My Journey

A new home, a new beginning

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:36:32 GMT

Ok so it didn't take me a couple of days to think it over and get around to it. I've blown off the morning's work and the new home for the continuation of this journal is ready. You can find it here :

My Journey Continues

If, for some reason, that doesn't work for you then shoot me an email. Hope to see you soon. Come on in....look around....but be warned there is not much furniture yet and that may not change much for a while.

How about this instead?

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:41:35 GMT

Ok so maybe saying I will not EVER write online again was a bit harsh. I DO intend to get firmly back in the habit of writing my private journal either on my computer or maybe even once again long hand. That will take a couple of months of steady going to get the habit back. I once heard that forming a habit takes three weeks. I must be stubborn cuz it takes me longer.What can I say I'm slow in that and everything else.

I have already created an account at Blogspot (www.blogger.com) so that I can post comments on the journals that move over there. I have yet to create a journal there. I will probably do it but don't expect to see much between now and the first of the year and anything that you do see will be just my words and little else because I don't think I want to deal with the learning curve on that right now.

After the first of the year I will probably gradually get back to writing in a public forum more regularly. I'm sure the three or four of you who do read what I write will appreciate that. I admit that I do enjoy knowing that you are seemingly enjoying my efforts. I love to write but have to admit that it's better when I know somebody is reading it. I get uncomfortable with much attention but I guess even I require a little and get a bit of a thrill out of it.

I guess the thing to do though is to make the new journal NOW so that I can post the addy here for those of you who I don't even have addresses for, if any. I should be posting an entry in the next day or two with a new journal address. Remember not to expect much for a while, moving is consuming me. There is a lot to do at both houses and by and large I'm loving it (thank God). It's keeping me very very busy though and not much of it is really worth writing about. Do you really want to hear what I packed in boxes today, or unpacked, depending on where I am? I know you don't want to hear about the bookshelves I'm building in the new house to hold the something like 1200 books that will be following me from Orlando to Hernando. (Trust me they are just plain boxes, nothing fancy, they go on the wall and hold books...lots of books)

Ok...back to work now. Hang in there and My Journey will continue.

Since we're being shut down...

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 03:16:44 GMT

Since AOL has decided not to provide this free service anymore everybody with a journal has some decisions to make. I've decided that I'm not going to save anything from any of my journals. I could change my mind before the end but I don't think so. I have all the stories in my story journal saved anyway, the entries from this journal and my poker journal I've decided to just let go. It sort of makes the whole idea of a journal useless but right now I just don't want to go to the hassle of saving it all.

Since it's been proven to me that nothing is forever online I will probably not start up another online journal. If I do I will do it out of the blue not really expecting readers. It will not be a continuation of my AOL journals. I'll go back to writing my journal on my computer or better yet writing it long hand in actual notebooks like I once did. I never should have stopped that and it cost me 3 years of journal entries with a few exceptions where I wrote privately about topics just too sensitive for a public journal.

I wonder how long it will be before AOL goes away all together? I think it's coming. Time will tell. I won't be counting on AOL mail I suppose. For now if there is anyone reading this who wants to be a bit more sure of remaining in contact you may want to add an email address for me to your address book, you can add Mnementh2000@yahoo.com. With any luck THAT service will hang in there for a while.

All good things must come to an end and it appears that this journal has. I know I've not been writing much lately but I didn't plan to abandon it. Life doesn't always seem to care for our plans however and this is just another example. Time to move on. Keep me informed of your email addresses and the address of your journals. I plan to keep reading them even if I do plan not to write online any longer.

Take care and keep in touch. Turn out the lights when you leave. I won't be here, I'll still be on My Journey through life.

Dodging Fay

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 12:08:34 GMT

A part of my plan for the move to northern Mississippi was always to be avoiding the inevitable hurricanes that will pass across Florida from time to time. I thought it would be nice to not need to be glued to the TV and tropical weather web sites when one was approaching. Well I'm here in Mississppi with Connie and it's not working out quite that way.

Connie, naturally, is worried about Lee there in Orlando with Fay headed there later today. I am too but not as much. This is a small storm and they are in for a day or so of really nasty weather but it should not be damaging weather except in isolated spots. It's not nearly the same thing as a category 3 or higher storm slamming it's way over the state.

This morning finds me getting up, and after watching the cats eat for a bit, turning on The Weather channel, logging onto a few tropical weather web sites and even checking out the webcast of Channel 9 in Orlando. This wasn't supposed to happen but at least it's less stressful here...to me anyway. I'm not so sure about Connie. Time will tell on that one.

Oh well, I'll watch it but not obsess on it quite like most people in Florida probably are right now. In the meantime life here in Mississippi goes on peacefully.

I've got some blueberry bushes to get in the ground. I'm looking forward to fresh blueberries next year, not many at first but more and more as the bushes grow. They are growing fast even in their pots.

Poker has turned around and is going well again. The last blip was just a reminder that luck IS a big factor in the game and sometimes all skill can do is minimize your losses. I've still got a very healthy profit for the year overall and have added to that quite well in the past couple of weeks.

My composter is doing very well. I knew it would. It's composting away very nicely and very quickly and with, just as I thought, no objectionable odor at all. Once the beds for the blueberry bushes have been prepared and the bushes planted I will probably start on the second barrel composter since the first is working perfectly.

That's my life at the moment as I watch Fay from a comfortable distance.

Barrel Composter

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:07:33 GMT

As I begin to settle in here in Mississippi I am about to pick up gardening again. When I lived in Cocoa I had a nice large vegatable garden that produced very well. We moved from there to a house in Orlando with a strict homeowners association that made vegatable gardening difficult so I let it drop. The move from that house to my mom's old house in Orlando didn't really see me pick gardening up again as much because I was just out of the habit as anything. Now is the time to start again. LOL well NOW is not a great time, it's late in the season. None the less I'm starting now anyway for fear that if I wait until spring I will wait forever.

A good compost bin system was part of my gardening effort the last time and I wanted to do it again. I never did like having to get in and turn the compost with a pitch fork but to be effective that's what has to happen. It needs to happen very regularly too.

Somewhere or another I had seen a picture of a composter that was not a bin system but in fact was a barrel that you put your stuff in and just rotated. What could be easier I thought? A search for them online showed me that they were more than I wanted to pay, way more in some cases. It's amazing how expensive the suckers can be.

Then I realized that I had two empty barrels sitting here courtesy of the previous owner of this house who left me a lot of garbage to get rid of. Some of the stuff was more garbage like than other stuff obviously. I'd been trying to decide how to dispose of the barrels and now I don't need to.

It's not pretty I suppose. I could have done a neater job cutting the door opening. It was hard making straight cuts on a curved plastic barrel. I'm hoping the second one will turn out a bit neater. The total cost was around $60 or so and part of that includes materials that are leftover and can go toward the second one.

Now I will be adding to it as I get compostable material and trying hard to remember to give it a few spins to stir it up every day. That will be hit or miss for a while since I am going to be gone from here for a few weeks at intervals between now and the first of the year. Still it's a good start and it feels good to have it turn out as well as it did.

Back to Normal

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 11:14:27 GMT

Well my problem last night with viewing journals is no more. They seem to be working fine. I thought for sure it was a problem with just my computer because my wife was able to view mine when I asked her to look at it and others were obviously able to view as well since I received a comment on my entry made just before things went whacky. Maybe though it was something with AOL...or maybe I was a LOT more tired than I thought and was somehow doing something wrong. I can't imagine what but who knows. Anyway things seem to be back to normal this morning.

help!

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 02:53:37 GMT

After I posted my last entry something happened that is preventing me from using aol journals on my laptop. I see an older entry than th most current when I look at mine or anybody elses and I only see one column, not any others the journal may have. when viewing mine I don't see buttons for edit entries or add entries or anything else.

I was only able to get this entry posted by looking back through the browsing history and finding a create entry entry. I don't even know if this will work.

Has anybody ever had this happen? It's weird that all of a sudden AOL journals will not display right. Every other web page seems to be working but NO AOL journals will.

Any help is appreciated.

Back in Mississippi

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 01:18:58 GMT

It's 8:00 pm and I'm back at the house in Hernando, Mississippi. I just finished mowing the lawn. Even this late it was hot. It was also a painful experience. I got stung by two yellow jackets and a wasp. It's enough to make me wonder if I shouldn't pay somebody to mow the lawn. Mostly I enjoy mowing it, even with the heat and the slopes. I do NOT like the wasp stings though. I guess the silver lining is that at least I'm not alergic to them. I will get more wasp spray and go on a hunt for nests and so on. If anybody has tips on getting rid of yellow jackets and mud dobber wasps let me know.

I left Orlando on Monday morning and drove to Biloxi to stop for the night. I have been taking some time off from poker (more on that later) and had not decided whether to play or not on Monday night. I ended up falling asleep early and then woke up wide awake at a bit before two in the morning. I debated whether to try to get back to sleep or just get up and drive the last 6 hours. I decided that five hours sleep was enough and got up and headed out. That actually woked out very well. I got to the house a bit after 8:00 in the morning.

I decided on this trip to see how it would go if I drove slower, between 60 and 65. Even with the truck loaded fully, I figure probably a 400-500 pound load, I managed to get right at 20mpg with it. At 75 mph I usually got 17.5-18.0 mpg. Yes it took longer but I figure I saved around 10% on gas. Time I have in larger quantity than money. Besides it's actually easier to drive that way it turns out. Everybody passed me, I probably passed four vehicles the whole trip. I'm sure most people would never have the patience to do it but patience is another thing I usually have a decent amount of...it helps if you're going to play poker after all.

As I said I've been taking some time off from poker after a horrendous run the last time I was in Mississippi. I'm sure it was just a bad run of cards, living proof that it IS gambling and that all the skill in the world doesn't help sometimes. Knowing that intellectually and knowing it emotionally are very different though and taking some time off was appropriate. I played a bit online and really did no better mostly. I also played some APL. That went much better. This past weekend I played twice and made the final table both times. Admittedly it's a bit like shooting fish in a barrel, there are some good players but there are more really bad ones. That's the whole point, to give people a free place to learn after all. It gave me a bit of a boost though and that coupled with a home game tournament I played the friday before and won helped get my head back in the right place.

I was ready to play tonight but I was afraid I might be a bit too tired since I've been up since 2am with just an hour nap. I also wanted to get the lawn taken care of so it was done and I didn't have to worry about it. If I'd known about the yellow jackets and wasps I might have decided to go play poker. Oh well, what's done is done and I'm cooled off enough to take my second shower of the day and get ready for bed.

Tomkins Knob - Monday July 14

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:54:14 GMT

After treking the Cascades trail we spent time reading in the picnic area. Once we'd relaxed for a bit we decided to take the other hike from that area. It was to an area called Tomkins Knob and features several old buildings.

The hike itself was relatively flat, probably the flattest we were on anywhere along the parkway. I grew up in Florida so for many a year all I knew was flat. Maybe that is part of why the Parkway fascinates me so. I've had people tell me that the Blue Ridge Moutains are not REAL mountains, that you have to get into the Rockies to see real mountains. I've seen parts of the Rockies but if you ask me the Blue Ridge Mountains are just as pretty and close enough to real mountains for a flat lander like me. From a Florida native perspective even the Tomkins Knob trail had some slope to it but in relation to say the Fodder Stack trail it was a piece of cake.

This picture is blurry because I took it from too far away using too much zoom. It still gives you a good idea of the area where we spent time ready and relaxing between the Cascades Trail and Tomkins Knob Trails.

We were in the Cascades Parking area which, as the sign says, is about half a mile thataway.

The first building we came to was the Cool Spring Baptist Church. It sounds like it never had a preacher of it's own but relied on circuit riding preachers. Somewhat understandably it also sounds like services were more likely to be held out under the trees than in the building.

A lot of the buildings along the parkway are like this one, log construction with those big gaps which obviously were, at one time, chinked with mud or clay to weather proof them. Many, like this one, have been left as nature has left them over the years.

Here you can see Connie on the way down to Jesse Brown's cabin. It's in a beautiful location. It's not very big though. Even with a loft there is not much space. It makes you wonder how large the Brown family was and how well they got along. Of course just to survive then you would not be spending a lot of time indoors I'd not think. There were no TV's or video games, just plenty of hard work going about the business of eeking out a living.

A ways from the house, down the hill aways in the trees you come to the spring house.

Water from a spring or two, no doubt Cool Spring (which the church is named after) bubbles up nearby and flows through the spring house. The water is cold not cool, near 40 degrees year round apparently. That would help keep the contents of the spring house cool all year which no doubt helped the residents keep more food.

It's always interesting to visit places like this, to look at them and think about what it was like for the people living there. How very different it was for them than for us today. How many of us could live like that and survive if we needed to?

Moving day gets a bit more real

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:18:25 GMT

Eventually I'll probably post the rest of the entries about our recent vacation but I thought an entry about me and my life might be in order. No doubt in future years I will enjoy reading back through it.

As the title of the entry states moving day has gotten a bit more real. Not that I ever doubted it would happen. Heck, we already own the house we're going to move to and this past twelve months I've spent more time there in Mississippi than I have in Florida.

Last night Connie made the reservation to have a POD delivered the day after Christmas. I've been moving one pick-up load at a time for the past year and the result is a house in Mississippi that is liveable and capable of having guests visit. As a matter of fact we've already had friends from Orlando visit and just recently Connie's mom spent a week with us. The good news there is that we got the "Mom seal of approval". She thinks the house there is perfect for us...and she's right.

One kind of amazing thing is that both houses are now perfectly liveable and we only bought one piece of furniture for the house there, a futon for the living room. There are some things here that would be difficult to move in the pickup and that are kind of bulky. Those items will be the items moved in the POD. It's cheaper than a mover and should work just as well. Loading and unloading is not a problem, it's the transportation that I wanted taken care of. It appears that the price of a POD is going to be the same as, or probably lower than, a U-Haul if you figure in gas. Also come January when the POD goes so do both cars. Connie will be following along and Caylith goes then too. It should be an interesting trip. The plan is she will ride in the truck with Connie with food and water and her litter box behind the truck's seat. We'll break the trip up as I've been doing anyway by stopping for the night in Biloxi. That makes for a 9 hour drive one day and a 5 hour drive the next. Beats a 14 hour one day drive all to hell.

When we moved from the house in Orlando that Lee is now renting from us (long story and in my opinion a failed experiment) to the one we're living in now which is my Mom's old house we tried hard to take only things we really needed or wanted very badly. We were partially successful. Now we need to do that again with the move to Mississippi. Hopefully we will not over stuff that house. Time will tell on that one but I have my fingers crossed.

Right now my life is in a bit of upheaval. Poker has been going horribly, bad enough that I've played only very sporadically for over a month now. I'm actually finding myself dreading when I feel I should play. Hopefully that will change. Connie, who knows enough about it and is good enough to probably be able to judge, says it appears to just be bad luck. Luck IS a large part of it of course but to this point I'd managed to always be able to apply enough skill to still make at least a LITTLE money even in bad luck times. Not so lately. I've taken some horrible losses and my bankroll is looking very anemic. Of course in part that is because I've had to spend out of it to get things for the MS house. Basically though I've had to scale back poker and am scrambling to fill the void with other things.

I'm trying hard to NOT make feeling sorry for myself one of them but that doesn't always work. I'm starting gardening again in MS and that will be nice. I have lots of plans on that score and it will be nice to get back to it. We eat a lot of fresh fruits and veggies and growing my own will really help out a lot and be very satisfying. I used to do pretty good when we lived in Cocoa and gave it up after moving to Orlando and a house with a homeowners association that was not veggie garden friendly (hell they weren't friendly or neighborly at ALL...unless of course you were part of the in crowd). That won't be a problem in Mississippi. There are plenty of gardens around our new neighborhood.

I'm also doing more woodworking of various sorts. Some of that is practical, bookshelves and so on, and some will be fun and/or decorative. As long as it keeps my mind off watching my poker game crash and burn it will be good. Of course I have hopes that poker will pick up but I'm a bit afraid that it's a fundamental shift. Luck is going to be too much a part of it as I think skill is equalizing. For many reasons I won't go into I think the really bad players are finally getting out. I can hold my own against good players the problem is that if that is all there is then the game is unprofitable if you play in a casino because of the casino's rake of each pot.

Time will tell on that. If I seem quieter than usual it's because I really have not felt like talking or writing much. I don't have anything I really WANT to talk about. I did think it was time for an entry about my life though for myself in later years if nothing else. If anybody is out there reading and interested then that's just a bonus. If you're out there I hope you're having a grand life. (lol inside joke with the "Grand life" thing...you have to live in or near Tunica to get it)