Just Venting
In the fair city of Waco there has been a lot of going back and forth about the whole "Tea Party" thing.  There was a fairly recent column in that bastion of liberalism, the Waco Herald Tribune, essentially calling out the "Tea Party" over perceived racism.  Of course there are many replies in the letters to the editor.  What follows is my perception -- I would caution those of you with a more conservative persuasion or who really liked President Bush -- you might find this a bit irritating.  This particular post is but a small diversion for me....just chalk it up to more liberal rant.The

Luck
Yesterday, Sunday, was a beautiful fall day in Waco Texas. The sun finally came out, the winds were quite and it was about 60 degrees. Hands down, my favorite time of year.  Perfect weather and football are hard to beat. I took Marty outside during the halftime of the Cowboys-Redskins game to take in some of the Autumn while I swept and gathered the leaves on the back patio and porch. We completely made over our back yard a couple of years ago, thanks to Marty's nephew et.al., and Marty really likes being out back when the weather permits (that sounds really old). We now have an abundance of flowers, flowering shrubs, windchimes and wind spinners in our small back yard. It

Portraits
I've written before that we kind of gauge our life by the frequency of visits to the doctor, the hospital or the emergency room. It's been almost three weeks since we have been in the immediate presence of "The Great and Wise". That means our life has been rolling along very nicely. It's been a month since Marty has taken any antibiotics. This is the longest I can remember since the strokes. It's been a wonderful respite. We did go see the good Doctor today just to get a pre-Thanksgiving check up. All appears to be going well, a slightly elevated white count, but not enough to break our anti-antibiotic record. No extra meds for my girl today."

My Friend Charles
Dickens -- "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." -- this past weekend. We spent this past weekend at our lake house. All of the kids came down and little Noah made his first sojourn to Richland Chambers. For the first time Marty and I got to spend some extended time with him and just as one would expect, it was the best of times. He was the perfect baby and we both had enormously good times with the child.It was my daughter Erin's pre-birthday celebration. Erin, Lyle, Matt, Sarah and Noah all came down. Erin, Lyle and I went to Lake Fairfield to try wrestling some redfish into a boat. We did manage to catch a few, but on

8 Pounds
My wife has always been kind of a supreme know-it-all and smart ass. Bright, quick, articulate – all are/were descriptions of Marty. She was/is funny, irreverent and I believe put on this world, among other things, to keep me humble. She certainly has always done a wonderful job at that.While I was on my recent sinning sabbatical in Las Vegas (good time, lost money, but fought them hard for it) my lovely daughter and her equally lovely significant other Lyle came to Waco to keep Marty company. Lyle is slowly becoming one of Marty’s favorites. He is not afraid of her; he talks to her like she is normal and is always and forever asking questi