Wow!! I am completely baffled by this nonsense I'm reading in the newspaper and on the web. People are protesting this Halloween costume depicting a space alien in an orange jumpsuit with a green card. Are you serious????

Has anybody seen the movie Men in Black? I thought it was a great flick. I can't understand how people can get from space alien to undocumented (illegal) immigrant. Have we slid that far, that now we find offense in a Halloween costume? I'm embarrassed for the organization that is protesting this, and I feel sad for somebody that would find offense in something as silly as this.

I wonder how people would react if I was to dress up as a saltine cracker (I'm white). Would that offend other white people? Possibly that would offend crackers? Maybe Morton salt would get offended cause I was an unsalted cracker.

Enough of this garbage people. Come on what happened to people having a good time with Halloween? Kids dressed up in just about anything they could find when I was a kid. We were a hobo, or a ghost, or sometimes maybe even a ghostly hobo. Will homeless people get offended if my kid becomes a hobo for Halloween? How about mediums? Will they get offended if my kid dresses up as a ghost that doesn't match their idea of a ghost? Heck, will goats be offended that I just called my child a kid?

I would rather have my kid dress up as an illegal space alien, than a hooker, or Charles Manson. No offense intended to killers or prostitutes. I just think that it's a cooler outfit. How about if we all lighten up and quit worrying so much about everything somebody is doing. Everything is not meant to offend. Some people are still trying to have a good time, and guess what? They shouldn't have to worry about whether me or somebody else is gonna be offended, because they are entitled to their opinion of fun.

Maybe the new theme for Halloween should be caffeine free, sugar free, fright free, color free, fun free...... I guess I shouldn't be that surprised, they took the fun out of Christmas years ago. It was just a matter of time until they got around to Halloween.

I just finished up a really good book called Sandstorm by James Rollins. It's a strange supernatural, scientific, spy, adventure. It's a little bit of everything all rolled up into one. There are a quite a few characters that you will be introduced to in this story.

Painter Crowe is a member of a high level top secret organization. He is special forces trained, and highly intelligent. Then there is Dr. Safia Al-Maaz, she is a curator of the Arabian wing of a British Museum in the middle of Downtown London. Her best friend, Lady Kensington, who is the sponsor of the gallery. Then for good measure add Omaha Dunn, the former love interest of Safia Al-Maaz. He is an archaeologist/treasure seeker. Along with his younger brother Danny, they will eventually meet up with the rest of this unusual group to search for the secrets to the greatest secret in Central Arabia.

The hidden city of Ubar is the prize they all seek. It holds secrets to the past as well as possibly a power source for the future. The problem (one of many) is that a mega storm is headed into the region and that coupled with a massive storm coming in from the sea, are on a head on collision course. Yep you guessed it, the storms should meet somewhere in the middle of their search area. There are lots of twists and turns in this book, and a lot of internal conflict. You will find that everybody has their own reasons for wanting to find the hidden city, and some of them might be a little less than Honorable.

The book had tons of action and some really cool twists and turns. If you like a few surprises, along with some actual truth to go along with your fiction, you will definitely enjoy this book.
I can't really say if this would be a fast read, as I was forced to put it down a couple of times (real life got in my way). But it was easy to get right back into the story even after setting it down.
At 569 pages (paperback), it wasn't all that long. It surely didn't feel like that it was that long, but that was because the book kept pulling me back in.

Overall I would definitely suggest you get a copy of this book. It's a good story, with some great characters, and it gives you a little bit of a history lesson, mixed in with some science and just good plain imagination.

I am sure I mentioned that my kids are into bowling. I have 3 boys and they all Bowl. The 2 older ones have been bowling for about 8 years and my little one for about 5. Truth be told they are all pretty decent at it.

My oldest son has anywhere from a 150-170 average (depending on if it's school or youth league bowling). My middle boy carries a 109 and my little one (8 years old) carries a 90 average.
They love it, and they are pretty good at it. They have made tons of friends at the bowling alley, and that has spilled over to school and other activities as well.

In fact my oldest boy, is or I should say was a pretty shy kid. He has always been a lot bigger than most people his age, and sorta felt out of place. Not so when he bowls though. Since it's an individual sport, he isn't matched up next to somebody. He feels much more at ease then in a football or baseball game. This allowed him to sort of come out of his shell, and he has made many friends while bowling. They hang out at the house, or around town or at school.

Anyway to my point (I am easily sidetracked). A few days ago, my son came home and told me that a kid at school told him that bowling isn't a sport. My son argued that it was indeed a sport, and of course the other child responded no it wasn't. So I guess that evidently they went back and forth like this throughout their lunchtime. My son asked me if bowling was a sport or not. I told him that it absolutely was. I explained that it was a competitive activity that was governed by rules. Which is as close to the definition of sport I could come up with. He said the boy told him that it's not like the big three (baseball, football, basketball) or tennis or soccer where you have to be fast or catch good, or any of those things. He told my son that bowling was just rolling a stupid ball and it was easy.

I asked him what he told the kid. He said that he told this little boy that if it was so easy, maybe he should come down to the bowling alley on Saturday and see if he could do it better. Well sure enough this young boy showed up with his mom for Saturday bowling. I hate to say this, but I could just tell this kid was a jerk. He was a cocky, pompous little jerk. His mom signed him up, but told the directors that she didn't think it would be competitive enough to keep her son interested (wonder where he got his arrogance from). the little boy proceeded to bowl on the lane next to my middle son. I sat close enough to watch this boy make a complete fool out of himself. He would have been just fine if he wouldn't have told all these kids how they were wasting their time playing this little kids game that wasn't even a sport. He explained that he probably wouldn't bowl after this week, cause it would be too easy.

Wrong answer, the kid bowled a best game of 82. Did I mention that was his best game? Yeah, worst game was a 51. I ALMOST felt bad for the kid. He made excuses for almost every shot. He was complaining about the ball, the shoes, too much noise, it stuck in his hand. You name it the kid had an excuse and the mom wasn't far behind offering her reasons. i ignored that woman after about 2 minutes of her jabbering.

The best part of all this was, that none of the kids were rude or made fun of the kid. Most of them even tried to give him tips to make it easier for him to get a better throw. Of course the boy didn't listen to any of the advice, and he continued to do miserably. Funny thing though, he did mention that he might come back next week just to show that he was only having a bad day.

When the bowling was over for the morning, my son was talking to this rotten little kid. My son told him that bowling was a sport and that this kid better practice if he wanted to be good at it.
The only good thing that came out of all this, was that the little boy did admit that bowling was a sport (albeit a dumb one).

I'm a little ticked off. I had to get tires put on my truck today. I figured that it would take a couple of hours, so no problem. I had plenty of work to do in the area. So I drop the truck off and sure enough he tells me, "No problem it'll only take a couple hours." I'm thinkin' this is pretty good. I can finish up my paperwork at my office, get the truck and run to the next site and finish up all my paperwork and be home by 5:00. Sounded really good in my head, but unfortunately..............

The tires were the first problem. They didn't get finished with my truck for about 4 1/2 hours. So that alone threw off my whole getting home by 5 idea. Then I ended up fielding phone calls more than completing paperwork. Now I'm figuring maybe 6:00. So I finally get my paperwork done at office #1 and I rush to office #2 thinking "I can still do this." It's only 3:00, I can rush through and get out of the office by 5:00 and that means home by 6:00. Oops another rush of phone calls. I always wondered why these guys never want to know about the possible side effects of pesticide inhalation on Wednesday at 11:00? Why does it always have to be when I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off? So I finally get the answers they need to the people that need them and set off at mach 10 to finish up this pile of ....paperwork.

By 5:00, it's painfully obvious that I'm not anywhere close to being done, and I get to bring this stuff home. But I still figure it's not that bad I can be done in a couple hours and everything will be A-OK. Raining cats and dogs, so it takes about 1 1/2 hours to get home (a lot of people don't really know how to drive in the rain apparently). Get my kids and we realize that we have to go get some Dog House repair materials (small leak in the house.)

So finally, I sit down and get started only to realize that I didn't bring home all the information I needed to complete all of this boring safety material that I have to present tomorrow in a meeting. So now I'm fishing through the Internet for the information I need, and it's coming along at a really quick snail's pace. Low and behold I finished at about 11:55. Which is not too bad, except I realized that I have to be up in about 4 1/2 hours. Did I mention I suffer from insomnia...Yeah my day is now complete. I have 3 1/2 hours till I have to get up, I have no coffee (well I have coffee, but it's not the good coffee), and I'm going to present a safety meeting to 58 people, and about 50 of them don't understand English all that well (can you say hand signals and drawings).

Wow....I feel much better now that I have just unloaded all that on any poor unsuspecting reader that happened by. Now I can concentrate on the fact that, I am actually feeling pretty good, my kids are getting over their school induced cold. My wife is still getting almost 40 hours at her job (makes for much nicer weekends). And I am gonna have a really good lunch tomorrow.

Of course I am buying for everyone, because they always sucker me into lunch on meeting day...

How Awesome is this. I was fortunate enough to be given this award by Jan of http://wwwbobbypinsboardwalk.blogspot.com/. If you ever want to get a great idea to remodel, or add a little spice to something you have, this is definitely the place to go. So thank you very much Jan, and please keep doing what you do :)

The rules, upon receiving this award, state that you must:
Accept the award;
Post it on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link;
Pass the award on to 15 other blogs that you've newly discovered;
Contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award

I would like to pass this on to:

This Train of Thought has been Derailed

Writers & Teachers

The Blueprint To A Positive Mindset

I HATE TO F---ING DIET!!!

A Book With A View

The Crazy H

BOOKISH BLONDE

eSpeciallyBen

just kicken it around

Writersoup; fuel for the mind.

The Louis L'Amour Project

Political Pluralism

★Addicted★

Lessons From The One Who Learns

Write It Anyway

I promise that if you visit these blogs you will definitely get some interesting takes on a whole variety of things. great reading right there :)

Everything lately seems to be moving at a pretty fast pace. I can't explain why it feels that way, but it just seems that no sooner has the week started than the weekend gets here.

My boys are in bowling. So every Saturday morning until May will be spent at the bowling alley(few holiday exceptions). On top of that my wife and I have tried to make sure that we have some "quality" family time. Our schedules don't allow us a ton of time together, so we try to make what time we do have count. On the brighter side of that, my boys and I spend a great deal more time together now then we have in the last couple years. We have always had a good relationship, but this just seems to strengthen the bond.

My reading appetite in the last couple months has turned ravenous. I can't explain what did it, but lately I can't seem to read enough. I have one read, and two more waiting in the wings. That hour and a half between my kids going to bed and my wife getting home from work allow me a good head start on my reading for the evening. It also seems to have given me the writing bug again. I think that is where a lot of my time seems to be going now. It just seems like as soon as I start researching something, I look up and it's already 2:30 am (thankfully I'm an insomniac :P ).

Really leaves me with one question for those of you that have labored with writing. When is enough, enough? When do you decided that this is where your story ends? I have thrown away at least 3 written pieces and the smallest of them was 42,000 words (i never professed to be smart). I just got mad at myself for the direction the story took, and instead of fixing the problem, I seemed to have abandoned it.

Yeah time flies when your having fun...