Someone Else Wishes Jess Happy Birthday!

Well, actually she's wishing her Southern Grandpa happy birthday!

Of course, when the camera turns on, our little girl is apt to get an attack of shyness, so you have to listen real close to hear what she's saying!



Besides "Happy Birthday Southern Grandpa", it's "Roll Tide" and "Go BAMA" and "I love you."


BAMA outfit, BAMA birthday greetings! Great birthday video for BAMA Grandpa!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESSE B. KING!

So how about a few pictures to celebrate his birthday? Here's the earliest picture I can find of Jess. He's one year old in this picture. It's not the best picture, but it's the only picture (so I guess it IS the best picture of him that young, ha!).

And then here he is, long, long ago, with his mother:
According to the date on the picture it was taken back in 1941 . So probably Jess was about 5 1/2 years old at the time. Wasn't he a cute little guy?

Here's all the King siblings around 1944. That's JB standing in the front, in the middle.

This picture is marked 1944, so Jess ought to have been about 9 years old.

And here he is with his younger brother, Kenneth:

Don't let the sweet pose fool you. I suspect he was a little rough on Kenneth at times! You know, that brotherly love stuff!

Jess thinks he's probably about 11 years old in this picture, and wearing his older brother, Thelbert's army hat.

Eleven years old, and look at that big handlebar moustache! Man, he grew a moustache at a YOUNG age, didn't he?

Now, how about this school picture? What a grin he's got!
He claims he was really shy during his school years.

They had horses to do a lot of the farm work while Jess was growing up. Here he is with Kenneth and one of their buddies:

He's the one holding the horse on the left.

Now, does this look like a shy dude in this picture? I think he's sure playing it cool here.
That's him leaning against the tree, in case you didn't figure it out.

Here's a picture of his entire family from 1948.

That's our Jesse in the front again, clear to the left.

Fast forward 35 years, and here's the family again:

Jess got to be one of the taller ones of the bunch, and is in the back, second from the right. (Or third from the left if you'd rather go that direction.)

Jess loves his grandchildren, and here he is with Debra and Dave's kids: Lee, Ryan and Emily.. .

By the time this picture was taken, Kelley was added to the group.

It was some time later, in 2005, and there came another grandchild!


Here we are with Ellie, way back when they still lived in Texas:

I have to admit, it's one of my favorite pictures.

And here's the proud grandpa with all the Sanford clan at Lee's graduation:

And then at Emily's. . .
I'd put one from Ryan's graduation in here, but I don't have any!

Of course, when you get to the grandpa stage, you're also likely to have some wear and tear on the body, and Jess had to have both knees replaced. Here he is last December doing some physical therapy.

This picture was taken back in July of this year, when we went to Canada to visit Richard, Chrystie and Ellie.

And then here's Jess with The Phantom Son during one of his visit's.


And last, a picture of recent vintage, of our intrepid explorer, checking out the new culverts the creek by our property is running through.

Of course, this is just a smattering of pictures, but you know I can't put a picture for every year on here or I'd use up all my bandwidth or something! It'd take a year to download, ha, ha!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESS!!!

NOT The Star Trek I Expected

Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t seen “Star Trek”
and want to watch it some time, DO NOT read this!!!!
==============================================================

Okay, so I’m an old fogey. I’ve been watching Star Trek since the original series first came out on tv. I had to walk over to a neighbor’s house to get to watch it in color. Through hay fields that were full of icky slugs that got in my shoes and made me go, “ooooooooooooo”. (As in a YUCK kind of ooooo – I don’t know how to spell it.) But it was worth it.

The point is, I love Star Trek. I’m a long time fan.

So I was all excited to finally get to watch the latest movie. I was sorry to have missed it in theaters, and stayed away from reading any reviews or anything that would spoil it when I finally got to see the movie on DVD.

You know, the movie advertised as the one “that follows the early days of the intergalactic adventurers” – that’s EXACTLY what it says on the movie sleeve. The one that promos lead you to believe tells you how Kirk, Spock, McCoy and all of the bridge crew met.

Well, I’m sorry. While this was a decent sci-fi movie, it is NOT how the Kirk, Spock and crew of the Enterprise we’ve known in previous shows and movies and books met.

No, instead we got some kind of alternate reality switch.

They talk about reality changing because people came back in time. And unless they do ANOTHER sort of alternate reality switch in the following movies, there's no way to segue from what I thought was supposed to be a prequel into the present Star Trek Universe.

Kirk’s dad was killed off in the opening scenes of the movie. They killed off Spock’s mother. They blew up Vulcan. Spock and Uhura have a romance. Man, it is soooooo messed up. These people (and planet) are important parts of the following Star Trek adventures.

This movie really flew under false colors. False advertising. I repeat, it is NOT how the crew of the Enterprise from other Star Trek movies met. Cause, after all, this is all a different reality.

An enjoyable movie? Yes, but, and it’s a BIG but… it’s not the Star Trek movie I was expecting.

And that’s a big disappointment.
(And I'm glad I didn't waste my money seeing it in a theater.)

A Little Behind

Okay, so I’m a LOT behind. As usual! (And my, wouldn’t I just love to have a little behind . . . )

I cannot believe that it’s only about a week until Thanksgiving. CAN. NOT!!!! You know what that means, don’t you? If it’s almost Thanksgiving, Christmas can’t be far behind, and then New Years, and there we are in 2010 and time just keeps whizzing by!

And so I just try to make the most of each day. That’s all any of us can do. I know that sounds trite, but as with most trite sayings, it also happens to be true.

I’d love to be able to make MORE of each day. I’m working on my health so I can hopefully gain more usable hours in the day. But there’s too much of the “gonna get worse before you get better” thing. Man, I am sooooo tired of that! Make one thing better, make another worse, or ever worser, create a whole new problem. What’s with that?

However, all things considered I feel extremely blessed. That’s something to think of with THANKSgiving coming up. However much I might whine and complain, we DO have income, we DO have a roof over our heads, we DO have food on the table, and on and on. We get so used to the land of plenty here, that we sometimes forget how much we have compared to a lot of other people.

I need to remember.

Imagine A Life Without Sports

I was just browsing through Facebook, and it never ceases to amaze me how many comments over the weekends are sports oriented.

What would people do without sports?

I’m not talking about actually playing sports themselves and getting exercise. Of course it’s good to get exercise. And it’s better yet if you can have fun while doing it.

No, I’m talking about sports as entertainment.

I guess mankind (& womenkind) have a long history of watching other people compete at some sort of athletic event. Way before the Greeks came up with the Olympics, I suppose cavemen were watching footraces or dino wrestling or something.

It seems to be included in many people’s make-up to enjoy watching sports. Maybe there’s some kind of “sports” gene that makes people susceptible to the thrill of watching physical competitions.

So I have to wonder, what would happen if people couldn’t sit around watching their favorite sports? What if there were no sports channel, or ESPN, or whatever? (Maybe even no tv, period!)

Well, what would people do for entertainment then?

Poor Baby!

I don't often chat about extended family on my blog, because as sure as I do, someone feels slighted. I don't know everything that's going on, I don't have time to mention everything that's going on, I can't begin to keep up with everyone in our extended family! So to prevent hard feelings, I usually stick to talking about us, our parents, kids, and grandkids.

But yesterday I mentioned that my niece, Bobbie, was at Duke with her youngest. Ava had to have eye surgery because of glaucoma. Sis-in-law Deb forwarded along a picture Bobbie took this morning of Ava:

All I can say is, "Poor Baby!"

Life Is A Whirlwind

Whew, seems like things are all awhirl. Seems like everyone is extra busy these days.

Jess has a manic-depressive job. For days and days he’ll have nothing to do. Depressive phase.

Then all of a sudden half a dozen people will all want something done yesterday. MANIC PHASE! He says he’s “busy as a one-armed paper hanger” or another one of his little sayings (some of which are probably better not to repeat).

Jonathan has been working over 40 hours a week. One good thing is he keeps relatively the same schedule week to week. He doesn't know the exact hours, but he does know what days he has off each week, when he’ll be opening and when he’ll be closing. Makes it a lot easier to plan.

Me, well, for instance last night we were going to do just a HALF hour meeting. Yeah, right. How about more like two hours!?! Which isn’t bad, just kind of funny. Wonder how long the meeting will be Thursday night?

Otherwise it’s the same old thing of trying to do too many things. With the time change, I’m doing all the outside critter chores by myself now. Cooking, laundry, whatever. Trying to get more internet work done. Updating older sites while thinking up new ideas, and creating new sites. It’s all a balancing act.

And wishing I could figure out what I’m doing wrong with networking computers. My laptop sees Jonathan’s computer, which is hard wired. But it won’t see MY desktop, which is also hardwired. I really, really, need to figure this out to get optimum use out of my laptop. I need to be able to tap into the stored files on the desktop. I’ve got two hard drives in active use there (one for documents, one for graphics). I’ve got to figure out how to access them from my laptop, but none of the info I find helps any. I do everything, step by step, and it still doesn’t work. I know I’m missing something, but I don’t know what I’m missing!

Of course, we’re not the only busy ones in the family. Dad will be going to Pigeon Forge next week so probably thinking about getting ready for that. My niece, Bobbi, was at Duke University Hospital with her youngest today. Ava needed eye surgery because of glaucoma. Debbie is watching her other two kids, so she's busy too!

I suspect I could poll everyone in the whole extended family, and probably everyone is busy with one thing or another. Thanksgiving is coming up fast, as is Jess’s birthday, and Christmas, and then all of a sudden, it’s going to be another new year!

Whew. I get tired just thinking about it.

A Family Classic

When I was hunting for a picture of me as a little girl for the previous post, I came across this picture:

It's definitely a family classic.

That's a year and a half old Jonathan under that blanket. We were camping near Mystic Seaport in Connecticut. It was Richard's 5th birthday (I believe he had a ship cake with little Lego men on it), and we were enjoying a family vacation.

At the time the picture was taken, the boys were supposed to be sleeping. Dale had just got after Jonathan, telling him to settle down. Jonathan immediately went perfectly still.

It was obvious he thought that if he couldn't see us, well, we couldn't see him either if he just held nice and still, and then maybe he wouldn't be in trouble.

His ploy worked. Not because we couldn't see him of course, but because it was so funny, we couldn't help laughing.

And it's hard to be stern when you're laughing so hard.

Think These Little Girls Are Related?

So what do you think? Do these little girls look related? I'm sure I'm more than a tad biased, but I think they do!

Of course, the right half of the picture is a recent vintage photo of our sweet Miss Ellie. But once in a while I see a picture of her, and it reminds me of another little girl from long, LONG ago (okay, you can quit snickering and making wisecracks about the Stone Age).

Cause yeah, the little girl in the left half of the photo is Ellie's Grandma. Both photos taken at around 4-years of age.

Put a pair of glasses on one little girl, and bangs on the other, and I think they'd look even more alike.

And I think that's pretty cool.

Life Is A Roller Coaster

Saying life has its ups and downs may sound pretty trite, but the fact remains, it happens to be true. Just looking at my last few posts, I see in one I'm discouraged, then I'm encouraged, then I'm discouraged, then . . . you get the drift.

And here I am this morning, at 11a.m., just now FINALLY in here to sit down at my computer and get to work. But first I need to decompress a little, vent, and get a little more "zen" in my thinking. Ready to focus. Because right now I'm anything but. I'm frustrated and discouraged. It's the middle of the day almost, and I haven't even started work.

Oh, it's not that I haven't been working. So far today I've:

• Fixed Jess's lunch for him to take to work,
• Baked some pepperoni mini-calzones for Jonathan to put in his lunch,
• Fed the turtle and bird on the inside,
• Put feed out on the front porch for the cat,
• Fixed feed for the chicks in the birdcage on the back porch,
• Put feed in the peafowl and rooster pens,
• Threw out feed for the chickens and guineas,
• And gave both dogs some treat bones.

But that didn't finish my outside chores. The good news is that it's beautiful outside today and we finally have sunshine. The bad news is after all that rain numerous buckets and the three wading pools holding water for the animals were full not only of water, but leaves. It is FALL after all.

The critters aren't that fond of leaf tea. I needed to dump those buckets and pools and refill them with fresh, clean water. Well, dumping full pools is hard work for me. Yeah, okay, I'm a wuss. But here I was hoping to have a less painful week since it's not supposed to rain, making it easier to focus on internet work, but dumping pools and dragging hoses means at some point there will be a payback. I'm gonna hurt.

I try to remember to use my left side as much as possible, but I'm right handed, and sometimes I forget and find myself dragging hoses with my right arm/hand. Not good. And I had to do a lot of hose dragging this morning because the hose to the sheep pen and for the birdbath in the front yard was busted. That meant I needed to haul it in and roll it up out of the way, and get another hose hooked up and pulled out where I needed it. And the hose I found was too short, so I had to move the concrete birdbath so it would reach it. . .

Then also some time during this morning, I was on the phone with Jess, trying to figure out how to email files from Microsoft Project. I didn't do very well at that, and that also is frustrating. We never did get it to work, and the only thing I could think to do was tell him to bring the program disks and manual home, and I'll install it on my desktop and check it out.

Poor Richard. How many zillion times have I asked him for tech support long distance? I know it's tough when you can't SEE the problem.

We were also having troubles with the phones. That's what I get for buying the cheapest cordless phones I could find. They kept going dead, so I'd have to switch phones, and Jess had to call back about three times.

Have I mentioned it's been a frustrating morning???

I had big expectations of really being able to charge into my internet work this week, but there are so many other things every day that I have to do first. And of course Mondays seem to be the worst, with getting things set up, like the week's humor mailings, and getting one done and mailed out.

Working at home may sound cool, but it's difficult. There are so many distractions, with things all around that need done, and nobody's there to do them but you. And a lot of people don't "get" the fact you are working. You're at home after all! You can do what you want! And you don't get away from the office. . . with all the interruptions it usually means you're working in the evenings too, trying to make up for lost time.

But having said all that, I still prefer working at home to going to an office. Which is just as well, because I can't survive in an office environment any more. No way I could sit at a desk 8 hours at a stretch. That's why the laptop is such a big help, because I can change my seating arrangements and give my body a little bit of a break.

And speaking of breaks, I've had mine now, so it's time to get to "work work" and see how much I can accomplish. It's not going to do itself, and nobody is going to help me, sooooo... time to woman up and get 'er done!

Encouragement

encourage tr.v. , -aged , -aging , -ages . To inspire with hope, courage, or confidence; hearten. To give support to.

I've been encouraged lately.

Getting my first commission check helped greatly. Finally, a sign all my work is heading somewhere!

Then one of the co-owners of the company where I take classes, etc., mentioned my accomplishment in the membership-wide call last week. I think there were about 80 people on the call. That may sound like a lot, but it's really a pittance compared with how many actually have membership.

The trouble is, more people like the idea of making a living on line than actually want to do the work it entails. So they join / buy a lot of memberships / products, but never do anything with them.

But it was encouraging for him to congratulate me, and hand out some praise!

And I'm encouraged because it's supposed to be DRY this coming week. No rain pain! I'm hoping to be able to get a lot done. It's easier to feel encouraged when the pain levels are down to normal.

So I'm hoping for a great week here. Hope you have one too!