Friday's Odds and Ends

Its a beautiful spring day here in East Texas and I was out early picking berries and then I took my dog for a walk. We have to enjoy these spring days before the blast of summer heat hits. Here is a picture of one of my favorite wildflowers. They grow abundantly in my front pasture and I have been known to drive around them when mowing.

 We're headed into run-off elections across the country and some of them could carry pretty hefty price tags. I like what one small town in Reeves County Texas did. The two candidates for city council, Bruce MacNair and Bryan Studer,  agreed to a coin toss to select the winner. All that cost was a quarter. A run-off election would have cost the small town of Wolfforth, which is near Lubbock, $10,000.

According to Texas election laws, a coin toss is a legal method to break a tie between two candidates, and it appears it may be legal in other states as well. In doing some research I found that a coin toss has been used in Illinois, New Mexico and even in the Philippines.

I have an idea. Why not make it law to have a coin toss to settle every election tie? Obviously those are the two candidates that most people wanted, and it could save so much money. And another plus is we would not have to suffer through all those horrid campaign ads that sling so much mud you want to put on your wading boots.

Here's a quarter to use.

 A Truthout article by Mike Ludwig shed new light on the controversial fracking method of extracting oil. Fracking is used in many states, Texas included, and right now there is an effort to halt the proposed fracking in areas surrounding New Mexico’s Chaco Culture National Historical Park. If you would like to urge the Bureau of Land Management to deny this proposal, you can sign a petition HERE

After reading Ludwig's article that opened with, "Energy Information Administration officials told reporters on Wednesday that they are cutting their estimate of how much oil can be drawn out of California's massive Monterey Shale formation by a whopping 96 percent."

Fracking involves forcing gallons of water, containing chemicals, deep into the earth to break up rock formations.

Ummm... do we really want to keep doing that?

Now lets close with some fun. I got these jokes from The Laugh Factory in the Family Jokes category.

A woman gets on a bus with her baby. The bus driver says, "That's the ugliest baby that I've ever seen. Ugh!" The woman goes to the rear of the bus and sits down, fuming. She says to a man next to her, "The driver just insulted me!" The man says, "You go right up there and tell him off – go ahead, I'll hold your monkey for you."

An elderly couple are in church. The wife leans over and whispers to her husband, "I just let out a long, silent fart. What should I do?" The husband replies, "First off, replace the batteries in your hearing aid!"

Happy Easter - Happy Spring

Just want to wish everyone who celebrates Easter a happy and blessed Holiday. No matter what religion one espouses, spring is always a time of great renewal of our earth as flowers blossom, trees burst forth with new leaves, and there seems to be an air of great anticipation and eagerness about us. So I hope all my friends who read this feel that sense of renewal and excitement in their lives.

May the Easter Bunny bring you lots of Chocolate

 On another note, the A to Z Challenge officially begins tomorrow, and that is no April Fools joke. (smile) I will be participating again this year and hope to be able to get a post done every day. Many will be short and sweet - well, hopefully sweet. I hope you will play along and visit when you can. You can also visit the other participants and read some fun posts this next month.

For more about the challenge and a list of participants visit the official A to Z Challenge blog site.

Say Hello to Spring

Please welcome my semi-regular Wednesday guest, Slim Randles as he shares more fun from the gang at the Mule Barn Truck Stop, who are featured in his popular weekly column, Home Country.

It was the sun’s fault; that’s all we could figure out later. Well, that and the demise of Doc’s phantom squirrel.

For a couple of days the sun had been warming our shoulders and making us smile. You know, whispering semi-forgotten things in our ears like “fly fishing … gardens … barbecue … swimming hole…”

Normally, our good doctor would’ve put another phony ad in the Valley Weekly Miracle offering a reward for his non-existent squirrel, Chipper, just to hoax us into spring. But after the last time, and the ransom money for squirrel nappers, everyone here knew there wasn’t a squirrel at Doc’s house. It just wouldn’t be the same as it had been.

So Doc got this madness started by putting an ad in the VWM that took a different turn: “Spring Special! Half off on all amputations. Call Doc.”

That was the first pickle out of the jar. The first tiny slip toward Spring Madness. We look up to Doc because he has more initials after his name than anyone else in town, and besides, he delivered all of us at least once. So we waited to see who would follow his example. In our case, you have to wait a week, of course, and despite a couple of inquiring phone calls, Alberta down at the paper wasn’t telling.

Turns out it was Dewey and Bert who struck next.

Bert’s quarter-page ad promoted the town’s first (in a long time) sock hop.

“Sock Hop! Town square! Wear socks! Nothing else!”

Now he didn’t say when this would take place, but we did notice some teenage boys hanging around the square just to see if there was any chance of naked nubile nymphets. There wasn’t.

Dewey Decker, the accident-prone king of garden fertilizer in the valley (it’s hard to damage cow manure) bought an ad for his garden-enhancing products offering a free taste test.

There certainly is something goofy and fun about spring. Just ask Alberta down at the paper. She has this little spring smile …
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To buy Slim’s books, go to www.slimrandles.com

Spring is busting out all over

One of my favorite things to see in the spring is all the wild, and not so wild, daffodils as they start popping up. Here in East Texas they grow wild along the roadways, but they are also popular flowers for home landscaping. They come up before the grass starts to grow so they can be planted throughout an entire yard.

My neighbors, about a mile down the road, have a gorgeous display of daffodils surrounding their house. Some yellow and some with pale outer petals and deep orange centers. They also have a huge old oak tree with daffodils planted around the base. Every day when I drive by I think I should take pictures, so the last time I passed and had my camera with me, I stopped.

I took a few shots and then one of their cats decided to come over and say "howdy." She seemed to enjoy weaving her way through the rows of flowers and liked having her picture taken.

What are the first signs of spring you see where you live?

Is Spring Ever Going to Get Here?

I saw the daffodils poking their lovely little yellow blooms up along the dry, brown roadways in the last few days, so I thought spring was definitley coming.

Now, I'm not so sure. Snow is falling, and it is predicted that we might have accumulations of several inches. A prediction that worries me since I have not cleaned up after the last snowfall two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, our cat, John, simply does not care about the weather. "Just give me a comfortable place to sleep."

I want to be a cat.

Easy Does It

Okay, I'm off my high-horse and much more mellow today. It is an absolutely gorgeous day and there is no way I can be strident with such a beautiful view out my office window.

The trees are leafing out, and the berry vines are covered in white flowers. Not too long now and I will be out picking berries and having them with my breakfast. That is if the birds leave me enough to harvest. There is a small flock of little sparrows already eyeing the vines. And a few robins are keeping watch from the branches of a sweet gum tree.

It is also a warm day with bright blue in the sky and bold sunlight cutting through the trees. I think I would much rather be outside than inside. In fact, I can't even count how many times I've made up an excuse to leave my office.

Whoops, I feel another one coming on....