Saturday afternoon I drove to Abilene.  I went by the post office and the grocery store before going to a friends house to prepare my contribution to the meal Saturday evening at another friends surprise birthday party.

I finally decided to do kolaches.  I did sixty of them, and had honey mustard, yellow mustard and barbecue sauce for dipping sauces.

The party was a "surprise" 75th Birthday party for one of the men in the group.  I will testify, he was surprised!   A good group turned out and there was an abundance of food.  The theme for the evening was Elvis!  There were albums and decorations on every table.  Painted 33 RPM records were painted silver and hung from the ceiling, swirling and turning in the breeze.  There were theme table and if you guessed correctly you won a prize!  I just looked at one of these tables and correctly guessed and received an Elvis CD.

Just as everyone was finishing their meal, loud introductory music began playing and all the sudden Elvis burst through the door!  He must have been a little rusty from the layoff but became better as the night went on. 

Elvis sang about two and a half hours, every song from the Elvis archives.  It was pretty neat!

It seems that the friend celebrating his birthday is a huge Elvis fan!  For about two months his girlfriend, his sister and his niece had been sneaking Elvis collectibles from the birthday boy's house.  I got tickled because the girlfriend said she had lied more in the last two months than she had all the rest of her life.

It was a fun evening for all!  Then Elvis left the building!

If I understand correctly, the Elvis impersonator is from Winters and he does Elvis and Old Country while his wife does a Patsy Cline impersonation.

Well, the NASCAR season is underway.  I would have loved to have seen Danica win it, but she finished in eighth place.Jimmy Johnson won the race followed by Jr. and Mark Martin.

After owning speed weeks the last two weeks, Kevin Harvick was caught up in a wreck and finished 42nd.

And the Oscars are over.  I enjoyed watching the arrivals more than the actual show.  It was almost comical watching designers, hair dressers and makeup people frantically making last second adjustments.

I did thing Halle Berry and Catherine Zeta Jones dresses looked remarkably alike!  Two gorgeous women!

I talked with Rian early today.  They have six inches of snow with drifts up to about three feet!  No school.

It has been spitting moisture, rain, sleet, snow most of the day here with gale force winds.  Predictions were for wind up to  55 miles per hour.

Have a day!

FATHER, thank YOU for a warm home.

Five days after turning sixty and so far I have avoided the nursing home. (LOL)

Yesterday was kind of a laid back day.  I had several morning projects I did in the office, prior to going to the farm shop. 

Our project truck had a couple of issues and I had not been able to find parts locally and we don't have a radiator shop in Sweetwater any more.

I needed a brake master cylinder for the 1951 Chevrolet bobtail truck.  The old one was frozen up (Or more accurately rusted up.  I finally found one in Abilene.

While the guys were messing with the water pump they nicked a tube in the radiator and once we got the truck running, the leak seemed to grow.  So I took it to a radiator shop in Abilene that I really like.  (You can bet it wasn't Abilene Radiator and Tommy and his band of merry thieves).

I found another shop that is fast, knowledgeable, and doesn't gouge you for unneeded repairs just to put more money in their pockets.

Anyhow there was a remote chance the radiator might come out of the shop so they asked if I had errands to run.  I told them I would hang around town.

I ended up eating lunch at Szechuan on South First, stopping in at Red Lobster for margaritas, and going to an afternoon picture show.  The movie was "Identity Theft", and it was hilarious.

There are two more movies I would like to see, "Parental Guidance", and Jango (sp) unchained.  One is a comedy and the other is set during the days of slavery.

Then I made a stop at Academy and bought a new sleeveless sleep shirt, and then stopped by Chili's for, you got it, more margaritas.

My radiator didn't make it out of the shop, but I sure enjoyed my day!

Thanks, I needed that!

I arrived home after ten, so I got some good zzzz's.  Tonight I am supposed to go to a birthday party!

Well, have a day and a weekend!

FATHER, thank YOU for days that rest and renew us.

I crossed the threshold day before yesterday.  I am now sixty years old.

It was a good day(s).

We have been on a different project at the barn.  Hopefully we will know where we are at with it later today.

Best news is that we received some moisture over night.  I tell you, the wheat was really stressed.  To be honest I don't know how it had held on until now.  Sam the weatherman says we should have rain all day long with severe weather possible late today and tonight.  Sure hope he is right.

I recently had requested a quote on another building at the farm.  This one is smaller square footage but taller and is an open wall structure, no cement floor (crushed rock) and will have bays large enough to get the planter(s) and strippers inside without using forklifts or removing them from the machines.  This building will be used to get tractors and sensitive equipment out of the weather, limiting exposure.  So many pieces of equipment have fiberglass or plastic pieces and the number of bearings on a planter or stripper header are surprisingly high.  Also the paint and interiors on the tractors really suffer from the heat.

I am still pondering the pro's and con's of the building.  We currently have the planter, stripper, combine, sprayer and nurse tank inside the barn along with three pickups, an antique car, two pull tractors and three forklifts and tools and attachments to numerous to mention.

My grandfather McLeod always told me rattlesnakes run in pairs and deaths come in threes.

Last Friday we lost the matriarch of the community at age 105, and Saturday we lost a young man at 43  and another respected gentleman at age 67.  Here is hoping this is the grim reapers quota for a while.

One of my least favorite things to do is go to a funeral.  However, since I have been back and living with Memama that is a pretty regular event.  In fact, later this morning we will attend the last funeral of the three mentioned above.

Well, I am still married.  We have an agreement and a decree but the opposing counsel has not signed off on it so it can be sent to the judge and ultimately the county clerk.

According to the agreement I got to go to the house the twelfth and pick up things that they had been unable to locate.  I was allowed into the attic and storage building and I also did a walk through of the house.

I think that  the thing that amazes me most is that they expect me to believe that items have miraculously disappeared and they sit there and look you in the eyes and tell you they have no knowledge of what happened to items.  Still no rings.  Still no diploma, and no boots.

They have a word for that.  It is called stealing.

You know, looking back I realize I stayed seventeen years to long for all the wrong reasons.

Well, let 'er rain.  Have a day!

FATHER, thank YOU for YOUR rain blessings.  FATHER we lift our friends that are hurting from loss for YOUR comfort and care.  And LORD I ask that YOU deliver me.

The new septic system is finished.  Thank goodness.

It is working well, even though it has a meskiny design and the fact that the tank is slightly too low (2").  We could probably have turd races with the slope from the house to the tank. 

The drain field went well.  I am very pleased.  We used the newer trend drain panels that require no gravel.  Supposedly it takes half the footage using the two foot widths compared to perforated drain line and gravel.  (The three foot wide panels require half again less footage.

We put in 120 feet of drain line in three sections.  The trenching was all the little Bobcat trac hoe wanted and it took two passes to get the width.  I was a happy camper when I dropped the machine back at the Bobcat dealer!

Some people would have you believe that running a back hoe or trac hoe is rocket science.  Don't believe it for a second.  All it takes is a little knowledge and coordination.  Shoot, Bill even got good on it!

We still have mounds of dirt, but next week we will begin a sprinkler watering to settle the dirt and then we will haul off the excess.  The guys have been leveling with rakes this morning.

A final project was to dig up an old propane tank.  Worst thing was that we cut the propane line Wednesday night.  The new line crossed the old tank.  Dang the luck.  I had to run to gather up pieces to splice the line where we would have heat that night in the house.

But we got it done!

We did take the majority of  Tuesday off to go to the house per the pending divorce decree and pick up some of my remaining property.  Still no boots, and no college or class rings.  Go figure.  We got to go into the attic, garage, I got to do a walk through of the house, and the storage building and back yard.  We had a pickup and trailer load, including my antique safe.  We also stopped by and got my items from the Stonegate storage unit.

Getting down to the short rows.

Have a day!

FATHER, YOU are getting me there.

The plumbing project is moving slower than I would ever have anticipated.  I actually thought a really hard day, day and a half would knock it out.  Four days in we are still working, although my bathroom is on line.

We are actually more than half way done, having set and plumbed the tank as well as one drain line.  We are on the second and largest drain line now and we are probably three quarters of the way done trenching

Yesterday we had built lines and connections to transition from the tank to the seep line, complete with T's to feed root preventative in and to connect the second seep line.  While the guys were doing this I was trenching with the trac hoe.  It was one of those days as the trench caved off twice the the little machine fell into the ditch.  Once I had to get pulled out and once I was able to use the boom and lift myself out.  The most exciting thing to happen was after the two cave ins I decided to dig from the side.  About the second move I was climbing up on the pile of dirt from the first trench for the second pass (to widen it for the panels to fit) and the little machine began crawling up and it just kept crawling.  Almost like slow motion.the machine turned over backward.  I killed the engine so it wouldn't starve for oil and crawled off the machine.  The three of us grabbed hold and righted the machine.

There is a fine line between vertical and horizontal like a bug on its back!  Thankfully it didn't hurt anything.

About eight last evening I walked in the house and couldn't find Memama.  In a few moments she walked in, having been to the wash house.  She had gone to get some clothes out of the dryer and fell.  Only a couple of scrapes.  She said she isn't even sore.  Tough ol' bat!

Well, I am not divorced yet.  The opposing attorney had a car accident Friday so things didn't happen.  It may be just as well. On  Monday Merrit's lawyer called her and said the new District Attorney there, having received a copy of the restraining order agreed to drop the charges against Merrit if Carol would agree too.  Funny thing, yesterday I checked my banking and found a charge for mylife.com and set it up on a recurring monthly charge.  Thing is, she charged it to my debit card and she is not and has never been on my account.  The staff at my life was so upset, they sent me the full account info, who set it up, when, and the payment method.  So now, it is lets make a deal!

Thing is, this isn't the first time she has done this.

I just figure what is good for one is good for the other.

Today I along with the hands are going to Abilene to retrieve more of my belongings.  I also get to do a walk through the house to see if I can find missing items.

Should be an interesting day!

Have one!

Oh FATHER, gonna need a big dose of patience.

Wednesday was a busy day!

For a week now, we have been working on plumbing here at Memama's house.  On Tuesday I finally made the decision to go with phase three of our project instead of doing a temporary fix that is going to be ripped out later in our renovations.  So, we have changed directions and emphasis.

The worst thing I can say is we are boring through concrete foundation that is totally cured.  We drill and bore for a while and then use an air hammer.

The best thing I can say is this house was built when houses were built!  The foundation appears to be eighteen inches thick.  Yikes.

We had initially decided to go under the foundation, but after digging three feet and not reachiing the bottom of the foundation we changed our minds.  I may be figuring out why Pepa never did this before.

I have additional help coming tomorrow morning.

Right now it appears some of the supplies I need are not currently available in Sweetwater.  Yuk.

I went to the funeral of a friends father yester afternoon, taking Memama along.  Then we stopped by the other funeral home in Sweetwater to pay our respects to another friend.  The second man did the major, radical remodeling at Memama and Pepa's house many years ago.  He was an excellent carpenter.  I would not have known him if I had seen him.  In fact, both of these men were ravaged by disease, the first affecting his mind and motor skills, the second affecting vital organs.  One was 84 and one was 71.

Then I made a bee-line for Abilene.  I needed to go by my divorce attorney's office briefly.  While I was there she gave me a copy of the printed decree for proofing.  It was on the money in content an d form but had numerous misspellings, including the respondent's and my own attorney's names.  Go figure.

Then I got my ears lowered, which took about an hour, wait included.  I really needed a haircut, in fact when the barber was through he asked me if that felt better and I told him I felt light headed!

Then I went and ate dinner at Chili's.  One of my favorites had been their cajun rib-eye, but it is no longer on the menu, however they did a good job with the rib-eye that is on their menu now.  I have never understood why they don't have baked potatoes, but their loaded mashed potatoes are good.  (As if I need mashed potatoes).

Then I went to the firehouse for a while.  Jim Sadler was playing and I always enjoy his band.  Dusty Creek, a Roscoe band is playing there this Friday and Saturday, their first foray into the Firehouse and a new band made up of older musicians from other bands, the Texas Dance Hall Drifters is playing next Friday and Saturday.  I haven't heard them, but people who heard their on the job audition say they are very good.

Well, I need to run down a small track hoe and some pieces for our project.

Have a day!

FATHER, I need some patience to see one project through and to begin the next.  Great things, YOU do every day!

How about that Superbowl?

Remember, you heard it here first.  The Ravens just didn't get my 11 points.

We had quite the little party here at Memama's.  Earlier in the day we had begun preparations, me making kolaches and Memama working on my rotelle dip with ground beef.  Then we moved on to firing up the grill.  Peppers and onions, german sausage, boneless ribs and ribeyes!

Way to much food!  We need a few more Super Bowls just to finish the meal!

My favorite commercial.  GOD made a farmer (even though it was by that POS company).  Although the Clydesdale colt was good.

I am hopeful that by this Friday my divorce will be final.

I had a call from my attorney yesterday discussing a few details and asking how I felt about it.  She is also going to get with Merrit's attorney and give him a copy of the restraining order against Carol to enter into evidence in the mess Carol started for Merrit.  They are hopeful that this will sway the district attorney to dismiss the charges.

However, if they don 't, I plan on filing charges against Carol for credit card abuse and forgery.  I figure what is good for the goose is good for the gander.

Friday was one of the longest, most stressful days I have had in a long time.  The negotiations were tedious and progress was slow.

Afterwards I went to dinner, which turned out to be a disaster.

It was definitely not the time to be contentious with me or to ask or demand I accept statements as fact without sources.

Anyhow, everything works the way it is supposed to.  I'm good with it.

I worked last night and since early on oil and gas stuff.  A man will be here at ten to meet with me.

Have a day!

FATHER, Thank YOU!

Well.  After completing the repairs on the 8310, the farm help had moved the tractor a short distance to clean under it.  When I went to drive the tractor out of the barn, the left front wheel rolled about twenty feet and locked down.  I reversed it and it rolled a short distance and locked down.  Dang the luck.

We jacked the left front off the ground and removed the wheel and planetary and found a broken piece wedged between the gears.  A roller bearing retainer had broken in half and fallen between the gears.  Luckily, from the old parts,  there was one roller retainer that was still good.  It took longer to clean all the metal out than it did to fix it.  Within an hour I was driving the big tractor and testing it out.  It did good.

Our next project involved getting the big stripper into the shop.  Jason has a pole vaulting pit stacked on one end and has the pro-mod pulling tractor torn down on the other end, so both big doors are not usable.  So we put a twenty-six foot header through a twenty foot door opening.  It took a while but we did it.  Also got the big stripper in the barn as well.

We are so ready for a rain.

The house levelers came Wednesday and Thursday.  They leveled Memama's house pier and beams the first day, then put six steel piers under the outside footing the following day and rechecked the pier and beams.

They completed all of the house except my bedroom and bathroom.  It turned out there was a leak under the bathroom and there was standing water.  When the farm hands came and we began to investigate, it appears they leak is from the sewer drain line.

Yuk.

It appears that the last time the plumber came and ran his line clearing machine, he perforated the drain line.

The guys have dug and digged, which ever you determine to be correct, and we put a pump under the house and pumped out about 350 gallons of water.  This morning there is no standing water but it is still very wet, in fact it is still too wet to dig.  So we sprinkled lime to dry the ground and it should also tone down any odor.

We will check it again Monday.

I spent all day yesterday in divorce mediation.  From 10 until 7.  We worked out a deal if Carol can produce clear titles.  She was missing one yesterday.  If that doesn't happen the deal is off.  If she does, by next Friday I should be divorced.

Neither of us is totally happy, but I feel she is in a workable position as am I.  It  is probably as good  a solution as we could hope for.

I guess it has been a week for women because I find myself totally detached.  After a long arduous day of negotiating, I went to dinner with a special friend and by the time I took her home I don't know if we remain friends or not, but certainly not special.

Oh well, the most important woman in my life is Memama and her well being, physically, and financially.  To be honest, all the other women in my life combined wouldn't make a wart on Memama's backside.

Ravens, by 11.  You heard it here.

Have a day!

Father, thank YOU for new beginnings.