Looking at a forecast, I decided that tonight was the night I needed to burn the brush pile next to the garden. Calm and cool, and following yesterday’s little bit of rain, the night was good for burning. By Thursday, the Weather Service expects fire danger to be high, and we are verging on a…
Continue reading →As an average, healthy adult, I suffer through my share of seasonal upper respiratory infections. We all have our nicknames for it: Mocus, Epizudic, The Crud, The Green Nose Packers, Sneezles, Angela’s Pismo Weekend, and so on. For me in years past, it starts with a sore throat, followed by a day or two of…
Continue reading →Abby and I originally planned to go to her hometown of Ryan, Oklahoma, today, but a migraine woke her up in the middle of the night. I gave her her Maxalt-MLT prescription, which cured her headache, but, as always, rendered her overwhelmingly drowsy for the entire remainder of the day. She slept in for a…
Continue reading →Abby and I spent yesterday together, mostly cleaning on the house, then in the evening making the dreaded Wal Mart run, followed by dinner out. In the middle of the day, though, we took time out to shoot her new Walther PK-380, a pistol which might be the perfect handgun for my wife. She has…
Continue reading →My sister Nicole called today to say that our uncle Bill Skinner passed away today. He was about 80. He died in hospice care at home from a long bout with cancer. Bill was married to our mother’s sister Margie for their entire adult lives. They lived in the same house in Thousand Oaks, California…
Continue reading →One of the things my sister Nicole and I looked forward to the most as we were growing up was the trip we made two or three times a year to Independence, Missouri, to visit our Barron grandparents, Russell and Aileen. Russell died in 1987 at the age of 89, and Aileen died in 1997…
Continue reading →With the cold settling in around us, Abby and I make sure to put Abby’s home made sweaters on our dogs. Both dogs like the sweaters, since when we get the sweaters out, they come over to us and let us put them on. If they don’t like something, like Frontline, the oil we put…
Continue reading →I don’t normally play hooky on days when it’s snowy out, but with Abby’s office closed and absolutely everything canceled at my office, I decided to stay home. As always, like in the other three seasons, I went outside to make pictures. After the fierce blowing and drifting yesterday, today it was sunny and calm,…
Continue reading →As my wife languishes in the piles of snow in Baltimore while she visits her daughter and son-in-law who had a new baby last week, I am taking advantage of the sunshine and 72º temps to catch up on yard work. Two days ago I fired up the chain saw to carve more out of…
Continue reading →Last night Abby dreamed she was holding her new grandson Paul. In the dream, he was about two months old and had lots of super dark black hair. A few minutes ago we received a phone message from our son in law Tom showing Chele with her new baby Paul, who, as you can see,…
Continue reading →Abby’s daughter Chele is expecting her first baby, a boy she and her husband Tom are planning to name Paul, any day. Abby is planning to travel to Baltimore for this event as soon as it actually happens. Chele reports that she is ready to have this baby. Meanwhile, it’s been colder this week in…
Continue reading →Last Thursday I drove to Tulsa to hook up with Robert “R. E.” Stinson to have lunch. We met at my favorite Tulsa restaurant, and one where many benchmarks of relationships with my Tulsa peeps have been set. Everybody had a great time, and Robert and I chased down some of his kin on the…
Continue reading →For many years in the 1990s and early 2000s, I flew a lot. Airplanes in my neck of the woods were cheap, my rent was low, and it was easy and convenient. A lot of people flew with me over the years, including my mother. (My sister says that the day I took mom flying…
Continue reading →Abby and I and our dogs have returned from an excellent Thanksgiving holiday in Platte City, Missouri, home of my cousin Lori Wade, her husband Bill, and their dogs Riley and Max. We were joined by my sister Nicole, who flew from her home in New Orleans, and Lori’s father, my uncle Wes, with a…
Continue reading →After some hesitation, pondering, figuring, worrying, and wrangling, Abby and I finally replaced her Jeep, which was something of a lemon, with a new Nissan Frontier Crew Cab 4×4 pickup. Abby seems incredibly happy with it. Nissan calls the color “Knight Armor,” which is their sales code for dark grey, the only color on their…
Continue reading →Abby is one to enjoy relaxation after a long day at the number mill, and she finds her way to her zero-g chair, where she is joined like royalty by her lap dogs. That chair uses hard plastic knobs to lock into place once reclined, and for Abby it has become increasingly difficult for her…
Continue reading →Today I turned 47, the same age at which Jack Kerouac, beat poet and author of, among many other things, “On the Road,” died in 1969. So it seems perfectly fitting that today Abby and I bought a piece of the road in the form of a used motor home. It is a 34-foot Fleetwood…
Continue reading →…except without the tobacco. Abby and I went out for dinner tonight, to Abby’s favorite Mexican restaurant, Polo’s in downtown Ada. It’s always great to take my wife out, and in addition to a great meal, I bought her a margarita, which took the edge off a difficult week for her. Our conversation led hither…
Continue reading →Abby’s family gathered for her father Hershel Shoffner’s passing this weekend. As you might remember from reading about her family’s reunions, there are a lot of family, and they are close. Hershel’s funeral at the Ryan, Oklahoma, Methodist Church was packed. There were musicians who played piano and fiddle, since Hershel was a fiddler. Hershel…
Continue reading →Abby and I are home tonight. We spent last night in the dark, and despite the propane wall heaters in our bathrooms, it was just too cold for Abby, so tonight we got a motel room. By 8:30 tonight, though, Dorothy called to say that the power was restored, so we came home. I checked…
Continue reading →Remember, Richard, Shakespeare said, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” So here we go. January: An ice storm gripped Oklahoma. March: Abby’s daughter Chele married Tom Reeves in a traditional Catholic ceremony in Reisterstown, Maryland. May: One of our closest friends, Ann Kelley, is diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. She would later learn that it…
Continue reading →As I write this in the twilight of Christmas Eve, we bask in the glow of a successful holiday. Abby, tired from our dramatic drive home and opening presents, has gone to bed with Sierra the Chihuahua at her side. I am at my computer, and of course Max is chewing up a hot dog….
Continue reading →We spent yesterday in Abby’s hometown of Ryan, Oklahoma, where we had fun with her family. Forecasts indicated the winter storm would stay north of us and our route home. But as we went to bed last night in Ryan, I got a blizzard alert text message on my phone. When we got up, snow…
Continue reading →Abby has been talking about wanting a small automatic of her own for some time now. She’s had a .38 Special for a long time, but ammunition is scarce and expensive, so she doesn’t shoot it much. She doesn’t love the grips on it, and it kicks quite a bit, so she wanted something new…
Continue reading →A everyone who reads my lexicon of bloggery knows, Abby and I spend a lot of our recreational time hiking and exploring in the desert southwest, which is home to some very interesting archaeology. The most compelling and intriguing is that of the Chaco Culture National Historical Park in Chaco Canyon, in the lonely high…
Continue reading →For as much trouble as this holiday can be, this one wasn’t so bad. Originally, I had hoped we could just go out to eat, or even just ignore the fact that it was a holiday, but when Abby’s daughter Chele and her husband Tom (just to refresh the memories of our readers) decided to…
Continue reading →I don’t know whose idea it was originally, but for the past few years there have been bulbs on the Christmas tree in the reception area of our office with our names on them. That tree is up now, so I guess that means it’s the “holiday” season. I’m a little cynical about this holiday,…
Continue reading →I got to spend an hour with our friend Tracy Nicole today, whose mom won another in a series of Mary Kay cars. We talked about all kinds of things as we waited in her mom’s front yard for the car to arrive. Tracy is a singer-songwriter, and Abby and I really like her music….
Continue reading →This morning Abby and I slept in, and as the morning went by, I found myself dreaming rather extensively about Jorja Fox, the actress who played Sarah Sidle on CBS’s CSI for seven seasons. Abby was disappointed to see the actress and the character leave the show, and with the departure of two additional core…
Continue reading →This bizarre image is actually Abby doing one of her regular exercises, which therapists and trainers call “bridges,” but which Abby knows by the nickname “Chihuahuas.” Normally the move is performed by laying on the back and placing a weight on the abdomen, then bridging up, holding, and lowering for a set number of times,…
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