And their off. . . .

We went to the horse races at F-berg yesterday. I suppose it would be fun if you win every once in a while. Brent 7 his boys and the Youngers were there. We ran into an old friend, Keely (used to be Peel). We haven't seen her in about 10 years. Still looks the same. Her Dad and current husband were there, too. Her younger sister, Donna Sue, (used to be married to Donald Boyd) has been married 7 times, so far. Sounds like a few of the guys I work with. This week of vacation has been nice. It's good to relax now and then. Especially the week before I start "on-call". I get the "double chili" this time. On call + Deb, Valerie and her boys are going to see Vanessa on Friday and come back Sunday. 1st, I would have liked to go to Vanessa's, too. 2nd, when I'm on call and home alone, I can't do anything. I can't mow the yard, use my tractor or anything like that, because I can't hear the #$%@ing phone ring. I even have to take my cell phone with me when I take a shower. The rules are that I have to be able to respond within 30 minutes. Kinda cuts it close when you live 20 miles away. And to think, I could have been retired (or at least out of this #@$%) by now, except for "you know who". Well, it looks like they are going to screw up the date for the annual dove hunt. It's always been on the second Fri-Sun of Sept. Now they want to go on Sun-Tues. We will have to take vacation. I'm probably not going to make this one. Guess I'll try to mow the yard tomorrow, since I won't be able to next weekend. We're going to Vegas on Oct 6-13. They can all kiss my @$$ that week. Maybe I can find someone to feed the dogs and chickens while we're gone. Still getting 2-5 eggs a day. Cows are doing fine. I went to the sale Wednesday, but couldn't find anything I wanted. I wanted a couple of cow 8 months bred. The best I could find was 5 months, which would put them calving in late November. Too late in the year for good calf growth, plus, I don't want to have to feed them all winter long. Well, I had better get off here. I'll keep ya posted (Jim) as it happens. Rick.

The Lord giveth.......

The Lord giveth and the hospital taketh away. After the recent flood, I managed to clear about $800 in overtime. Guess what! We just got a bill from the hospital from when Deb went a couple of weeks ago with a migraine. We still owe $853 AFTER the insurance. We were there for 2 hours, the first 45 minutes of which were out in the waiting room. The total bill was just shy of $3000! She got some meds in an I-V and a cat-scan. This has been one hell of a summer. Teeth, glasses, water well, and now hospital. What's next, a plague of locusts? I'll probably live a long time, because God loves jacking with me. Got plenty of grass in the field, though. The calves are pecker deep in grass. ho ho. It took 3 hours to mow the yard, Sunday. It should have been baled. Still haven't done the place between the barn and the fence, because of standing water. We have a multitude of flies and mosquitos right now. Never a dull moment. Oh, we went to Jos's Crab Shack on our anniversary (35) last Saturday. I had the full crab deal. Yummy! Deb got her first Patron` margarita. She was impressed. I just renewed my driver license. It's $24 now. When I was 14, I got my first DL for $4.50. Gasoline was 24 cents, too. Gotta have your social security card, as well, and they took both thumb prints. More homeland security, I guess. Gotta go for now. Rick.

row, row, row yer boat. . . .

Back for a short. Happy 4th. I finally got a day off. My a%# is dragging. I personally handed out 60 cases of bottled water to disaster workers, by myself, yesterday. What a freakin' mess! The latest estimate is $137 million to recover from this. The most amazing thing of all: no casualties. A ton of homes and vehicles trashed. It washed rail cars off tracks, and MOVED railroad tracks 20-30 feet. What's mind boggling is that not only that amount of rain, but the short time it fell in. The brunt of it was from 1AM-4AM, while people were sleeping. We made The Weather Channel and other national news. After the city water finally was repaired (1 week), there was a multitude of bottled water left over from the H.E.B. donations. They didn't want it back, because they had already written it off. They said, "Come and get it!" We now have a veritible well of bottled (Desani) water in the barn. Should last Deb a year. What blows my mind is with half the streets ion town washed out, and the Aqua Boom in Kingsland cancelled, the illustrious city manager announced that the city will put on a fireworks display tonight at the park. Oh, by the way, this lake front park has been flooded and the lake is closed. Now, all the riff-raff from Buchanan, Kingsland, Granite Shoals, and Burnet will be in Marble Falls tonight. Can you imagine the traffic?!!!!!!!! I figure he must have family in for the holiday and wants to put on a show for them. To hell with the consequences. Oh well. Back to the 12-hr shifts tomorrow. Meanwhile, the CID cases keep piling up. Boy howdy!!!!!!! More as it comes in, Rick.