We already voted, so leave us alone!

I am still being besieged by political calls, on every phone line we have.
All of them of course want donations.

Well, word to them! I am through with this political season, we have already voted and I have already sent in my check!
And the Queen has volunteered and worked the phone banks three times over the last week at the Johnston County Republican Headquarters.

So quit calling us already, we gave at the office!

Since Ariel was home for fall break last weekend, and will not be able to make it home on Election Day due to his class schedule, we all decided to take advantage of early voting.

It was his first Presidential Vote, missing in '04 by only 18 days.

It was an honor to be able to vote as a family.
My first vote was in 1972, and I remember how proud and grateful I was to be able to do so.

It was extremely easy, we all walked in the Govt Building in Smithfield, our County Seat and signed in and went right to a machine.

Never forget who secures our right to vote and hold open elections.

It is and always has been our men and women in uniform.
Many of them are overseas now, and will rely on absentee ballots and the like to cast their own votes.

He will join their ranks full time next year sometime, after graduation and commissioning.

Just yesterday, he found out what his branch assignment is to be.
This is a career shaping decision for Senior Cadets, and will have a maj0r impact on their future in the full time Army.

He had asked for Branch Transition, three years or so in Combat Arms, and then moving into Intelligence as soon as he is promoted to Captain.

He had chosen Armor as his first pick, followed by Artillery and then Infantry.

Infantry, or 11Bravo as it is known in the Army is the most sought after branch.

Well, imagine his surprise when he found out he indeed had his desire to move into M.I. fulfilled, but his Combat branch is to be 11Bravo!

It meant in short that the Army recognizes great potential in him, and chose him over many Cadets who had Infantry as their first choice.

In addition, the Colonel told him "You will be going to Ranger school, just get ready for it!"

For those who don't know, Rangers are the toughest and most capable soldiers in the Army, short of Green Beret and Delta Force. And all of them come from the Ranger ranks.

Having that tan Ranger tab on his uniform will also be a tremendous career enhancer.

There is no certainty that just because you are sent to that school you will make it through, many don't.

But I know the kind of grit our boy has. He will get it done!
As the Finnish relatives say, "He has Sissou!"

Way to go son, and congrats from your proud parents!

Hoohah!

It's fall in North Carolina!

Finally we had a weekend with seasonal weather here.
Just last week we had a couple of days with temps in the low eighties.

The leaves are changing, it's blustery and I am wearing shorts!
Then two days later I'm freezing, and turn on the heat for the first time this season.
Welcome to NC!

Yesterday, I moved all of the Queen's plants that could survive into the garage.
Moving my old back out of kilter in the process. Ouch!

She will be doing a guest blog and posting some pictures soon.

F0r now, we have a lot of fresh flowers all around the house.
They would most likely not survive the week, temps at night will be in the mid-thirties.

Our boy was home for a four day fall break weekend.
It was great to see him, even though he slept a lot.
Trying to catch up from 5:15 AM early rising for ROTC PT is tough.

He went back to Boone last night, we will see him out there during Halloween weekend.

App is playing a nationally televised game on Halloween night (ESPN2) if you would like to see a real championship football team play.
They are going for four National 1AA championships in a row this year.
GO MOUNTAINEERS!

Time to ship all of the family Christmas stuff she has been collecting all year, make a big pot of soup, and watch the World Series.

Life is truly grand!

Stay tuned for that guest blog from the Queen.

The purity of baseball

Odes to the pastoral nature of baseball are too numerous to list here.

In the closing innings of this bitter, rancorous overly personal presidential race,
it is nice to watch something that doesn't smack of polls, talking head idiots on the 'news' outlets, etc.

See the ball, hit the ball, catch the ball, throw the ball, and run like the wind!
Pretty basic stuff, whether you are coaching four year old T-ball or the Tampa Bay Rays.

I have always loved post season baseball, even though it falls in the middle of football season.

Each swing of the bat can not only change the entire outcome of a game, but of a series.

I will never forget Reggie Jackson's unmatched performance while wearing Yankee Pinstripes in his first World Series with that team.

Three first pitch swings of the bat, and three home runs!

No one before or since has come close to matching that perfomance.

There is nothing quite so tense in all of sports than a hot hitter facing a flame throwing relief pitcher in the late innings of a playoff game.

I still remember watching the 1960 World Series between the Yanks and the Pirates with my Dad, a confirmed Yankee's fan.

With one swing of the bat Bill Mazeroski won that series for the Pirates in the bottom of the ninth of the final game.

And you still see that faded old black and white video from the fifties of Bobby Thompson's ninth inning home run "Shot heard round the World" to win the NL pennant, and the radio announcers famous call-
"And the Giants win the Pennant! The Giants Win the Pennant!"

Who will be this years hero or heros?

My money is on the Rays.

The worst team in major league baseball last year, they won 97 games to win the AL East, the toughest division in Baseball this year.

Everyone loves an underdog, unless of course they are playing your hometown nine.

Last night they once again made hash of the defending champ Red Sox vaunted pitching staff, winning 13-4 to go up 3 games to one in the ALCS.

Their manager, as the announcer put it "Looks like an English Major!"
His style is quiet and motivating, believing that inspiring his players to sacrifice and play team ball beats cursing and screaming and throwing things in the dugout.

It sure seems to be working!

The Phillies need only to win tonight to lock up the NL slot in the Series, and the Rays only have to win one out of the last three games, two at home to go for their first time ever.

Nothing beats watching the World Series on a crisp fall night!

Pop some corn, brew some tea, maybe drink some brew(skies) and let's go Rays!

"And we liked it that way!"

Comic Dana Carvey had a recurring character on Saturday Night Live back in the early nineties,
"The Cranky Old Man".

Dressed in a tacky cardigan, with a wild crazy man wig, he did hysterical rants on nonsensical memories of how tough things were when he was young, always capped with
"And we liked it that way! We loved it!"

Eating rock soup, walking so far to school that our feet bled, having such lousy light to do our homework by we are all blind now, etc.

It was always incredibly funny, and at the same time insightful.
Dana and I are within a year of the same age, and he would probably agree with me that it is difficult not to allow ourselves to turn into some semblance of that mad old man.

The longer we live, the more foolishness and base behavior we witness.
We have watched our popular culture degrade to the point of animal crudeness.
Just because a show is on during the so-called "family hour" (I wonder which family, the Manson Family?) doesn't mean you should let your kids anywhere near it.
Movies have become degenerate to the point that unless we know exactly what we will be seeing before we go, we just stay away from them.
So that automatically eliminates 99% of the garbage Hollywood churns out these days.
It does save money!

The generic term "The Media" may seem trite, but they are the obvious culprit.
But they only reflect the degradation of the human animal in general.

I had a wise old Uncle myself, he went on across the bridge several years ago to rest with our ancestors.
My Uncle, Bob Hill had a good conversation with me just before I married.
This was just after Jimmie Carter left office, before any of RWR's policys had the chance to effect any real changes.
Interest rates were so high that we despaired of ever owning our own home.
I made the comment "No wonder so many of us are angry young men. Looks like we will never be able to work and achieve what your generation has"

He was a big man, with a deep, pleasant laugh.
Putting his ever present pipe down, he laughed and told me
"You have to be my age to warrant really becoming angry! Just wait, someday you will be an angry old man!"

Boy, Uncle were you right on!

Now I understand why my Dad was so P'O'd most of the time.
In his youth, most of America still lived in small towns, or in poor rural areas.
He was born in a log house, built over 100 years before his birth.
With no indoor plumbing, and only two Franklin stoves and a fireplace for heat.
And it gets cold in West Virginia, especially at night.
One pair of shoes purchased in the late fall had to do you all winter.
It was 1938 when they moved into the current farm house before they had electricity.

Fast Forward to today, when even the poorest of our poor have electricity and plumbing.
Most also have TV, and other standards still considered unattainable in a great portion of the world.

Our communications, medical technology, and standard of living has increased far past what I ever invisioned when I was in college over 30 years ago.

But are we better off as a people than we were then?

You think that over and get back to me.

Bet you'll be pretty mad, though!

I used to love KoolAId, too.

I am feeling sick to my stomach.
Not because of anything I ate as you may assume.
No, it's too much sugar in my diet.

I'm speaking of the multiple tons of sugar heaped in the direction of one of the major Presidential Candidates.
This has been going on since his national introduction at their convention way back in 2004 when he gave his first major speach.

It became obvious to me then that here was their candidate for the current 2008 election.
The mainstream media, in all of their "journalistic integrity" immediately jumped on his bandwagon.

Any legitimate critique is labeled as Divisive, Bullying or negative dirty politics.
Or, the most egregious nonsense of all, Racist.

In other words, do not dare to crititize the annointed one!

It is his destiny to rule us all, and to eliminate anything that we perceive to be bad.
Lately this seems to include Free Market Capitalism as well.

The economy, "Man made Global Warming", international diplomacy, free college, free health care, free housing, free free free!
I'll solve it all!
And of course at no cost to anyone.
Excepting the "wealthy".
And wealthy is whatever we say it is.

The annointed one will fix it! Trust us!

It is troubling to the point of dispair to the Queen and I how many people seem to have willingly "drank the KoolAid" of all of this empty rhetoric and bombast.

Facts? If they seem to contradict the annointed one's public statements, well then they cannot be true.
Please don't confuse us with the truth!

When he is caught in contradictions or outright lies, there is always an excuse.
And no shortage of media lapdogs to blast the public with blanket disapproval of his accusers.

As kids we were taught "You are known by the company that you keep"

It is also off-limits to bring that up in the case of "the annointed one"
Violent terrorists who advocated the overthrow of our government, who planted bombs that killed police officers and other innocent victims?
Why, that was then! He is a college professor now! I guess that makes everything AOK, huh?

Insanely racist, anti-american "Clergy" ranting and dancing to the tune of "everything about this country stinks"?
Why, I never heard of such a thing while I was sitting in his congregation.
For twenty years.

Imagine if it were a White separatist racist "pastor", who led a Republican candidate's congregation.
Well, I'm sure the media would have no problem with that!

The current financial mess, mostly due to idiotic loan policies in forcing banking institutions to grant big loans to people that did not qualify and most likely would not be able to fulfill their payment obligations started in 1999.

That's right, during the Clinton Administration.
Do your homework and follow the money back to that starting point.
There are many people sitting in Congress right now accusing the current President and the other party of sole responsibility for the disaster.
Look at their financials.
One Senator in particular who heads the powerful Finance Committee has benefitted greatly from sweetheart mortgage rates and other benefits.
And he doesn't have an "R" after his name either.

The entire situation stinks, and we the taxpayer are going to end up paying for it.
Don't let "the annointed one" use this to help sweep into the Oval Office.

And please, young people, you are too old to continue "drinking the KoolAid"

Use the brains the Good Lord gave you and think your way through this!

The old axiom "There ain't no free lunch!" still applies in 2008.