A wrote a thing about my Mom and Baseball...

               Author’s (heh) note : I’m been struggling to find the correct words to express what I want to express here, and even after writing it and putting it up here, I still feel that it falls drastically short of what I want to say.

               Last night was fairly intense.  Around 11pm I was lying on the couch and the Astros were a single out away from winning the World Series.  I was buried under a pile of decorative pillows with my hands held up to my open mouth.  Nervous.  My heart racing at the same pace as that of a hummingbird.  Sweat starting to work its way out of the glands on my forehead.  I had earlier turned the Air Conditioning down to somewhere in the 60s because I was too ramped up and it was the only to cool down!  The last out came and I jumped out of the prone position and made a noise that I am entirely certain I cannot recreate.  Decorative pillows flew off of me and went in all directions.  After the initial elation, I stood there in front the TV and got a bit misty eyed and thought of my Mom.

               I’ve been an Astros fan for as long as I could be a fan of something.  I don’t recall which year but sometime in my early formative years I had an Astros themed birthday party, complete with an Astrodome shaped cake (carrot) that my Mom made for me.  I love the Astros, but not as much as other people I know, and not nearly as much as my Mom does.  My Mom is a super fan!

               Some of my earliest (and somewhat fondest memories of baseball) involve lying on the couch next to my Mom while she watched, or listened to Milo Hamilton’s broadcast on a very old blue spherical radio (the radio still works, if I had to guess its older than my Mom).  She listened to every game, and watched whenever it was possible (depends on if the game was on TV of course).  She has been a fan since before the name Astro was even a thing.  She’s loved the team since their inception in the city of Houston in 1962.  She would always come out of games with a positive attitude, even if the results were negative.  The hopeful Astros fan!

               My Mom is not doing so great these days.  Currently she is dealing with brain necrosis, it is an ugly thing and no one can agree on what will happen.  All we can garner is that it is a slow/medium/fast dash to the end, not exactly comforting in any capacity.  Part of this means that my Mom’s brain will slowly degenerate and she will begin to show signs of dementia and Alzheimer’s.  It has already started to begin.  Last night though while texting with my Dad he was telling me about my Mom watching the game and how she was fully aware and cognizant of everything that was happening and how after the Astros won the game she was happy, and cheering, and clapping (and if I had to guess probably crying a little as well).  My Dad said that he had not really seen her like this in a while.  I don’t tell any of this to depress, or anything along those lines.  I write these things because sometimes I have difficulties verbalizing my feelings, and I want to make sure that I say the things that need to be said.

               With all that in mind, Thank You Houston Astros for giving my Mom the ability to see something that she has been hoping and wishing for since she was a 5 year old girl.

Endeavors...

I’ve been thinking for a while that I want to do something else in addition to my main job.  I like the idea of more money and I like the idea of attempting to better myself. 

Despite the fact that we are in the middle of house hunting hell and having a date of when we have to be out of our house (we sold it), so it’s not an ideal time to be thinking about things I want to do in addition to what I already do… but here we are.

That being said, I’ve parked a domain name from Squarespace and I think I am going to attempt a website.  It’s going to be beer themed and I am not quite sure the content just as of yet, but it will more than likely start as a beer based blog and work its way up from there.  I like beer, and I like writing, so the two seem like a likely progression for me to start and pursue.  Will anything come of this?  More than likely not… but the real question is why not?  I could come out of this with a new skill set, or I could fail at it and really only lose the time I attempted it.  Meh what is the worst that could happen.

Nothing has been done to the site I reserved, so I’m not going to link to it here just yet, but sometime in the near future it’ll be dropped!

Do you all want to talk Politics?  Yeah… me neither.

I don't edit

It's true.  When I sit down and write something I write something and then I ignore it forever.  I tend to not edit things as I write (it's a problem for certain).  I always felt that editing was second guessing myself, and that was never something that I tended to do.  I need to work on going back and re-reading things for content and continuity.  While grammar and the like are important enough, I contend that as long as the crux of the story gets across you can still enjoy the reading experience... of course I say that knowing I have a fairly horrible grammatical voice and should probably go back and reacquaint myself with the English language...

I wrote a short story a bit earlier inspired by a conversation that I had while I was in California (the ending is not part of the conversation!) and I've been trying to keep with my goal (granted you don't see all that I am writing, just occasional things I throw out there when I am bored).

Maybe one day I'll go back to my old format and complain about something other than myself and my grammatical foibles, but today this is what you get... enjoy.

The Restaurant.

               “I can’t believe the day is finally here” I said aloud.  The bathroom lights illuminating my tie as I set to straighten it in the mirror, my wife only a few feet away getting ready.  Her dress shimmered in the lights of the bathroom, a calming yet exciting light blue, a favorite of mine.  She walks up to me to give me a peck on the cheek…

               “I know.  We’ve had these reservations for almost a year now!”

               “Such an intriguing concept.  A restaurant where you can’t see the food, or the people you are eating with.” I say.

               “It’s the perfect concept for you.  You get to be social without actually having to interact with anyone else in any way, shape or form” she intoned sarcastically.

               “I know!”

               We couldn’t believe when we had read about this restaurant.  A place where you walk in, get seated at your table and then blindfolded, we instantly were intrigued by the concept and found out about reservations.  Somehow we got lucky and were able to score reservations for opening night.  That’s right this place has had buzz surrounding it for at least a year now and here we are, finally at opening night.

               I don’t often get excited about new things, or going out in a suit for that matter (I’d much rather be on the couch in pajamas with some take-out and DVR’d shows… I have a huge backlog of television that I need to watch), but this spoke to me.  The concept of eating without seeing the food, removing a sense from the act of eating and enjoying food in a different fashion compelled me to do this.

               “You ready?” I inquire.

               “Yeah, let’s go”.

               An uneventful car ride later and we roll up in front of the restaurant.  The restaurant was unnamed (part of the appeal) and was located in an up and coming part of the city, a converted warehouse district that was now full of condos and people with more money than sense.    A sharply dressed valet was there to take our keys (and our car) and we were escorted into the restaurant. 

               “Welcome to our experiment in eating” the hostess said, “Names please?”

               We give our names and the Hostess verifies the names on her list, scratches both of our names off and then directs us into the main eating area.

               The restaurant was really two rooms.  The first room was the waiting room where the Hostess greeted us, it was unassuming and basically a small, black box.  No art on the walls, no signage anywhere, no names.  The other room of the restaurant was similar just a larger room.  In the middle of the room was a circular table, big enough to seat 12 people.  Once again, no signage, no artwork, nothing on the walls.  A single dimmed light hung above the table.

               “Please be seated.  As you can tell we are waiting just a few more people to come.  As part of the experience please refrain from interacting with any of the other guests”.

               We take our seats next to another excited couple.  We can tell that they are having the hardest time not trying to strike up a conversation with us about the shared experience we are about to have.  Luckily for all of us we don’t wait long on the other group to arrive for our meal to begin.  As the other group arrives a gentlemen in a tuxedo comes out and introduces us to the restaurant.

               “Ladies and Gentlemen, tonight we begin our experiment in eating.  In a few minutes you will be blindfolded and the lights will be turned off.  We ask that you do not speak with the people next to you.  Do not let their opinions on the food and spoil your own thoughts.  This is an experiment that each of you will undertake by yourselves.  The last thing, all of the foods will be enjoyed solely with your senses, there is no silverware in front of you.  All foods will be enjoyed using three of your senses.  Touch.  Smell.  And Taste.”  As the man in the tuxedo was saying this a group of twelve people dressed in all black showed up and walked behind each and every one of us in the room.  “The people behind you will serve as your napkin.  Since you will unable to see any of the food, or what may or may not be on your fingers, they will make sure that after each course you are clean and ready for the next course.  They will also help you with your blindfold.  I welcome all of you to the culinary experience of a lifetime.  Please enjoy”.  He bows and quietly leaves the room.

               The person behind me then takes the blindfold and places it over my eyes.  The world goes dark.  Almost immediately I can hear plates and platters being fumbled into the room.  The noise of the preparation makes me hunger with anticipation.  A disembodied voice in heard “Course One”.

               The person behind me takes me by the arm and leads my hands towards whatever the first course is.  It’s odd.  It’s spherical and has a sticky viscous fluid around it.  It’s warm to the touch, but not hot.  “Please eat” the same disembodied voice said.  I place the object in my mouth and take a bite.  The taste is wonderful, a variety of flavors and textures wrapped into one.  The object was soft on the outside, had a hard shell in the middle and liquid inside of that.  Complex at all aspects of the food.  It was delightful and unsettling at the same time, not knowing what it is.  After I had eaten the person behind me took my hand and placed it in what I can only assume was a bowl of water and washed off my hands.

               “Course Two…”

               The same things occurs, the person behind me takes my arm and leads me to the food.  I grab it and feel the texture.  This was flat and crispy.  Much hotter than the last.  Still the flavor was amazing.

               The meal went on like this for what seemed like hours.

               “Course Three”

               Spongy and coated in some type of sauce.

               “Course Five”

               Stringy and tough.  Tasted similar to beef jerky.

               “Course Eight”

               Soft and fatty.

               “The Final Course”

               I guess dessert, but I am not sure.  It’s sweet.  It almost seems like an attempt at caramelized meat.  I’m not really sure.  It’s good though, albeit it seems over cooked.

               “Thank you for taking part in our experiment.  You all have been most kind to help us out today.  You may please take off your blindfolds.”

               The lights were put back on and we began to take off our blindfolds.  We could not believe our eyes.  Most people in the room broke down in tears and began to dry heave and some even threw up.

               I stand up quickly and grab a napkin from the person behind me.

               “Overcooked” I say as I wipe my face down and walk away.

               On the table was the bloodied and lifeless corpse of some random person I have never seen.

               

I've recently reacquainted myself with my love of writing (note again I say I have no skill whatsoever, but it's still a hobby and something I enjoy and I'm all for exercising anything that makes you happy).  With this recovered past time of mine, I have gone looking for inspiration to write things, and have come across a subreddit that I enjoy (I won't attempt to explain reddit to anyone here, either you know about reddit or don't.  It is what it is).  The subreddit is /r/WritingPrompts and the concept is that a user will create a writing prompt and people will pick a prompt and write a short story or something like that.

The one I picked was a contest that was being held by this subreddit that involves writing the first chapter of a novel, no major edits or anything like that.  Just sit think up a topic and write the first chapter to a book.

Here is my entry (note the chapter had to be between 2000 to 5000 words... I opted to be on the shorter side).

Why was it me?  Why did I even sign up for it in the first place?  I guess when you are told that you have a one in ten million chance to be given superpowers you just take it.  But I really wish I hadn’t.  How did I get to this point in my life…?

               My name is Chris, and I live a fairly normal life.  I have a boring job at a software company, you’ve never heard of the company, but it’s probably been watching you for years now.  For the most part I keep to myself, I walk down the streets with my ear-buds in, engaging with no-one and just going about my life.  That is of course until tomorrow… tomorrow will change all of that.

               Bzzz Bzzz.  My alarm screeches in my ear indicating that it’s time to start the day.  I slap the snooze button and go back to sleep for the generous nine minutes of time that my alarm clock affords me.  What would seem only like seconds later BZZZ BZZZ BZZZ BZZZ the alarm is screaming at me to wake up and start the day.  No damn you.  I don’t want to get up and do anything yet!  I relinquish control to the alarm and turn it off, stumbling out of bed and walk my way to the kitchen and the ever present, always needed, coffee pot.  I begin the process of making coffee when BZZZ BZZZ BZZZ BOOOOM a loud crash goes off in my room.  Ugh.  I must have left my phone on vibrate and near the end of the night stand.  I’ll deal with that later.  While the coffee maker begins to percolate I do my usual morning ritual of a visit to the bathroom, a quick wash of my face and then putting my glasses on (the most important part of the ritual… well at least if I want to see).

               On the way back to the coffee pot I grab my phone and see what it was that caused my phone to vibrate right off of the night stand.

               “Come on down to 5^th and Main for a chance to win!” greeted my eyes as I unlocked my phone.

               There is no number.  Where did this text even come from?  I wonder what is at 5^th and Main street?  I thought to myself as I poured myself a cup of coffee, went into the fridge and poured a little half and half into the coffee.  Watching the swirls of light brown that dance through the dark nightscape that is my coffee cup always makes me happy in the morning.  Taking my first sip of coffee I bring up a map on my phone to determine what, if anything is at 5^th and Main street.  Hmm… looks like nothing.  Just a big blank patch of green, well I guess maybe it’s a park?  Odd.  I’ve never really been to this part of town… I wonder if I could skip out on work and go?

               BZZZ BZZZ BZZZ the phone vibrated in my hand, scaring me a little to where I almost lost a drop of coffee. 

               “Come on down to 5^th and Main for a chance to win.  5pm at the tent.  1 in 10,000,000 chance to win big!”

               Okay this is getting weird.  Still no number, just an “Unavailable” up top.  This seems way too much like a scam, not something that I would ever consider doing.  But at the same time I’ve been bored.  In a rut of sorts.  Maybe this would be just enough out of the ordinary for me to get out of this rut and continue forward.  Okay.  5^th and Main Street is maybe 45 minutes from the office, I’ll leave a little early and find good parking and see what this is all about.  Also 1 in 10,000,000 that doesn’t seem like great odds…?  I put my phone down, finish the last sips of coffee and head towards the shower (another integral part of my morning rituals).

               I get out of the shower and begin to towel myself off and walk into the closet to decide what I am wearing.  Luckily for me it’s always pretty easy.  A pair of Khaki pants and a black shirt with the company I work for emblem emblazoned on it.  Having no need for choice when getting ready in the morning is a much nicer option than having to decide something different every day and trying not to repeat… or worse yet, trying to make an impression.  Simple and easy I put on my normal uniform and pick a pair of black dress shoes with a pair of multi-colored argyle socks (not everything can be boring… right?).

               I dress quickly and head back to the kitchen for one more cup of coffee before I leave.  The second cup always has more half and half a two teaspoons of sugar.  The first cup is to wake me up, the second cup is to give me energy enough to actually leave my flat.  On the way out I grab my keys and a plain grey hoodie and head out the door.  My morning routine followed to a T I’m happy and walk to the car and get in and drive off to the office.

               My office is fairly close to my flat.  I don’t much care for being stuck in traffic (and I live in a city where traffic is a major concern) so my morning commute is all of five minutes.  I park and walk into the office, saying “Hi” to the security guard, whose name I still have yet to remember, I’m bad with names…

               My desk is hidden in the back of the office.  I prefer this, it means that nobody can really come by my desk and bother me with a bunch of questions or things that I may have to fix.  I like my job, don’t get me wrong, it’s just that most days I’d prefer it if I didn’t have to deal with anybody to get it done.  I pass by Bob and Jim two of my coworkers desks on the way to my desk.

               “Hey Chris… did you get a weird text this morning?” Bob asked.

               “Weird.  Yeah I did.  Did yours have a number associated with it?” I replied

               “None” said Jim.

               “I’m actually thinking about checking it out after work.  I mean why not?” I stated.

               “Yeah… I’m torn.  It just seems so sketchy, and even stranger that we all got the same texts” Bob brought up.

               “Meh.  I’ll drive by it, if it looks really bad then I’ll skip out and text you guys” I said as I walked off and back to my desk.

               Work that day was uneventful, a few fires that I had to put out and a few calls that I had to make for support reasons.  All in all it was a good day at work, any day that I only have to talk to a few people is a good day, and this day was one of those.  Around 4:10 in the afternoon I grabbed my grey hoodie and worked my way back to my car.  On a typical day I’d be home by 4:15, but today I opted to follow the instructions of the strange text and worked my way down to 5^th and Main, in the middle of downtown. 

               I turned on a local talk radio/news show for the drive downtown, you know the one, it’s a lot of talking heads with really calming voices who tell you all about the wars in whatever countries are currently in the midst of battle and interspaces fluff pieces about pets or fashion in the middle as a palate cleanser after hearing about far-away atrocities.  One piece did catch my ear though, it was a local interlude (where the local news caster comes on to interrupt the national radio news host) and it was talking about the weird texts.  It appears that everyone in the city had gotten a similar text to the one that I had received early that morning.  They too had no idea where the text originated from or what was happening at 5^th and Main, in fact one of their reporters was at 5^th and Main during the news story and there was nothing there, nor were there any signs of a tent or whatever the text said be there.

               Once the local news story was over the national news picked back up with a story about the text as well.  Oh it looks like we are going to be on the news, I love it when our city is in the national spotlight, we live in such a huge city and nobody knows about us!

               “It seems that the same text was sent out to every cellphone number in all of the major cities of the United States, all of them talking about a chance to win citing a 5^th street in each town and some major intersection that occurs with it” the radio announcer said.  “Reports from each site indicate that nothing is currently there”.

               So it’s not just us?  It’s everyone in the United States who is getting this same text and all of them are on a 5^th street?  That’s crazy.  This things just gets weirder and weirder as more reports come in.  Now I feel like I have to go.

               Traffic was a beast getting into downtown that day.  It would appear that since everyone got the text it looks like a good portion of the cities populace were headed that way.  I exited the freeway and took a few surface streets that I knew as a side route (at least a popular map/traffic app on my phone told me about this route… I’ve never actually taken it before).  The traffic caused me to get to 4^th and Main around 4:55, a little later than I wanted but still enough time to get out there and investigate.  Oddly enough despite all of the traffic I had no problems parking at a local garage on 4^th street, a block from where the text told everyone to go.

               I get out of the car and begin the walk to 5^th street where it intersects with Main, there are tons of people on the street all of us heading in the same direction.  Not a single one of us has any idea why we are going to this intersection or what any of us may win.  Some people are comparing the texts that they received and they were identical.  A person asked me about the texts and I just told them that I know about as much as they no… nothing.  News helicopters hovered overhead trying to make out what was happening and news vans littered the streets trying to do the same thing.  Still nothing showed up at the intersection.

               I made it to 5^th and Main and there was a massive crowd waiting to see what was going to happen, I slowly worked my way up the front (I can sidle through a crowd pretty well, and still be relatively unseen), or at least what I thought was the front.  There was nothing at 5^th and Main yet.  I checked my phone and blinked back the time, 4:59:30.  Thirty seconds until 5.  Where is this tent that the texts were saying was supposed to be here?

               25

               I really wish I knew what was going on.  This suspense is killing me.

               20

               Okay.  It’s almost 5.  Why is there nothing here except the other people who wanted to check this out after they go the text?

               10

               5

               4

               3

               2

               1

               0

               At 5:00PM on the dot a single small white tent appeared out of nowhere.  A man who appeared to be in his late 40s with peppered hair and a long white lab coat was in the tent.

               “Welcome everyone.  I appreciate all of you who have come to find out what the contest is all about.  Please before I explain anything I must insist on no photography, please put your cellphones and cameras, if you have them, away.  This contest is meant for you to live in the moment and not live via a tiny screen!” the man started with a gravelly deep voice.  “I know you are all wondering why you are here and what this contest is.  Why the odds are 1 in 10,000,000, and what possibly it could mean to win ‘Big’”

               Yes.  Finally some answers.  I put my cellphone away and listen in closer to what the man in the lab coat is saying.

               “You all now have a chance.  All of you here are in the contest.  All of the people in the other cities with my colleagues are in the contest.  We thank all of you for this.”  The man explained.  “On to the crux of the contest.  One of you, or one of your peers in another city will win a special invitation back to our labs.  We are InGene and we’ve made a vaccine that will give one of you superpowers”.

               “We are giving away the chance for you to become a superhero”.

Look over here... it's a non-political post

I've been fairly political as of late and I figure it is time for a little bit of a change in scenery here.  It has been fun as of late sitting down and writing.  I'm not very good at it, but it's still a lot of fun and gives me a mental exercise that I don't often get at work.  Work has, at least for me, become somewhat of an auto-pilot endeavor as of late.  There has not been a large amount of change lately and because of that I feel that the message I deliver is the same each and every time I train or travel.

DO NOT get me wrong.  I like my job, I like the concept of what I do, I like the people I work with and for the most part I like the travel (I've always liked to travel, I feel that somewhere in my past biological history there must have been some nomads).  However I feel that I have become stagnant.  This is where the writing comes in.

I have been making myself attempt to write about a thousand words a day.  Those thousand words could be any number of things.  It could be a short story, or the attempt to start a book, or this blog for instance.  It's a bunch of stuff that for the most part no one will ever read, but I feel good while doing it.

As I stated a few paragraphs up, I'm not a very prolific writer.  I tend to shift tenses constantly, my grammar and punctuation leave a lot to be desired.  I tend to write in a very disjointed narrative, shifting back and forth between thoughts and ideas as I shift between paragraphs.  It's somewhat how my mind works.

Many years ago I named this blog Captain Non-Sequitur (I've actually had this much longer than I've had any other form of social media, I think I've always liked this form better anyways) because to me that is exactly what I was (not that I am a captain of anything) but my tends to be very non-sequitur when I think.  It is not linear.  It does not have a purpose.  I believe this is why I could never be successful at writing.  I'll follow a plot point for a while and then take a very weird turn and end up somewhere totally different than originally intended.  However unlike someone who is skilled at putting pen to paper, my path change won't make for good reading, it'll just confuse and render the reader unable to continue...

I think what I currently do is suited to my mind set.  I can present things in a logical way, and then take a turn and present them in a different logical way.  I'm good at taking more complex issues and topics and making them much more approachable.  So either I'm suited to do what I do currently... or I'm suited to do stand-up.  The only issue with the latter option is that I'm not at all funny!  Maybe one day I'll find a nice fun history or introductory biology class that I can teach, and then I know I'll be much happier in my work environment.

I'm an introvert who likes to talk with people...

Hypo what?

Let's have a frank-ish discussion about hypocrisy...  (We've all been hypocrites at one point in our lives).

I'm going to throw out a totally hypothetical situation here and I'm curious how you all would score...

So let's say we have a Republican controlled Congress and a Democratic President, and that Democratic president decides to appoint a new justice to the supreme court, we'll just call this person M Garland.  The republican held congress decides that they don't want to do any of their jobs and they don't sit with or talk with this candidate at all.  He languishes for a while and basically fades to oblivion because well that's what happens.

Did you praise said republican congress?  Did you say that they were right to ignore anything from the Democratic president?  Cool... don't worry I already know your answer (you totally praised the shit out of them).

Flash forward a few months to a Republican President (sort of... I don't agree that Reagan would have anything to do with this person, but whatever) who has a Democratic Senate that is enough to stop the president's current candidate for the supreme court.  Would you praise these Democratic members of congress?  Would your answer be the same as it was for the question above?  Oh it's not?  Then congratulations you are a hypocrite!

One month saying Mitch McConnell is a hero because he stood up to Obama's moderate supreme court nominee, and then just a few months later complaining that the Democrats are doing the exact same thing that your beloved republicans just did is pretty much the definition of hypocrisy.  I'm sorry based on the actions of the republican congress during Obama's reign I see absolutely no reason that any democrat should consider anything that the president now says.

And just for fun... the president has already posted paperwork to run for re-election in 2020, so he is technically campaigning... so I think any of his nominees should be treated in the same way that the nominees during Obama's last year were treated.  It's not my fault the president decided to turn the next four years into an election cycle.

I want to wrap this up... I'm tired.  I'm tired of trying to fight people who don't actually pay attention to anything except those sources that only support their rhetoric (see the white house spokesperson's latest statement about how white house aides will only go to news sources that push their agenda... I won't even being to tell you what is wrong with that, if you don't know you are too far gone).

Lastly.  Never again tell me anything about checks and balances.  IF you are paying attention you would start to realize that all of those are starting to go away.  The next time someone tells me not to worry because there are "checks and balances" in place I am going to give them a multi-hour lecture about how they are wrong and understand nothing about the way the government works.

Alarmist I Know... but aware as well.

https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-for-a-coup-e024990891d5#.npqk2enpu

This link is somewhat alarmist, and somewhat conspiratorial... you're going to have one of three reactions to it :

1.  You are the extreme left and you'll say "Oh I've been saying this since last year when the president decided he was going to run..."

2.  You are somewhere in the middle (middle right and middle left) and you'll say "This is a little too conspiracy minded for me, but I may pay more attention"

or

3.  You are extreme right and you'll just deride this as fake and continue enjoying breitbart (also fake, and now technically in power).

I like conspiracy theories.  I always have.  I've held an almost fanatical devotion to reading and trying to understand what other people believe.  I frequently comment on conspiracy subreddits, because I like to engage the beliefs.  The problem is that for the most part I'm not a conspiracy theorist.  When people start talking about Free-fall speeds and jet fuel I tend to comment on the side of reason.  When people talk third gun-men or aliens making the pyramids I tend to ignore that for sanity sake.

With all that being said sometimes I wish I was the Fox Mulder.  I want to be the "I want to believe" guy.

I'll tell you that my favorite airport is Denver International airport because of the ridiculous theories about it (when the real reason is that they have the best craft beer bars out of most all of the airports in America, I should know I've been to a lot of them).

Okay enough about my idiosyncrasies and back to that link up there.  It is after all a tad conspiratorial, but with a hint of truth behind the words.  Here is my take on the whole thing.  A few posts ago I talked about the direction that the country was headed and how I pulled some parallels from stories that my Grandmother had told me in the past.  Today I find articles and opinions like this that are backed up with facts from the newly inaugurated presidents stances.  I find that a lot of this is frightening and while I am not truly sold yet, I believe that within the next week to 6 weeks another executive order will be announced and signed that will (using flowery religious pre-text) attempt to take away the rights of anyone in the LGBTQ community.  This religious liberty executive order will put me over the edge to accept a lot of what this article believes and states, I believe that is when we will begin to see a little more problems for under-represented minorities in the US.

Now we are still a democracy of sorts, and we still have our voice, since January 22nd I have emailed and called (I called during the weekdays) the two senators of the state of Texas.  I have not had any success getting a hold of either and I have only gotten rhetoric filled copy and paste replies, and Ted Cruz decided that since I have contacted his office for the last week and a half that he would fill my inbox with his news letter.  I reply to each of his newsletters and say what I think is un-American about each and everyone of his stances.  I reply in the kindest of terms, and make a point using logic and reason.  I don't reply back to his emails and tell him that he is indeed the Zodiac killer... it has also been noted that a lot of republican representatives have been un-responsive and hiding from their constituents...

Okay.  I've been fairly negative for the past few weeks, let's look at some positive stuff.

The incident is still being investigated so no true correlation can be made, but this makes me happy to see American's rising to a cause http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/burned-down-mosque-texas-islamic-centre-victoria-rebuild-americans-donate-800000-one-day-a7553256.html?cmpid=facebook-post&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000090 - Especially when there is so much negative rhetoric in today's world.

I'll leave you with a joke.

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/01/30/the-aclu-says-it-got-24-million-in-donations-this-weekend-six-times-its-yearly-average/?utm_term=.9fd3a46c0833 - After reading this I can only assume that the president has some sort of vested interest in the ACLU.  I mean look at how much money he is making them...