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Scrabbleganzapalouza
Posted: July 25, 2011 in Family ActivitiesTags: Family, Life, Schipperke, scrabble
I went to Kathy’s this weekend to play scrabble with her and her friends and our cousin Tim. I had not been up to San Francisco in a while and it was nice to be winging my way to the Bay Area. The day started with boarding Virgin America in first class, courtesy of Kathy, of course, and ordering a mimosa. The chatty Brit in the next seat was amusing and the flight otherwise uneventful.
The dogs, two black Schipperke pups that have flowing, mammoth like fur were a happy sight. I have my own two schipps and was already missing them. Seeing Kathy’s two was a nice diversion. They were soft and cute and cuddly too!
Tim beat me my first game of Scrabble and bill beat me my second. Though I had met Bill back in around ’89, this was my first time actually spending any time with him and he was delightful. We all drank and played and laughed and ate and went to the Table of Treasures for our fabulous prizes. I coveted the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il tongue scraper but still got my own great gifts including BOTH of the golden tickets. Had those panned out I would have been 61 million dollars richer and unemployed! ‘Twas not to be however, so off to Fremont in East Bay to visit my Aunt Eileen and Uncle Nick. Known affectionately as the God Parents. We talked and ate pizza and had a great time.
Just as quickly as I had arrived, it was now time to dump me back at San Francisco International Airport for the ride back to Sin City. as the plane touched down the sun was setting in the west and all was right with the world. Another great weekend in this life on Earth.
Freedom. We pay for it in more ways than the traditional uniformed armed forces. We pay for it by serving our government in many ways. This is my view of the price of freedom today.
I love watching Turner Classic Movies. The old black and whites really are fun and often have far better stories and are not formulaic like modern movies tend to be. I love The Thin Man series, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Women…..this lsit is endless. That being said…….they HAVE to quit showing those doggone Bowery Boys movies! The lead actor is Leo Gorcey. Gorcey started playing in various permutations of the same character (Slip Mahoney) at the age of 18. Now the problem here is….wait for it…..he played a young teen. He continued to play this young teen role into his forties and we are never supposed to think of him as getting older. Maybe this is the fountain of youth — portray an illiterate troubled teen in low budget movies for 30 years. It simply falls flat and it fills up too much space on the TCM lineup. They do not hold up and they make the cream in my coffee curdle.
I remember way back in health class learning about the stages of life. But learning about them in your youth is nothing like living them in middle age. Everyone has to do it, so the pain that can sometimes come along with it is not unique to me.
I grew up the crybaby in the family. The oversensitive one that could cry at a soap commercial as well as a cartoon. Now, as my father’s health slowly declines I find myself crying more and worrying more and dreading what is to come. To watch the vitality slowly leave him is unbearable at times. Seeing my Marine Corp, truck driving, hell raising dad reduced to sitting in a chair, watching television with everything done for him rips at my heart in ways I could never have imagined. But those who would read this have either already had this experience or will have it. There is just no escaping the stages of life. We have to take the bad with the good, and there truly was a lot of very good stuff over the years. The only way to avoid this would have been to not have had a dad……I would not trade that to rid myself of this part. 
So, I will cry and I will do all I can for him and with him. For these are the times of life.
There is an author that I have grown to love over the years. He has written great things that have really 
taught me a lot about secular relativism and the Christian World View. His name is Chuck Colson. Yes, he is the hatchet-man from the old Nixon years. But during that downfall he became a Christian and has worked tirelessly since to help inmates reform and accept Christ. He has also written extensively about how Christians fit in to the modern world. He is quite a bright man.
But yesterday, someone pretended to be him and “friended” me on facebook. Not nice and there is a certain sense of irony….impersonating a Christian. And to what end, I do not know. Even went so far as to write me a private email and it was by all appearances a nice note. It made me feel bad that this person invaded the persona of another to do nothing that could be good. And that the one being impersonated did not know….would not know because he does not use the social networking sites.
Do people now have to go from place to place and ensure that someone has not pretended to be them in order to be safe from this sort of thing? It is a far different world than when I was a kid and not in a good way. All the wonder of the technology we have seems most often to be used to do harm. My friends trusted that he was real and that was in part because I had befriended him. Is my trustworthiness in question? If not my judgment? All I can say is please don’t shoot the messenger…I only wanted good things to come of “friending” him. We will never know who the imposter was or what he wanted.
It feels like it has been such a long year yet it has gone so fast. I have made many new friends kayaking and hiking and rock climbing. I have continued to golf and am happy at my job. Dad turned 79 while I turned 49. It has been a year since I moved into my house and both the dogs and I are happy here.
Seems like life, while not at all what I expected it to be, is going very well. Many people are out of work. I am blessed to have a good job and more than enough to get by.
But what of the remainder of this year. Kathy will be down for Christmas. Leo will be home from China. We have already made plans to golf while he is here. I enjoy golfing with Leo and Tony and Rene. I hope to get in some more climbing and hiking before we say goodbye to 2010.
At work, the boss is gone now, elected D.A. of Nye County. Conrad will be gone soon too….Justice of the Peace was what he nabbed from the mid-term elections.
Stacey and I completed the Valley of Fire 10k. It was our second time and we will be doing more of these and even some half marathons in 2011.
I will be working hard to get ready for my 2012 adventure to Nepal for the Everest Base Camp Trek! I sure don’t want to waste all of 2011 focusing on 2012 though. We have to live each day, every day we are given instead of wishing them away for something that is out in the future.
With that in mind, I have about 33 days to live out in 2010 and I want to make the most of them. I’ll sign off for now and go do some of that living!
Gift O' Gab 