Friday Cemetery Blogging

A Couple of Photos

Been playing with photoshop again. The top shot is from a church started by a group of slaves in the 1870's in Corsicana. It was a very cool building.

The second one is pretty self explanatory - a rainy cemetery in Athens.

So how's your week going? Mine is still windy and sandy.

And windy.

With sand.

Misty Weekend

I had the best spooky weekend! Rose and John were headed to visit Rose's aunt in Gun Barrel City. (Don't you just love that name?) I hitched a ride with them and spent the weekend skulking around cemeteries in Athens with C.Wright.

We even found, among other treasures, a cemetery named after George Valentine Petty. Isn't that a great name?

I love names. I keep a list of probationer names. They are really incredibly funny, but unfortunately, I can't share any of them with you. Cemetery names are fair game though. If - when - I write a book, my characters will all be named for people I've tramped on in grave yards. Names like Minnie Moon, for example.

While we were there, the weather was the most creepishly foggy and misty and downright rainy. My favorite! Unfortunately, grey granite monuments silhouetted against a grey granite sky makes for some boring photos. However, anything you snap with you camera aimed at the ground takes a wonderfully subdued and eerie feel. Maybe I can post some good shots later this week.

On the way home, we all breathed a sigh of resignation as we climbed back up on the dry, dusty caprock. As John said, "Every time I go somewhere else, it gets harder and harder to come back home." We were welcomed with two days worth of sandstorms.

Some days I really don't know why the hell we bother to live here.

Although, there's always the sunset...

Friday Cemetery Blogging

If he'd swerved, maybe he wouldn't have been shot!

Single parent, eight kids, frontier sheriff.
Hell, yeah, she was a remarkable woman! They gave the historical marker to the wrong Loyd, if ya ask me.

Friday Cemetery Blogging

Loosened, unfettered, apart, untied.

Avia Knotts has gone and died.

At first I thought, Whut the hell??? But....

You Would Be a Pet Bird

You're intelligent and witty, yet surprisingly low maintenance.You charm people easily, and they usually love you a lot more than you love them.You resent anyone who tries to own or control you. You refuse to be fenced in. Why you would make a great pet: You're very smart and entertaining Why you would make a bad pet: You're not interested in being anyone's pet! What you would love about being a bird: Flying, obviously What you would hate about being a bird: Being caged

What Kind of Pet Would You Be?

Trying out this video thing...

Just messin' around...

Friday Cemetery Blogging

I'm not as old as this Person.

But I'm older today than I was yesterday.

Random Stuffs of Monday Madness

I had this really great post that I was going to do tonight. (Well, not really great, but at least mildly entertaining.) However, I left the scrap of legal pad that it's written on in my office. I had a long wait in court this morning, which is the only place on the planet that I submit to the torture of waiting without a book, so I tend to fill the time with writing.



Unfortunately, when I don't bring the drabblous scribblings home with me, it does none of us any good.



So, speaking of waiting, I find myself becoming more and more intolerable of it. I can wait for days on end, as long as I have a book to read. If not, I ain't doin' it. No way. No how. I refuse to even pull into the parking lot of the doctor's office without a significantly weighty tome. (Nothing deep - just something lengthy.) I even read when I'm in line at the drive through at the bank. Although I've not stooped to my father's low of taking a book to the movies to read by what might as well be distant candlelight, that's only because I don't usually get there before the previews start. I've even taken a book to a funeral.

What is the weirdest place you read?

That being said - I've sadly neglected reading over the last year or so. I've done it in fits and starts in lines and at restaurants rather than sitting down at home and doing some serious page-turning. But I plan to change that. I'm halfway through the first Stephanie Plum novel by Janet Evanovich. Y'all were right - she's just too dang funny. Please feel free to send more suggestions my way.



I've been reading this evening because Jackson is watching TV. Now that Katie is in bed, he's indulging in his most gawd-awful, divorce-inducing, eye-gougingly irritating habit. He's watching 'rasslin'.



Is there a support group for people whose cohabitants indulge in watching wrestling on a weekly basis? I guess I shouldn't complain. He doesn't get drunk and mean. He doesn't beat the kid. He doesn't gamble uncontrollably or snort cocaine. As far as I know he's not cheating on me with some redneck floozy - although we might could work something out if she was willing to dust - and he's generally kind to animals.



But, damn.



And he doesn't watch it quietly. He has rasslin' deafness, which means he claims not to be able to hear it unless it is excruciatingly loud. Makes me want to ream out his ears with a Dremel tool. He just left to grab a coke. I turned it down to an almost normally level. He won't notice the difference when he returns but he'll turn it up a couple of notches anyway when he gets back. He knows I always turn it down when he's not looking.



God, I hate rasslin'.



I blame my father-in-law. He used to make his living as a professional wrestler on the local circuits. His career ended early due to an injury, but not before he thoroughly indoctrinated his kids. (His dad moved from rasslin' to a career as a fake heroine dealer. But that's a whole other story.) So every Monday night, this stuff pervades my abode, assaulting my senses and lowering our collective IQ.



And if the 'show' weren't bad enough, the commercials that accompany it are downright insulting.



So, before my brain totally liquefies and oozes out my ears, I will give you a bit of hard-learned advice: Don't change your ringtone to Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. Even thought it's a really good idea and it will make you grin like an idiot whenever your phone rings, don't do it. Because each and every time the phone rings, you will find yourself duty-bound by the irrevocable laws of the universe to answer the phone in your best Lurch voice.

"You raaaaang?"

Friday Cemetery Blogging

How's your new year been so far? It's been pretty good here. Here are some reasons why:

1. After almost a year of searching, we finally found a new cleaning lady in November. Found her a week before surgery. She expects to be released by the doctor to go back to work on January 7th. She's supposed to call and let me know if she can work, and if she's gotten a clean bill of health, I swear, I may kiss her.

2. I had some good time off during the holidays. Jackson and I spent more than one day in ratty old sweats, doing nothing more intellectually or physically stimulating that moving from the recliner to the refrigerator and back. It helped renew my batteries a bit.

3. We've been child-free for most of the past two weeks. Which means we got to see some adult movies. Not those kind of adult movies! Our favorite was, of course, Sweeny Todd. (Johnny Depp and Alan Rickman! In the same movie!!) Jackson had never heard of it before and I explained the highlights of the plot while we were standing in line to get popcorn. Then I told him it was a musical. He gave me one of those oh-crap-not-again, eyeball rolling, you've-gotta-be-kidding-me looks. I get those a lot. But, try as he might, he couldn't help but love it. We went to see it again the next weekend, then found an all-night discount store that had the soundtrack so he could sing along all the way home.

4. We had meat pies on New Year's Eve. My mom's recipe. Yummy!

5. Zoe is housebroken! (But Doofus Archie has regressed and is leaving piles in the house. Damn cat!!! He's NEVER done this before. I think it's a territory thing. Suggestions, anyone?) Evil Steve lives in high places now, but she seems to be tolerating the change in altitude well.

6. Jackson and I are watching the Iowa caucuses on C-Span while I write this. It's so cool! Kicks hell out of the line of blue-hairs voting straight ticket that we usually get to see. This is fun! Freaky, but fun!

7. I painted a picture this weekend. It ain't good, but its probably the best I've done so far. Improvement rocks!

8. Jackson bought me a scratchy quill and ink set for Christmas. Calligraphy, here I come! But the best part is the sealing wax and brass seal. It's a skull and crossbones! Score!

9. Hmm... I gotta think of another reason, I can't stop at just nine.

10. We got all our Christmas stuff put up in record time. That's one of the pleasant side effects of a grinchy Christmas wherein you don't put the tree up until a little over a week before the holiday and then never get around to actually putting ornaments on it. heh. Begone, 2007! Howdy, 2008!