It’s Valentine’s Day, 2015, and it falls on a Saturday. You know what that means, don’t you? It means you won’t get into so much as a Burger King without a wait! Be sure to visit today’s A&J for my indirect thoughts on that one. Where do you get your ideas, indeed. Don’t get me wrong. I love a nice outing in a good restaurant, especially in observance of Valentine’s Day; I just make it a point never to go on Valentine’s Day! This allows for a truly romantic dinner in a peaceful atmosphere (at normal prices), plus it serves a secondary purpose if necessary: “Valentine’s Day? Don’t you remember that cozy little place we dined at last August!”
Happy Valentine’s Day!
By Jimmy Johnson
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255 responses to “Happy Valentine’s Day!”
OF due 1524-1544 CST. With luck, I will be napping. Peace, emb
http://www.nps.gov/features/yell/webcam/oldFaithfulStreaming.html
Charlotte: Of course! [I think.] JJ tricked us. We expect Janis, she looks enough like Janis to fool us, A&J don’t [usually?] have a tall opaque hedge around their house, the two bump; still deluded, we try to make Janis look like somebody else.
I think you win the A. Conan Doyle prize.
Peace, emb
Charlotte, I know your area just gets terribly buried and I get snowbound with a little ice and snow because they do not treat or clear roads here except most significant ones. A number of years ago I lost an older friend in OKC who slipped on ice, hit his head and died from brain injury.
Broken bones abound during our ice storms. I just go into survival mode but I actually own one of those Jimmy Buffet freezers, you know the song where he sings I wanna go where there ain’t any snow, fore my fin sinks so low, I wanna go where it’s warm.
Culmination is when he shoots the hole in his freezer because he has cabin fever. I didn’t shoot the hole myself but I do have the freezer with the bullet hole in the lid!
Hang in there, kid!
Tomorrow Danny Thomas will appear and a closet full of walnuts…
The eagles at Berry College (near Rome, GA) hatched two li’l “iggles” this weekend. If you google “Berry College” along with “eagles”, I imagine you can find the live coverage. The college site has a choice of 2 viewing cameras plus an approaching view camera. There is a related site on Livestream, but I think one has only a single camera view there. I could be wrong on that.
In another month, here’s hoping the Decorah eagles will be at least as fruitful.
Remember when I said neither Mike nor I ever asked permission to do or buy anything? Or what we read or where we went? It has always been openly around but my personal rule and his were to respect privacy. So, it has taken me this long to open the nightstands on either side of his bed. Still haven’t really looked through much but was totally surprised to find out I own three more guns, two revolvers and an automatic with two clips. Two Smith and Wessons and a Remington clip.
And a plethora of knives and one must have just come from Knifehog as box is still in there, looks like a sawsall of some sort? Teethed blade in holster so I am thinking for sawing your leg off when you get caught in the rigging? I think all the Spydeco knives are in with sailing stuff.
I know I have a bank vault box full of guns but those are antiques I think and no, I haven’t actually taken inventory. These aren’t antiques except the Remington looks older.
The only thing I ever saw Mike shoot was skeet targets/clay and he liked to shoot targets on ranges. Gave up duck hunting by time we married and couldn’t stand my family’s deer hunting expeditions.
John, I thought of you today while editing my column because it is a commentary on my personal choice of path I am going down. It may not be published for awhile but I will send it to you since I know you aren’t publishing it!
Love, Jackie
Guess what I meant above John was that you are facing the same terrain I am and that is what it pertains to. Where do you go? I looked out of kitchen windows across the yard at the beautiful little bridge across my “ditch” creek that was last thing Mike built for me. It hit me how hard that was, not because such builds weren’t easy for him but because of the pain and effort it took. I went away for an afternoon and came back and there the bridge was.
Stone mason built walks to it, then curved the walk up slight incline and built the stone patio. So seemingly simple and elegantly placed.
Love, Jackie
Steve, are you saying we are squirelly and a lot of nuts?
Just back from a quick trip to Montgomery. Jackie, Jackie, Jackie. Doing a Jerry. Now whatever do you mean? I’ve seen the Eagles in concert twice and really enjoyed them but I think that it’s time for them to retire. Like Sir Paul on SNL 40 last night. I did talk to Timothy Schmidt briefly on the phone one day. It was a business call about his Volvo, but he seemed to be a nice guy.
Jackie, here is the house my ex and I lost to foreclosure, twice. All the trees you see in our yard were planted by us, with me doing most of the digging and her picking the spots. We enjoyed what we were doing, although I could have done without the gas-powered auger hitting broken limestone chunks every time I tried to bore a hole in the large space behind our yard. I miss that place, as we put a lot of sweat into it. It was great for wildlife watching because of the forest on the back of the property. Wild turkeys, deer, hummingbirds, goldfinches, bluebirds, hawks, possums, skunks, salamanders, frogs. So quiet you could hear the owls at night.There is a large screened porch facing that back fence and the cats had a ball sitting out there and watching whatever happened to wander through, Also the USAF Thunderbirds, B-17 bombers, etc during the annual Air Show.
Oops, forgot to put the link in: https://www.google.com/maps/place/1306+Springwood+Ct,+La+Vergne,+TN+37086/@36.019003,-86.535391,99m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x88640d9f4860a1ef:0x26a1f6b5d57d36c7
Mark, that would be great for wildlife watching. Is the forest behind it undeveloped land? I had to laugh at you, because I have sold houses cheap, cheap to avoid foreclosure, I have had one foreclosed which I didn’t much care about anyway, but never same property twice. It is like Oscar Wilde said, “To lose one parent is questionable but to lose two at once is truly suspect.”
If he didn’t say that, I created the quote. I used to do that sometimes. Anyway, conversations with Texans who are not totally in denial often get stories like that. I had a friend once tell me not to play Losers Poker with a failed oilman!
This property is not mortgaged and won’t be. I would deeply regret losing this one, not because it is socially correct but because it is so personal and comfortable. I love to look at wildlife and birds, nature, rocks, mountains, lakes, forests. I don’t want to kill any or eat them or stuff them, just like to let them go on living and hope we don’t manage to eradicate their habitat.
Love, Jackie
Earth to Jackie, look up^.
Hi Jerry, I agree. It gets to the point it is like me listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival the other day and realizing there didn’t seem to be any of the original band left, just people from various decades? But in Sir Paul’s case, we know it is him but he’s looking like he was stuffed and held up in a doll’s frame like the acts at Branson.
Sorry, just me being a witchy woman here! You are right, I need to put the fire arms in the bank vault with the rest of it all after I get them cleaned. No sense in adding to the attraction for theft!
Love, Jackie
Dear emb, you are very perceptive — thank you for the nice prize you awarded me. I have always enjoyed his stories very much. We will see how the plot plays out in A & J … going to go look on The Dark Side now, see what they say.
Firearms, yeah, eh, I think that you should put them away. Absolutely. Interesting image of Sir Paul there Jackie.
Dear Jackie, now you have even more handguns — wonder what Ghost is going to say! He must be busy, haven’t heard from him much today. I love your sweet story of Mike building you a beautiful little bridge as his last handmade gift to you. What a man!
Mark in TTown, your former home looks so good and you worked so hard on it. Such a shame that it didn’t survive the “housing bubble”? Wishing this hadn’t happened.
Jackie, if you zoom out, you can see the airport which was behind us. It is a civilianized WWII bomber training airfield. So as long as the airport remains, that forest will stay undeveloped as it puts a buffer between the residential areas and its runways. These days it is only a general aviation site with a company which renovates commercial airplanes too. I wish I could laugh at it, but the circumstances surrounding the first foreclosure were very painful and contributed to the breaking of my marriage. But it is a great location.
I don’t know if it is the economy or if we jinxed the house, but the people who have bought it since we lost it the second time don’t seem to have done any better. Out of curiosity I looked it up, and it has been foreclosed twice more since we left it in 2008.
Oh, yes, if you scroll out further you will see Percy Priest lake. That is where I suggested you could sail your boat while in town for the Volunteer Jam. It is a huge lake, that covered the site of several small towns. There are state parks everywhere along there with boat ramps. I had called it Old Hickory but I meant Percy Priest.
Mark, I do not ever want to look up old houses, it is not beneficial and usually causes pain and a revival of old unhappy feelings. Plus, usually the landscaping doesn’t survive either. No, I was very, very lucky that my marriage survived this stuff because most people’s don’t. And often, it is not our faults of course. Crazy as it sounds, events take place that cause financial and personal loss to disconnected individuals, often in a domino effect and nothing we can do will stop it. Ask me how I got to be such a wise woman!
Love, Jackie
OF due 1837-1857 CST. Peace, emb
http://www.nps.gov/features/yell/webcam/oldFaithfulStreaming.html
Charlotte, I am some what dumbfounded that I do find I own so many guns/weapons. I will no longer ever jokingly call them “toys”, an insult to Ghost and Sand and a lot of serious trained individuals. Just before Mike died he did tell me to go buy the Glock Ghost recommended and sign up for lessons in shooting it. We had even discussed where to find shooting ranges, teachers who specialized in training women. He was still telling me same thing in hospital, where he remained quite lucid up to the ICU. never did he mention all these! I think he thought them not suitable?
I am somewhat afraid to find out if my cousin indeed still has my mom’s hunting guns or not? I had assumed he had disposed of them in period he was so stoned on drugs and I did not ask him at funeral, I was just relieved he was sober! She had a large number, unlike me she like to shoot things, and hunted into her 90’s.
These will join the antiques in the vault I think as soon as ice melts.
Love, Jackie
Steve-
I got the reference and it sure made me smile, especially considering Janis’ similarities to MTM!
Jackie, two questions…
1. Did the bank decide you could again be trusted with your own money?
2. What is the model of the Remington semi-auto, or its caliber if that’s easier to find? (One or both should be on the slide, or on the part of the barrel that shows through the ejection port on the right side of the slide.)
“To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” ~ Lady Bracknell in “The Importance of Being Earnest”, Oscar Wilde
But I like your version better, Jackie!