After years of sitting on my butt at home

It's weird. I've been going out now for weeks on end, to Galveston, here, there, to a movie, to dinner - it's been so long since I've had a steady companion to spend my time with. My body rather resists - it's been inert for so very long.

This morning, up at 6, out the door at 7, picked up Robert at 7:40 and we went up to Rusk, which is about three hours northeast of Houston to ride the Texas State Railroad.

We rode in my car, and left the interstate at Huntsville, headed east on a succession of Farm to Market roads, with many twists and turns, mostly on two lane undivided pavement.

You know, it just isn't hard work to drive a car on an urban interstate. Even on an interurban interstate, it's not a challenge. Up and down curving hills, with blind corners, no shoulder, on a two lane road - THAT'S work. It was fun. We had my Delphi Nav200 unit on the windshield and Robert's Garmin on the dashboard (he was insisting that his was superior.) The Delphi quickly proved that it would get us LOST, not there, telling us to turn left or right while the Garmin kept telling us "no, stupid, just keep going straight ahead."

We gave up on the Delphi when we realized that not only were its directions poor, it had the wrong true road speed (my speedometer is NOT inaccurate, it's HYPER accurate) and generally had a bad attitude. It is going back into Bram's car now.

The weather was movie-perfect. We zipped along like no one was on the road (mostly because no one was on the road) and pulled up at the Rusk Depot of the Texas State Railroad with 45 minutes to spare before they chuffed out.



Robert insisted that we should pay extra for the climate controlled tickets, and we boarded the combine car which sits in the middle of the train, and dropped our lunch cooler off in the baggage/concession area then headed into the small seating area in the combine car. You can see the combine car just to the left of the depot here:



We were the only people seated in the combine car; everyone else was in one of the other six coaches. After a cab tour (which was more like a cab drive by greeting) of the steam locomotive, we settled in and the train headed off for the 24 mile ride to Palestine.

Being the only ones in the combine car, we enjoyed a very peaceful environment (aside from the rocking back and forth, the traffic back and forth to the concession stand, where Cracker Jacks were the most popular necessity) and arrived in Rusk about ninety minutes after starting for lunch.





Robert had packed a cooler for us, so we sat in the perfect weather under some shade trees and waited for the sign to re-board the train back to Palestine. The engine makes a big "Y" around the depot to turn itself around, and we were perfectly positioned to watch this operation.





Robert walked over to drop a few coins on the rail for the locomotive to smash for a souvenir (I have my penny from his trip up there last weekend.) The locomotive, nor the crew seemed to be much interested in mashing flat our increasingly valueless coinage.





After recoupling to the train, we re-boarded and took our seats again in the combine car. The trip up had been so peaceful - just me and Robert hanging out, talking about whatever we talked about - I was really hoping for solitude again. People walked through but somehow we had an air of exclusivity - people kept saying "this must be a private car or something."

We did pretty darned well until about twenty minutes into the journey back, and a fellow who was loud with his speaking (and his movie camera) brought his daughter into the car and tried to sit her down. Frankly, she wasn't very interested in it. She kept trying to go back to whence they had come. He tried to leave her in the car and retrieve the rest of his tribe, but she had skipped out on him by his return.

He corralled her and got her seated in the pair of seats directly behind us and began chatting her up about nothing (but in a dominating voice.) Robert, as casually as you could imagine, says "Sir? Sir? Are you planning on sitting there for very long? This is a private car, you know. The climate controlled tickets are for the cars behind this one."

And he GOT UP AND TOOK HIS DAUGHTER AND LEFT APOLOGIZING. Uh, I nearly spewed I was choking from trying not to laugh out loud.

What a hoot.

A short time later, some young kids came into the car and sat in some of the seats. We worked to not allow them into consciousness, and they were very well behaved. I kept expecting the guy to come back with his daughter, but he never did.

The trip back was much shorter. It was something - there was no phone signal at all after we left Rusk, and hardly any the whole day. As we were leaving, we noticed that their rail yard had a bunch of equipment that looked interesting, so we peaked around. An old Southern Railroad business car - hmm. Doesn't that need to be in my garage?

The whole day was weird. I should have had a sense of deja vu all day, given that I spent my boyhood growing up with a nearly identical steam excursion railroad in my grandparent's back yard.

And, it wasn't like that. The whole steam thing didn't make me connect to how I felt when I was eight or eleven, and the whole train thing just didn't send me upriver emotionally like it always has. It was a whole new experience, and it was all about hanging out with Robert. Not what we were doing, just that we were doing something.

It was great. It really tells me that the most important things in life are the memories that you create with other people, not what you buy, what you have or what you've seen.

Don't you just love the smell of regulatory napalm in the morning?

Read this terrific article about the developing re-regulatory "storm" in Salon magazine online.

More on creating time with people important to you and proof that the French are weird

It was very clear to me yesterday, we could have been sitting in a hot tub, in a beach resort, my living room - any would have sufficed. It was having nine non-stop hours with no distractions that gave the day its meaning.

"I don't get it..." said a French businessman over lunch on Friday. "In
fact, I don't think any of us get it. You've got a guy – the governor of
New York – who hires a prostitute. He gets caught and has to resign. But
the President of the United States lied to the American people and started
a war in which thousands have died...a war that is so expensive it
threatens to bankrupt the entire nation. How come he doesn't have to
resign? Strange system."

This was just the coolest thing to see

Okay, so I'm an airplane dork. But, this really made my week.

Why I like reading Josh Marshall's TPM

Josh Marshall writes/manages the news site "Talking Points Memo," which has been honored with new journalism's highest quality award (not bad for a BLOG, huh?) based on their work to reveal the information and the depth of the current administration's US Attorney purge.

Here are one of his blog poster's thoughts today about our three presidential candidates, the financial crisis and what's NOT being said. I think that it's something that should be reviewed, and then those questions asked of the candidates. You will have to do it, though, the media won't ever do it.

TPM Reader SW's lament ...

I am appalled, though not surprised, at the complete silence by the candidates on the last few days' events on Wall Street and the world's stock, bond and currency markets. This has far more effect on all of our futures than racist comments by the oxygen deprived brains of some old political or spiritual leaders. I know why Clinton and McCain are not talking about it: too many of their biggest supporters had too much to do with what happened, and benefited from the deregulation of the past twenty years for which both (and their allies) had a great deal of responsibility. (Remember that Hillary stood by while her colleague Chick Schumer killed the bill to tax hedge fund managers, who ear scores of millions every year, at income, rather than capital gains, rates.) What about Obama? Is he not up to the task of educating people about what the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act did to the markets many Americans poured their retirement and college savings into? Does he know that the Federal Reserve is about to bail out bankers, investors, and outright thieves who helped drive down the dollar, and brought the credit markets to a near standstill? Does he understand the problem? I wouldn't know.

Seventy years ago Franklin Roosevelt was able to explain this country's and the world's financial crises to a far less educated, and less accessible, American public. That today's candidates are unwiling, or unable to do so, is alarming. Maybe if the media first tried to understand the problems, then asked the proper questions until answers were forthcoming or it was clear the candidates are afraid to ask them, political coverage would be more than the extreme sports coverage it has turned into.

Two weeks, holy cow

I think that this is the longest I've gone without entering a blog post in .. well, since 2003.

Lots going on, I guess. Work has been consuming, and personal growth work has been consuming a lot of my time. That, and, for the first time since Tex Johnny died, I've had a regular playmate in R. It's been GREAT having someone who wants to spend time with me, just hanging out, having fun, doing things - I NEARLY played Frisbee (tm) golf with him today - but had a prior commitment. Uh, hello? Me? Flying kites on a beach? Playing Frisbee (tm) golf? Answering the phone on a late Friday afternoon and agreeing to go to a movie on 90 minutes' notice?

This is just not the "me" that I've known.

I've just juiced some of Jeremy's left over fruit that needs to be used or will be as sour as he is - Just made a lovely cocktail - one jigger vodka, one juiced ruby grapefruit, one juiced small orange, and one juiced blood orange over ice in a highball glass. YUM!! I'm calling it a Blood Diamond Greyhound.

There's something I haven't posted about - Jeremy. He's still gone - totally out of contact. I packed all of his things up last week, and it's neatly sitting on the garage shelves. He's either finally gone off and killed himself, is being supported by some new person I'm unaware of, or has wandered off to another place and time.

In any of those outcomes, he's chosen to leave his things behind and to refrain from any adult conversation. Once his fruit left in the 'fridge is consumed, and after April 25 (the date I told him I was going to hold his possessions through,) he will be only a faded memory.

I have my guest room back, however. Today, I re-hung pictures in there and cleaned. Again. More, actually.

Brought home a carpet steamer/shampooer from church - we didn't know we had it and didn't know if it worked or not. I cleaned it all up today, and it works - it's just not getting the carpeting wet. Hm. I intend to use it on the stairs, the landings and the bedrooms to get all of the Jackie/Jeremy residue out. More will be attempted later tonight.

Back when I bought my iPod, I also bought a Kuda USA phone pad to hold the iPod in the Red Rocket. It's languished here these last weeks, and yesterday - I finally decided to try to install it myself. And, it WORKED beautifully. I installed the clip holder to the pad (myself, thank you) and got the whole thing working.

I also cleaned up the car, cleaned the garage, bagged up the recycling and took it out, pruned the hibiscus on the courtyard, cleaned the kitchen (a never ending story,) and did the church thing.

Now, I'm watching "break up" or whatever that Jennifer Anniston movie is. What was it that Brian said? "Even when Jennifer Anniston is offstage you can hear her acting suck."

And, the rich art buyer guy in the movie looks JUST like my favorite porn star. i can hardly wait for the credits.