A Song and a Brownie Frosted with Memories

Amanda's first chorus event at Deer Creek was a music and dessert review. It's an idea that was new to me, but it was a pretty good one. I mean, who would argue with free dessert while being serenaded? There were 2 long tables loaded with all kinds of dessert from homemade to store bought and 2 risers set up for a high school choir and a middle school choir. It was pretty crowded there, in the lobby of the Alumni Hall, and Amanda's group was set up to the side in the shadows so my pictures didn't turn out very good. The singing was great though and really helped the desserts go down. As if dessert needed any help, sheeeesh. The high school groups sang songs by class period and then in a combined group, then the middle school sang some songs and then all sang combined. The middle school group is pretty big, I didn't do an official head count but I'd say there was around 40 girls and 1 boy in the choir. All in all it was a pretty nice evening. I moved around the room and tried to get a decent picture, but I didn't do very well.

The stupidest thing occurred to me at one point. Mom had not gone to a lot of the kids events in the last year or so because she couldn't see to drive at night. It occurred to me that if she were still here that she surely would have been there to see Amanda sing that night, and suddenly I had the sads in full force. What's stupid about it is if mom were still here she'd be living at home and I wouldn't be and the kids wouldn't be at Deer Creek in the first place for her to come and see anyway. But, I thought it and it made me sad and on we go. I'm sure that this won't be the only reminder from Deer Creek that tells me that I miss mom and dad. After all, I'm living in their house.

I started a facebook of my own a few days ago. I never had any interest on my own, but a niece invited me, and a lot of the extended family has a facebook, so I joined up. They have started a group called I HEART the Lazy J, to remember all things Granny and Papa Dodgen. Well, I don't just HEART the Lazy J, I own it. It's my home. But if you HEART the Lazy J, and you're reading this, then you probably know why I'm crying right now and you know what I wish was different out there right now. So many years of memories of coming in the back door, not as the master of the house but just as the son. I guess I still wish on some days that I'll open that door and hear dad call out Hellll-oooo from the other room, or see mom sitting at the table drinking tea and looking out at her birds. Still though, it's home, and if I have my way about it I'll not live anywhere else from now on. And to everyone that is a HEARTer of the Lazy J, that back door is still as open to you as it has been for going on 30 years now. If you are nearby, stop in, anytime. It's a lot different now, but it's a lot the same too. There's a balance there that I guess I'm still learning. It's both comforting and saddening at the same time to look at Tandy sit and watch the television while she works with her needle and thread. It's new, and yet it sometimes brings a flood of memories of another gal that used to do the same thing. I don't know how to explain it, you either get it or you don't.

Come by, we'll have dessert and sing a song, then maybe we'll remember those that have led the way before us. After all, they were the HEART of the Lazy J, and they are the reason we love it so much.

Half-Baked Alaskan

I hadn't seen my friend Chuck in years. In fact, I pretty much gave up on seeing him. The last time he was here was for work-related training and he said then that he had pretty much reached the end of the classes for his line of work and he wasn't sure when or if he would return. Then, a couple of months ago, a mutual friend asked for my new address and how to get there so that he could pass it on to an old friend that wanted to come visit. Chuck's habit in days past was to just show up out of the blue. Sometimes school would last just a few days, other times it would be for several weeks. One Sunday morning as I was getting ready to leave for church, I went out the garage to check on something and I almost ran into him as I walked out. He grinned and said, "Am I too late for church?" Good times, good times.

Well it's been a long time, and this class was only a week long, but we were able to get together for a couple of visits while he was here. He came on Thursday evening the day before he flew out again. We had bratwurst and potato salad and Mountain Dew for dinner. I guess we've had that or something like it every time we get together. Then we spent the evening catching up on each other's lives. He's been to Iraq a couple of times, not to fight necessarily, but to help provide for and maintain the troops that did do the fighting. He went on a trip to Israel, (all of these adventures were with the guard reserves), and had some great stories of the holy land and some of the things that saw while he was there. He brought back some salt crystals from the Dead Sea. He said that the salt forms big crystals and sinks to the bottom and you can feel them with your feet, but even in only waist deep water you can't bend down far enough to pick one up with your hands. His kids, like mine, have grown up in the years since we've been together. He was shocked to see how big my 3 had grown. Each of them are now taller than he is, (although that's no great achievement, he's not very tall). He showed me the website of the church in Wasilla and some pictures of their youth group trip snowmobile riding and sledding. Time passed too quickly and soon we were saying I'll see you sometime down the road. I really hope to one day take a vacation to Alaska and visit him and his family there, fish for some salmon, or maybe do some other hunting, but definitely tour the mountains and glaciers with camera firmly in hand.

Some friends defy distance and time. Who knows when we'll meet again, I sure don't, but I'd bet when we do we'll pick up the conversation just like it was a day or two ago that we had seen each other and not months or years. Some other friends and us are talking about getting an RV and driving up to Alaska for a week or two. So far it's just talk, silly talk even. But who knows, sometimes talk turns into action and maybe one day we'll head North, way North.

Until then, Godspeed Chuck, take care....
I love ya brother....

11th Place Isn't Bad at All

Not when you haven't ever run on a team before. But Jeff improved from having never run to finishing in 11th position in his last meet this year. He was close to running in the district race the next week, but not quite, maybe he'll do that next year.

They started out back behind the school, about 10 different schools were there.

I saw Jeff in the middle of the pack and he saw me too and started to angle over towards me.

He looked right at me for that first 100 yards while he ran to the edge of the path in front of me.

Then he broke out in a crazy, ain't I somethin' grin as he passed by that I almost missed completely with the camera.

The next time I saw him was over a mile later and he wasn't quite as grinny as he was at the first pass.

But at the end, what was left of him was hustling towards the finish line in position for a medal.

Tired but well rewarded for his efforts, he got home in 11th place. Pretty cool. Deer Creek won the meet and finished with 6 runners in the top eleven in this race. Jeff learned what it means to be on a team and made some new friends. He had a couple of days off and then basketball practice started last week.

Go Antlers!

Just Another Day....

Today is Wednesday, Oct. 10, the 283rd day of 2007. There are 82 days left in the year.

On this date in the year:

1775 - General William Howe is named the interim commander in chief of the British army in America, replacing Lieutenant General Thomas Gage. He was permanently appointed to the post in April 1776

1780 - A powerful storm slams the islands of the West Indies, killing more than 20,000 people. Known as the Great Hurricane of 1780, it was the deadliest storm ever recorded

1795 - The United States mint hired its first two female employees

1813 - Composer Guiseppe Verdi was born in Le Roncole, Italy

1830 - Queen Isabella II is born, she died in 1904 and was queen of Spain from 1833-1868

1845 - the U.S. Naval Academy was established in Annapolis, Md.

1877 - the U.S. Army held a West Point funeral with full military honors for Lieutenant-Colonel George Armstrong Custer. Killed the previous year in Montana by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Custer's body had been returned to the East for burial on the grounds of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, where Custer had graduated in 1861-at the bottom of his class

1881 - Charles Darwin published "The Formation of Vegetable Mold Through the Action of Worms." (Let's not forget Darwin's stellar posthumous work as worm fodder, no book has been published on that to this date but certainly evolution cannot continue without a food source. Thank you, Chuck!!)

1886 - the tuxedo dinner jacket made its American debut at the autumn ball in Tuxedo Park, N.Y.

1900 - Actress Helen Hayes is born

1901 - Henry Ford drove one of his own vehicles in his first and last automobile race. Today Ford is the only automaker that can lay claim to victory in the Indy 500, Daytona 500, 24-Hours of LeMans and Daytona, 12 hours of Sebring, the Monte Carlo Rally, and the Baja 1000

1911 - Revolutionaries under Sun Yat-sen launched their overthrow of China's Manchu dynasty

1917 - Jazz musician Thelonious Monk is born

1935 - George Gershwin's opera "Porgy and Bess" opened on Broadway

1943 - Chiang Kai-shek took the oath of office as president of China

1949 - Country singer Tanya Tucker is born

1957 - Milwaukee Braves win World Series game 7 over the New York Yankees, 5-0

1964 - the 18th Summer Olympic Games opened in Tokyo, Japan

1969 - Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre is born

1970 - Fiji became independent after nearly a century of British rule

1973 - Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned his office pleading no contest to one count of federal income tax evasion

1979 - Wayne Gretzky played his first NHL game and scored the first of his NHL record assists for the visiting Edmonton Oilers against the Chicago Blackhawks

1985 - U.S. fighter jets forced an Egyptian plane carrying the hijackers of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro to land in Italy, where the gunmen were taken into custody

2002 - The House voted 296-133 to give President George W. Bush authority to use military force against Iraq. The Senate followed on the 11th

2004 - Superman actor Christopher Reeve died at 52, after becoming a paraplegic in a horse riding accident in May 1995

2006 - Google Inc. purchased YouTube Inc. for $1.65 billion in a stock deal

Aaaaaaaaaaand, finally, in 1967, 40 years, or 14,610 days ago.......

The Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits the placing of weapons of mass destruction on the moon or elsewhere in space, entered into force

In 1967 there were approximately 3.7 million births in the US.
In 1967 the US population was approximately 179,323,175 people, 50.6 persons per square mile.
In 1967 in the US there were approximately 1,800,000 marriages and 479,000 divorces.
In 1967 in the US there were approximately 1,712,000 deaths (9.5 per 1000)

The top songs were:

To Sir with Love by Lulu
Windy by the Association
Somethin' Stupid by Nancy & Frank Sinatra
The Letter by the Box Tops
Happy Together by the Turtles
Daydream Believer by the Monkees
Ode to Billie Joe by Bobbie Gentry
Groovin' by Young Rascals
Light My Fire by the Doors
Hello Goodbye by the Beatles

Last but Oh, most certainly not least:

Craig Howard Dodgen, who is not a weapon of mass destruction and will therefore thankfully be allowed access to space and the moon if he so wishes, was born.

More than you wanted to know........