Thinking out loud

We all have random sparks of thought that run rampant in our minds throughout the day and most of the time it is nothing more than random bits and pieces of things we have seen and heard, most of the time we never give them a moment of thought until something you see or hear happens to bring that and other thoughts to the surface. Why? Because something clicks, something that seems to fit all those bits of randomness like pieces of a puzzle, you don’t know why the pieces fit but to you they do and they are there because the pieces are evident, you can see them in black and white and in the spoken word by inflection and intonation of ones voice.

We start to analyze what we see, what we hear and when and where and bring all of it up to your conscience thoughts and start to look at what has been burrowing inside your mind. What had popped into my head is a line from a movie called “Indecent Proposal”.

In the movie, at the beginning (I believe) the main character played by Woody Harrelson says "If you want something very badly set it free. If it comes back to you, it's yours forever”. I am probably missing more of the lines but you get the idea, don’t you? So I did a web search (Google is our friend) and several version that goes like this; "If you love something set it free. If it comes back to you, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was." Another is “If you love something set it free; if it returns its yours forever, if not it was never meant to be.”
In all the same meaning comes through. You don’t own anyone, no living being can be owned.


Here are my questions:

• If you let someone go, let them be free one who you love and they return, will you still feel the same?
• Will you still feel the same intensity of love that you held before?
• Can anything be salvaged from such split?
• If you let someone go and they do not return what will you do?

Colors

My sense of color coordination for the most part is non-existent besides a three year old has better color coordination with crayons than I do. What am I getting at besides the obvious fact that I am color blind or color challenged? Nothing really it is just that Charlee is working on the house preparing it for the possible move from our home to another part of the state or just around the corner. The kitchen is complete along with the laundry room of which I personally like the way it came out and the next project on the list is the living room dining room area which is one very large room that does nothing except during the holidays. The popcorn has been removed from the ceiling, center beam has been covered to depict a solid wooden beam and the trim will be replaced and painted shortly after the walls have been painted. Now we come to the crux of the story, paint. Not so much the paint but the color of the paint she wants to apply and this particular color called “Dusty Plum”.

I have a problem with “Dusty Plum” in that I have no idea what a dusty plum looks like because I never seen the color before and if you are talking about something along the lines of a plum sitting on your kitchen counter with several weeks of dust on I would be leery of touching or eating the fruit. Sorry back to the point at hand, Charlee being a patient soul tried to get my mind bent around the color of “Dusty Plum” by describing the color as that being gray in nature with a bit of purple thrown in.

Knowing she had visited Loews I figured I can give their website a try and see if there is by chance a color swatch of “Dusty Plum”, the color she has chosen and guess what they certainly do! Seen below is the color of choice and it looks like a sun bleached purple to me but over all a nice color. Now being one that cannot for the life of me color coordinate I will bow to my wife choice of color because of several reasons.
1. My wife’s keen fashion sense.
2. My wife’s better judgment.
and
3. My lack of being able to coordinate any two colors.

But I am curious about something here; it is in the descriptions of the colors below. If someone told you they are going to paint their living room “Eddie Bauer Home, Linden.” or “Aquatic Edge”. What first comes to mind? My answer to that is “What color is that?” But that is just my own opinion.

You know what is scary? That there are quite a few people out there who will know exactly what color you are talking about.

A tree grows in Brooklyn.

This has nothing to do with Johnny and Katie in the story it just sounded pretty good title for this little story. This little note has to do with an article I had read today in the New York Times Home and Garden section titled “Backyards, Beware: An Orchard Wants Your Spot.” The article talks about one gentleman from England who now lives in Brooklyn and has a back yard that totals 150 square feet.
In other words 10’ x 15’ plot of land to call and do as he wishes and what he has done with this piece of land is create an orchard that contains two cherry trees, two apple trees, one Cox’s orange Pippin in a planter, a Santa Rosa Plum tree a Concord grapevine in a barrel that he is trying to grow vertically, three varieties of blackberries, a fig tree a litchi and two tangerine trees (kept in the basement during the winter).
For the size of his plot of land and the amount of trees he has planted and potted he certainly has a variety of fresh fruit to choose from given the trees receive an ample amount of sunlight during the growing season.
The article went on to write about another home gardener, a lady and her boyfriend who live in Southern Calif who are doing the same thing with the small amount the bear ground they have in their back yard.
What does all of this have to do with me? Nothing, nothing at all this mainly applies to Charlee, you see we have three acres of land of which two and a half acres of our land does not have a thing on it other than grass and a few trees. Charlee would love to have her very own orchard of peaches, apples etc. I think I would like a fig and lemon tree or two added to the orchard. It would be nice to walk out your back door to view your trees and see the fruit dangling from the branches waiting to be picked once they have ripen. Wouldn’t it also be nice to have the aroma of the trees when they come into bloom during the spring? To make this happen will take time and patients, it takes fruit trees a few years to grow and mature before they start producing a good amount of fruit and the time you will also have to take to keep the trees pruned and healthy. Now imagine all of the canning you get to do! Charlee and I have always wanted to try our hand at canning and if this does happen we are going to be a bit busy.

At the movies

Months ago I had set up an account with Netflix in order to watch a movie I had read about in thet news or haven't seen in some time. I find myself enjoying movies from the 1950's to the 60's the most fun and entertaining to watch just because they are well written. What is funny is that I cannot pinpoint when it seemed as if the all that matter to the studio's that contents doesn't count just the bottom line, a lot of the movies in theaters from the past 10 years to today are really not that good, sure they are entertaining just not that good.
Nothing seems truly original, true there are some good movies out there but nothing seems really original only a handfull have really good that I would watch them again if givn the chance and here are a couple of my choices:
Pans Labyrinth
Sixth Sense
The Shawshank Redemption
Dead Poets Society
Gosford Park

The current run of movies using comic book characters isn't too bad but they haven't been spectacular either or at least to me they haven't. Movies that have been formulated from books seem to have more going for them than the comic books stories, namely the Lord of the Ring trilogy. Which given the length of the story in book form you can only choose and film so much. I believe that Mr. Jackson did a wonderful job with the movie.
It would be nice to see another film with originality like the Sixth Sense or Gosford Park again and maybe this year something will come out with a bit of thought and substance that will give the viewer something to really grab them. One can hope.

I'm Dreaming of a...

Yesterday George, Jared and I visited a restaurant that specializes is fish. The restaurant is called Totally Fish, we had a wonderful although expensive (to me it was expensive) and I would also have to say they did not scrimp on anything. George has his fish grilled and fried. Jared and I had our fish stir fried and grilled.

What was nice is that you chose the fish you wanted than you chose between having your whole fish prepared by grilling, stir-fry, baked and fried, you can also have half of your fish prepared like we had above. In addition you received saffron rice and vegetables on the side along with your water. For our drink I had Seychelles tea which was a nice flavor of blackberries, fresh mint, tea and something else I cannot describe but it was good!

When we exited the restaurant we were greeted by the waitress who followed us out the door, once we exited the establishment we were again greeted but by a four legged variety. A cat who loved to talk. I found it a bit funny for two reasons. The waitress was trying to shoo him/her away and what was the icing on the cake he or she was waiting outside of a restaurant who serves fish. Below is the picture of our waitress and the cat at the door leading to the restaurant.

Now comes the main part of this story. After seeing Jared off George and I headed back to Buehring and the radio was on when all of a sudden "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" comes on the radio! All I could do was stare at it. Here it is January of '08 Christmas has come and gone and I am listening to that song. George and I just started laughing, here in Kuwait, in the Middle East of all places. At least we had an excellent dinner!

Whats in the news

Very little of the news we get has little to do with with what good is happening in the world, what we do get is a lot of is bad, negative or tragic news, Take the following headlines:

"Fire engulfs downtown Lawrence." The Boston Globe.
As one who listened to the news from Boston for several years let me tell you. This is nothing new, something is burning to the ground in Boston all the time.

"Bodies fall out of sky as planes collide." ABC News

"Homeless man accused of attacking four people with a chainsaw." USA Today

Not once single news item mentioned something good happening in the U.S. There are good things happening out there in the world but it isn't sensational enough to bring in the readers or the conspiracy theorist.

Reading U.S. news via Google news that was the majority of the stories listed along with tragic stories of the four children who were tossed over a bridge in Southern Alabama by their father. Out of the twenty or so stories we have the following lined up for use to peruse.
One article on sports, two entertainment, four tragic stories, three deaths, two about the weather, two on current politics and five special interenst stories and the list goes on. Out of all that was posted not a single one was of a bit of good news. I could care less about the majority of the news listed and I dismiss all of the news about our current political show down between Barak and Hillary. For me this is not a black or white issue or wheather male or female. I believe that neither one of the candidates deserve the presidency nor do I believe that either of them have enough experience for the office. Speaking of which where is Ms. Rice? That woman impresses me. Hey I'm sliding here! Sorry about my ramblings.
I would love to read a human interest story that has some good, something decent. I am getting tired of having to see in print and television of all the deaths, bombings, political manuevering, etc, etc, etc. Is that to much to ask for?

Let it snow...

Yesterday my wonderful Charlee did not get much rest, probably because at around 3a.m. she was wide awake awaiting the snow that was forecasted to fall. Since we live in the middle of Alabama this is a big deal and besides, Charlee loves snow. The snow was preceeded by sleet but several hours later her beloved snow had arrived!

Charlee is like a kid in a candy store when the snow arrives, what can I say she loves it. Several years ago snow had fallen on our little piece of the world and it was nice to see the white fluff stuff coming down there was enough on the ground as there was yesterday to make a snowman and throw a few snowballs of course I was the first to be the reciepeint of the first strike snowball attack. With the snowfall at home yesterday Charlee just watched it fall and enjoyed every minute of the event.

Later she had ventured to the local Piggly Wiggley but alas it was closed along with half the state due to weather. If you wish to see the pictures in Alabama please follow this link, oh by the way there are three pictures of a church near our house that unfortunatly burned down.
http://www.pbase.com/satterwhite_house/new_pics&page=all

So who is the biggest kid in your house when it snows?