Wednesday is the day that the grocery store sends out its ads in the newspaper.  I always read the ads because they always have some bargains.  If you buy 50lbs of cat litter you will get a dust pan for free.  A 15lb turkey will get you a box of stove top dressing.  and so on.  I rarely ever buy any of the things they advertise but I like to see what they think I might want.  What I really want is for them to go down on their prices and quit giving stuff away for free.  I do not need a new dust pan.  What I need is the price of toilet paper to go down by about 50%.  Our maid is an Herbalife devotee and she spends about as much time in our bathroom as she does cleaning.

I have been observing the cookie aisle at our grocery store and it has begun to shrink.  Cookies used to occupy one side of an entire aisle.  Now there are no more that 12 ft of cookies and they are mostly made up of Oreos, Keebler elfs cookies and Mexican cookies.  What the hell gives with the cookies.  We miss having options.  I like Nutter Butter cookies.  I like those chocolate pinwheel cookies with the gooie marshmellow stuff in the middle.  Who the hell decided to quit selling those things?  Did some nutritionist decide that such a cookie would shorten the life of a 71 year old man?  How many of those things would I have to eat before I started showing side effects.  Hell, the medicine the doctor prescribes for me has more side effects than a good marshmellow cookie.

I am planning my New Year’s day menu.  I am having black-eyed peas, with ham hock, cornbread and chow-chow.  I have recently become enamored with stuffed jalapeno.  I may have some of those.

Tonight being the eve of New Years we will go out to dinner.  We usually do that about 6:00 and are in bed before the first fireworks start.  I can’t even remember the last time I was awake at the stroke of midnight.  Last year we went to a supposedly nice, high end restaurant and my daughter and a good friend were surprised when they went to the ladies room and found a couple already in there.  It was a man and a woman, who had been at the bar engaged in a grope fest and decided to carry it on in the ladies room.  My daughter let them know that she had been mentally damaged by seeing them doing what they were doing.  We are not going back to that place again.

I probably wont watch much football on TV tomorrow.  I have kinda lost touch with college football.  I did see where the Cotton Bowl had been renamed the “down-town Dallas civic bowl or some such name.  When did they change the word tradition to a 4 letter word.  I never did like the parades but used to watch all the big bowl games.  Alas, time marches on.  Down a dark alley as far as I am concerned.

I dont make resolutions as not sure what I have been doing needs that much tweaking.  I am getting new eyes so I might try to see the world in a different light.  I may try not to be so prejudiced against people who dont see things my way.  However I might warn some folks that may be planning a jihad in my neighborhood that my resolutions dont always come to fruition and I have increased my ammunition supply just in case someone wants to loot a liquor store in the neighborhood.

I hope each of you have a great new year.  I hope that each of you have good health and that your families enjoy the same.  I hope that each of you vote republican the next time you get a chance.  Or democrat if you just have to.

Chuy the resolver

We are closing in on the end of an exciting year for the Cowan family.  I have posted about most of the things we did but think a highlite reel might be in order.

We bought a small parcel of land in late 2013 and spent most of 2014 making it more comfortable.  We added a flush toilet and hot water with shower so we could get clean while doing our thing in the scrub brush of south Texas. We have added creature comforts almost weekly including last weeks purchase by Santa of a pressurized convection oven so I can have my biscuits of a morning.  I feel that it is important for a person to start the day off with a good biscuit, some sweet cream butter and a dab of real good jam.  The oven will see some meat loaf soon.  New blue-ray unit will allow us to watch as many John  Wayne movies as my family can stand to watch.

Dorothy and I took a trip of a life-time to Scandinavia in the fall.  We spent 33 days looking around the countries of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland.  We saw some sites over there that were amazing.  Pretty countries, all.  Good food, even if some of it was not something we would normally eat at home.  Pickled hearing can be eaten with about 200 different sauces.  Our local store has about one.  Google “Danish brown cheese”, read about it and say you wouldn’t eat that on a piece of toast.

We have not had any major health problems, although old age is creeping up on us.  I go today for pre-op for my cataract  surgery on the 9th.  Guess I will be lucky if that is all the problems I have for a while.

We lost a few of our class mates during the year and that makes me sad.  I was trying to put together a reunion but could never get a good time in an appropriate place for all of us, then got busy with travel and all that.  Sorry about that.  Maybe I will get the urge this year.  Actually I am not a very good planner of anything.  I am more of a write a check type guy after someone else has done the work.  Poor character trait if you ask me but that is what I have so must live with it.

We are looking forward to 2015 and are already looking at travel books about our country’s national parks.  D wants to see Glacier and I want to see Yosemite.  I guess we will see both just as soon as my new light weight down jacket gets here.  Old people get cold.  Sequoia (red woods) would be nice to see also.  Could fly into San Fran, eat down at fisherman’s wharf, rent a car and do some touring.  Sounds about right.  There is a famous eatery down at the bottom of the hill near the chocolate place that I would like to eat at again.  Dont remember the name of the place but maybe one of y’all know it and will let me know.

David has been posting pictures of west Texas and those bring back some good memories.  I can damn near name the menu of Al’s Burger Bar.  Most people who comment on the pics love the same things that we all liked.  Sissy burger would be good about now, even for breakfast.

Here is wishing each of my forever friends a Happy New Year.  May you prosper, even if oil  is in the toilet.  May you enjoy another year of good health and most of all, may you be as happy as you can be.  I think happiness is way underrated, dont you?

G

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,100 times in 2014. If it were a cable car, it would take about 35 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Woodrow Call stands in the ruins of Lonesome Dove.  A young reporter walks up behind him and asks if he is indeed Capt. Call.  When there is no reply, the young reporter states that people say that Woodrow and Gus were men of vision.  And simply asks, were y’all men of vision?  Capt Call stands there is the fading light and cogitates for a moment and says, Yeah, hell of a vision.  That happens to be one of my favorite lines in my favorite movie of all times.  I can almost quote the entire movie at anytime a person will stand still long enough to listen.

I wanted to be a man of vision.  I have read thousands of books about men of vision and I was jealous of every one of those men.  I asked myself a million times why I was not blessed enough to be a man of vision.  I could have explored the west, traveled to ancient lands and discovered mysterious things, had I only been a man of vision.  Was it the times in which I was born?  Was it the fact that I was born in a small west Texas town where visions were not that common.  Was I born in a time when visionaries were limited in places to discover.  I guess the answer to all those questions is yes.

Reading has helped me in my pursuit of a vision.  I am continuously amazed at the number of people who I speak with who can’t remember the last time they read a book.  Most are waiting for it to come to the movies or maybe become a TV documentary.  They simply don’t have the time to spend reading.  Could that be one of the things wrong with some of our young people who seem to not have a purpose?  Could they simply be lacking a vision?  Could be.

I will keep trying to become a visionary but time is running out.  Hopefully one day someone will ask if anyone knew if I was a visionary.  I hope someone can simply say ” Yep, hell of a visionary”

Chuy

It has been a slow week for news items that interest me.  I really dont care who we tortured in order to get info that might have saved someone life.  The tortured do not torture as they have simplified things by simply chopping a captives head off while filming for news at 6.  The folks in Wasington are spending way too much time on this subject.  The tortured, or some of their folks, have vowed to retaliate in some way.  Okay, so until this thing has blown over I will not eat at the new middle eastern restaurant here in Corpus.  I like the stuffed grape leaves but can forgo them if it keeps in out of a jihadist shoot out during the lunch hour.

I dont care who has knocked up any of the Kardashians.  Period.

Labron James, a basketball player has committed an error by touching the Princess while she was having a picture made with him.  Hey, she is not the princess of anyplace this side of the pond.  Over in Britain, well, dont touch the little gal.  Over here, you want your picture made with a basketball star, you have to suffer the indignation of being touched.  Again, too much being made of this situation.  No one seems to ever say what they mean in these cases.  Labron should have simply said, I dont give a damn and be done with it.  The worst thing to happen would be the Queen would refuse to come to a Cav game.  Again, who gives a damn.

I will continue to watch the news to see if there is an event that can really get me revved up, but it is looking grim.  I search the internet news items each morning but mostly see articles on the top ten most beautiful skinny women in VS underwear.  Does anyone know anyone who wears that stuff?

Chuy the newshound

I occasionally watch the news shows such as the Kelly report, O’Reilly, etc.  I don’t have a favorite because all them apparently have an agenda.  They are not reporting the news in  an unbiased manner, but simply are doing what I am doing at this very moment, giving you my views and thoughts on a subject that I am not an expert on.  There are several jokes about opinions and about things that we all have one of that I wont be specific about.  You have all heard the joke.

The recent events in Missouri have reinforced my thoughts about racial equality.  I know that African americans were brought to our shores against their will.  My family owned many of these individuals back in Mississippi in days gone by.  I have not ever owned anyone.  I have employed people who might think I was a slave driver but they got to go home at night and got paid a fair wage so dont think they were in too much stress.  It baffles the hell out of me when I see a person of color running out of a liquor store carrying 3 quarts of lemon flavored vodka and a big orange drink, hollering about polilce brutality.  The sumbitch just broke the window out of the store with a baseball bat and he is yelling that he is not getting a fair shake.  Free vodka is pretty damned fair to me.  The step father of the young man (deceased) that caused this ado was taped while he stood on a car hood urging the mob to burn things down.  He grabbed his crotch more times than MJ.  He did not, and I remind you that I may not have been present, look to me that he was in a great deal of discomfort about the loss of his wife’s son.  He appeared to me that he might have been a tad disappointed that he wasnt on the vodka run down at the liquor store.  It seems to me that if we had a few less apperances by Al Sharpton and persons of his ilk in times of strife that we would be much better off.

I dont think the Furgason, Mo situation has helped relations between police and the public. I dont think it ever had a chance to do that.  Setting up a commission to study whether police have become too much like a military unit will not help matters either.  What I think will help is for each of us to try to do the best we can to be nice to our fellow man, no matter what the color of their skins.  I dont mean that you have to be nice to the guy who loots your liqour store, but I know that I can improve my relations with some people.

G