Day Trip

I know I write a lot about nature but that’s what excites me and spurs me to write. I have always been a naturalist at heart.

This morning I got up as the first light of dawn was starting to show. A pale sky blue glowed on the horizon and you could still see the twinkling of the brightest stars remaining overhead. The first calls of the morning songbirds echoed throughout my neighborhood. I was having my morning cigarette and an ample mug of coffee.

After completing my morning ritual, I went inside and packed up some provisions for a day trip out in the country. I packed some turkey and swiss on rye sandwiches and some chips. I also threw in two large bottles of lemon-lime Gatorade, a large bottle of tap water, and some energy bars. I picked a few select items of my gear to add also such as my handheld radio, one book, first aid kit, survival knife, and my snake bite kit. I placed all of this into my daypack and donned it upon my back. I climbed aboard my mountain bike and peddled my way out spring road until I escaped the city limits.

The cool morning air was comforting and almost chilly if I picked up any speed going down hill. I wish I had brought my fleece throw over. Soon, the sun shone in earnest and the day quickly heated up. The humidity was low so that made for a pleasant experience despite getting up into the lower nineties.

Eventually I found my way to one of my favorite spots to rest and recuperate on such a trip. It is a large, smooth granite rock jutting out of the forest floor along side a babbling brook. It is quite a way off from the dirt trail and I found it by accident last summer as I was exploring one afternoon.

I parked my bike up against a large oak nearby and sat down with my back towards the large rock facing the meandering creek. The soft sound of the water gurgling was music to my ears. I ate my sandwiches and drank my fair share. I watched as a lone crayfish crawled across the creek bottom looking for shelter. I then pulled out my book and begin to read as I munched on an energy bar. It was a beautiful setting underneath the dense canopy of old growth hardwoods. Shafts of sunlight shone through breaks in the forest overhead and a cool breeze was blowing. My eyelids grew soon grew heavy and I laid the book upon my chest and fell fast asleep.

By my watch, I awoke an hour later and was being eaten alive by mosquitoes. They were out in full force and had found me. I hastily packed up all my stuff and climbed aboard my bike to escape the onslaught. I rode a little deeper into the forest and then decided to turn around and head for home.

Evening Serenity

The evening is filled with the late calls of cicadas, crickets, and the chattering of the last remaining chimney swifts as they spiral down to their nocturnal abodes. The day is drawing slowly to a close. The cool, evening air wafts over me after a hot day and it is comforting. I pour myself a large glass of ice cold sweet tea and sit on the porch. I light a cigarette and take deep draughts. The last vestige of sunlight is on the western horizon; a perfect setting for the end of a perfect day.

It is times like these I wish I was camping amidst the wild woods. I yearn to fill my backpack with gear and to set out on an adventure; an adventure of survival, solitude, and oneness with my surroundings. The ambience of an evening such as this brings out the “Walden” in me.

Green Lantern

The yard is alight with the sparkling blinking of fireflies. It reminds me of the Green Lantern comics I read in my youth. Green Lantern had a ring that glowed fluorescent green much like the fireflies. It gave him super human powers.

The humidity of a southern mid-June permeates my clothes and the sheets on my bed. I lay most nights listening to the night time sounds and my radio as the sweat drips down my back. I am at one with my environment and sitting here sweating in a fruit of the loom t-shirt and boxer shorts. I do not mind the heat. On several blogs I read, the authors are complaining about our current heat wave. Earlier in the winter they were complaining about the ice and snow. I guess you can’t please everyone. I for one welcome this turn in the weather. I have had my life time’s fill of cold weather during my stint of homelessness. Bring on the heat ye weather gods.

Last week and weekend was busy. I went out to eat with my mother two times a day. We tried almost all the restaurants in this small town. I have probably gained ten pounds. She was starving and so was I. My father was in Palm Beach, Florida visiting with his cousin so he says or was it his mistress? I could care less about his personal misgivings. I do believe he has more going on than he lets on. At least he takes care of my mother very well and sees about her financially.

My ex-wife has come by several times the past few days. I do not answer the door and she has gone so far as to holler into my open windows trying to reach me. She has also left several suggestive messages on my answering machine. It is all about sex I do believe. Her overweight carcass has not had much success getting fucked since we have broken up and ended our marriage so she turns to me as her ace in her back pocket.

I haven’t had any sexual relations since I broke up with Alaine and plan on keeping it that way. My father always said, “Son, you hand is your best friend.” I am inclined to believe him now that I am older and have had some experience.

Lost in a Virtual World

I’ve rekindled my love of online gaming now that I have a fantastic internet connection again. The past few days I have been lost in the virtual world of online warfare that is Battlefield: Vietnam. I have been trying to keep my virtual persona alive in frenetic 64 person battles.

Today was the world premiere release of the demo to Battlefield 2. I think I have finally found another game that is going to suck me in for the foreseeable future. I was extremely concerned that my now aging, two year old computer wouldn’t run it well but it runs fabulously with very nice graphics settings and a high frame rate. I was smart in sparing no expense a few years ago on this computer.

Updates to this blog will be sparing and few for the foreseeable future. Frankly, I have grown bored with blogging and blogs in general. The many blogs I once read are either inactive or gone. Most of the authors that I enjoyed update on a frustratingly infrequent basis to the point I no longer stop by. Each to his own I say.

I mainly wanted to let my longtime blogging friends know what’s up. I am fine and well and busy enjoying a new pastime. I just have more intriguing fish on my plate at the moment. I could never do this when I was married as my ex-wife would go ape shit if she even caught a glimpse of me playing.

If you enjoy a good game and are a gamer, fire up Battlefield: Vietnam or Battlefield 2. I will see you on the battlefield.

Out of a Blue Sky

I was sitting in my car. The sunlight was beating down relentlessly. The sweat was dripping down my face and falling off the tip of my nose. I was eating a turkey and swiss on rye sandwich and listening to the weather band. I could hear the rumbles of thunder all around me with great looming thunderheads in the sky. The horizon was deep blue/black and looked ominous.

Suddenly, I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. POP! In a flash, a lone strike of lightning came out of one of the thunderheads and landed near my car on the hilltop. The subsequent crash and rumble of thunder was a loud, booming, immediate crack that made my ears ring. It was so loud it was almost deafening. It scared the holy shit out of me.

Needless to say, my storm watching adventure came to an end. I realized I was next best thing to a lightning rod sitting in my car on the biggest, treeless hilltop for miles. I ate the last of my sandwich, finished my milk, cranked up the car, and navigated down the dirt trail to the main dirt road and headed home.

My ears are still ringing but what an adrenaline rush.

Stormy Day in Alabama

This kind of weather gets me excited; the classic pop-up thunderstorm southern afternoon. The radar is lit up with wandering storms meandering towards the northeast. After writing this, I am going to pack up a lunch and some cold drinks and head out to a big hilltop in the countryside to storm spot for awhile. It is a pristine 360 degree view of the countryside and the horizon. Good thing my car has four wheel drive cause if it rains hard, I am going to need it. Dirt roads can get awful muddy after a storm.

Today was a busy day. This morning I got my bi-weekly Risperdal shot. Luckily, I didn’t have to wait very long to be seen. A new nurse is giving my shot and she is not very skillful with her technique yet. It was very painful in the old derrière. It is also hard to pull down your pants and expose yourself to someone that you are not familiar with. I try to tell myself that she has probably seen a thousand strange asses in her career.

Next on the agenda was to go to my father’s pharmacy, install a computer, and get it networked and online. It took me hours to get everything running right and networked with his older computers. I finally got his quickscript applications running right so he could fill prescriptions and print prescription labels on that computer. I also got him set up so he could do his weekly stock/drugs/merchandise orders online instead of having to call it in. It gives me great satisfaction to be able to help him in such a capacity. It would have cost him a fortune to have a technician come out and do it.

Well, I must be off to wild woods of the countryside with my trusty weatherband radio in hand. Hopefully some grand weather awaits me.

Kid in a Candy Store

Man, I didn’t realize how bad my internet connection had become. It is just blazing fast now and has not gone down once since this afternoon. I am busily downloading the British television shows I have missed the past few days at huge rates of speed. I feel as if I have rediscovered broad band.

A lone pop up thunderstorm has erupted on the horizon. My windows are filled with the far off flashes of lightning and the room rumbles with occasional thunder. The lightning bugs are also dancing their courtship ballet throughout my backyard; just a typical summer evening in the south. It feels good to be alive and experiencing this after such a dreary and overcast week last week. I think I will go sit out on the porch with a mug of coffee and enjoy the light show despite the oppressive humidity.

Internet Woes

My internet has been down since Friday. It has been frustratingly slow and intermittent for months now. They have come out multiple times to install new modems and it works for a few hours then goes back down again. After the third call today of this week and an estimated two days for the technician to arrive and to try and diagnose, I took matters into my own hand. (Why they didn’t check the signal strength on the line I do not know.)

This house has cable in every room. There are two 1000 mhz splitters out in the cable box on the back of the house with five distinct lines running from them to each room via the basement. I unhooked the line coming from the telephone pole than ran into the box and water just poured out of the first cable splitter I tried. Apparently, the cable box has a bad leak. It is supposed to be sealed to the elements.

I went and bought a new high performance 2300 mhz splitter at radio shack for $10. I came home and installed it and instantly my modem fired back to life and I was back on the web with a rock solid connection. (3 megabytes per second down.) All these months of a poor, crappy connection and it was as simple as that. It feels damn good to be back online and to have solved the problem myself. They kept trying to blame my router or my computer which I was sure it was not the problem.

Next, I must begin the arduous task of trying to get them to refund the past few months of my internet bill. They did a poor and faulty install of the cable box which let the water in. I will bug ‘em till they relent I tell ya! I can’t wait to see the look on Randy’s (the technician) face when I show him what was wrong. He has been over here so much we are on a first name basis.

The Hermitage

I grow ever more isolated as time goes by lately. My only contact with the outside world is the internet/email and a hand full of store clerks I encounter every week. I don’t know what has gotten into me but I crave isolation. Only when I am alone do I feel comfortable and at ease. I don’t even get lonely anymore. I am perfectly content to sit here, read all day, take long walks or bike rides of exploration, and listen to talk radio.

I posted a comment on Kevin’s blog. I restrained myself and was nice. I wanted to tell him he was speaking out of his ass over the subject of healthcare and doctors. He sure has been preachy lately. Ever since he threatened to sue me several times over a blog I have had an ill will towards him. I wish I had saved those emails. He would threaten me with a lawsuit and “lawyer friends”. I would write back for him to go ahead and sue me as I was judgment proof. I had nothing he could have taken and would enjoy seeing him waste his time. You can’t garnish disability. It was quite comical on my end but he was definitely serious even though his threats were without backing. I liken him to an internet bully.

Panhandling has ended down at the Piggly Wiggly for the time being. Someone higher up must have gotten pissed off and complained. Now the cops are doing regular sweeps of the parking lot and sitting out there a lot. Cap W/Tag, Slop, Weasel, George, and the gang have temporarily disappeared. The police will soon tire of these tactics and the gang will reemerge from the backstreets and back alleys of downtown. It has been nice to walk down to the grocery store without being hassled for change, cigarettes, or beer though.