Today's Pictures

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For 15 years Surely Not has lived without a leash, most times without a collar. She was fortunate to live where she could roam free and enjoy being a dog. It wasn’t until we moved into our little house on wheels that she was forced to wear a collar and leash. I was surprised when she took to this restriction.

One of her greatest pleasures in life is the opportunity to run without the leash. With her eyesight and hearing diminishing, I found giving her this opportunity difficult to do. I have lived with her for 17 years; I know her habits, and her little quirks. I know when she becomes confused at night when her eyesight is at its worse she will walk around in a circle. I know when she loses sight of me she will search for me. I also know when she is tired she will lay down even during a hike. Because of her failing eyesight and hearing, I decided to purchase her a cat collar with a little bell.

At night, while I am starting to drift off I can hear her walking around. I did not know, until the bell, how much water she drinks at night. When I put her outside for her evening constitutional, without a leash, I can hear the soft chime of the bell and can zero in on her if she gets a little confused. It is usually dark and she never wanders to far from the door. As I stated earlier I know her quirks and habits.

The bell turned out to be a life saver on our hike in the Rockcap Canyon State Park. It was a long downhill hike to the little river. As usual I stayed close to her with leash in hand and helped down a few small ledges and around a few prickly pear cacti. Because of her size I would lose sight of her but I would hear her little bell. In a matter of seconds she would pop out of the high grass and I swear she would have a smile on her face.

We tried the hike around the canyon where the trail was easier and a little flatter. I think she put all of her energy into bounding and leaping because about a ½ mile down the trail I stopped hearing the bell. She is most times ahead of me but this time she was behind me. When I turned around, I saw her, she was in the shade stretched out and resting. I sat with her and enjoyed the scenery. I felt a little sad because of what I saw, knowing she couldn’t see it. She is never more than two feet in front of me or behind me yet that bell was the smartest purchase I have made. As long as I can hear the bell I know where she is, when I can’t hear it I stop. I am well trained, just like Surely Not.

I know some people would consider this an act of abuse or neglect. Some believe all pets should be restrained, others would think that an older dog should be leashed or kept home. I am always aware of Surely Not when she is outside. If she suddenly gets the urge to run to far from me, I will put the leash on her which has not happened but I am prepared. She is 17 years old, she is a grand old lady, and I don’t know how much time she has left. With supervision I want her to have her freedom and enjoy the world around her. When I lose sight of her in tall grass or whatever I can hear the bell.

Today we are in Big Spring Texas; Surely Not is heading out for another adventure in a little park in town. She will have to wear her leash but she will have another grand day. Tomorrow we will head out looking for a warmer climate. Robin I have tried to get a picture of a prairie dog but those little buggers are faster than they look. I am still trying to get a picture. I have a mission. Until later.

I Don't Think We Are In Missouri Anymore

Click Here For Caprock Canyon.

Click Here For Unexpected Roadside Attractions.

The Cat On The Roof Story

There was this guy who was taking care of his friend’s cat while she was on vacation. On the third day of her vacation, her friend called and said “Hey your cat died.”

Grief-stricken she cried, “Don’t you ever give someone bad news like that. You have to build up to it. Instead of calling me and saying my cat died, you should say you cat is on the roof. Then the next day call and tell me my cat fell off the roof. And then the third day you can tell me my cat died. I would be prepared.”

Her friend apologized for his lack of sensitivity.

Later on in her vacation, she received a call from her friend.

He said “Your mother is on the roof.”





Pictures have been posted - Lubbock City Cemetery

Uh Kids.....

Your mama is on the roof.



It was time to caulk the roof. For reasons I cannot explain, I cannot climb in shoes. I always fall off. So I was barefoot.






Saw this, took a picture of it, and thought of you, Hannah Banana.

Planes, Trains, and Prairie Dogs

We have arrived in Lubbock Texas. Right outside our window is a "herd" of prairie dogs. Surely is excited. She is going hunting.

Hannah I will call you tonight.

The internet is once again iffy but I did update my webpages.

George Washington Carver Monument, Diamond Missouri

Llano Cemetery, Amarillo Texas

Palo Duro Canyon, Canyon Texas

Cadillac Ranch and Big Texan Restuarant, Amarillo Texas

Windows Vista Stinks!!!

I had a day where every one I know and love called me. The first was Hannah and she was laughing about the email I sent Robert. See Below.

This phone call was followed by other phone calls from family. With each phone call I was asked "how are you doing?" I just laughed and said "Well...." I told everyone about my email and how I dumped on poor Robert.

Well folks here is the infamous email.

I was on the Internet for a long time yesterday but this morning I started having trouble again. It is a Windows Vista problem and my advice is "DON'T BUY A COMPUTER WITH WINDOWS VISTA!"

I have two errors on my web page. You can view most of the pages by going back to "where we have been."

Until later

The Infamous Letter

Subject: IPV6 connectivity limited with Windows Vista
To: "Robert Weber"

I have done a lot of research on this. I took the "easy" way and disabled IPV6 and that didn't help with my being able to access the internet. Most if not all, public WI FI uses IPV4 and their IPV6 is limited.

I decided to contact Dell Support and spent two hours on the phone with a tech who finally agreed with me. In short I cannot get on the net because of Window Vista.

You can google this and see that I have not lost my mind. I need to be able to access the internet not only for personal reasons but for professional as well. I am so screwed.

We will be in Lubbock Texas in less than a week. I will send you their address so you can ship my old computer back to me. It is frustrating to have a computer that meets my needs with the exception of not being able to access the internet.

Things have been super crappy. In Oklahoma City, the roads are so bad that the whole RV was being shook. I am so cautious driving, I check my mirrors repeatedly and thank god I did. Right in rush hour traffic one of my basement doors popped open on the driver's side of the vehicle. I managed to get pulled over and get it closed without being killed by crazy insane drivers. It was my "propane" door, one without a lock, and I don't use it very often. The rough roads could have popped that open.

Water pressure at various parks is giving me a fit. I have blown two hoses. At this park I put the water pressure regulator on the faucet and another on the RV. Still leaking. I just keep the water turned off until we need it.

Then my camera lense broke..... Surely is having problems in the poo end and I have to shave her butt which means I have to sedate her. I tried to get out of my door this morning and it jammed. I thought I was going to have to climb out the window to get out. Relatively minor fix but aggravating. I am still dealing with our hot water problem and I need the freaking internet to set up my reservations for the next two months. Can you tell I want to hurt someone badly? :-)

Other than all of that I am hanging in their by my toenails.

Thanks for letting me emote.

I Am Back On The Net

I am back on the net. Don't know if it will last. I updated my photo blog and will provide links later on.

this could turn ugly quick

We pulled into…. Hell I don’t know, somewhere between Clinton OK and Elk City OK yesterday. Just out in the middle of nowhere and land as flat as bologna. The park was clean and had a few trees, plus cable and internet. After setting up camp, I turned on the TV and tuned into the weather channel so I could find out about the winds.

The weatherman said, “This is the worse I have ever seen it. The weather situation is ripe for spring tornados but this is fall. Folks, this could turn ugly quick and I suggest that you all take cover or find a safe place. For those who don’t have a safe place I would suggest you start digging a hole as fast as you can because you only have two and a half hours to do so.”

Mom and I just looked at each other with our mouths hanging open. I knew it was windy but I didn’t see a dark cloud in the sky. Since I only had a dust pan to dig with I knew we were done for. I went to the park office, which didn’t have a storm shelter and paid for another day.

All through out the evening mom and I looked out the windows like rubbernecks at an accident site. We were waiting for the hellacious storm the weatherman had forecasted.

We waited, then waited some more. Then we checked the internet and the TV and they forecasted storms but nothing of the magnitude of the dooms day weatherman. Is this an Oklahoma thing to do? Scare the bejesus out of their audience.

We spent the day doing laundry, organizing, and reading. There was no storm, just a shower, and all is calm. We will be in Amarillo Texas tomorrow.

The Chores Are Done

Friday night Hannah spent the night in the little house on wheels. Saturday we went to George Washington Carver State Park. Sunday was the day to tackle my jobs.

The house has been washed, top to bottom. The levelers have been wiped down with oil and greased. The level oil has been checked and filled. The car has been wash and the oil has been checked. I replaced the cap on the generator, cleaned the basement, fixed two hoses, washed and oiled the hitch. I also checked the fluids on the RV. Two women came over and told me to cut it out or their husbands will expect them to do the same jobs I was doing. I explained that it was either my mother or me climbing ladders and crawling under the RV. They smiled but I am sure they had a few things to say to their husbands. You know men, the minute you pop the hood or open the compartment to the motor they come in droves.

This evening I put away all of my toys, I am sorry I mean tools and loaded mom in the car and went to a casino. Robert, feel free to call me anytime I am at a casino because I won enough to go through the Oklahoma toll road 8 times with 5 axles.

Needless to say I feel like Surely Not (see below) and yes, Robert I will get the pictures of this weekend uploaded and on my webpage…. Maybe tomorrow.

Good night and we are heading for Tulsa tomorrow.

Uncle Yegi

Even though most of my childhood memories are gone, there are a few that stay with me. Those that have made an impact in my life. One of my childhood memories was of a man who I called Uncle Yegi. He was a delightful person who lived in Kansas City and sold oriental rugs.

What fascinated me about him was the two large scars located on the side of his face that stoled his dimples. He had stories about his two scars but they were stories of his own creation. I remember a hint of sadness when he told his tales that made me aware that these stories were fairy tales. Still I loved hearing the stories and I regret now not being able to recall them in it’s entirity.

It wasn’t until years later, when I was older and could understand the cruelties of war, that my mother told me what little she knew of Uncle Yegi’s past. Mom knew a lot about his life in the United States but his past was clouded in mystery. For reasons lost in the past he talked to my parents about his past. He was Armenian, as a child he was a part of the “death march” and he was shot in the face. The bullet entered and exited through his mouth.

Was it genocide or was it a massacre during a chaotic time, not an organized campaign of genocide as Turkey claims it to be?

If time allows read the following article and you decide.

In June 1915, the Turkish government ordered the deportation of all remaining Armenians from Turkey into the deserts of Syria and Iraq to the south. During the deportation, some Turks, Kurds, Arabs, and government officials aided and even hid Armenian families. But most of the Muslim population cheered the expulsion of Turkey's largest Christian minority group.
When the Turkish authorities assembled Armenian villagers for deportation, they often immediately shot to death any able-bodied adult males. The women, children, and elderly men were then forced to travel hundreds of miles, mainly on foot, into the southern deserts. The Turkish government provided them with little food, water, shelter, or protection.
Along the way, outlaws, local people, and even the police guarding the deportees attacked, robbed, raped, and murdered them at will. Minister of War Enver created a paramilitary unit called the "Special Organization," made up mainly of convicted criminals released from prison. Its mission was simply to attack and kill Armenians.

Kurdish horsemen also raided the Armenians, robbing them and sometimes taking women and children as slaves. The Turkish government did little to discourage such acts.
The Reverend F. H. Leslie, an American missionary in Urfa, a city in southeast Turkey, wrote:
For six weeks we have witnessed the most terrible cruelties inflicted upon the thousands . . . daily passing through our city from the northern cities. All tell the same story . . .: their men were all killed on the first day's march from their cities, after which the women and girls were constantly robbed . . . and beaten, criminally abused and abducted along the way. Their guards . . . were their worst abusers but also allowed the baser element in every village . . . to abduct the girls and women and abuse them. We not only were told these things but the same things occurred right here in our own city before our very eyes and openly on the streets.
The forced deportation of hundreds of thousands of Armenians led to their mass destruction by murder, starvation, and disease. At most, 25 percent of those who were forced to leave Turkey reached Syria and Iraq. But most of these people were finally massacred or left to die of thirst in the desert.

At times, the Armenians resisted. In 1915 on a mountain called Musa Dagh (Mt. Moses), located on Turkey's southern Mediterranean coast, Armenian villagers defied the government's deportation order and took up defensive positions on the mountain slopes. For 53 days, they fiercely fought against the Turkish army. Finally, more than 4,000 Armenian men, women, and children escaped by ships to Egypt where they lived in refugee camps until the end of the war.
Many foreigners witnessed the destruction of the Armenians, including diplomats and missionaries. In May 1915, Great Britain, France, and Russia jointly issued this warning to the Young Turk government:

In view of these new crimes of Turkey against humanity and civilization, the Allied governments announce publicly . . . that they will hold personally responsible [for] these crimes all members of the . . . government and those of their agents who are implicated in such massacres.
On July 16, U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Henry Morgenthau cabled the State Department that the deportations were increasing and "a campaign of race extermination is in progress."

Abandoned After the War
On the losing side at the end of World War I, Young Turk leaders Talaat, Enver, and Jemal fled the country. A new sultan, hostile to the Young Turk regime, formed a temporary government. He set up military courts to try members of the Young Turk government for war crimes. Talaat, Enver, and Jemal were prosecuted even though they had escaped the country and were absent at their trials.

The Turkish war crimes trials of 1919 documented "the massacre and destruction of the Armenians." The defense attempted to show that the Armenian minority was disloyal and a threat to Turkey during the war. The prosecution, however, showed that most Armenians remained loyal to Turkey and did not threaten its war effort. The prosecution also presented evidence that the executions, deportations, and massacres had been part of a premeditated "centrally directed plan" to get rid of the Christian Armenians in Turkey once and for all.
The Turkish war crimes courts found the defendants guilty of planning and carrying out the destruction of the Armenian people, a crime against humanity that would later be called "genocide." Talaat, Enver, and Jemal were sentenced to death while lesser officials received prison terms.

World War I ended the Ottoman Empire. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a war hero, formed a Turkish republic in 1923. He ordered the release of all those held for war crimes. Armenians seeking vengeance later assassinated Talaat and Jemal who were living in exile in Europe.
The peace treaty between Turkey and the victors of World War I called for the creation of an independent Armenian republic formed out of Turkish territory. U.S. President Woodrow Wilson pushed this idea and even asked Congress to authorize an American trusteeship to oversee the newborn nation, but this never happened. The short-lived Armenian Republic collapsed when Ataturk attacked it and confiscated "abandoned properties" that had been owned by the Armenians before the deportations.

In 1923, the final peace agreements that formally ended World War I abandoned any support for an independent Armenia. The agreements also ignored the right of Armenian survivors to return to their homes in Turkey and be compensated for the loss of their property. The Soviet Union carved out a small area for its Armenian citizens.

Greetings

Tuesday was my big day out! Usually I wouldn't be wearing my leash on my day out but I did a bad doggie trick. Instead of staying by human mom's side, like I usually do 99% of the time, I decided to take a little stroll when she wasn't looking. I walked all the way down a steep hill and I saw another dog! I barked and barked and barked! Being a little deaf I didn't hear my human mom calling for me. When I looked up the hill, there she was on her way down and I mean on her way down. Fortunately she regained her balance and didn't roll all the way down. Knowing my time without the leash was limited I decided to run all the way up the hill, pass my human mom, and wait for her on top. She was not a happy camper. But I was!

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Define Procrastination, Pepper

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Joplin Missouri

Oh Dear, What Can The Matter Be?
We made it to Joplin, Missouri. I noticed that my hitch was covered in a thick, oily, black substance that stained my hands. Since my little house is a diesel pusher, I started checking fluids, mainly the oil. By the time I was through my hands were black. I admire anyone who works on diesel motors. Everything I checked looked fine so I have an appointment with a Cummins mechanic. It is probably nothing to worry about but since it has never happened before I just want to make sure.

Camaraderie
I found out that once I opened the back of the motor home to gain access to the dip stick, men came running. An instant friendship formed over a discussion of what was wrong which led into a discussion of gas versus diesel. I was even more pleasantly surprised when the women folk didn’t come running out to claim their men. One even gave me a sympathetic look but I was enjoying the conversation. I learned a lot from the pow wow.

Cable TV
When we first arrived I was told that the cable was being installed and I should have it by the evening or the next day. To my surprise a gentleman showed up to finish digging the trench and do the installation at the box by my site. He accidentally cut through my power. It didn’t affect anyone else but me. The next hour was spent trying to figure out why I didn’t have power when power to my box was restored. We checked the fuse box and checked the outlets. I check the gauges inside the house and check the little black box outside. We could not figure it out. Then it dawned on me… the inverter/ converter doohickey. I went out and looked at it and pushed a button. I had lights. Needless to say we all did a little jig on that one.

Web Page Updated

Click Here For The Renaissance Faire

Click Here For Elmwood Cemetery.

Later folks, Mindy I will get those pictures sent tomorrow.

Last Night In KC

When Scott first moved to KC he moved into a retirement home. The apartment had Bingo Night, Pot Luck Dinners, Quilting, and various activities for its tenants. We teased Scott about his apartment. After a year of "retirement living" he decided to move and he promptly left his retirement home and moved into a chicken coop.

Yes, I said chicken coop. It isn't a typo.

Fortunately he isn't nesting with the chickens or gathering eggs. At one time this place was a working farm. As time went on the farm was converted into apartments with fewer than 15 tenants. The pasture land was left untouched and became a large yard with deer grazing at dusk. It is a pastoral setting, a rare piece of ground for being in a large city. What is even more amazing is the rent is reasonable, there is no paperwork to fill out, and you don’t have to give up your first born son to rent it. When an apartment becomes available the owners just hang up a sign. The tenants that live here have been there for years. Scott was so fortunate to find such a wonderful place.

The tenants are all laid back and no one complained when Scott and his friends held a cookout and brought out their musical instruments and started to play. It was the perfect ending for our time in Kansas City.