Dec 5th - Politcal Commentary - Reasons to Vote Democratic

I received an email containing the "12 Reasons to Vote Democratic" below. To be fair if someone sends me an email with similar "reasons to vote Republican" I will add it. Of course there are no reasons for anyone to vote anything other than Civil Libertarian.
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When your "friends" cannot explain why they are going to vote for a Democrat, give them this list. They can then pick their reasons from this "TOP 12"...

I’m voting Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of fuel are obscene, but the government taxing the same gallon of fuel at 67/77 (gas/diesel) cents/gal, plus 18 cents/gal sales tax, is okay. 

I’m voting Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.

I’m voting Democrat because Freedom of Speech is fine as long as only conservative Christians are offended.

I’m voting Democrat because I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves.

I’m voting Democrat because I believe that people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a $40,000+ Chevy Volt that other taxpayers are forced to subsidize.

I’m voting Democrat because I'm not concerned about millions of babies being aborted so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.

I’m voting Democrat because I think illegal aliens have a right to free health care, education, and Social Security benefits.

I’m voting Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for investors. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as the Democrats see fit.

I’m voting Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters.

I’m voting Democrat because I think that it's better to pay billions to people who hate us for their oil, but not drill for our own (ANWAR) because it might upset a caribou. Besides I would much rather our dollars go to some Muslim enemies than to friendly Canadians who want to sell us more oil if we will only let them build a pipeline.

I’m voting Democrat because while we live in the greatest, most wonderful country in the world, I want more "HOPE AND CHANGE". (more $1.3 trillion deficits, more years of plus 8% unemployment, more bombing of Muslim nations, Libya, that hated us before the bombing and who will hate us after we have spent over a billion dollars bombing them, etc). I endorse changing one of our motto's from the “Land of Equal Opportunity” to the “Land of Equal Outcome.”

I‘m voting Democrat because my head is so firmly planted up my ass, it's unlikely that I'll ever have another point of view.

"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery."

-- Winston Churchill

Dec 5th - Another Rainy Day

It has rained most of the day again today. The rain is supposed to stop this evening and no more is forecast for the next few days, but it is going to get a lot cooler. Today's high was 43 and the low tonight is supposed to be 36.  We are then going to have some nights with lows at, or below, freezing. Thursday the highs are supposed to climb above 50 again.

Kathy made broccoli cheese soup and vegetable beef soup for the Substation this morning. The Substation is the little on-site restaurant where you pay for what you get, as opposed to the dining room food that is included with the fees people pay to be here.

This morning I took the "guts" out of a small dorm style refrigerator and put a light socket in it so that it could be used to keep welding rods dry.

We took the afternoon off and left here about 11:30. We went to Tyler to look around a little. We ended up driving around the "loop" around Tyler. We didn't actually go downtown. We went to Sam's and also stopped at a Goodwill that we drove by.

I thought you might be interested in an interesting item at Sam's. You know you are in the southwest when Sam's sells corn husks for $5.50/pound.

You folks up north may want to set up some snow fence to catch corn husks as they blow around, and sell them to Sam's.



Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

Dec 4th - The Weekend

Saturday we ate breakfast at Juanita’s Mexican Restaurant in Lindale. They have a great weekend breakfast buffet. After breakfast we parked downtown and watched the Christmas parade. In the afternoon we didn’t do a lot. Kathy went for a walk but I just lazed around.

This morning we attended the worship service at Community Christian Fellowship.

 http://ccflindale.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1  Patty, from YWAM, had given us a list of area churches. She asked us about the type of service we preferred and recommended that we try CCF. My first impression is that, even though they have a large facility, they have a “spirit” similar to that at Harvest Christian Community.

Before coming to the Tyler/Lindale area we had no idea how many ministries have bases in the area. We drove by a Mercy Ships Ministries and Teen Mania Ministries bases on the short drive to CCF. Two other ministries that have local bases are Living Alternatives and Mission Direct.

Kathy went in town and bought some groceries this afternoon but I spent the day lazing around again. It rained most of last night, all day today and is still raining. It has been so dry here that people are glad to get the rain. It is supposed to stop tomorrow afternoon.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

Dec 3rd - Political Commentary - Buy American???? - Oil Sands

 Check out the video clip at the link below.
 http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/us-bridges-roads-built-chinese-firms-14594513?tab=9482930&section=1206853&playlist=14594944

I thought one comment made by a government official was interesting, fabrication facilities can't find welders. I am a firm believer that, in general, government has done such a good job of turning us into an entitlement nation that few are willing to work to learn the skills it takes to get a better job. Before retiring I regularly heard comments that companies about how difficult it was to find skilled labor.

Why get a job when Obama will borrow more money from the Chinese and Arabs to pay you to sit on your butt?

Why work to learn a skill when Obama will tax the hell out of those who have learned skills and give that money to you.

Ron, the guy I'm working for, and I had an interesting discussion at supper last night. He is from Alberta. I asked him what he thought about the environmental consequences of tapping the VAST quantities of oil in the oil sands. His reply. "The stuff has been oozing out of the ground forever. Now companies are taking the oil out of the sand and putting white sand back in its place." He said the Canadian federal government gets a LOT of money from the oil sands and that money get distributed across Canada. He wondered why the people of Quebec, who keep trying to stop the extraction, while they stand with their hand out to get their cut of the profits.  He also mentioned a tree hugger video about some birds that had flown into one of the retention ponds. He wondered why the same tree huggers hadn't done some filming at a wind power site next to a school. A crew has to go out every morning to pick up the dead birds before the kids get to school.

Dec 2nd - More Stair Building

Below is a flower/weed I noticed on my walk to work this morning. The breeze was blowing them around so the focus isn't great. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

We finished the stair forming late this afternoon. HOORAY! I'm stiff and sore in places I didn't know I had. Actually I've enjoyed almost every minute of it.

The food here isn't up to what we had at Spring Hill. I've been eating breakfast at home, because I LIKE a hot breakfast, and do-it-yourself oatmeal is not a hot breakfast.

For lunch today we were supposed to have grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. There is always a salad bar with imitation (Romaine?) lettuce. The grilled cheese sandwiches were fine (how can you screw up a grilled cheese sandwich?). The soup was definitely not tomato soup. I think that they strained the vegetables/beans out of some soup we had earlier in the week and then threw some cheese in it. Actually it was reasonably edible. Tonight for supper we had some type of soup that I first thought was going to be some type of Cajun soup. It was not. If it had not been sweet it would have been good. One of the guys at our table said the cook puts brown sugar in EVERYTHING. We also had cornbread and it wasn't to bad.

Todays high temp was 68. Last nights low was 54. Tonights low is supposed to be 48. It was only partly sunny.

Tomorrow we are going into Lindale and look around some more. The Christmas parade is supposed to be tomorrow. I just read that Quitman, TX, about 25 miles north of here, cancelled their Christmas parade, it was supposed to start at 6 PM tomorrow, because of forecast bad weather.

A LOT of rain is supposed to be on its way. The area is really short on water for the year but right now everything is nice and green because of some rains before we arrived.

This evening at supper we set with a guy who grew up in Bangladesh; Ron, the Canadian who I work for; and an oriental lady who spoke only broken English, and her small child. The guy from Bangladesh has been a lot of places doing missions work. He came back from Afghanistan about a year ago and will soon be going back over there. The lady is taking classes here.

Thats all for tonight. Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

Dec 1st - Some Photos

Todays's high temp was 68. It was sunny and there was a breeze. Kathy said that my face is quite red because of the moderate sun/wind burn.

Below are some photos I took yesterday.

This flower (probably some kind of weed) was a nice to see as I started to walk to work yesterday morning.

This is a view looking back toward the motorhome. You can barely see the motorhome back in the woods on the left side of the photo.

I walked another 50' or so and took this photo of the way I was walking.

This photo is pretty much taken from the end of what you see in the previous photo. I'm headed across the grass towards the far trees.

This is taken from the treeline. The place I'm working is maybe 100 yards beyond the buildings you see.

This shows most of the new building.

 This is one of the two stairs we are working on. They poured the uppers sections a week or so ago. We are forming the lower stair section. They will have a local concrete contractor pour the steps once we finish the forming. He couldn't do it tomorrow, before the weekend rain so we will have to try and cover up our work so that the weekend rain doesn't do to much damage.

The wood that you see over the entrance is cedar. There are at least 5 similar entrances, but only two have the big stairs. As soon as they can decide on a color, and things dry out, one of the next projects is staining all the cedar.

Kathy did more painting and staining today. She also did prep work in a bathroom to get it ready for painting. The folks here were quite impressed by the way she re-organized the paint supply room.

I think we are both looking forward to getting some rest on the weekend. I know that I am. Once again I am pooped, I am such a wuss <grin>. No one here is pushing either of us, but we do push ourselves. Being outside in the fresh air and sun all day long is almost enough to tire me out; digging, hammering, scraping, etc is more than enough to finish the job. I'm certainly not complaining. I am having a good time and get to work with some interesting people.

Enough for tonight, time to go to bed. Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.

Nov 30th - Great Day, Short Post

Weather was beautiful. High was 62 degrees with bright sunshine and no wind. I helped with cleaning and building forms for a stair, again. (David, wish you were here. We would have been at least twice as efficient if all you did was supervise.)

I will add a some photos of the place later but right now I am pooped and it is past time for bed.

Good night to all and may God bless you and yours.