Happy Halloween!

A few weeks ago all 3 grandkids spent the night, and Grandma wanted to make a scarecrow with them. A good time was had by all, though I got in a bit of trouble when I came home at 2AM (kids long since in bed, of course) as she was putting the finishing touches on him and pointed out he looked a bit like he might have been at Roswell!

alan

Blogger and it's snits...

I wrote a Saturday post, but Blogger wouldn't let me upload it and I didn't have hours to keep trying as it was a work day again...if you'll forgive me I'm going to drop it in here:

Ssturday!

For some reason I keep "hearing" an old "Chicago" tune rattling inside my empty head, but with the sun out, errands to run, my truck to wash, and work to go to, I don't think I'll be taking their suggestion today!

Tomorrow Bill and Laura are coming from Lawrence so we can change the oil in their Neon, put on the Blizzaks that I had bought for Dottie's Neon before we traded it for the Malibu and some winter blades, then I have some steaks to go on the grill and a couple of pounds of mushrooms to fry in time for Dottie to come home. My plan is to have her Malibu washed and waxed before 2 when the kids arrive. We have a 60 degree day today, and a couple of 70's tomorrow and Monday, so trying to make use of them, especially after all the cold and rain this last week!

I'm almost afraid to say anything about the national political scene for fear I'll jinx things for next week...

But I can't help wondering what happens if you waterboard a guy with a pacemaker, since that's obviously not torture?

alan

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Now it's Sunday morning; thanks to the time change I got a bit over 9 hours sleep and am waiting for the kettle to boil to make some oatmeal and a latte.

Bonnie Raitt was on Prarie Home Companion last night; at one point she was telling Garrison how nice it was to have someplace on the radio to find some sanity once a week, that she and her band always listen while they're on the road. She said that at least at Halloween there's an excuse for "scary", unlike the rest of the time as of late (me paraphrasing)!

That thought has been stuck in my head ever since...

Have a wonderful Sunday, each of you!

alan

Rinse, Repeat...

Started the next "cycle"...it would be 17 of 19 again, but I have Halloween off, and we get election day as a negotiated holiday. Worked an hour over last night sweeping...I know better, but too greedy for my own good (truck payments, car payments, Christmas is coming, a half dozen birthdays...)!

Mitch's birthday on Saturday was fun.

My sister's younger son Jordan, with my grandaugher Talia and my youngest grandson...



Caleb a few minutes later, lol...



This is Dillon, looking quite grown up for 7...



and of course, my brother-in-law Mitch being served his cake and ice cream by Miss Talia...



Next time I go back to the Nikon and the overhead bracket to get rid of redeye, these were all shot with the little Fuji and unretouched.

Sunday we made the 10:30AM show of "Flags of Our Fathers". Someday this will be ranked above "Saving Private Ryan" in the list of great WW2 movies. Knowing Eastwood shot a 2nd movie from the other "side" of things that won't come out until spring, I'm curious to see it as well.

If I am smart enough to leave when the line stops tonight, I'll be making the rounds this evening...hope I'm forgiven for not getting everywhere everyday at this point!

alan

I ran across this a couple of nights ago...

Maybe it's just me, but I thought it was pretty funny! (click the link above.) I don't know why it won't set up like a regular YouTube video, but this is the best I could do...

Hope someone else gets a weekend grin from it!

I've worked 17 of the last 19 days; finally I get two off in a row. Tomorrow is my brother-in-law's birthday party, delayed from the end of September due to scheduling conflicts. Sunday is hopefully "Flags of Our Fathers" early, shop our way home, then catch up with "Battlestar Galactica", "Supernatural" and some other things we haven't seen each other long enough to sit down and watch!

Lovely weekends to each of you!

alan

Wednesday, 4:10AM...

and I've been bloghopping for a bit over an hour...still need to put tapes in the VCR's for tonight, clock is set for 11:30AM...to much life and not enough hours!

Sunday was a blur of laundry and other chores...looking forward to a two day weekend this week!

"The world is still the same, you'll never change it"...(from a song most of you are too young to remember).

Korea and Iran whipsawing W. and his cohorts while Iraq descends further into chaos and more of our children die each day. More politicians with their hands in our pockets...more appointees under investigation, pleading guilty, going to jail...

and then on the way home tonight I heard that Ken Lay's conviction was thrown out!

I'm not surprised...disgusted, but not surprised!

Sometimes I think a whole lot of villages must have decided to exile their idiots...

to Washington!

alan

Saturday...(does it count if I have to work?)

Dottie was off yesterday; I managed to get up and we made it to an early show of "Man of the Year". I NEEDED THAT!

I don't care how many stars they're giving it, it's a good movie...not only things that need to be said, but some heart to it as well!

We shopped our way home (Sam's, Costco, Wal-Mart) then I went to work; slept later than I should have this morning (it's afternoon, lol) and I'm off to run a few errands before work.

The best thing about working Saturday (besides the paycheck) is cranking up "Prarie Home Companion" on my radio at 5pm! Things always brighten when I hear Garrison Keillor!

Hope you are all having wonderful Saturdays...

alan

Catching up...

Sunday, besides some time with the grandchildren until they left for church, I had planned on making it to the 2nd movie we had planned for the week before, washing and waxing Dottie's Malibu, cooking dinner, and watching some TV.

She picks on me a lot about how many hours I think are in a day...

We went and saw "The Illusionist" last week; I had also planned on getting to "The Guardian", but we didn't make. We did finally get there Sunday afternoon, though it wasn't the 10:30 AM show I had planned on. Good movie...I can see why it's holding it's numbers on the IMDB!

Washing her Malibu got put off; we stopped and picked up new tailights for the utility trailer my Dad had built, as I couldn't get the old ones to cooperate, and I came home and replaced them and got the front mudflaps on my truck just before dark as she started dinner.

Monday I ran some errands then came home and washed the truck and got a second coat of wax on it, looking towards the winter weather that's on it's way and knowing they like to put a lot more salt down here than sand so they don't have to clean it out of the storm sewers.

That reflections shot from yesterday was in the roof of the truck after I rubbed the wax off...

When I was done with the rest of it, it looked something like this:





Those two were shot with the Nikon, which seems to be fine after it's trip back to them to have the CCD replaced for free. The "Reflections" was shot with a new Fuji A350 I bought Monday while running those "errands"; 5.2 megapixel, for $90, the size of a cigarette pack. I had been looking for something that would fit in a pocket or Dottie's purse for times when I didn't want to carry the Nikon and lenses; something cheap enough if it fell in a lake, or something happened I wouldn't be distraught like I would if I lost the Nikon. It seems to work well...

My original plan for Tuesday was to wash and wax her Malibu, but it was already raining by the time I got up, so I rewired a pull switch in the ceiling fan in our bedroom; much easier when you don't have Frankie carrying off the wire "nuts", the pull chain, trying to play with the light bulbs...

Then I vacuumed out our main furnace (there are 3 in the house and one in the garage) and lit it off, as the predictions for Wednesday night range from 31 to 39. By the time I got those done, it was time for work again...

Now it's a bit past 4, and my eyes crossed about 10 minutes ago. Goodnight all! Happy Humpday to those of you who aren't working this weekend!

alan

Reflections on an Autumn Sky

via Silverado...

alan

Late Friday afternoon...

just in from "the rounds" (bank, GNC, Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market, Sam's Club and Costco). It's 3:30, I've got a half hour to unload and put everything away, eat, pack my cooler and be out the door...

Caleb is spending the night tonight with Grandma, Dottie's off this weekend, and I work tomorrow night. The other two grandkids will be here tomorrow afternoon so their Mom and Dad can go to a wedding...

So I won't be around much 'til Sunday evening late!

:o)

Thinking of you all, wishing you lovely weekends!

alan

Wednesday...not quite "hump day"...

for me, anyway; this is the first of two back-to-back 6 day weeks. It wasn't supposed to be, but it seems they want every Saturn we can build between now and New Years, so they switched some days and put these together to get another day's production.

In February we are supposed to put in requests for most of our vacation days so they can allot manpower; figuring out Dottie's weekend schedule against our Saturday schedule, I plotted out a lot of her Tuesdays off on weeks I would be working on her Saturday off that way we see each other on occasion. Yesterday was one of those, my next is Halloween. That will be my first Halloween off since my grandkids got to start "Trick or Treating", and I'm looking forward to it much, though I kind of wish I had next Tuesday in addition...

I had planned on doing two movies yesterday, but we slept an hour later than I had planned on, then had some "us" time (grin). Back in May we had some hail damage repaired on our Malibu, and the "ditch moldings" they had replaced on the roof were coming loose, so I swung by the Chevy dealer to see about having them replaced. They asked if I had a 1/2 hour, and we said "sure" so they did them right then!

While we waited we went down to the "Parts" department to see about some odds and ends for our new truck. I had bought a "bowtie" (Chevy emblem) cover for the receiver hitch that matched the one in the grill the day the hitch was put on; last Sunday while I was in Wal-Mart for about 20 minutes someone stole it. They actually pulled the retainer clip and pin from the hitch, took the emblem, and put the pin and clip back!

$20, it pissed me off some as I'm still paying interest on it, but made me think that perhaps I should worry about my spare tire, as being a "plain Jane" my truck didn't come with the tire lock as standard equipment. Having to replace a $200 wheel and $150 tire would really wind me up, especially when I need it and it's not there!

So I asked about it at the parts counter, and they had the lock in stock, keyed it to match our ignition key, and told me how to put it in. They also gave me 10% off since I'm a GM employee.

While we were there we picked up a set of mudflaps that fit without drilling. Whenever Dad and I fished the powerplant lake an hour south of here, the gravel entrance road would stone the amber running light off the boat trailer, so I figured it was easier to put those on one time than replace the lenses every time we fish there, lol!

After that there wasn't time to do two movies, and "The Guardian" will be around for a while (Sunday morning is looking good right now for us) so my art house movie "won" the afternoon.

"The Illusionist" starts a bit slow, but is a great movie! The snowball that starts so small picks up momentum until it finally ends up in a brilliant conclusion! Holding at 7.7 on the IMDB with almost 5200 votes in means this isn't just me prattling on...it's really a good movie!

For those of you who have a weekend and a chance, it's well worth your time!

alan

Grrrrrrrrr...

Went to bed at 1...woke up at 3 and couldn't get back to sleep. Finally at 4:15 I gave up and came in here to blog-hop for a bit...

Worked 11 hours last night. A long time in the saddle...especially when you consider that 2/3 of it is driving backwards, lol! Home at 4:30, to bed at 5, tried to get up at noon, but after I talked to Dottie I laid on the bed while watching the Weather Channel and waiting for the local forecast; next thing I knew it was 3 something!

When Dottie was still driving the white Chrysler everyday and I had an old AMC around for the boys to drive, I was driving a $400 Dodge pickup for a couple of years. It was a slant-six, running on five when I bought it, and after 2 years it dropped another cylinder. We bought Dottie's first new car about that time, I got the Chrysler, and the truck sat in the back yard for a year and a half.

I bought a wrecking yard motor (it ran when they got it, of course, but I never heard it; I'll never make that mistake again!) and spent part of my model change 2 years ago hanging it. Never got it to fire, thought it was in the wiring, and didn't worry about it. Last year, with my back still in recovery, there's no way I was hanging over a fender to work on it.

I started trying to fire it up again this spring, and finally got spark to it when I figured out it had lower compression than the one I pulled out...

It never did run.

The Chrysler left for the crusher on Friday morning (me still feeling guilty, like I let it down by not trying to save it). This afternoon I hitched up Dad's log chain between the new truck and the old one, and when Dottie came home from work we pulled the old one out of the yard and onto the driveway, then swung the 2nd motor into the back, along with all the extra wheels that were around from things, and I've been throwing all the AMC and Chrysler and Dodge parts out of my garage into the bed this week. It leaves on Monday morning...

I remember people speaking of STB's penchant for organizing and minimizing, and I'm trying to do a bit of that for the first time in my life...

I've spent so much time making things out of junk for 35 years it's really hard to let it go...that fear of throwing away something you might need some dark and stormy night is hard to overcome!

The one thing that's helping in this round is that I also fear taking the new tires on my new truck anywhere near the metal recycling plant!

:o)

A beautiful Sunday to you all...

I'm going to try to go back to sleep now...I had the clock set for 9...

I wonder how far it's going to creep this time...

alan