After a long day in the office one warm September evening I grabbed for dinner a foot-long meatball marinara sub sammich (is there any other kind?) from a certain internationally-known purveyor of such goods and headed out to Hueston Woods.
Fallen timber, shot through the sunroof of the Jeep Main Battle Tank.
When in Hueston Woods for reasons other than routine TDS patrol, I often think back to the infamous Dead Raccoon Incident of 1990. For further details, you'll have to ask Big Randy or Kuertz, the only other eyewitnesses into the as-yet unsolved mystery of a surprisingly mobile-yet-expired woodland creature.
Most often, though, my memories harken back to those halcyon days of Hueston Woods Marina yesteryear. Specifically, the summer yesteryear of 1989 when I worked the marina docks with the motley crew of (among so many others) Claudio, Josh, Jude and a character named Mark from Union County HS almost too unbelievable to be true. And so on that balmy September evening, I with my meatball marinara sub sammich in hand made a triumphant return to the marina. After more than 20 years since my last visit, I was struck by the few ways in which the marina had changed and by the many ways in which it had not.
Perhaps the thing simultaneously most and least unchanged:
I didn't get any marinara on my shirt, did I?
It was breezy down by the lake. Just as I remembered from so long ago.
Lou sent me a reconnaissance photo while he was on patrol in the central part of the county back in the summer of 2015:
A Trans-Am with a vanity plate which read "EASTBND." For the uninitiated, this refers to Jerry Reed and one of the handful of listenable Country & Western songs. Watch ol' Bandit run!
I returned to Hueston Woods in October to treat My Dear Elderly Mother to a dinner at the Lodge. The buzzards beat us to it. I mean they beat us to the Lodge, not dinner. You knew that, right?
Afterwards, we sat in rocking chairs by a roaring fire and watched the sun set over Acton Lake.
Mid-October brought with it the scourge of triennial state-mandated continuing [re-]education. At least they provided donuts and coffee (and a boxed lunch, later). I had the best seat in the house:
Having broken free from the re-education camp, my escape found me pursuing safe haven at the palatial estate of Mr & Mrs The Incomparable Joe Wilhelm.
They weren't home.
Autumn returned to the Ranch with it's usually glorious blaze:
One month later at The Ranch, it was time to remove autumnal debris from the rooftop:
Green acres is the place for me. You can keep your dreary, claustrophobic, miserable, derelict city life.
The end of the baseball season and the onset of winter brought with it the standard fare of too much internet surfing. I created my own original text for a funny-cat meme to send to my nieces. It's out there, somewhere, on the interwebz. Feel free to use it:
Didn't Gary Larson kill the single-panel cartoon genre with his unparalleled (but too-oft copied) Far Side?
Then there's also the indoor sport of marathon television viewing. The former world-wide phenomenon of the BBC's Top Gear was shockingly and abruptly blown into oblivion just as the lads were in the midst of driving the one car I most wanted to see them feature:
Let this be a lesson to you! You know, if you were contemplating being physically abusive to your hard-working and under-appreciated support staff. Not sure that really applies to anyone other than Mr Clarkson. Then again, the road can present you with confusing and maddening challenges like this situation I found myself in while roving about in October:
Left Lane Closed Ahead. Right Lane Ends, Merge Left. No wonder it created a traffic jam. Makes me want to punch an assistant producer! The world is a crazy place.
At least Dubya and his Big Oil cronies had been finally busted after 7 years of BHO's Glorious Revolution!
My randomly-generated Reds-themed lottery ticket did not allow me to share the wealth:
Morgan (8), Foster (15), Kluszewski (18), 70 (NL Champs), 75 (World Series Champs) and the so-called Mega Ball was... well... there's that number again! How could this ticket lose?!
My Christmas tree decoration game was elevated to a new level:
Your eyes do not deceive you! That's a shadow of a Christmas tree on the wall next to my Christmas tree. I'd like to see the folks at Luminosity pull off that neat little trick! Of course, the trimming of the tree was accompanied by the usual holiday season entertainment:
A Doctor Who marathon on BBC America!
Lou's birthday cake was one for the ages:
On the eve of New Year's Eve I took in an indie film you've probably never heard of:
The Force Awakens was better than Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith put together.
I'll wrap this episode with a photo from December taken at the end of a(nother) long day in the office:
Is this what I keep hearing people refer to as "the money shot?"
And on that bomb shell, good night!
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