I hope everyone had a great holiday weekend.  That everyone stayed safe and happy.  I’m actually starting this one on the 4th of July because I’m staying home with my doggies because they HATE the fireworks and the city sets them off right down the street (practically) from me.  Plus I live between some real Indiana rednecks who’ve been setting stuff off for the past couple of days and ALL day today.  Lots of M-80s or whatever the modern day equivalent is.  Heck, these guys could be setting off sticks of dynamite for all I know.  

So, I spent the day building new subheading titles (Good Morning Campers, Dragon Pix, Fantasy Pix, etc) and added a few new ones for specialized people who contribute all the time.  Try to make it a little more participatory.  

We’ll see.

But, in the meantime, let’s go ahead and get the regular show started and see where it takes us today.  I feel like I’ve got some things to talk about today, like there is something percolating in the back of my head that needs to come out in my writing, but I’m not sure what that might be just yet.  I’m sure that God will let me know what that is at the right time.

But for now…

How about a round up of last minute 4th of July stuff that I received…

It’d be easier on my poor puppies if we’d done that here.  Although these guys probably would’ve just ignored it.

I don’t know…some of them I may have already used…but here’s some more I know I didn’t use…

I’m kinda wondering if that isn’t Mrs. Aussie Pete. Not that they would be celebrating the 4th, but you know, just posing for the picture.  Or someone from his family.

An old farmer was hauling a load of manure when he was stopped by a state trooper. “You were speeding,” the cop said. “I’m going to have to give you a ticket.”

“Yep,” the farmer said as he watched the trooper shoo away several flies.

” These flies sure are terrible,” the trooper complained.

“Yep,” the farmer said. “Them are circle flies.”

“What’s a circle fly?”

“Them flies that circle a horse’s tail,” answered the farmer. “Them are circle flies.”

“You wouldn’t be calling me a horse’s ass, would you?” the trooper angrily asked.

“Nope, I didn’t,” the farmer replied. There was a pause as the trooper continued to write out the ticket…”But you sure can’t fool them flies.” 

 

Too funny!

I feel like I’m in a rut. Every time I go to bed at night, I find myself just getting up again in the morning.

Anon.

Massachusetts  Law

Bullets may not be used as currency.

2024 Staff Photos

A man phones home from his office and tells his wife: “Something has just come up. I have a chance to go fishing for a week. It’s the opportunity of a lifetime.

We leave right away. So pack my clothes, my fishing equipment, and especially my blue silk pyjamas. I’ll be home in an hour to pick them up.”

He goes home in a hurry and grabs everything and rushes off.

A week later he returns.

His wife asks: “Did you have a good trip, dear?”

He says: ” Oh yes, great! But you forgot to pack my blue silk pyjamas.”

His wife smiles and says, “Oh no I didn’t. I put them in your tackle box!”

Another really good one from brother Joe…

An unemployed man is desperate to support his family of a wife and three kids. He applies for a janitor’s job at a large firm and easily passes an aptitude test.

The human resources manager tells him, “You will be hired at minimum wage of $5.15 an hour. Let me have your e-mail address so that we can get you in the loop. Our system will automatically e-mail you all the forms and advise you when to start and where to report on your first day.”

Taken back, the man protests that he is poor and has neither a computer nor an e-mail address. 

To this the manager replies, “You must understand that to a company like ours that means that you virtually do not exist. Without an e-mail address you can hardly expect to be employed by a high-tech firm. Good day.”

Stunned, the man leaves. Not knowing where to turn and having $10 in his wallet, he walks past a farmers’ market and sees a stand selling 25lb crates of beautiful red tomatoes. 

He buys a crate, carries it to a busy corner and displays the tomatoes. In less than 2 hours he sells all the tomatoes and makes 100% profit. Repeating the process several times more that day, he ends up with almost $100 and arrives home that night with several bags of groceries for his family.

During the night he decides to repeat the tomato business the next day. By the end of the week he is getting up early every day and working into the night.

He multiplies his profits quickly. Early in the second week he acquires a cart to transport several boxes of tomatoes at a time, but before a month is up he sells the cart to buy a broken-down pickup truck.

At the end of a year he owns three old trucks. His two sons have left their neighborhood gangs to help him with the tomato business, his wife is buying the tomatoes, and his daughter is taking night courses at the community college so she can keep books for him.

By the end of the second year he has a dozen very nice used trucks and employs fifteen previously unemployed people, all selling tomatoes. He continues to work hard.

Time passes and at the end of the fifth year he owns a fleet of nice trucks and a warehouse that his wife supervises, plus two tomato farms that the boys manage. The tomato company’s payroll has put hundreds of homeless and jobless people to work. His daughter reports that the business grossed a million dollars.

Planning for the future, he decides to buy some life insurance. Consulting with an insurance adviser, he picks an insurance plan to fit his new circumstances. Then the adviser asks him for his e-mail address in order to send the final documents electronically.

When the man replies that he doesn’t have time to mess with a computer and has no e-mail address, the insurance man is stunned, “What, you don’t have e-mail? No computer? No Internet? Just think where you would be today if you’d had all of that five years ago!”

“Ha!” snorts the man. “If I’d had e-mail five years ago I would be sweeping floors at Microsoft and making $5.15 an hour.”

Which brings us to the moral:

Since you got this story by e-mail, you’re probably closer to being a janitor than a millionaire.

Sadly, I got it, too.

That one cracked me up so badly.  That is me SO many times.  When I get a chance to actually sit at church and not play security and walk around during service, I sit in the very front row and when my stomach makes its ridiculously loud noise, I always look up at the Pastor like it’s his fault. 

Never works though.

A trial had been scheduled in a small town, but the court clerk had forgotten to call in a jury panel.
 
Rather than adjourning what he thought was an exceptionally simple case, the judge ordered his bailiff to go through the courthouse and round up enough people to form a jury.  The bailiff returned with a group of lawyers. 

The prosecutor felt that it would be an interesting experiment to try a case before a jury of lawyers, and  the defense counsel had no objection, so a jury was impaneled.  And the trial went very quickly.  After only an hour of testimony, and very short closing arguments, both sides rested.  The jury was then instructed by the judge, and was sent back to the jury room to deliberate.

After nearly six hours, the trial court was concerned that the jury had not returned with a verdict.  The case had, in fact, turned out to be every bit as simple as he had expected, and it seemed to him that they should have been back in minutes.  He sent the bailiff to the jury room, to see if they needed anything.

The bailiff returned, and the judge asked, “Are they close to reaching a verdict?”

The bailiff shook his head, and replied, “Your Honor, they’re still doing nomination speeches for the position of foreman.” 

This is a great one!  It’s from Buzzfeed and it’s called:

“My Adult Children Didn’t Believe Me”: 26 Normal Practices And Routines From The Past That Have Gen Z’ers Confused, Perplexed, And Puzzled

And here’s another one… this poor bear.  You are not going to believe the crap this poor bear has put up with.

The Unluckiest Albino Grizzly Bear in the World Got Mistakenly Sent to the Artic 5 Times

So, today … Friday … has been one of those days.  I WAS going to get up, do lawn work all day and get that out of the way, but instead it started raining, so Izzy and I went shopping.  Harbor Freight was having a sale (Man! I love Harbor Freight.  It’s like the toy store for men.) I spray a lot of weed kill and I’ve had this little one gallon, hand carry pump sprayer that I use.  I usually fill it up twice and it’s a real pain by half an hour or so.  I bought a 3 gallon backpack sprayer for $29 on sale.  I’m going to try it out on Saturday.  I also bought a little bitty wet/dry vac specifically for cleaning out the car.  Holy cow!

 

It will suck the hair off a watermelon at 100 paces!  It’s a little monster!  Plus, you can hook the hose up to the outlet and make it a blower.  There’s a warning on there that says basically when you use it as a blower that anything inside the canister can be ejected through the hose, so make sure the canister is empty before hand.  So, I’m thinking, buy a bunch of that birthday confetti, fill the whole canister up with it, poke the hose inside or over the top of a bathroom stall while someone is using it and turn it on!  How awesome would THAT be!?

Or even better!  I have to start punching holes in like 50 new base plans that are about 150 pages each…save all the little round circles that are punched out…Yeah!

Anyway, when we got home, Izzy and I trimmed some branches, but everything was too wet to mow, so that’s now on tap for Saturday. 

Okay, no theme today, you are just going to get about 10 or so of the memes in the order that I have them in the file.  So, don’t blame me if they are all one sided.  I just send out what I receive.  Besides, you guys all know how I feel.  I am a Christian, Constitutional, Conservative.  

I saw a tweet (do we still call them that now that it’s X?) just a quick headline that said that Biden had a medical issue on Air Force One.  My first thought was that, okay here it is, their excuse for getting rid of him from the ticket.  Someone responded, “No he didn’t.  He walked off the plane just fine.”  I stopped reading at that point because it’s all becoming nonsense…would that be “again” or “still”?

And yet another…

Unexpected source exposes the ‘conspiracy’ hiding Joe Biden’s decline from America — and the details are insane | Blaze Media. Say it Ain’t so Joe

That is so much me!  Except I wave my tablet because I can’t afford books anymore…I read too fast.

I know.  This is a real worry of mine.  I went to the eye doctor the other day and I told her that I HAVE to take care of my eyes.  As far as my body goes, they are my number ONE priority because otherwise I won’t be able to read.  I hope and pray that there are good libraries in Heaven.  But, there you will have all those historical figures to TELL you the stories themselves.  How’d you like to spend an afternoon talking to Noah about the art of ark building or to Moses about what it was like standing in front of pharoah while you told him to “Let my people go!”  Man!  I can’t hardly wait!

This one is from Steve H.  And it’s awesome.  Here’s what he has to say about it.

Subject: Must watch short YouTube    “This is what STRENGTH looks like” on YouTube

An iconic  but relatively unknown response to those still suffering from terminal cases of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS.) 

Two young men are walking down Fifth Avenue. The first one says, “Look at that gorgeous redhead in that green suit.” 

They walk on, and the same young man says, “Wow! Take a gander at that blonde in those red slacks.” 

They continue, and again, the first young man says, “Holy cow! Feast your eyes on that brunette in the …” 

The second young man finally says, “Is that all you can think about? …..Clothes?” 

I have no idea WHO amongst all of you had the temerity to send me that!!!

So I heard someone on the radio say, “until you can thank God for the death of your spouse, you have not completely come to grips with it yet.”

I started thinking about that.  While pondering this deep topic, I received this from my (and your) deep friend Stephanie.

Now, I’ve seen this, or something very similar to it many times before and it is quite true.  It leaves you quite changed.  Most of it in horrible, devastating, incredibly painful ways.

But in what good ways have I been changed that I could possibly thank God for?

Sure…there have been some positive changes in my life since I’ve lost Mary.  And to be clear, I HATE that term.  I haven’t lost her.  Like if I look around enough I can find her again or if I just lift up the right towel or pillow I can jump in excitement and say, “Oh!  There you are!  I’ve been looking everywhere for you!” 

No. 

And it’s not like I don’t know exactly where she is.  And it’s not like I don’t have every assurance of being with her again some day for all eternity, although I’m also assured that our reunion will not be very high on the list of either of our priorities.

But thanking God involves being truly thankful for something important.  What am I truly thankful for that happened because Mary died?  I’ve lost 138 pounds, but that’s mostly because eating just isn’t any fun any more.

What else?

Well, I guess, the biggest thing is that I went back to church, more importantly, I went back to God.  Not that I ever really left God, but I REALLY went back to God, for everything, every day.  Mary was so much better at that then I was.  Relying on God for everything.  I was more self reliant.  Which do you think works out better?

My life is so much better now.  I am so much more content.  I have several ministries that I am involved in and more than one person has told me that their life has been changed because of my efforts, although I HAVE to emphasize that is NOT a reason.  No wait, changing others lives IS a reason, but me taking credit for it NOT a reason because it’s NOT me, it’s God choosing to work through me.

And that ain’t nuthin’!  

But to hit my knees and say those words, “Thank you God for taking Mary.” 

I don’t know. 

But I think I have to try. 

And by “try” I mean really mean it. 

Maybe I’ll let you guys know.