Hitting the Pause Button

It's been brought to my attention that my wife and I are full of great ideas and good intentions, but that all too often the ideas that we do have are not getting carried out. It's true that my wife and I have carried out a good number of our ideas, many of them becoming successfully competed projects. Our home improvement projects have been successful ones, for example. However, it seems with every good idea that we went forward with there are three more that only stayed in the idea stage and never had any effort applied to them. Jodi got a revelation last week that led to us committing to stop saying the word "need." It must be extracted...

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Civil War Weekend

Last weekend, I was transported back 150 years in the past to witness the first major battle of the Civil War at Wilson's Creek. From Thursday evening through Sunday afternoon, it was nothing but muskets and cannons for me. The Battle of Wilson's Creek was an interesting one, to say the least. So many stories and keepsakes have been preserved from this battle and those who fought in it. Even the actual site of the battle has been kept virtually untouched. This August marked the 150th anniversary to that battle. To commemorate the event and those involved in it, Wilson's Creek Publishing is working on the release of a 144-page coffee...

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Motorcyles: Enjoyment vs. Risk

Dustin won the 5 Years & 300 Blogs game that I had on the last post. Congratulations, Dustin! And, happy birthday, too! For his prize of choosing my next blog topic, he sent the following:How much more dangerous is it to ride a motorcycle than drive a car? Since I ride a lot now, I am constantly getting told, basically, that I am waiting to die. Well, am I? Or is speed, alcohol, and other variables more of a factor?It's interesting that he chose this topic. Only twelve days ago I attended my step-brother's funeral. Michael died when his motorcycle left a rural highway, struck an embankment, and landed in a field. There were a couple...

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5 Years & 300 Blogs

I actually started blogging on MySpace back when MySpace was all the rage. But, in August of 2006, I decided to go pro and get an actual blog site rather than continue to use the blogging option on my social networking page. Not long after that I decided to scrap my MySpace page altogether. I was growing increasingly bored with it.So, now it's been five years since I moved to Blogger. And, this is the 300th Blogger blog that I've written. I feel like maybe I should celebrate in some way, but I'm not sure what to do. I could give away "the words" T-Shirts to the first 50 people that comment on this blog, but I don't have any "the words"...

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$5 Lesson & Repurposed Technology

Last week, I was able to stop in for a few minutes at one of my favorite places to shop, STD Flea Market. Out of all the flea markets in town, STD is my favorite. It has a strange name, I admit, though an innocent one. The acronym stands for Springfield Tool & Die. The story goes that the owner of Springfield Tool & Die retired and turned the two buildings he still owned into flea markets since they weren't much good for anything else.I love both stores. I've found some really good items over the years for myself and have even resold some items bought there for a quick and nice profit. Jodi had a booth in the downtown location for...

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