Jon stopping by.

     two weeks ago, Jon stopped by on his way to his tour in Japan. The kid is so skinny, it makes me hungry just to look at him. He is so hyper. All the workouts and such. He is a one of a kind kid.

     Well, we sat around and bull crapped about this and that. Things like cars, and boats and the Navy. Also responsibilities and family, bills, and things that effect us both. All the things that we had in common.

     We did get him to stay a few hours and get some sleep. He really does not have a room here and William was adamant that he sleep in his bedroom. We both went to bed at about 1 AM and he wanted to get up early so I set my alarm.

     At 5 AM, I went up and was going to wake him up, but I just had to watch him sleep for 10 minutes. Yeah, he is 22 and all, but I think the last time I did that was in 1993. He still sleeps with his eyes open. It is comforting (to me) to watch him sleep. I will not get into the specifics of why he didn't live with me in his teens. I will just say that I missed him all this time.

      Sometimes you just have to love your kids, no matter what happens in our lives.

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If a tree falls by the river, does it make a splash?

     We had a little storm blow through the other day. It (to my delight) took out a tree in front of the house. Sure, It was blocking a little bit of the view. One thing. When it came crashing down, it almost killed a man that was walking up the street.If you click on the picture, it should blow up in a seperate window. If not, hold down the shift key and click on the picture. Anyway, in this picture, you can see Richard, Maryann, and William in the middle of the tree, being impressed that it actually fell. In their eyes, trees are supposed to be these massive things that are impervious to such things.

     As you can see, the tree was a little on the large size. I would have to estimate the girth to be about 60 inches or so. The strange part was that the storm literally ripped the root system out of the ground.

     Maryann was the most impressed that the tree fell. Just the day before, she was sitting in the tree's shade. I was one of the trees that everyone sat underneath because it created a great amount of shade for the picnic table and the bench that was underneath it's canopy.

     One of the things that this storm did, was to reorient the house. Yes, the wind was so strong that it moved the house a little bit south. Some of the flooring (floor boards) that are on the first floor had been moved to the point of them bouncing up as you walk on them. More on that in another post.

     When all this was happening, Bridget and the kids were on the porch. All of them were yelling at Tom who was the guy walking up the street when this all was happening. Just before the tree fell, I could see his umbrella fold upwards in the wind and that is when everyone else was running into the house. Of course, I am the big dummy and passed them in the doorway as I was running out into the storm.

I had seen Tom walking up the street, then as his umbrella folded up because of the wind, he literally disappeared from view. The rain and wind were blowing so hard, I could not see more than 50 feet from the house. Just as he disappeared, I saw this massive shadow come crashing down, covering the street and what looked like, crushing Tom. So as I was running out of the house in the middle of this seriously dangerious storm, he was huddled down in back of the scoop in front of the house. He was missed being crushed by mear inches. I ran over to where the tree fell and was relieved to see he was still alive. I was damn impressed that he was unhurt. So, after a few seconds of telling him that he needed to come over to the house, he came over and stood in the front door and shook for a minute until the storm finally blew over.

     So, once we saw that Tom was OK, we all went outside and admired the damage. It was not very interesting. Only the fact that this all transpired just after a concert was blown away up the street at the park and just minutes ago.

     It was stimulating when we went out and saw that everyone was out looking at the trees and seeing that everyone was unhurt.

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The Gadsden Flag:

The American Revolutionary period was a time of intense but controlled individualism - when self-directing responsible individuals again and again decided for themselves what they should do, and did it - without needing anyone else to give them an assignment or supervise them in carrying it out.

Such a person was the patriot Colonel Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina. He had seen and liked a bright yellow banner with a hissing, coiled rattlesnake rising up in the center, and beneath the serpent the same words that appeared on the Striped Rattlesnake Flag - Don't Tread On Me.

Colonel Gadsden made a copy of this flag and submitted the design to the Provincial Congress in South Carolina. Commodore Esek Hopkins, commander of the new Continental fleet, carried a similar flag in February, 1776, when his ships put to sea for the first time.

Hopkins captured large stores of British cannon and military supplies in the Bahamas. His cruise marked the salt-water baptism of the American Navy, and it saw the first landing of the Corps of Marines, on whose drums the Gadsden symbol was painted.

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Boyscout Canoe Trip (By Richard)

Last Friday we (my Boy Scout Troop and I) went to Morgans Canoe and Livery. My Troop had rented a total of five canoes and eleven kayaks. For a fifteen mile trip down the Little Miami River, it took us about nine hours to reach our campground.

During that time this what happened, Chrisna (my good friend) in his kayak was acting as if it was impossible, while having trouble with every little thing you could think of from paddling to turning to capsizing which he did in two foot water. When he did when when no one was looking, we were shoving off the bank. Then for a quarter mile he slowly chased it over rapids and four feet deep places in the river.

After he got the hang of kayaking people started to tip or should I say capsize. Soon after wards Patrick was the second one to tip over very dramatically I might say with a scream from him (horribly loud I might add). It took him forever to dump out the water and get back in.

After a few hours, we hit some rapids which wanted to turn you around really fast. The rapids tipped a canoe, then a few hours later the havoc began. Three more canoes tipped because they tried to finish a merit badge requirement. Afterwards we had a couple of kayaks tip over and we finished the trip. We slept that night through a storm and a lot of fireworks from across the river. The next morning we woke up, packed up, had breakfast and left for home.

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