The Cannonball Run

The Cannonball Run is a good funny movie depicting interesting "misfit" characters who are participating in an illegal 3000 mile race; and the misadventures and detours they take on while outsmarting the police and one another. These "cannonballers" are played by such interesting celebrities as Burt Reynolds, Roger Moore, Farah Fawcet, Dom Delouise, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Tery Bradshaw (amongst many others). Although it was given a PG rating; I think today's standards would look at the hijenks they get into (especially all the drinking and driving that goes on) and put them in a PG-13 category; of course, saying that, if they were going to be in that category anyway the women in bikini's in the movie would probably be showing off even MORE skin, if that is possible without exposing the R-rated body parts!

Truth Idols

A copy can be more perfect than an original; but only if it is not a perfect copy! When I use a copy machine on a pencil sketch I sometimes get a prettier "duplicate" than the original drawing. It is prettier because it is DIFFERENT.

The Calm

Beneath the outer shell of hell lives the placid perfect peace. The contentment rests gently on its own; it is a slippery soap on a descending slope, so to protect it we grasp it, usually resulting in the peace bursting from our hands down the valley.

My Work Day

I wake up to my dog Tiger at 3am. After letting him out and back, I toss and turn until at least 3:30 into a light sleep.

I wake up again at 4:30. At 5:30. At 5:55. I rub my wife's back.

A watch beeps at 6 and so I leap out of bed. I feed the dog. While I eat two or three bowls of cereal as part of my weight gain diet, I check out a quotes of the day web site.

By 7 my wife and I are in the car, driving to work. We listen to the morning morning crew with Captain Mike Casper until I change the station to the classical station. My wife says she likes classical music, but it must grow dull on her by the time she drops me off as the next day the station will again be with Mike and the mix morning crew.

By 7:15 I am at work. I review the tasks I have to do. I panic. I read my email. Add them to my to do list. I then pick someplace to begin and start at it; phone calls and emails interrupt my train of thought and often provoke a change in the focus of my work from moment to moment.

At 10:30 I take my first break of the day with two very nice coworkers. They are both very good listeners and, as they are older than me, provide a good example for me to follow. We walk outside down the green belt path, talking about safe subjects for the most part.

At 12:00 I work on my personal projects while having some lunch. All these projects include writing in some degree or another.

At 1:00 I return to work; at 3:30 I take my second break with the same coworkers as the first; again, outside for a fresh breath of air (though lately it has been inversion fog air).

Somewhere between 5 and 6 I clock out of work and do some more writing.

I am back home by 6:30. I spend five or ten minutes focusing on picking up the obvious eye sores in the living room or kitchen. Someone feeds Tiger. Someone lets Tiger out.

In the next few hours, in random order, I make some dinner, eat some dinner, find snacks to get my caloric intake up to my goal, I do 30-35 minutes on the cross trainer exercize device, and have watched at least an hour of television.

At 10 I brush teeth, take my blood-pressure reducing and mood-smoothing medications, and set down to sleep. By 12:30 I am actually asleep.

A Forrest of Trees

I love trees. I'm not afraid of them one bit. To climb them all day would be a delight. They are so majestic; straight ones, bushy ones, even dead ones seem strong and stoic. The tree might make a great mentor for me. What a symbol of the inner me I wish I could be.

Trees, like humans, have layers in concentric rings. Every passage of life, to every season, there is a ring. Together, all of these rings make up the complete tree.

Quotes: Remember, a chip on the shoulder is a sure sign of wood higher up. Brigham Young

Promises that you make to yourself are often like the Japanese plum tree - they bear no fruit.
Francis Marion (1732 - 1795)

There's nothing that keeps its youth,So far as I know, but a tree and truth.
Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809 - 1894),

The great French Marshall Lyautey once asked his gardener to plant a tree. The gardener objected that the tree was slow growing and would not reach maturity for 100 years. The Marshall replied, 'In that case, there is no time to lose; plant it this afternoon!'
John F. Kennedy (1917 - 1963)

Trees like to have kids climb on them, but trees are much bigger than we are, and much more forgiving.
Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Old Tree, 1993

Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who decided to stand their ground.

And this our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.
Shakespeare

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)