salmon in Resurrection Bay. It was awesome.

We saw the Aurora Borealis overhead when you could hear the electrons popping. We watched the start of the Iditarod Sled Dog Race. We watched Independence Day fireworks when it wasn’t even dark.

Looking back, we will always cherish our time in Alaska, but when we had the opportunity to return to Arkansas, we took advantage of it. During three years very close to the top of the world I saw more snow than I care to remember. When we returned, I resolved to take advantage of the occasional warm days of Arkansas winters. I resolved to wear shorts outside at least once every month, just because I can. Last Saturday should have been my day for this month. I missed it. As I looked outside today I saw icicles on everything and had no desire to venture outside in shorts. Thank goodness there will probably be another warm day before the end of the month, maybe even before the end of the week. Don’t you just love it? I do.

I moved back to Arkansas because I wanted to. The first thirty-five years of my life, I lived in Arkansas because I was born here. The past thirteen years I’ve been back in Arkansas by choice and that choice has made all the difference. Being away for a time as helped me to appreciate life here much more than I ever did before.

New Year’s Eve

Today is New Year’s Eve. 2008 is mostly in the rearview mirror at this point. I hope you were able to make good use of the year because we will not be able to get it back. Who would want to anyway? The opportunity to accomplish that all important, life changing task or objective is almost past.

It seems like just yesterday that the world was abuzz with Y2K. I’m sure you remember that. Can you believe that was nine years ago? This television conversion process from analog to digital sort of stirs my memories of the Y2K uproar. I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being reminded that all my cable attached televisions will not have a problem on the “the day”. If the television stations are paid for all this air time to annoy the public, they are probably raking in a tidy sum. With that said, there will probably be someone with an antenna connected television that will not have any idea what is going on when their TV quits working. “The stupid thing was working fine yesterday.” Face it, some people don’t pay attention. Jeff, my son that used to work at Walmart, said that some people complained about those converters they bought. “I hooked it up to my new flat screen, HD TV and it doesn’t work.” He can tell stories you wouldn’t believe. I hope I can get him to write some of them down.

I just ran across my Christmas List from a few days ago. I didn’t get everything on my list. Now that was a surprise. I’m not sure anyone even saw it, but it doesn’t matter. It was all just stuff. You know that most, if not all of the stuff that we hold dear will eventually end up in a landfill somewhere. The truly important things in life are the memories. This Christmas has been unique. It won’t be remembered like we had thought, but it has been unique, none the less. We had great plans. We planned to spend the Christmas holiday in Northwest Arkansas visiting with relatives. We did that. We stayed at mom and dad’s house while they are vacationing. We painted their living room and dining room, like we planned. By the way, it looks great. Unfortunately, the flu bug arrived two days after Christmas as we were putting things back in place in the living room on Saturday night, and we are still here.

We had planned to be in Florida today, but those plans have been put on hold. Fran is getting better, but has no desire to travel that far after just emerging from the flu. New Year’s Day on the beach will have to wait for another time. I’m hoping she will feel better today so that we can still enjoy the New Year’s Day holiday.

After a long absence, it appears that perhaps Arkansas Razorback Basketball has returned to Bud Walton Arena. Last night’s game sold out before three o’clock yesterday, and judging from last night’s performance, Razorback Basketball tickets just got more valuable and hard to come by. Jeff and John got to see the Razorbacks defeat the fourth ranked Sooners last night as a part of that sell out crowd. I’m sure they will have exciting accounts of the game to tell, more of those memories.

Today is my mom’s birthday. I won’t disclose her age, but as the song says, “She is old enough to know better, but still too young to care.” She is enjoying one of my favorite places, the Gulf Coast of Florida. Our plans for a New Year’s Day on the beach started when I told her I was going to take off from work on her birthday and come to see her. She said she would be in Florida, but I was welcome to come. We still look forward to it, but it will have to be another time.

Happy Birthday Mom! I love you!

A look back at Christmas

Christmas 2008 was a wonderful day. It is remarkable how the world slows down on Christmas Eve. Traffic was almost non-existent. It is a shame that we stay so busy most of the time that we can't slow down to enjoy life and enjoy our families. All through the day on the 25th, most businesses were closed so there was little need to be out and about. By tomorrow morning, the business world will come back to life and by noon, the machine of life will be back up to speed.

Christmas is over now and we have a week to get anything done that we intended to accomplish during 2008. Many will start to consider and make "New Year's Resolutions" during the coming week. Not me. A few years ago I made a resolution to not make any more New Year's Resolutions. I have been fully successful in my efforts.

We are having an unusual Christmas weekend this year. After a great Christmas Lunch at Fran's Mom's house, where I ate way too much, Fran and I returned to my Parent's house where we are staying over the Holidays. We then began to paint their living room. You see, Mom and Dad are spending Christmas with my sister and her family in Georgia. They left us a paint chip. We got the paint and at this point we have the first coat on at least two thirds of the living room.

We have now quit painting for the night and are watching old Bogart movies. We will finish up tomorrow before returning home. When we get home, we will have to get ready to join Mom and Dad for the New Year Holiday on the beach in Panama City, Florida. I can't wait to walk on the beach on New Year's Day!

It is my hope that you and yours had a Merry Christmas.