Tomorrow, tomorrow

The sun'll come out tomorrow! No, it won't, s'posed to rain. Well, the sun might come out but we probably won't see it, put it that way. At least it's not snowing.

Why did I sign on here? There was something I thought I'd report on but now... Oh, yeah. Tomorrow- I was speaking of tomorrow, weren't I? -is a big breakfast blowout for some friends and acquaintances. My contribution is cornbread but I'm gonna bring some chicken gravy too seein' as how I have leftovers from the weekend, just getting better as the days pass. And some blueberry muffins too. I guess I'll drag myself out early in the AM and put it all together, just not in a kitchen mood this evening. I did my kitchen duty tonight throwing together breaded fish and onion rings and topping it off with a quick ranch, horseradish, onion and crab seasoning dip. I should write a cookbook. Except it would be such a mish-mash of non-nutritive extras, super-carbo loaded side dishes and junk food meat/cheese/bread entrees that only the most desperate teenage gourmand would rush out to buy it.

In my defense I did steam some California mix to go with the breaded fish and onion rings.

Oh, and I added a town photo tour to my photo albums. I still have a handful of pics to upload but it is sooooo tedious I gotta save it for another day. It's a pretty unremarkable little burg, East Prospect, but I had fun testing out the new camera as I strolled around town in my Hoss hat snapping shots on every corner. Got a few strange looks and one 'Howdy, Tex!' for my trouble.

Captain's log

   Stardate... unknown. I'm sure the dyed-in-the-wool Trekkie can tell you but I can't. One of the Star Trek magazines I used to get had a system of inverting the date to create a 'stardate', nothing practicable or 'true' according to the physics of faster-than-light space travel, I'm sure. I knew a kid at one time, he might have been thirteen at the time, who could have explained it to me, I'm sure. But I'm doubtful he could have made a drawing of Mr. Spock that actually looked like him. What do they call that? The various human abilities and the way they present themselves, math versus art, right brain, left brain... oh, man, the Alzheimer's is advancing, I think...

   Watched Ice Age last night, a funny little diversion. Including a Star Trek reference, no less. For a pop culture geek like myself those kinds of things make these modern cinematic marvels worth watching. The CG animation is a wonder, of course. And some have a rollicking, snappy story. But catching the goofy 'in jokes' is the fun part.

   There's a chicken in the pot today, I'll probably get to make the stuffing. Just one of my many and diverse culinary abilities. When I tended my short course of studies at Millersville there was a little eatery, a Greek pizza joint, across the way called The Sugar Bowl. Don't ask me why 'sugar bowl'. What does that have to do with pizza, I ask you?!? At any rate, their pepperoni stromboli became a perennial favorite for my pal, Pat, and myself. We were regulars and got pretty chummy with Nick and his momma and the Ms. Pac-Man machine. We had an art pal, E.(Edward) Scott Baer,a big football player, really nice guy, who drove delivery for them for a while. I remember he had a real fascination with werewolves, a number of his drawings and lithographs were lycanthropic themed. Try saying that three times fast- lycanthropic themed lithographs, lycanthropic themed lithographs, lycanthropic themed lithographs.

  Once I moved back across the river, married and so forth, it became a pilgrimage of sorts to go back a few times a year and treat the kids- and myself -to those big, greasy, cheese-laden delights. Eventually, after Nick's Momma died, I decided I needed to try my own hand at stromboli making. It's not complicated, of course- you stuff enough stuff and cheese in there and make sure the bread is done through and you're golden -and anything my wyfe didn't have to cook was great by her. Since she's taken up a more or less vegetarian diet I made a steamed vegetable version this past week. My son and I stick with the stick-to-your-ribs meaty boli, pepperoni and deer burger with red onion. I've made chicken and onion, cheesesteak, turkey, even tried the 'standard' ham and salami once or twice. But the boy and I decided next time we need to try a bacon cheeseburger boli, should be fun.

   But I digress... as if I had anything of great import to record herein.

   Nope, that's it.

Time to write

Write what? What comes to mind? This, that and everything. And nothing. Babble, bable. Yadda yadda yadda.

Well, finally got over the hump on that illustration. Nothing spectacular by any means, limited by size first, lack of real inspiration second  and, third and not least of all, my own rusty fingers and intuition for composition, figure drawing and so forth. My wyfe and kids- make that 'kid', only one in the house anymore -are suitably impressed but I know what 'used to be' and so it's pretty pedestrian by my estimate, if not downright dreadful. But it was kinda fun working through the colors, not really my forte, more of a black-and-white guy. Anyway, I ended up painting acrylics on acetate, sort of like a cartoon cel, for lack of any better materials at hand. Tough doing line work with a brush so there are more than one or two fat lines that oughta be more sensitive, suggestive but instead heavy-handed. I don't know whether it'll make the online album, probably not. Remains to be seen whether the client is agreeable to it as a finished product...

In other news, we finally replaced the long-gone digital camera. A definite plus for my little hobby enterprise and attendant eBay offerings. And the family album as well. Yay! I haven't fired it up yet, got a serious case of late afternoon sleepies when we brought it home and took a nap instead of breaking it outta the box and setting up the dock and software. I could be doing it right now but what am I gonna do, take pictures all night? Nah, tomorrow's soon enough.

Deep breath... aaahhhh...

    Boy, was I in a sour mood there for that last entry or what? Oh, well, that's the way it goes at times. Everything is brighter this morning, sun shining and exceedingly temperate out of doors. The mailman brought a coupla postcards and two AOL coasters- I signed on from one of those startup disk mailings but, really, how many can a person use? -addressed to the neighbors two doors down. So I walked them over and got no answer except the barking of the dogs and left them at the front door. Nothing portends an optimistic slant for the day like a small good deed to start it off, right? Hopefully the neighbor who got my mail will feel compelled to do the same.

  It annoys me how this utility makes such a wide space betwen paragraphs. It defeats the possibility of recording lines of poetry herein. I'm nobody's poet but what if I were? Or a songwriter? I'd have to use slashes to demarcate the lines, not nearly so attractive or as engaging, simply wouldn't flow,  like reading line-by-line. That's just my thinking on the matter.

  In other news, I wrote earlier about the Daisy Model 179 six-shooter bb gun. Mine arrived yesterday courtesy of a fellow in Atlanta Georgia. I found his website, well, I forget just how I found it, but he offers a whole slew of real firearms and a few bb shooters on the side as well. So I got a nice price on it and it's in purty good shape. A little smaller, well, not so much smaller as lighter than the Hahn with somewhat less chunky plastic grips. It works but, wow, it's weak, weak, weak. Probably won't throw a bb more than twenty feet. And it won't shoot straight either, hahahaha. The boy and I ran outside with it, loaded it up- holds twelve shots -and plinked away at a cereal box in the snow. We had a good laugh trying to actually aim with it and watching the bbs pssst into the snow frst to the right, then to the left. So I'll bring it along with the Hahn .45 to the repair guy down in New Freedom after the first of the year, see if he thinks it can be tightened up, maybe install a new spring to perk it up a hearn. I thought both might be good for squirrel hunting but I'm starting to have my doubts- certainly about the Daisy, even if it's tweaked. Less so about the Hahn, I think a new gasket will solve the gas leaking and it just might have enough juice to do more than poke holes in soda cans and cereal boxes.

   It seems terribly self-centered writing here- me, me, I, me, me, mine... -but I guess that's the point of keeping a journal, right? Reflecting on the bullet points that make up a life from day to day. Besides, my wyfe is less than keen on publicizing any aspect of our life, certainly she'd rather there be recorded nothing about herself and the kids- of course, there are some sinister scenarios to consider when writing anything online about kids these days, too bad -and so it becomes 'The Story of Wes' and not much else. Ho hum.

Bitter

Boy, what a crappy week it was. Snowed and snowing again, I guess it's turned to rain now, even better. Enagaged in a push/pull contest with the neighbors, over space in an outdoor shed, of all things. So I spent the night dragging stuff around inside and out, mostly out. In the sleet and rain. Stacking crap on top of crap. In the dark. That goat farm on a hilltop in Kentucky sounds pretty good about now. I filled the bird feeder out front last week and I've seen exactly one dratted bird all week. And he flitted away as soon as he spotted me at the window, stupid bird. Casually twirling my six-shooter tonight and flung it off my finger and- WHACK! - cracked against the bottom horn of the Charvel, putting a big circular ding in the newly restored finish. At least it didn't go off and put my eye out. I can't seem to get a decent draft of an illustration I'm working on. I'd planned to go at it with a vengeance tonight, blown outta the water by the shed thing. Sometimes the general trend of things makes you just wanna spit. Or punch something. Then I'd probably break my hand and really be up a creek. If I thought about it long enough I'm sure I could think of more and crappier stuff but I'm already missing the beginning of ER. Which is probably a re-run. Or a Christmas show. Bah, humbug, I says...

Bang, bang! Shoot, shoot!

Hahahaha, that just occurred to me as I was thinking of a heading for this; that Beatles tune, what is it? I got the radio playing in my other ear so I can't recall the tune right off. Well, they'll play it after while, it's a Beatles weekend on the local oldies station; I suppose largely due to the remembrance of the anniversary of John Lennon's death. It's strange to think it's been longer since that happened than I'd been alive at the time. That doesn't make sense, does it? It's been 25 years, meaning I would have been 20 at the time. No, wait, nineteen. 2005, carry the one... minus 61... higher math, ouch, my head! Yep, nineteen. Reminds me of one of my favorites films, Forrest Gump. Forrest, the accidental witness to any number of historical events and personages, supposedly is a guest on Dick Cavett with John. If memory serves, their casual banter, archival footage of Lennon neatly interspersed with Tom Hanks as Forrest, gives the appearance of being the inspiration for Imagine.

But I started to make a note about a new diversion. When I was a kid my Dad was park ranger at a campground, the Pequea Creek Recreation Area. Sixty five acres of hills and woodlands, peppered with campsites, a few pavilions for group outings, a big grassy field where the kids for miles around gathered to play ball, nature trails, swing sets and other playground structures and the muddy Pequea Creek running right through the middle of it all. Along with the campground office we ran a little camp store selling Sterno, plastic picnic tableclothes, candy and soda, luncheon meats and cheese, badminton sets, fishing worms- my brother and I had a going concern with that concession every summer, lemme tell ya! -canned goods, Stewart hot sandwiches, firewood and lots of goofy souvenir items.(At one point I drew several pastoral scenes for use on the souvenir goods- a coupla Amish children running after a buggy, deer in a field, stuff like that.) But the coolest thing we used to offer for sale was the Daisy "Spittin' Image" BB gun. It was called 'spittin' image' because it was the perfect likeness of the six-shooter every TV cowboy carried. It was something like 15 bucks- a veritable fortune then, even for an enterprising twelve-year old like myself -and I always wanted one in the worst way. I don't recall if it was a matter of never saving the money, spending all our bait worm profits on candy, gumcards and Tastykakes, or if Mom wouldn't let us have one for fear we'd put an eye out. Which we probably would have. My cousins had both bb rifles and pistols and we'd invariably send the youngest, George, out the yard to set up the cans or whatever we were using as targets... and then we'd shoot at him. In our defense we did have the good sense to shoot low so it was always only a leg or butt shot... And he was almost always wearing jeans. But I never did have a Daisy six-gun of my own, drat.

So off and on, given my adult onset fascination with TV cowboys, I've looked for them on eBay. I learned they were Model 179 and, since Daisy long ago discontinued their manufacture, had become quite collectible. And they always seemed to end up selling for more than I wanted to invest being A) interested purely for sentimental, non-practical reasons, B) a cheapskate of the first order by nature and C) poor to boot. Then they seemed to dry up. I guess eBay banned their sale, impossible to regulate just who was buying them, I suppose. I mean, any juvenile delinquent could conceivably order up a very realistic looking BB gun and commit who knows what heinous acts. Hold up grannies on the street, rob the local mini-mart, put his own eye out.

Anyway, despite the dearth of availability I would search every so often just in case one somehow slipped under the radar. Sure enough a week or so ago, crammed into a lot with some busted up cap guns, I glommed onto the Daisy's counterpart, the Hahn '45'. Actually, this gun predates the Daisy by a few years at least. And unlike the Model 179, it's a CO2 powered bb shooter. So it's a little more powerful than the spring action versions. Plus it's got faux antler grips, very neat. The listing said 'missing parts' and it was obvious from the awful picture that the CO2 cartridge was absent. I ventured a ten dollar bid, won, paid another ten smackers to ship it to my door and discovered it also had no trigger. But I'm not complaining at that ticket. A little web searching found a guy in New Park PA, maybe fifteen, twenty miles down the road at the outside, who works exclusively on bb and pellet guns. He calls himself Precision Pellet. Now, if he can scavenge a trigger somewhere and re-seal the gas input for less than thirty, forty bucks, I'll be in business for less than half the usual going rate. As it is he's too busy to get to it until after the holidays so I'll just play with it for now. Practice my gun-spinning technique so I don't shoot myself in the foot when it's all fixed up.

But it does shoot even without the trigger. Oh, yeah, it does. I know this because my son, the duly trained firearms handler and mighty hunter of harmless woodland creatures, had installed a CO2 cartridge from his own storehouse of shooting goods and was toying with it while I busied myself with something or other in the toy cave here in the basement. I wasn't paying any attention until I heard a distinct 'phhhhhht' behind me, followed by a hollow clicking sound back the hall. He says, 'Well, it shoots!' 'So I gather... It was loaded?!?' I ask, incredulous that he would be so remiss as to fire the thing off indoors. 'No, no,' he says. 'Well, what was that chink after it went off?' I says. A quick inspection of the hallway and the foldout laundry room door revealed a bb-sized hole which, I'm fairly certain, was not there before.

Brother, no wonder Mom didn't want me to have one...!

As I added the picture it occurred to me how... inconguous, at very least, it is to be yapping about a gun, even a toy gun, after starting off with a reference to a death by gun violence. I can only qualify my remarks by saying I'm not a big fan of the gun. Too loud. And dangerous, no doubt, as demonstrated by the foregoing anecdote... though I tried hard to give it a humourous spin it would be decidedly non-humourous if it had been a real sidearm.

My dad was a dyed-in-the-wool, 'pry my gun from my cold, dead hands' kind of gun fancier. And his gun enthusiast's argument that guns don't kill people is all too true. But 'people with guns do kill people' is too true too. On the other hand, Cain had no gun. Likewise Jack the Ripper- no gun. So it's not the gun, it's the motive of the person mis-using it that makes a useful instrument something vilified in the minds of so many. But then I've never been shot or had somebody I love shot to death either... No end to this debate...

Deep thoughts

Random thoughts that occurred to me today while driving in traffic, running errands and having lunch:

"Wow, she must think I'm really hot. She's really staring at me... That or she thinks it looks ridiculous the way I stack my sunglasses on top of my prescription glasses... Yep, that must be it."

"Wow, I am really hot. This coat is great outside but I've got to ditch in when I come into the store. The scarf too."

"Note to self: Remember, Hoss's is a steak place. When you order a burger, you've got to specify 'well-done'. Or you get a bloody rare burger like this one. Ughhh... And you know it'll just get spit on or 'accidentally' dropped on the floor if you send it back..."

"When I wear these black gloves I feel like Zorro. ( horizontal-diagonal-horizontal slashing motion) Or the Lone Ranger. Hi-yo, Saturn, awaaay!"

"Hey, I remembered the important stuff! Craft board, shipping boxes, Aragorn doll. Can you believe it was only five bucks?!? Somebody else could have remembered we came in here in the first place to get power steering fluid..."

"I'm never going to remember all these when I get home! It's almost like a mental curtain is drawn once I pass that portal. All the meditation and interesting distraction is left at the threshold, displaced by 'What's on TV tonight?' and 'Where's that leftover Chinese? It was here yesterday?...' 'Yes, I do think it'll be okay to eat it...'  'No, the red dye kills the trichonosis bugs. I read it somewhere...'

Okay, I made that last one up. But it's true, absolutely true. I hope.

And now for something...

... we hope you'll really like! I added just two of the hundred or so photos from the West Virginny trip from two weeks ago. Coupla the girls smiling for the camera and a nice wintry scene that I'd print out and hang on the wall if my stoopid printer wasn't acting up! It printed okay but not nearly as crisp as a stark image like that needs to be. Still, a nice meditative view of whitened trees over a fence. I wish I'd taken it! I'm better at retouching and trimming photos than taking them. Check 'em out using the 'Family Album' link at left. New photos load at the bottom so you have to sit through the 'old' stuff loading to get to 'em, sorry.

In other news: I made some bacon tonight. Not real bacon, play bacon for my Johnny West dolls. If anybody remembers Johnny- anybody? -he was the original cowboy doll by Marx, very cool. One of the few boyhood toy pictures I have- I love those old shots of kids and their toys, usually black-and-white, making believe with the help of some doll or whatever -shows me and my brother with Johnny and Thunderbolt, his palomino horse. Good stuff. But Johnny came with all sorts of teeny rubber and plastic cowboy accessories; hat, vest, chaps, spurs. And a coffee pot, coffee cup and frying pan. But no play food to use in the pan. So I'm making my own from latex and sculpy clay. Eggs and bacon. Coupla biscuits. I'm sure I'll get around to pancakes and syrup, I'm already thinking of how to make a melting pat of butter for on top of the stack! Hoo boy, what I won't do to distract myself from the hum-drum!

What the...?!?

Man, it's always something. I can't get my printer to align to save my life, keeps offsetting the colors on my little print jobs for my homespun doll goods. I'm torn between letting it go, allowing for a 'vintage misprint' look and running the alignment test for, like, the fourth time since installing new ink cartridges a week or so ago. I think the real reason I worry about it is because they are adorned with my cartoon likeness! The misprinting makes me look silly. Sillier than normal, I mean. Vanity, thy name is Wes, man. Hahahaha...

Took a pre-dawn drive to Hershey PA this morning. Not to smell the chocolate- which you definitely do in warm weather, not today for sure, it's sub-freezing all day -but to bring my grandfather to the hospital for a procedure designed to halt the spread of a certain proto-cancerous growth. It'll be a regular appointment for the next six weeks, well, five now. We yapped about idiot drivers and cell phones- neither of us own one -along the way, stopped for breakfast on the way home. I promised to bring him some of my wyfe's turkey pie before the week is out. Brought his little lap dog, Bo-Bo, the bacon from breakfast. My aunt warned me beforehand not to allow myself to be browbeaten or suffer quietly Pap's well-known rollercoaster temperament. But I didn't have any trouble. I'm an easygoing sort to begin with, been referred to recently by one adversary as a 'good-natured goof' to which I responded 'Thank you very much!', but I did make a point of speaking clearly and unequivocally and sitting and standing straight to make my height advantage more obvious to my dear pappaw. That and I threatened to kick his cane out from under him if he acted up.

No, not really! I'm kidding! Kidding! It was all very nice and familial, really.

Yesterday was the anniversary of the beginning of my married life. Let's see, nineteen years. Easy to remember because one year to the day after that memorable occasion my daughter was born. So all I have to do is remember her age and add one, simple. Her age is easy to recall this year- despite the lack of birthday revelry in our family -because it was an auspicious date in all our minds and not simply because it marked the attainment of 'adult' status. From all appearances, and according to my own prophecy, it was a countdown on her part to that date from the revelations five months ago of her secretive involvement with a young man of our acquaintance. Suffice to say, the discovery of what had been going on under our noses, quite literally, was a stunner of outsized proportion. Said countdown ending with an early morning call from my sister-in-law on the date in question asking for a family conference to discuss the desire of the daughter in question, who had stayed overnight with said sister-in-law, to emancipate herself from our home, take up residence with said aunt and- most importantly -take up where, under extreme parental duress and coercion, she had left off with the young man in question.

A lot of questions, eh? Which begs the question: Is this really the end result of admittedly imperfect but well-intentioned parenting? Hmmm. I think if I was told this was what I had to look forward to eighteen years ago... well, that way leads to madness, theres' no doubt. Like nearly every circumstance of life, hindsight is the perfect vision no glass goggles can approximate before the you-know-what hits the fan. You'd think we'd learn from the generations that went before, recalling our own mindset at such-and-such age and so forth... but no, we stumble blithely along, certain that our experience will be different somehow. As though roseate optimism is certain to foster miracles in our case while the poor schlubs around us falter and flounder under the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune'. (And you thought I knew no Shakespeare! No, really, I don't...)Quick! Where's the looking glass?!? I do believe I've spied the common but elusive poor schlub!

Suffice to say, it was an anniversary only of hand-wringing and mood swings, harsh words and heartache, devoid of all but the most meager sentimentality. Sheesh... who writes this stuff?!? Anyway, it remains to be seen what the day after will bring. Confrontation, recrimination, accusation? Or bittersweet resignation? Either way, bags and boxes brim with the left-behind accoutrements of a young life, a pack-rattery of both necessary and inconsequential goods. Each object a remnant with it's own peculiar cachet of sentiment, utility or combinations of both.