Pear Leaves.

Well, after the last two rants... I decided I just needed to show you a pretty picture.

We don't get much fall color here, everything goes pretty much from green to brown, with an occasional forray into yellow. But the ornamental Ambassador and Emporer Pears at least look kind of interesting on the way....

These are just some leaves I found on my morning walk around the block... I spread them out on the scanner. They're kind of cool, individually, but a whole tree full of them just looks ill... Anyway, I'll take it as I find it...

RANT ALERT!

Just a quick post before I attack the house. This place hasn't been seriously cleaned in longer than I'm willing to admit. But posting for my wonderful blogging friends is a perfectly wonderful excuse to procrastinate a little.
The Blue Girl Rose is blooming in the yard... this is the bush that sombody gave to my mother, and ended up in my front yard. I posted about it before but nothing too important...

Last night, I went to some darned seminar about 'wellness' products... a network marketing thing. A friend of mine is involved in it, and they just wanted to 'share' it with me. I listened to several motivational speakers telling me all about how wonderful everything is... I don't know if you've ever been to these things... but here's the rub...

They stand up there and tell you about the miraculous effect of their products in their lives. Just to let you know, the products include magnets in your shoes, mondo expensive matresses{with magnets included in the stuffing} some machine that makes hexagonal water {?} special air filters, dietary supplements, red-wave lights, and every other silly thing you've ever dreamed of. Then a bunch of people stand up and tell you how all these wonderful products have cured their MS, diabetes, back injuries and general malaise. Then the speakers come back and tell you that they make no medical claims, even though they just did.

Then they tell you how as a GOOD AMERICAN you are almost OBLIGATED to be a successful network marketer... (even though the company itself is based in Japan, it's still evidentlyvery much AMERICAN to spend your money on things made in other countries.) Then they make some amusing plays on words, then they tell you how stress is killing us all, and how they're soooo happy to SHARE (for a price) this OUTSTANDING SUCCESS PROGRAM with you so that you can have lots of money and spend all this time with your children (family values is a big marketing tool for this bunch) etc, and so on and so forth, and would all the Special Guest please stand up so that they can give you an application and a small plastic bracelet, at which point I felt a hand on my back pushing me out of my seat, whereupon I informed someone that if they didn't remove their hand from my back they were going to draw back a bloody stump and we'll see if that magnet in your shoe cures that...

Now, I'm pretty open minded. If my next door neighbor, or my cousin, or someone I actually knew was cured by strapping a magnet to their butt... I might be impressed. But I'm sitting here in this room, invited by someone who is telling me what a wonderful, successful and healthy life they're leading, even though I know for a fact that they've been laid up fighting the flu for the past 4 weeks. And on the other side of me, is some guy I've just met, telling me what a wonderful, successful and healthy life he's had since begining these products, even though not 30 minutes ago he was talking about these awful migraines he's had for the past 2 weeks... (I'm thinking the magnet headband might be giving them to him...) and scattered throughout the room are dozens of people who keep telling everyone how this WELLNESS program has helped them sooooo much, and, quite frankly, they don't look well... I mean, maybe they are well, I certainly don't know. But what's the point of being well if you look like you've got one foot in the grave and the other foot on a banana peel? Quite frankly, given a choice, I wouldn't mind being on deaths door, as long as I looked good.

After all this, I did a truly American thing, and went to a bar to have an alcoholic beverage and a good rant to any poor soul in hearing distance.

And now, I have to clean the house...

I'm trying to be a good blogger...

but the planet doesn't seem inclined to cooperate with this endeavor.



The pictures are just things in the yard... nothing too exciting, but I finally figured out what was with the camera, so I decided to take a few shots...



But here's what's been happening... Last week, I drove all day on a rather slow Monday. Then I got an order to pick up on Tuesday and drive all the way to Austin... aproximately 200 miles. Good $$$, so 7 am Tuesday, I'm picking it up and gone, back in DFW about 3:30... (and I suppose I should mention, it rained each and every inch of the way... not a nice polite rain either... we're talking a no visibility near biblical deluge type of rain) and then straight home... (this is why couriers charge so much for longer trips... one is all they can do per day as opposed to 7 to 12 smaller ones...)



Wednesday, I drive small trips all day, and dispatch suddenly calls and says they have something that has to get 250 miles to Houston, do I want it? Well of course I want it. I'm thinking I'll pick this up, get into Houston about 7 or 8 PM, find a bar, have some fun, check into a cheap motel and drive back tomorrow....

So they send me the order. Turns out it's a round trip... extra $$$, but now I have to deliver the machine part to the factory, pick up the bad one for repair, and be back in Dallas before 5 AM. No R&R, no fun, no sleep. That's just annoying.

But, on the way back, at about 2 AM, I did stop along Hwy 45, which is rather desolate... there's not many towns directly on that Highway, and spent a few minutes stretching my legs, which is very neccesary if you're driving for a long time and late at night. It gets your blood moving and helps keep you alert. Since you're away from city lights, you can look up and see stars, and even pick out part of the milky way. Quite a sight to see actually... I saw 4 shooting stars in the space of 10 minutes.

so, I get back into Dallas about 4 am, get the part where it's going, and I miss the next days work entirely. I'd driven more than 20 hours, the only thing getting delivered was my butt into a bed. And BTW... this is my birthday. Weee Haw.

Drove Friday. All day. Till far too late...

Drove Monday. All day... for not much actually...

And today, I had to take off to go sign papers for the estate. Calling somebody else to find out why they're taking automatic withdrawals from Mom's account, even though they saw the Death Certificate over a Month ago... Not the end of it unfortunately. I'm gonna be dealing with all this stuff for the next 6 months it appears.

And it's an absolutely beautiful day outside, of the kind that we have very few of in the Dallas Ft. Worth metroplex, and I'm stuck trying to do this @#$%&*!

As I mentioned before, my birthday was last week... the 1 month aniversary of Moms death (a fact I mention because several ever-so-thoughtful-weasel-people made special phone calls to point it out to me, so evidently it's very important!) I spent the day sleeping between phone calls from afore mentioned weasel-people and the evening at a friends house having an extremely informal dinner.

Actually a wee bit too informal. It was me, a friend from High School, and the computer. Specifically, some guy that she'd met online who lives in Cairo, Egypt, and who's face kept popping up in a chat window on her computer screen...

"Isn't he cuuuuuute?" she asked.

"If you're into sasquatch." I answered.

and I went out last weekend to see some people.

No one I knew,

just people.

Any people.

I didn't care.

and that's how I've been spending my time....

And that's all for my rants today... I interspersed it with some decent pics, so it shouldn't be too depressing....

later.

I'm a bad bad blogger...

I haven't posted in seemingly forever. But it's not entirely my fault...

1) it's been raining. For over a week now. Seemingly incessantly. Very annoying. I hate taking pictures in the rain.

2) even if I liked taking pics in the rain, my camera seems to be messing up.

3) And I haven't really had anything to say. The rain has drowned out even my ranting ability. Just a big damp blah.

But, I have been reading all of your blogs, so I'm not ignoring anyone.

I'm just here.

Thought I'd let you know I'm still kicking.