Gray Morning Light

This Morning it snowed
For the first time
Everything powdered with white

I’ll pull you close
Against the winter chill

And kiss your face
In the gray morning light

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Many people have made blog posts this week relating to cold weather. It doesn't snow at all where I live, so I had to pretend for this poem to make any sense as I wrote it. It's not much, but I'm in a snowy mood...

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The Jordan H.S. Match Gun Incident

Thanks everyone for the great Christmas messages, posts and comments. I very much appreciate them all. Now it's time to share some more stories from my dysfunctional and crazy childhood. This one was posted shortly after I started my blog and I don't think anybody outside of my family read it and/or commented.  

There is a way to make a “match gun” using a wooden clothes pin and a rubber band. I don’t remember who taught me how to do it, but I experimented until it worked. It had to do with taking the clothespin apart and reassembling it backwards. The rubber band is there to hold one end of the clothes pin together. The match (a wooden kitchen type), lights as it is shot out of the clothespin by one end of the spring. I just found the above picture on the Internet, and it looks pretty close to the ones that we made. Yes, we were evil wicked children...

I don’t remember the exact year, but I think it was 6th grade. It was mid-summer and very hot. Kenny Meeks and I were walking down Myrtle Avenue in North Long Beach, along the backside of Jordan High School where the athletic fields are. We were having an ongoing “war” with our match guns, shooting them at each other. I suppose it could hurt if one hit you in the eye, but we were young and didn’t worry about it at all. I shot one at my friend and it zipped right by his head. We continued on our merry way until we noticed smoke coming from the area we just came from.

We hid our match guns and ran back to where the smoke was. I guess the match that whizzed by my friends head went through the fence and caught some grass on fire.  As we looked through the fence it was very obvious that it hadn't been watered all summer. It was brown and dry and starting to burn. The fence was too tall to climb over and there were no gates on that side of the school. There was only one option remaining and we took it. We ran! The hidden match guns were forgotten. What match guns anyway?

We ended up at our original destination which was the local junior high school to play bombardier in the gym. A few hours later we walked by the high school again on our return trip. A patch of grass about the size of half a football field was burnt. We couldn’t tell if a fire truck had been called to put it out or not, but because there was nobody in the area, we assumed the fire just burnt itself out.


Several years later I attended that high school. Every time I was in that area I thought about the fire and the match guns, and just how little supervision I had as a kid.  Of course with my mother, having little or no supervision was a good thing...

Big Doings in So Cal

Many of you are used to extreme weather. Where I live, we are not. We live in a semi-arid very hilly area and even rainstorms cause us problems.  When it rains heavily for three solid days (like it just has) and the ground is already saturated from rain we've had over the past two weeks. We have HUGE problems.  I know that some of you are going to pooh-pooh this, because you experience "real" weather on a regular basis. Our infrastructure simply isn't made to handle it.

This morning I had a follow up appointment with my surgeon. My preferred route would take me through a place called Laguna Canyon (now closed), to Laguna Beach (now closed), and down Pacific Coast Highway (now closed) to Newport Beach.  As an alternate route, I took what I thought was the my best chance of making it through. I was shocked at how many trees were uprooted and/or damaged. Every river, creek, stream, lake, pond, and flood control I saw, had overflowed.  Many of you have seen photos from the lake at the bottom my hill. This morning, the lake was much bigger and every boat there was either sunk or full of water. Most of the famous downtown beach, is simply gone...


This video (thanks to ABC news) shows the mud and water flowing down Laguna Canyon Road.  (please click on the following link) http://abclocal.go.com/kabc/video?id=7858291


I have a huge mess to clean up at my house, the roof is leaking and my step daughter (Ashley at Our Journey Begins, as the Kings) just called and said her washing machine broke. So, I'm off to her house. Next storm is due any minute! 

Happy Holidays to all my friends out there. I'll not be posting again until next Monday! I hope you have a great holiday weekend.

 

Clouds

please enlarge this photo

My photo won!

Joan Hara at The Retirement Chronicles, sponsers a monthly themed photography contest. It has judges and the monthly competition is fierce. The theme for November was "clouds" and I'm happy to report that my photo won!  The "fire" look to the clouds is caused by the sunset reflection off of the pacific ocean, which is just the other side of that hill. Thanks so much to Joan and to the judges!

If you are interested in photography and don't know Joan already, she has a great blog. She lives close to nature and takes great photos of it during each season. You just may love it there...

Weekend Reflections - Alamitos Bay

click to enlarge

Weekend Reflections by other photographers at Newtown Area Photo.

Where Clarity Remains

The Walk

by Pam Tucker

The solitary old man

Finds himself

Retracing lover’s steps

In their old places

Lingering

Where they once 

Stood together

Tossing stale bread

To busy ducks

Nine years later

To the day
He dissolves in tears

With his sight unclear

He shrinks upon himself

To the one place

Where his memories

Are handled and stored

With special care

To the one place

Where clarity remains

Soon my love

He whispers
Soon...
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Original artwork provided by Pam Tucker.

More of her fantastic art can be found at Pam T’s Art Loft.

 

 

 

 

 

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I'm Baaaack.....

It’s been 5 days since my surgery. So far it’s been kind of a mixed bag. I’m super happy to report that the surgery was a total success. I woke up in the recovery room and all the pain and numbness was gone. The doctor told me that the swelling from the surgery might delay any positive results for a week or two, but so far…nothing!

On the downside, recovery from the surgery has proven to be very painful. Maybe some of the worst pain I’ve ever had. The narcotic that works the best for me is Dilaudid. Of course it makes me VERY sick to my stomach. Anti-nausea medication seems to have little or no effect.  So Wednesday and Thursday were pretty much spent pushing the narcotics button and then throwing up.  In the long run, it was worth it.  I came home on Thursday afternoon and the Dilaudid has been replaced by Codeine. It’s not nearly as effective of a pain killer, but at least it doesn’t make me sick.  Dilaudid and Codeine are both very addictive.  I’ve been down that road before, so I plan on taking the first exit I see. I plan to be off all painkillers in a couple of days.

A couple of people commented that they thought I was emailing from my hospital room. I didn’t take my laptop or phone with me. I was in no condition to do anything. I never turned the TV on even once during my stay….

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about the holes in the side of my head. To make sure everything stayed steady while he was operating, the surgeon put my head in a metal ring. It was secured with screws through my scalp and into the bone of my skull.  Man, do I ever wish I had a photo of that for this post.

It’s now Sunday evening and although I'm not totally comfortable, I finally feel up to turning on my laptop.  I didn’t want to wait any longer, because I wanted everyone to know how very appreciative I am for all the supportive words, positive thoughts, good karma, and prayers sent my way.  This is another example of how real the connections are, that we of the blogging community make with each other.   I’ll be posting this on Monday morning after I edit for drug induced errors…

Once again, Thanks so much to all of my friends out there!

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Foraminotomy, Laminotomy and Microdiscetomy

Foraminotomy is a surgical procedure performed to enlarge the passageway where a spinal nerve root exits the spinal canal.

Laminotomy is an open surgical procedure whereby a small opening into the spinal lamina is made and access to the spinal canal is created on the backside of the spine.

Microdiscetomy is the surgical removal of herniated disc material that presses on a nerve root or the spinal cord.
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You might be wondering why I'm posting this information.

Several years ago I was in a pretty bad auto accident. It caused the herniation of a couple of disks in my neck. As time has passed the vertebrae has grown new bone to make up for the missing disk tissue. As a result the seventh cervical vertebrae is putting quite a bit of pressure on my T1 nerve. This nerve runs along the upper back, goes through the shoulder, elbow, wrist, and ends in the two little fingers.

Whenever I look up and turn my head to the right, the nerve pinches. In the same order as above, all of those areas of my body feel like they've been stabbed with an ice pick. Then it all goes pins and needles. Not a good thing. Codeine and Lyrica work pretty well, but I've taken entirely too much of them.  Not a bad thing, if you don't mind being in a fuzzy state all the time. As you may or may not know, drugs played a major role in most of my younger days and I liked that "fuzzy state" a bit too much. So I stopped taking the medications a while back.  Pain or fuzzy? At this point, I've opted to live with the pain.

Living with the pain doesn't work either. So I'm going through with the surgery mentioned above. It's happening two days from now and when I wake up in the post-op room, I fully expect that the pain will be gone.  Depending on how it feels and how quickly I recover, will determine when I show my face here next. I'm hoping it will be just a couple of days.

I'm not worried about the surgery at all and I'm looking forward to the warm and toasty pre-op blanket!  Talk to you soon...

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Weekend Reflections - Laguna Niguel Lake at Dusk

enlarge for bests viewing

Laguna Niguel Lake at dusk

Weekend Reflections by other photographers at Newtown Area Photo.

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The Hating Game

Talli Roland is one of my blogging friends. She's not only an  outstanding and creative writer, she's also a very nice lady, who has supported my blog for quite some time.  I've already read an advance copy of her book. I was totally entertained and liked it a great deal. 

Please help her debut novel "THE HATING GAME" hit the Kindle bestseller list at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uc by spreading the word.  Even a few sales in a short period of time on Amazon helps push books up the rankings, making it more visible to other readers.

 

Amazon.co.uk: http://amzn.to/hNBkJk

Amazon.com: http://amzn.to/hX2ieD

  

No Kindle? Download a free app at Amazon for Mac, iPhone, PC, Android and more.

Coming soon in paperback.  Keep up with the latest at www.talliroland.com.

About THE HATING GAME:

When man-eater Mattie Johns agrees to star on a dating game show to save her ailing recruitment business, she's confident she'll sail through to the end without letting down the perma-guard she's perfected from years of her love 'em and leave 'em dating strategy. After all, what can go wrong with dating a few losers and hanging out long enough to pick up a juicy £2000,000 prize? Plenty, Mattie discovers, when it's revealed that the contestants are four of her very unhappy exes. Can Mattie confront her past to get the prize money she so desperately needs, or will her exes finally wreak their long-awaited revenge? And what about the ambitious TV producer whose career depends on stopping her from making it to the end?

Oops!

Many of you are new (or newish) to my childhood stories, please don't think I'm being too hard on my mom in this blog post. If you go back and read some old entries related to my childhood, you'll soon agree that I'm being pretty darn nice...
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My mom was a terrible cook didn't cook very often. We always looked at that as a good thing.  To the best of my recollection, she only prepared Thanksgiving dinner a couple of times. When she did, a pre-cooked ham was always the main course.

For reasons known only to her, one year she decided to cook a turkey. It was probably because she had recently decided to get married again for the second, no third, oh yeah, for the fourth time.  She was probably trying to impress her latest victim new fiance. I believe I was in ninth grade and my younger brother was in second. The other four or five people were friends of my new, soon to be step dad.

The table was full of all the normal Thanksgiving things.  Nice dishes, formal silverware settings, the whole shebang. I think there was even a center piece. I'd never seen any of this stuff before and wondered if it was all stolen property where it came from.

Everybody was sitting at the table waiting to eat, my brother and I were sitting at one end and were the only ones who could see into the kitchen.  My mom was at the stove transferring the turkey from the roasting pan to the serving platter with a couple of large forks. The turkey started to get away from her and she dropped it. 

The turkey hit the floor with a thud, everyone at the table looked up in surprise. My mom yelled out, "It's okay it fell on a piece of paper!" Only my brother and I could see that there was no paper, or anything else on the floor but our dinner. She picked the turkey up off the floor in a split-second. My brother and I looked at each other and then looked back into the kitchen to see our mom staring at us. She was pointing at us with one index finger while using her other hand to make a "keep your mouth zipped shut" motion with her other hand.  She didn't have to do either of those things. We knew by the fire in her eyes, that if we said anything about there being no paper, we were dead meat in big trouble.

My mom proudly marched into the dining room with the no doubt cat hair and dust laden turkey. All the adults oohed and awed as she set the platter on the table. She was positively beaming as she asked her new fiance to "do the honors," while shooting me and my brother another acid glance.

Before carving, my soon to be step dad, started scooping dressing out of the bird and into a serving bowl. Yes, ladies, gentlemen and dear friends. You know what happened next.  The last scoop was not full of dressing, it was full of the "giblet bag" that my mom failed to remove before cooking the turkey. Peyton looked at mom and said, "you are supposed to ta....." She didn't say a word, but somehow he knew by the by the look in her eyes, not to finish his sentence. She had a smile on her face for everyone else at the table and pure evil in her eyes for him. 

Everybody in my mom's life understood what that glare meant, just as clearly as if she said it out loud.  It meant, "I am crazy, I am more violent than you can imagine and I am capable of hurting you or worse."   Amazingly, he married my mom anyway. It didn't last.  A Las Vegas wedding and a Tijuana divorce...

The only positive thing that came out of the entire affair was related to her dropping the turkey. From that point forward, continuing until today. When somebody drops an item of food on the floor or ground, even if they have no intention of eating it, we always say, "good thing it fell on that piece of paper!"


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Magpie 42

One hundred yard dash

Ohio State Champ 1952

Now the trophy sits

On a dusty shelf

As tarnished

And brittle

As the legs

That carried him

On that day

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To see other entries relating to this photo promt go to Magpie #42

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Tay 005 Gypsy Girl

enlarge for best viewing

Gypsy Girl

Hair Cream versus Tooth Paste

My dad kept his tube of hair cream and comb in a drawer next to the bathroom sink. His tooth brush and tooth paste were in the medicine cabinet over the sink. He was out late most nights and was usually pretty bleary eyed when he got up in the morning. 

One Saturday morning, my brother and I swapped the two tubes, hoping that he wouldn’t notice until it was too late. We sat in the living room waiting for him to get up and go to the bathroom for a long time.  

After what seemed like hours, we heard him come out of his room and go into the bathroom. The first noise we heard was the toilet flushing, the second was the bathroom faucet running, the third noise sounded like some kind of wild animal.

Apparently fate selected the “brush your teeth with hair cream” scenario over “comb your hair with toothpaste,” because the "wild animal" noises turned into some very loud retching. Then the sound of my dad throwing up!

After a few minutes he came out of the bathroom with one tube in each hand. We sat quietly on the couch watching TV, like we didn’t know (or hear) a thing while he stomped into the kitchen and asked my mom about it. She claimed to know nothing and told him that he must have put them away in the wrong places the day before. When he walked by us on his way back to the bathroom, he paused for just a second and stared at us.

We must have looked innocent, because he didn’t say a word.  I think he knew on some level that we did it, but he never asked.

I don't have many happy childhood stories, this is one of them...

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I first posted this when I had only a handful of readers and it received exactly zero comments

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Weekend Reflections - Backyard Sunset

enlarge for optimum viewing

For more Weekend Reflections visit Newtown Area Photo.

Kindle - This is Not an Ad

Before I start, I'd like to make one thing very clear. I love books. I love reading them, I love looking at them, I love touching them, and I love collecting them.  Because of these things I've never been a fan of ebooks, or any of the new "readers." After I read a book, I want to keep it.

I have no idea how many books I've read in my life, but the number has to be in the thousands. Storing even a fraction of that number, requires a tremendous amount of room.  I didn't want to rent storage for them, so several years ago I started donating, or just giving them away to people that I knew would read them.   Of course there are some that I would NEVER part with.

A couple of months ago, I received a Kindle for my birthday. Much to my surprise, I fell in love with it. It's takes only a few seconds to download a book, the format is amazingly clear, and the darn thing holds about 3500 books!

Amazon.com has many of the classics in kindle format for free. I downloaded about 50 of them and am just about to dive in. I've read most of them before, but can't wait to get started anew. Depending on which model you buy, you can even go online and blog!

You can also use your Kindle to store all of your personal documents. They will format them for you for free and it only takes a minute or two.

If there is a book that I MUST have and it isn't available on kindle, I'm probably still going to buy it, but that will be the only reason. My sources tell me that it won't be very long before every new book will be available for download.  I was amazed to find out how many old books are already available.

If some of you now see me as a traitor, I'm sorry. For those of you currently working on books, I'll be supporting you via Kindle or paper, whatever it takes!

Do any of you have a Kindle or something like it?

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Office Eater Types

Everybody likes food, and people working in offices are no exception.  There are many different "food personalities" out there. You may be one recognize some of these fine folks...

The Leech
This ingrate never participates in office pot-lucks. Despite that fact, the leech has no problem slithering up to your potato salad and anything else that was brought in and eating without shame.

The Secret Eater
The overweight person who always says no to potluck, snacks, sweets and cake from office celebrations. They come back later, when no one is around to get their share and eat it in secret. It's not a problem if all the food is gone, because they have enough snacks in their desk to feed a small country. Oh yeah, there are never any candy or snack wrappers in their waste basket. What? Do they really think that if we never see them eating, that they must appear skinny to us?

The Ghost
This person doesn't even work with you, but somehow gets word that food is in the building and noses it out at just the right time.  Coincidence? I think not!  You won't see this schmuck again until the next time food is available.

The Hawk
The person who always asks if everyone is done eating and then scoops up all that is left and takes it home. I was at a my granddaughters birthday party a short time ago and my daughter caught one of the mothers wrapping up many pieces of pizza and putting them in her purse. The nerve! In addition, her daughter was clearly a trouble maker. Must be fun in that house.
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Of course there are other borderline personality types whose food issues have nothing to do with potlucks.

The Bird
This idiot eats pistachios, peanuts or sunflower seeds and manages to leave a mess wherever they are sitting.

The Saboteur
The skinny person who brings sweets in for everyone but never eats any themselves.  They must always remain the slimmest person in the office.

The Fish Eater
Forget about pot-lucks, this non-human always ignores the "NO FISH" sign hanging on the microwave and stinks up the entire office. This practice is so taboo, that doing it, should result a caning. Or is it just me?

inspiration provided by:  http://jayneferst.blogspot.com/2010/10/seeds-as-snacks.html

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Post Number 500

This is apparently my 500 post!

Somewhere around 90 percent were posted on this blog with a small percentage on my now defunct photography blog. I was thinking about putting some kind of deep and wordy post together to memorialize the event.  This isn’t going to be it.

I will say that I totally appreciate all of you who follow and comment on the things I post here.

Truth be told, I’m just too darn tired and burnt out to post anything. I’m going to take a few days off to get some stuff done.  Everything is okay, I promise! I'll be back soon.

Just too much to do…

Just too many plates!

Weekend Reflections - What Are You Looking At

For more Weekend Reflections visit Newtown Area Photo.

for best results, click to enlarge

Nickname Compendium

I recently made a blog post relating to "Neighborhood Nicknames" that we've given to some of the people we don't know and houses in our neighborhood.  Many people who commented to the post also left nicknames they use in their neighborhood.  Some of them are hilarious! They also left explanations, but it just seems so much funnier without them.

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5 cats that crap in our garden house

Billy Barty house 

Binocular Face
Car Alarm house
Cassanova house

Cat Murderer House
Cat Woman's house

Cloppity House

Cooper House

Crotchety old fart

Crotchety old fart house
Dealer's house

Devil worshipers' house

Drug House

Dysfunctional family

Dysfunctional Family house

Family whose Mom died

Family with Five Boys house

Freaking Insane

Freaking insane house

Girl who drinks wine on the front porch in her bathrobe house

Goat Man’s house

House with that really nice guy married to that recluse

IN-LAW house

Junk House

Mean Asian Guy

Naked Neighbors

NOSEY House

NUT HOUSE!!!!
PJs at noon

Nutty-Nora-Next-Door

Pavarotti

Pill Hill

Selfish “^&*%”

Slam-slam house

Sliding Down the hill house

Spider lady

Start of The Trail House

The Clampett house

The Clown Car for assholes people

The Cool Neighbors

The Fireworks People

The German Shepard People

The hollering trio

The mansion on the hill

The Persian Party house

The Pond House

The Pool People

The SquidBillies House

The Weird Young Hippie Couple with the Push Mower and the Baby house

Unfriendly House

Weird People

Weirder People

Weirdest People

What-are-the-Gringos-doing-in-my-neighborhood house

Where's Waldo House

Yappity Dog House

Yours mine and ours house

Zoomy house

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Vegetables

It has taken most of my life to actually say that I like vegetables...

My mother boiled them.
She didn't just boil them though, she boiled the crap out of them.
You know how vegetables taste so good when gently cooked or lightly sauteed?  Asparagus, green beans, or broccoli?  Yum!

My mom would boil them to the point of being mushy! They made us gag, but good old mom made us eat them anyway. As some of you already know, my mom didn't allow much complaining about food (or anything else).  I became a professional at making vegetables disappear from my plate, without really eating them. Good training for smuggling items into prison, I'm sure. Luckily, I never needed that skill. Okay, so you've read my old posts! There is a big difference between jail and prison!

For a good portion of my life I never ate vegetables, because I thought everybody cooked them like my mom did. I've wasted so much time and missed so many vegetables! Once I discovered the correct way of cooking them, I fell in love and now eat them all the time.

There are still a few I haven't recovered from yet; hominy, brussel sprouts, peas, and Lima beans. I'm not too worried about it, because nobody really likes hominy anyway, right?

I won't even talk about creamed corn, just saying the words makes me want to yak...

Did anybody else's mom ruin vegetables for them? Or is it just me?

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Neighborhood Nicknames

Do you have "names" for people in your neighborhood that you either don't know, or don't like? We do...

• Dysfunctional Family. This family lives behind us and down the hill.  They need full time therapy. All we know about them is the yelling, cursing, and cops.
• Cloppity House. The guy walked home drunk in the middle of the night with clogs on. His steps made a "cloppity" sound. This happened five years ago, but the name stuck.
• Yappity Dog House. These folks actually denied that their yappity dog barked all day while they were at work. Thank goodness they moved.
• Unfriendly House.  For reasons unknown to us, the wife in this house just flat out doesn't care for us. Although her husband seems to like us, when she's around, he pretends not to see us. Poor guy...
• Sliding Down The Hill House.  We live on the ridge line of a hill top. A house across and down from us a ways has slipped down the slope a bit. There is also a semi-wilderness trail that starts next to their house. (also known as "start of the trail house."
• Cooper House.  These people now rent the house from the "yappity dog" owners. They have a stupid dog that they can't control. All we've ever heard them say is "Cooper, Cooper!" The dog just won't shut up. You can't have a conversation with them because the dog won't stop barking at you. I told the lady yesterday that I give up...
• Start Of The Trail House (see "sliding down the hill house.")
• Cat Murderer House.  These cruel people have lost 3 cats to coyotes, but they keep getting new ones. Someday, there is going to be a confrontation between the two of us.

We  also have neighbors that we like and know by name, so not everybody gets a "nickname."

I'm sure our house is known as "the guy wearing pj's at noon on weekdays drinking beer in the back yard" house"



thanks to Bossy Betty (one of my favorites) for inspiring this post.

Happy Halloween

After dark

Halloween

Can't believe

Things I've seen

Scary faced goblins

Gremlins galore

Wolf men
Vampires

Knock at our door

Pirates
Princesses

Come into view

Best costumed one

Tomorrow night's stew

(photo: BWP)

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Lusus Naturae IX

Only one more day!

Several people have asked me what kind of container the doll heads were stored in.

Well here ya go...

enlarge please

Next year, a new theme...

Lusus Naturae VII

How Do You Compete With That?

Many of you are aware of the annual July 4th "water war" on our street. It should come as no surprise that Halloween is a pretty big event here also.  It's not that there are a ton of decorated houses, but everybody is in their driveways or in their garages, giving out candy and having small parties.

We get between 150 and 200 kids each Halloween. A couple of years ago, we had well over 200. Every year there is at least one kid, or parent who reminds us that "the lady who used to live in your house gave us hot donuts instead of candy!"

That's right! She cooked and gave out fresh hot glazed donuts as treats! How in the heck is a person supposed to compete with that? We don't even try, I just give them their single m&m and tell them to move along...bah!

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Lusus Naturae V

5 days 'til halloween

A Mad Dog Chases Himself

A cold wind blows

A lone wolf howls

Somewhere in the woods

A mad dog chases himself

Snapping at his own bloody haunches

You approach through the fog

Alone and lost

Trying to find the trail again

Before full dark falls upon you

Aware only of the sound of your boots

Crunching through the snow

Your frantic breath hangs in the air

Like a frozen scream


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Weekend Reflections - Golden Pavillion

This photo is a little out of place during my pre-Halloween posts. I like to participate in a little photography show and tell called "Weekend Reflections" hosted by James at Newtown Area Photo.

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The Golden Pavillion (Kinkaku) was originally built about 800 years ago. It is a Zen temple in Northern Kyoto, and has been designated as a UNESCO "World Heritage Site."