GREEN ! ! ! !

Going green is the new "thing" these days. It is all the rage, "everyone" is doing it, everyone except the "evil" conservatives that love digging coal, drilling oil, and killing polar bears.

Now let it be known I am a fairly conservative minded person, I believe in limited federal government and strong state rights. So being green is not on the top of my list. I have been hounded about "doing my share" and "saving our planet" by numerous tree huggers. This has been the tree hugger mantra for the last 20 years or so.

Well the tree huggers have been going about it all wrong. Most people are selfish and lazy by nature, so they won't go out of their way to recycle, or to use eco-friendly products. They have been pushing the whole "save the world", "save the polar bears", "save the owls" rhetoric.

What they should be doing is showing how when we recycle we can save money. For instance plastic bottles, if we don't recycle these things we have to make them out of petroleum. So the use of petroleum to make bottles drives the price of oil up, which in turn will cause the price of gas higher. And gas is to damned high now. (yes I know it is under $2.00 a gallon, but it is still to high.)

So, tree huggers stop trying to save the baby seals and start showing how we can save money.

Band of Brothers

I finally bought the DVD set of Band of Brothers. The impetus behind the purchase is my getting into the miniatures game Flames of War as stated previously in this blog. I really enjoy this series, it has great filming and excellent editing. I also like how each episode is from a different point of view. I think this was most evident in the episode named "Bastogne", in this episode we follow Easy companies medic during the Battle of the Bulge as he struggles to keep warm, find medical supplies and keeping his company alive. The imagery in the whole production is striking and the story of Easy company is told in such a way that you begin to feel as if you are part of the action yourself.

If you haven't had the pleasure of viewing this masterpiece, rent it, buy it, do what you must; but get your hands on this great film.

20 minutes to self destruct.

While sitting in my hotel room in the Houston suburb of Pearland, I'm watching the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Where Silence Has Lease". This is the episode where the crew of Enterprise encounter a conscience far above their own. The captain decides to destroy the ship and all its crew to keep it from being used as a laboratory experiment. Picard sets the destruct interval to 20 minutes.

While watching I began to think about how I would spend the last 20 minutes of my life if I knew it was to end at a certain time. Would I sit and contemplate my morality? Would I try to contact my family? Would I do things that are illegal? I really don't know what I would do.

How about you?

Spring has sprung!

Spring has sprung,
The grass has ris,
I wonder where the flowers is?

This little poem was taught to me by my granddad, one of the greatest men to have ever lived, in my not-so humble opinion.

This post is a just a little tribute to him.

James Havens Word was definitely a renaissance man. He was one of the most devout individuals I have met, but still was soundly in the corner of science. In his early years, living in Austin, TX he was a trouble maker and was constantly getting into trouble. For instance he took a skyrocket and laid into one of the trolly tracks on Congress Ave. and set it off. Well the situation started out fine, but it decided to take a turn for the worse when the rocket careened into the plate glass window of Christian Science Reading Room.

Another story about him was he and his buddies would climb to the top of the inside dome in the Texas Capital and drop a strike-anywhere match wrapped in bubblegum. They would try to get out of the building before the old Civil War vet who was a guard there could catch them. See thing about strike-anywhere matches and bubblegum is that when dropped the friction of the gum against the match when it hits the ground lights the match and creates a bubble in the gum. The bubble eventually pops and in the rotunda of the Capital it would sound like a gun shot.

Granddad claimed to the die he died that if it hadn't been for the Boy Scouts he would have been in the state pen by the time he was 18.

Instead the Scouts got him straightened out and he joined the Marine Corps. He had decided to be a sniper during basic, camping out every free moment on his sergeant's door step. That is until he found out that a Marine sniper had a very short life expectancy. He served his time in the Marines and came home to Texas and started a family. He moved to a small town on the Caprock of Texas called Floydada.

He became the Hartford Insurance man there and took care of the farmers and other residents of the area. The Boy Scouts meant so much to Granddad that he became the Scoutmaster for the local troop, even though he only had daughters and no sons.

He also became well known in the archeology community, with several major finds credited to him. Including Baker Cave in the Devil's River area around Del Rio, TX and his research into the travels of Coronado in the canyons surrounding Floydada. Anybody that has been involved in serious archeology in Texas in the past 50 years probably knows my grandfather, either by reputation or by having the privilege to have worked with him directly.

There are many great stories about my granddad, to many to tell here. He truly was one of the greatest men to have ever walked on this planet. There has only been a few men that have influenced my life to the extent he has. In no particular order, My granddad, my dad, my step-dad Bruce, Jesus Christ, and my drill sergeant, SSG James Ashwood.

Because of my granddad I have my faith, I earned my Eagle Scout largely to his credit, and my desire to learn more about my past can be, at least partially, attributed to him.

As for his question in the poem above?

Here you go granddad,

Happy St. Pat's Day

I know I am late, but it did get posted on the right day. But I was traveling for the last two days. For those of you who don't know, my company has me travel all over Texas to train our customers his to use our software. So I was scheduled to train in Kirbyville, northeast of Houston by about two hours. That is unless you get caught on IH-10 behind a multi-vehicle pile up that included haz-mat clean up. I was lucky last night, not so much today. Two days, two accidents, same place, same time, that strech is jinxed. Stay away from the Trinity River bridge on 10 any time between 3:00 and 7:00 in the afternoon.

So now I am sitting at Houston Hobby Airport waiting for the very last flight back to Austin. Just about ready to board, so I will post this and talk to y'all on Friday.

Posted from my kick ass iPhone.

I want my mummy!

Well last Saturday half of the 4Cs took a day trip to Dallas to visit mummy dearest. Cruft and his trophy fiance joined me and my sweet wife on an excursion that took us 190 miles north and 3,200 years into history.

The Dallas Museum of Art is hosting the King Tut Exhibit presented by the National Geographic Society. The exhibit opened back last November and will close and move on in May. This is an amazing show, and although we didn't get to see Tut's actual head piece or his sarcophagus but we did get to see some of his personal possessions that were buried with him. Such as one of his ceremonial daggers, the crown he wore while he was alive and a beautiful chest piece.

There was a sarcophagus and a "death" mask, those belonging to Tjuyu, Tut's grandfather. There were artifacts from other family members as well, wall carvings of his father, miniature sarcophagus of his still-born sister. There were also canopic jars of his mother's and various items found in his family's court.

I am still trying to wrap my brain around how old these artifacts truly are. These items are over 3,200 years old, remember the United States is less than 250 years old and Europe has only been aware of the "New" world for just over 500 years. And what is even more mind-blowing is that when King Tut came to power the pyramids of Giza, outside Cairo, were already 1,000 years old. We are talking OLD.

It was a terrific trip, and we will be going back to the Dallas Museum of Arts to see the other permanent exhibits. We are also planning a trip to the Witte Museum in San Antonio in April.

ZOMBIE ATTACK!!!

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