Delayed Flight

What happens when you plan accordingly and arrive at the airport an hour before your flight like everyone should? The flight gets delayed an hour. So here I sit on the floor of the airport in the 'A' line ... waiting.

At least I will be the second one onboard once all the pre-boarders board. I just hope the people already on the plane from the connecting city get off, otherwise I have prepared this all in vain.

One point of interest:
The guy who played 'Dee-Bo' in the movie Friday is also waiting in line patiently. Actually, he is sprawled out on some seats snoozing. I am so tempted to walk over there and quote some lines from the movie.

"What-chu got on my drink Smokey?"

or ...

"Shut up punk be-fo I knock you out!"

I did happen to snap a shot of him with the camera on this phone. I'll append it to the post later, since I don't think I can upload photos from this phone. How lame.

Sigh... another 45 minutes before the plane arrives...

'Dee-Bo' has already been heckled by some of the airport employees who recognized him too. Seems that his fan based is made up of only an elite few.

I wish someone would piss him off so I could watch him knock them the fuck out. At least that is what he did in Friday. I would have to fall into the scene and run over to the knocked out dude and say, "You got knocked the fuck out!!"

What have I become?

UPDATE:



My intention was to be one of the first ones on the plane so I would be one of the first ones off. So who is sitting in the choice row where I want to sit? You guessed it. Dee-Bo.

Now I am not going to let him deter me from achieving my primary objective, so I kindly ask, "Is there anyone else sitting here?" He says no, so I grab the seat by the window. He was sitting in the aisle seat, so we had a nice space between us.

Now I am not one to bother people, especially if they have a level of celebrity-ness about them, so I pretty much leave him alone. He however wants to know what I do for a living, where I live, my purpose for going to California, etc...

So then I am dying to know what he is doing in Nashville. He says he is just passing through between movies and that he talks to children about God. I'm thinking to myself, "Is this the same guy who knocks people the fuck out in the movies?"

Just as I am getting interested in hearing more, this woman plops herself down between us. The smell of alcohol is heavy on her breath. Now Dee-Bo is obviously irritated. I start thinking, "This is it. He is about to knock this woman out!"

I wait eagerly for his fists to start flying. But instead, he tells her if this was a movie, he would have to knock her out!

I can't believe it! He actually said that. She either didn't know who he was, or she was too drunk to realize what was happening.

He goes on.

He tells her, after she still doesn't get that we don't want her crowding our space, that he will put her in his next movie so he can shoot her right in the beginning of the film.

This is all happening while people are still boarding, with the occasional passenger saying what's up as they recognize him.

Now the flight attendant is involved and obviously on Dee-Bo's side. He tells the lady that Dee-Bo is a big guy and needs room to stretch out. Dee-Bo chimes in that he is six-five and 265 pounds.

Finally the woman gets the message and leaves. Dee-Bo and I look at each other with relief. I thank him, we knock fists together and go on with our conversation.

I ask him what movies give him the most recognition, and he tells me Friday and The Fifth Element. I forgot he was in that movie. He than tells me he has been in 95 films, but the IMDB only lists him with 93. I tell him I have credit for one film and he chuckles.

I just looked at his imdb listing and he has over 100 listings, didn't count individual movies or anything, so some of them might have been tv appearances.

Overall, he was a great guy. He is very religious and told me about all the charity events he does for troubled kids. He was very personable and told me things about his personal life. I won't go into detail here out of respect for him, as he trusted me enough to share it with me. Plus, he is a big guy and I would not want to get on his bad side!

I'll give him a call some time when I am back out in LA. (Yes, he gave me his phone number!) Never know when he might need some software development work done.

de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum

"But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful. Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure. To take a trivial example, which of us ever undertakes laborious physical exercise, except to obtain some advantage from it? But who has any right to find fault with a man who chooses to enjoy a pleasure that has no annoying consequences, or one who avoids a pain that produces no resultant pleasure?

"On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains."

- Cicero (45 BC)
- translated by H. Rackham (1914)

The truck in my profile is no more

The truck you see in my profile picture has been repossessed by the evil empire known as 'Ex-Girlfriend, Inc'.

Due to circumstances, the truck (formally a gift from said empire) was irrevocably retracted and stripped of its gift status, and labeled as merely a token of a contract. Hence, it was stated that it was not officially a gift, but part of a contract, that in the event of a break-up, the truck would leave with the person who gave it.

Didn't make much sense to me either.

It was a nice truck. Nice to look at. Its purpose though was no more than a transporter of trash, which coincidentally, contained trash when it was removed from the property, but upon removal, the trash was left strewn about my yard, along with plenty of other trash left behind by said empire.

No worries though. Just a lovely reflection of the true character of the empire.

So, now I am truck-less, but I have gained a lot of trash. This leaves me in a conundrum. The truck was used to remove the trash from the property, and now it is gone. So how do I get the trash from my property to the dump? Its a very methodical process, to say the least. Each week, go to the dump with a couple of bags of trash neatly contained in clean trash bags. Each trip removes part of the past empire's legacy and places it where it rightly belongs.

Its very cleansing process, both literally and figuratively.

what's been happening

Life recently has taken hold. Work, chores, and daily tasks have consumed my existence to the point of not being able to sit still long enough to even write a thought down here. Even this very post is being composed while in bed, after the day has come to an end. Furthermore, I am composing this via my pocket pc cell phone. Life has gotten that busy.

But to this this end, I have wrestled from the grips of the daily grind time to play disc golf, teach my son the art of rollerblading, and compose this post. In exchange the grass is allowed to grow a bit taller, the trash pile a bit higher, and the weeds to get a bit thicker.

If not now, then when? Sometimes even when life is coming at you faster than you can possibly manage, it is still ok to take time for youself and your family. That's what life is for anyway, right?

Mutual of Chapel Hill's Wild Kingdom

Oh my good gravy. I have been wanting to post about these events for the past few days and I finally had to say screw it and take the time to write about it.

It is becoming like wild kingdom around my house. The plethora of deer is nothing new, nor are the masses of turkey, but lately, new faces have been making an appearance, and they deserve to be mentioned.

Saturday morning I woke up early around 7:30am (early for a saturday), and just happened to look out of the back window. To my surprise, there were two 'dogs' lying in the backyard. Well, let me clarify, one was sprawled out on the ground and the other was just kind of sniffing around. They looked like puppies. Actually, they looked like wolf or coyote puppies. Since wolves are not known around my parts, I thought they may have been coyote pups. But they were black in color. I thought that perhaps they are this color when they are born so as to 'blend into the dark of night'. Who knows.. I haven't had time to research and find out for sure. One thing I was sure of, they were wild. The one that was sniffing around, as it turns out, was actually hunting for small things in the grass. As I watched in awe, it would sniff around and then pounce, pull it's head up while chewing on something. The other one would raise it's head up from time to time to see what was going on, but for the most part, it didn't move much.

I wanted to take a closer look, but I knew if I went outside I would scare them away. So I watched some more. As I watched, the 'active' one decided to make a bee line for my chicken coop. Then I suddenly realized why my chickens had previously been disappearing. These little bastards were having a feast at my expense.

After the one was out of sight, I walked outside to check on the one that was still lying there. I walked to within 15 feet of it or so before it popped its head up, saw me, and then jumped to it's feet. We both stood motionless for several seconds staring at each other. I could see the wild in it's eye. It looked just like a coyote, but it was all black with blotches of brown speckled throughout it's coat. Every couple seconds, it would flinch as if it was trying to fake me out, like it was going to make a run for it. I quickly grew bored of this encounter, so I slowly raised my hands and clapped them together. That was all it took for the little guy to make a run for it. He darted into the woods, and when he did, I noticed it was injured. It's hind leg was stiff and it was not putting any weight on it.

Since then I have not seen the little guys, but I did see a full grown coyote in the driveway. That was a first. I had always heard them howling at night, but I had never seen one up close on my property. There must be a lack of food or something, or they think they can get a free meal since I had let the chickens roam free for so long. Since the rash of chicken deaths, I have kept the remaining three (from a total of 21) in the coop behind closed doors.

And that ladies and gentlemen is not the most exciting part of wild kingdom at my house.

On Sunday, I was playing around with my video camera, when I noticed two hawks circling overhead. They were having a dispute over territory, and screeching at each other. I was able to zoom in pretty close with the camera, but they were so far up, I had a tough time keeping the camera steady, even with the anti-shake technology.

Anyway, one hawk finally prevailed and continued to soar around up there for quite some time. I started previewing the video I had just shot of the hawks when I heard the hawk above start to screech again. This time I looked up, but I didn't see it, even though it sounded like it was very close. Then out of the corner of my eye I could see this object falling from the sky. When I focused on it, I realized it was the hawk. It was diving straight down, wings firmly tucked to it's side, beak pointed down. It was focused on something and diving right toward it. I was in so much awe that I didn't even think to turn the camera on to capture this event. It disappeared from view when it reached the tree line, and just as soon as it did, I heard a chorus of turkeys gobbling frantically. At that moment, I realized it was hunting and had caught a turkey. The chorus of gobbling was from many turkeys, but after a few moments, I could only hear one turkey, and its cries dimminished with each passing moment, as if it was crying out its final gobbles.

I was amazed. I had never thought I would witness anything like that from my own backyard. Afterwards, I realized that not only were my chickens probably victims of the coyotes, but they were also probably victims of the hawks.

Until next time ...

The eggs have come

The chickens finally started laying eggs. I found five eggs this morning in the chicken coop. Five eggs from three chickens, you do the math.