jon_e_h

"The difference between death and taxes is death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets." -- Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist

Lips caressing softly
A warm embrace
I melt into you
and surrender at your touch
Lines blur and boundaries fall
Where do you begin?
Where do I end?
I feel your warmth consume me
My toes curl as you pull me closer
Our mouths blending gently
Our souls breathing in each other

Patrice Pike and Fishing for Comets live at Salon Nights on the Levee
1727 E Levee St, Dallas, TX, 75207
When: Saturday, Nov. 22, 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Cost: $25
Age limit: 21+



All proceeds benefit Rockin' For Rescue Foundation. Live and Silent auction, too.

"I'm sorry, sir. Your address is twisted in the system. If you vote here, it will not count."

"But I've lived here since 2006. I received a voter's reg card soon after I moved in. I just renewed my license, this license right here, in JUNE! What the hell is wrong with this system?!"

So, anyway, in order to vote today, I have to drive down to Southwest Dallas, near Duncanville and Cedar Hill. This is all because of the post office and some ass-haberdashery with respect to their change of address forms. They really messed up a bunch of stuff, which is tangential, but related to the present challenge. Anyway, now I have to figure out a way to get down to my mom's neighborhood to vote >.<

I decided to try my hand at making a t-shirt design. Check out my storefront on CafePress.com:

http://www.cafepress.com/EnvisionWear

A few years ago, I was out of work for an extended period of time, so I explored cooking to satiate my need to be creative. I had always enjoyed cooking, but was not really good at it. It all started with the quest for pesto. As with everything I do, I set out to make the best possible pesto with my own unique spin on it. It was very successful and soon I decided to try my hand at making pesto pizzas with it. That was hugely successful, as well. I even did two pizza parties for some of my friends, which I really enjoyed, and people at the parties really enjoyed my pizzas. I also made hors d'oeuvres for a movie night at my friend Jamie's house once. I used my red pesto recipe mixed with cream cheese for that.

From pesto, I branched out into other Italian cooking, initially starting out with dishes that included pesto and then moving on to others that did not. After I had a pretty decent lineup of Italian dishes, I decided to try my hand at Thai cooking. My Thai cooking is very narrow, because I focus on Pad Thai, but it's really good. I make a few other things which are also good. Next, I decided to try my hand at curries. I started out with packets bought at the store, then started adding my own ingredients to off the shelf curry powders and finally made my own curry powder which I think is pretty good. Now I make three pretty good chicken curries that my family seem to love. Next I moved on to Tex-Mex. I need to start cooking again so I can experiment with many other styles.

Anyway, while I was in the quest for the best possible pesto, I had a dream of opening a restaurant. That faded away gradually; so gradually, that I do not even remember it happening. Yesterday I went to Acemart, which is located just up Webb Chapel from where I live. The dream came flooding back to me, as I was surrounded by restaurant equipment, supplies and place settings. All of the kitchen gadgets and doohickeys made my heart beat faster. The large vats and stock pots made me smile, as I fondled them in awe of their size and machining.

Last night, I was chatting with my new friend Stacie, who was telling me about business her family is starting. I brought up catering as one of the things she could do, because it kind of fit in with their business plan, which put a seed in my head that decided to bloom into a full thought this morning. I've spent the past few hours looking into what's involved in opening a catering business. It appears to be a much better Idea than opening a restaurant, as the initial investment and capital involved are much smaller and the chance of success is greater. So many restaurants, both good and bad, fail in the first year. Catering can start out as small as one wants it to start out. It can be done part time with very little investment.

Yeah, so this is dancing around in my head now. I suppose it could lead to great things and financial independence, at some point if I decide to pursue it. I may look into getting employment with a caterer to see how the business is run from the inside and base my decision on that. There is so much to ponder.

...is rated E for everyone. :-)

Ok, so I had this really weird craving on the way home from watching airplanes land at Love Field from Bachman Lake Park with Eric. He loves watching the planes and the ducks. Anyway, back to the craving. I had the a craving for something fishy and salty. I heard that sardines fit that description, so I called my mom while I was on the way to the store. She said that she doesn't like them, but my grandpa used to love them. I figured why not, so I bought two different kinds; if I didn't like them, I could give them to the cats :-)

I opened the more expensive ones first. They were boneless & skinless from Morocco and packed in olive oil. They were pretty fishy, salty and reminded me of strong tuna. All in all, I'd have to say I would repeat the experience. I am saving the cheap, water packed, regular sardines for later.

Trying new things is good; even things you don't think you will like. Preconceptions kill possibilities for adventure :-D

yo momma so big, she jumped up in the air and got stuck!

Hmmm...pretty cool function, although very limited. I guess I would have to come back later and apply restrictions or simply not post anything I want restricted :-)

I worked an 18+ hour shift yesterday (Sunday into Monday, actually) so I was really tired by the time I got to sleep around fifteen to nine last night. I wanted to get to bed much earlier, because I had to be up to work to shut down the server at seven this morning. Since I was still pretty tired after I shut down the server and I do not have to start working until 8:30, I decided to take a nap. During that short nap, I had a very vivid dream.

The really strange thing about the dream was how vivid it was. It seemed like I couldn't sleep, so I walked up to the lobby and looked out the front window. The sky was very bright and suddenly it started snowing. Then the wind whipped up and the flakes started beating against the window glass and grew in size to large white clumps. The sky gradually darkened and off to the east I saw an enormous thunderhead, dark grey in color and pulsating with bright flashes of lightning, which never seemed to stop. The lightning in the cloud was so intense that it was continually illuminated. The sky then turned black. The summer heat began to melt the accumulating drifts, resulting in fast moving runoff, which began icing over on all surfaces.

About that time, I heard a rumbling coming from the side of the building where our parking lot is located. Then, out popped a bucket T in a sand rail configuration, with sand paddle tread on the rear wheels and grotesquely elongated independent rear suspension. The suspension and the drive axle on the passenger side was flopping around like it was broken and I yelled out to alert the driver of the problem, but he just kept going. He reached the end of our parking lot and cut across the southbound lane of Regal Row, then the median and finally into the northbound lanes, where he stopped his vehicle, turned on yellow flashers and got out to stop traffic.

A group of us piled into someone's car. The driver was female. She and the other passengers were non-distinct and indescribable. She was in a panicked state and took off as fast as she could, sliding all over the place. Traffic was blocked going south, so she jumped up on the median and began driving erratically. We ended up on the northbound side, driving the wrong way, but there was not much traffic. We passed a large group of U.S. Army vehicles, mostly jeeps and troop transport trucks of the WWII era, which were parked in a parking lot and unoccupied. The road was slick and we slid to the side of the road. There was a feeling of relief, which was very short lived, as we were soon hit on the rear driver side quarter by a large truck. The car was sent careening on the slick, icy surface. It bounced around like a billiard ball and soon more cars were involved in the accident, all sent sliding and uncontrolled, hitting more cars. We then began to slide in the direction of the road, spinning in a counterclockwise circle. The car almost fell off several drop offs along the side of the road. The sensation of falling woke me up when the car actually did fall.

Anyway, it was a very strange dream to have in such a short nap. I work up at 8:19, which was eleven minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off. Of course, the very first thing I did was go look outside :-)

Know yourself. Be yourself. Be here now.

from: D o w n s i z e r - D i s p a t c h

Give government an extraordinary power for the purpose of doing good, and someone will eventually use it to do something extraordinarily bad. But it's worse than that . . .

The good thing you wanted done may never happen at all.

Does government make competent use of the powers it already has? We think not. Would government do a better job if it did less, and focused more? We think so.

Incompetent use of extraordinary government power creates emergencies. Emergencies justify new and bigger powers. The new and bigger powers create still more and bigger emergencies. And so it goes, step-by-step, until government is omnipotent and omni-INCOMPETENT and the people are crushed.

Those who trade liberty for security make a bad bargain. So it has been in the past. So it is now. So it will be in the future. It's time to say no to this bad bargain.

Senator Specter and Vice President Cheney are negotiating a back-room deal that would give the President the power to spy on Americans without a warrant. When the closed doors open and the bill comes forth, it will be rushed to a vote. The time to oppose warrant-less searches is RIGHT NOW. Send your message opposing this extraordinary new power by clicking here.

Thank you for being a DC Downsizer.

Perry Willis
Communications Director

When I first encountered Justin on the old club sponsored message board, I did not know what to think of him. He was rude, abrasive and mischievous. He stirred trouble and caused grief and anguish for my friends. He was not very nice. I decided to befriend him, anyway. I figured that the only way that I could truly understand his motivations was to get to know him. When I met him in person for the first time, he came over to my condo. We sat around and talked for a few hours about various topics, ranging from the club to programming to relationships, both good and bad, to computers and gaming. We talked and talked. This encounter was actually nice. I did not really have anyone to talk to about those things, at least not only one person with whom I could talk.

I helped him set up the first incarnation of TCB. We went through long hours of testing and breaking and fixing and testing some more. He added code to make the board do things which other boards did not do. He eventually made amends with my friends, who are probably reading this. Things were pretty good for a while. He was still rude, abrasive and mischievous, but people just accepted it for the most part. From time to time, drama would raise its head. Drama would die down and everything would return to normalcy. He and I had our own drama from time to time, but it was nothing major--nothing to make me angry enough to tell him to leave me alone.

What I learned about Justin is that he was mostly like everyone else. He wanted people to like him. He wanted to be happy. He wanted to be noticed. Also, like quite a few people, he did not have a good idea how to make any of this happen. His base character was quite likable. His grand affectations in an effort to win people's hearts and minds made him unbearable and misunderstood. He did things to people which should never be done. He made enemies. He won few friends.

Under the surface he was very troubled by his actions. He knew he was not doing the right things. He did not know what to do and it depressed him. His self-medicating and the prescriptions from his doctors would make things better for a while, but his underlying problems continued to exist. He just could not make people like him for him, because he was too busy trying to build a facade to get him noticed and to get him the attention he desired. If he could have just been himself, I imagine people would have liked him. Despite his facade, I could see the good guy underneath. He was depressed, needy, confused and misunderstood, but he had a good heart.

I saw him online a week or two ago. I thought about chatting with him, but I am going through some issues of my own right now, so I thought I would catch up with him later. It had been a few months, what difference would another week or two make? Apparently it made quite a difference. I will never be able to chat with him again. I will never be able to listen to him tell me how well his newest medication is work or how someone or something is pissing him off and how he plans to take revenge. I will never have the chance to talk with him for hours about things which interest us both. He may not have been the best friend or best person in the world, but he was a person. He was a person with problems.

What person does not have problems, issues, complexes or demons which drag them down from time to time? I know I am not immune. Maybe some of us cope better than others, but I do not think coping or overcoming our problems could possibly make us that much better than those who cannot. We are all human. We have all fallen down. We have all done things of which we are not proud. At the base of it all, he was no different than any of the rest of us.

He was a man battling his demons the only way he knew how. Despite his flaws, I mourn his passing. I apologize to any who think I might be minimizing the hurt he caused. I hope those he hurt can let go of that hurt. He can hurt you no longer. I hope god will judge him justly.

To all who are out there, whatever the situation, if you only listen to one piece of advice from me, listen to this little tidbit about chances:

Treat everyday as though you have only one chance to get it right, treat every person as though you only have one chance to do right by them and treat your life as though you only have one chance to do it right (for the reincarnation believers out there), because you can never take back anything. Never take for granted the chances that you have and remember, any chances that are given after your indiscretions, transgressions, faux pas or fuck ups are golden.

I start my second chance at my job from which I was fired on August 28, 2001. It is as clean a slate that can be had and I will treat this second chance with all the respect which it deserves. I urge anyone taking a lackadaisical attitude toward the chances which they have been given to reconsider their motivations or lack thereof. Life is too short to fall short of being the best you can be in the time that you are given. Carpe diem!

If you like pad thai, you'll probably like this sandwich idea. Two slices of sourdough bread, crunchy peanut butter with a light sprinkling of granulated garlic and fresh cilantro on one side and chinese chili-garlic sauce and honey on the other side. Trust me, you have to use fresh cilantro for it to taste right.

In other news, we are getting a house. It is over in the Royal/Brockbank area near I-35. It was built in 1955 and has three bedrooms, a huge living room, a huge kitchen with eating area, a pier and beam foundation, hardwood floors and a large detached garage. The only thing definite at this point is that we want it! Send good vibes our way and wish us luck. Hopefully we'll find out this week if our bid was accepted and have everything sorted by the middle of February.

Married life is great. I never thought I would meet my lovely lady Leah. She keeps me grounded when I need it and I return the favor. She lifts me up when I need it and I do my best to do the same for her. I wish I did not work so much. Time is precious and I'm spending most of my waking hours away from the people I love. It's hard to be a good husband and father when I am away so much.

Being a father is awesome. I love seeing my son's daily progress. He is so astoundingly clever at times. He's already learned how to fool us into thinking he's taking a nap, just long enough so that he can get out of bed and continue playing! Nevertheless, he is an exceedingly easy going boy. I savor every moment I can spend with him.

My job sucks ass. I've never been more miserable at a place of work than I am now. Working 60-75 hours a week is very draining on my energy and my mind. I've had a few leads on jobs, but none have come to anything so far. I wish businesses would consider non-college graduates with years of experience in their chosen field. Anyone need a top notch graphic artist?

I need something stable until my manufacturing business starts rolling. I have access to a 3x3' CNC router table. I can make anything from custom computer case side panels to custom furniture pieces to carved wooden doors. The possibilities are almost limitless. The table was originally bought to build custom solid body electric guitars, but our luthier flaked and grew wings. If anyone has other applications in which this table might be useful, drop me a line.

Blue Skies lyrics
from: Irving Berlin

Blue skies smilin' at me
Nothin' but blue skies do I see
Bluebirds singin' a song
Nothin' but bluebirds all day long

I never saw the sun shinin' so bright
Never saw things goin' so right
Noticin' the days hurryin' by
When you're in love, my how they fly

Blue days all of them gone
Nothin' but blue skies from now on

Blue skies smilin' at me
Nothin' but blue skies do I see
Bluebirds singin' a song
There's nothin' but bluebirds all day long

I never saw the sun shinin' so bright
Never saw things goin' so right
Noticin' the days hurryin' by
When you're in love, oh my how they fly

Bye blue days all of them gone
Nothin' but blue skies from now on

I really dig this song, especially these days. The other morning, about 30 minutes before my shift ended--just as the sun was coming up--I came around the side of the building and had an awesome view of the Western sky (yes, I know the sun does not rise in the West--be patient). The sky was lit up with a pale blue radiant light and was partially filled with billowing white and blue clouds hanging over the industrial portion of downtown Dallas. The sight made my heart flutter and I could feel joy rising in my soul.

I cannot remember the last time I felt so joyous because of a beautiful vista--years ago, maybe even decades--and I can only think of one thing that could have changed this: My Beautiful Leah has awakened my long slumbering giant of a heart and my world is now painted in more lively colors just knowing she is in it.

Whenever I am blue, I think of you and my heart swells, making it all better. I love you, my light from the East. As you rose from your bed, your light painted the Western sky with the most awe inspiring shade of blue. So beautiful was this sight, my heart skipped a beat and my eyes nearly welled with tears. I stood awestruck for a few minutes. You are my light.

I've been setting up a message board for the past few days which will operate as a backend for an editorial style news site which I plan to launch by the end of the month.

I would appreciate it if I could get some people to start posting on it for the next couple of weeks to test the settings.

Like I was saying, the message board will be the back end. News in the site sponsored news forums will go directly to news pages in a CNN.com similar format.

The goal of the site is both to bring attention to underreported/misreported news items and news items which are published overseas, but not in the US by popular media. I hope to have many different contributing authors offering opinions from many different perspectives. I want biased, well informed, opinionated news to have a home. Right wing, left wing, middle of the road, anarchy, whathaveyou: I want it all.

If you would like to be a contributing author to the site, PM me on the board and we'll discuss it. I will require either good grammar OR acceptance of the fact you will be edited for grammar.

Click here to bitch slap those who misreport the news!