Happy Thanksgiving!!!!

Timewaster Of The Week-Nov. 25

Turkey time!

http://www.southbank-design.co.uk/turkeyshoot/index.htm

What Is The Meaning Of This?

This site has a bunch of interesting background on old sayings and word origins:

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~genepool/meanings.htm

It includes:
Blackmail
Bought the farm
In like flin/flint
Break a leg
In the lime light

and my personal favorite:
Jumping Jehoshaphat!

Epic Fail

Failure, or at least the opportunity to point out failure, is trendy these days.

Plenty of examples of failure can be found on YouTube, but this little site has pretty much cornered the failure market:

http://failblog.org/

Here are some examples:

It took me a second to get the last one. Lots of the "fails" on this site aren't suitable for an award-winning family-oriented blog such as this one, so beware. Most of the stuff is wicked funny.

Soldier Boy Comes Home

It is unknown when the soldier-boy light switch made his debut on the bedroom wall of my childhood home, where my parents moved in on their wedding night in 1962 and never left.
I just remember it always being there.
My sister had a girly switch in her bedroom, and it went away about the time she went off to college.
I insisted that soldier boy stay, and my parents honored the request. It served as fond reminder of a closed childhood chapter. It was also kind of funny.
The Houston home underwent a number of transformations over the years. New tile was installed. Carpets and furniture came and went. The kitchen was extensively remodelled.
After Dad died in January 2007, Mom went on a remodeling rampage, as some widows do in their grief as they try to start their lives anew. In my old bedroom, the old wooden shelves that Dad built were removed. New carpet was installed. Tile was put down in the closet. A new coat of paint came, too.
The soldier-boy switch remained.
This past Saturday, I entered the house for only the second time since Mom's sudden death to pancreatic cancer. The home was frozen in time. The covers were still as they were when she wheeled out of bed for the last time, unable to withstand the stomach pain any longer and knowing she needed to go to the hospital. The TV remote lay just as she left it. A glass with evidence of evaporated water sat on the night stand.
It was spooky quiet, but the house and back yard seemed alive with the ghosts of family memories.
I had come to do the dreaded task of removing furniture and various belongings. Knowing my sister would be doing the same soon, I left the place a little disheveled to minimize the impact the old home would have on her.
After everything was loaded on the truck, I had one more task before locking up the house and perhaps never seeing its interior again.
I removed the soldier-boy light switch.
All the furniture, wall hangings and photographs are one thing, but the image that remained burning in my brain as I drove away in the truck was that empty cavity the soldier boy guarded for more than 40 years. His relief from duty there ends a life chapter. The house will never be the same.
The soldier boy's mission, though, is not over. Somewhere out there, he'll stand vigil on a wall of a home that our boys will have to clean out some day.

Timewaster Of The Week-Nov. 20

Kill!

Kill 'em all!

http://www.onemorelevel.com/game/storm_the_house_3

Pinewood Does Everything In A Big Way

We live in a fantastic neighborhood. There's a real sense of community out there in Pinewood, located halfway between Beaumont and Sour Lake.

When we burn, we burn big.

When hurricanes hit, we have more trees down than anybody else.

When we party, we party big, as we did during the terrific Halloween celebration.

Our owls, snakes and deer can beat up your owls, snakes and deer.

Pinewood also is known for its flooding, although it's really only the same tired three houses along the golf course that actually get flooded. I don't believe anyone lives in them anymore.

We had big rains in October 2006, and the creek came up in our back yard.

Last night, we had some big rains again, only I didn't realize just how big until this morning, when we awoke to our back yard looking like this:

It wasn't even close to the house, so no worries there. Plus, it drains off very fast. We're not even in a flood plain.

With all the craters where trees used to be back there, it'll be interesting to see what it looks like after the water recedes.

Timewaster Of The Week-Nov. 10

This is a great little problem-solving game:

http://www.onemorelevel.com/game/splitter

Timewaster Of The Week-Nov. 3

Yes, we're all sad that baseball season is over and Halloween has passed.

So here's a little something to help you cope:

ZOMBIE BASEBALL!

http://www.gamekrunch.com/content/zombie-baseball