O-Dark-Thirty

I found this a few years ago and it tickled me. It just turned up again on my computer. Lucky you. 1) The bandage was wound around the wound. 2) The farm was used to produce produce. 3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse. 4) We must polish the Polish furniture. 5) He could lead if he would get the lead out. 6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert. 7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was  time to present the present. 8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum. 9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes. 10) I did not object to the object. 11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid. 12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row. 13) They were too close to the door to close it. 14) The buck does funny things when the does are present. 15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line. 16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow. 17) The w...

Over the years I've read dozens (perhaps hundreds) of books on finances and hundreds more web sites and magazine articles. Handling your finances boils down to a lesson I learned the way most of us learn our valuable lessons - the school of hard knocks. Here's the lesson: Spend less than you make . Sounds simple, doesn't it? Yet people can't seem to grasp the concept. Most people overspend. The government does the same thing . When you are not a good steward of your money, you're heading for trouble. Steward? What does that mean? Isn't the money yours, to do with as you please? On the one hand, yes, it is. You certainly earn it and can spend it as you wish. On the other hand, like every other physical thing in life, money can be taken from you, lost or destroyed. You can't take it with you when you die; like all your property it then belongs to someone else. So, in fact, you are simply a steward of the money while it is in your possession. Now...

Darling and I played World of Warcraft for over five years. We enjoyed it immensely, though we quit because it eventually became a little ... trite. I'm not sure what the word I want is. Boring fits, but it was boring for us, and others didn't get bored with it, so I don't have a good analysis. I miss playing the game because of the interactions with my brother, his family and my son, but I really don't miss playing WoW. I even get a free week occasionally and don't use more than an hour dropping into the world and looking at it. There were some things that happened in the virtual world of WoW that still make me grin, though. Recently some players exploited flaw in the game and started wiping out the entire population of all the major cities, player and non-player alike. There are some YouTube videos on it. Of course there was the classic Leeroy Jenkins video , which still makes me grin. As a quick overview, a team discusses their next battle encounter and m...

Some ask me occasionally how I come up with story ideas. The ideas are pretty easy , and I've written that before. For instance, I ran across a fantastic picture of tree top camping. I captured the picture, but neglected to capture the photographer, and I'm sorry for that. Looking at the picture made me wonder if there was a story there. Perhaps a story with the Brothers von Crapp, so I thought I'd start one. Here's the current (draft) beginning, just for your reading pleasure. "We were younger then." Vic, the Gentleman Adventurer, reached over and picked up the steaming mug of tea with the first two fingers of his left hand slipped through the mug handle and his palm firmly against the thick side of the porcelain. The heat didn't seem to bother him, though he blew across the top of the mug and didn't immediately drink it. The soothing scent of Earl Grey made him smile. "Yes. Yes, we were. Though age doesn't seem to matter much to u...

I just bought the new iPad. A few years ago I watched the Apple announcement of the original iPad and I bought one of the first ones available. I didn't stand in line for a dozen hours like some people, but it seemed like a revolutionary (magical!) device, and I suspected it might change the face of computing. I wasn't exactly right. That first iPad, I discovered, was excellent for consuming content. I could recline on the couch or in a chair and very comfortably read my emails or the latest news or surf the web. The iPad was pretty snappy too. As far as the apps went, there were only a few that made me sit up and say "wow" but that might have been me and not the apps. What I was hoping for was a device that would allow me to sit comfortably in my chair and write, transposing the myriad thoughts of my scattered mind into some semblance of order in electronic form. That's what I'm doing now. It took more than the new iPad (I call it the Gen4, but only be...

A heart-felt "thank-you" to all the good men and women of the Armed Forces of the United States of America and to all who serve this great country in any capacity. I know that Freedom is not Free. Without your service I would only dream of Freedom. We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. We the People All of us. Not some of us. Not a few elite. Not simply those elected to Congress or the White House. Our heritage stretches back to other lands, other nations, but this is the nation we all choose as our home. We are equal, not elitist. We're in this together. Life. The greatest adventure any of us will undertake. We didn't sign up for it, and we don't get out alive,...

 Delilah Smith - Onsted  Mom loved to write. I don't know how much she actually wrote; much of it was on paper and in wire binders and is now lost to us. Some few stories actually survived as computer files and I have the ones that I could find. This is my Mom's story of Christmas, in her own words. Christmas at home began right after the Thanksgiving weekend as my grandmother would start to bake her wonderful fruit cake. She made many of these cakes and I think gave some of them away as gifts. She made them in the big round bottomed dough pan that she used when she made bread for the family. They were also baked in the bread pans and wrapped in brown paper. I think she probably basted them from time to time with something but I don't remember for sure. We kids were pressed into service as the raisins were ground and nuts were chopped. The kitchen smelled delightfully of cloves, cinnamon, and ginger for ever so long. The catalogues (wish books) were gi...

Darling is my hero, for a lot of reasons, but her latest endeavor perfectly displays her combination of velvet glove and iron fist. I already posted about how well she handled having our current house completed before we moved in. She was relentless in her pursuit of quality work at the very best prices. She had a guy come and put a really fine fence around the back yard. She had workers renovate the inside of the house, painting, plumbing and flooring. I love the laminate flooring in this house even if it means I occasionally leave barefoot footprints across the surface. Maybe especially if I leave footprints. To clean the prints off the floor I put on a nice fluffy pair of socks and skate around the floor, buffing until it shines again. She found a good contractor to install the laminate flooring , though we certainly should not have watched it being installed. She erased a tree AND had grass put in the front yard. I didn't think the grass would survive, but the front yard ...

Some stories are not mine, but they should be told anyway. For the record, my brother gave me permission to tell this story, so I hope I get it right. One of my other brothers, D, has his own blog and is starting to tell his own stories . I really like that. Not this meatloaf My next younger brother, B, is a warrior. There’s no better term for it. Oh, he adapted to civilization well enough, and as a young man was adept at the saxophone, but King David was also a warrior and he composed all the Psalms, so the two skills are not incompatible. B is married to a Treasure. When B first met L they were both in high school. He asked her out, they had a good enough time, but when he dropped her off at her house afterwards he told her that he would marry her. Understandably, that freaked her out and she refused to date him again. She dated some of his high-school friends, but never again went out with him. B left high school and did what all males in our family do – he enlisted. (I ...