I’m totally phoning this one in. It wasn’t my most exciting sightseeing trip, but I was out of stuff to see in that area. Don’t get me wrong, it was nice historic old stuff, but it’s always been hard for me to get excited about historic old stuff – unless it’s really, really old. Like Pyramids in Egypt old.
A brief update after last week’s rant: I’ve encountered some nicer folks, most notably today. Other than that, I’m sticking close to home for a bit and only surrounding myself with positive people, meditating longer myself, and reading and listening to more metaphysical stuff – something that always makes me feel great.
Tomorrow my neighbors are taking me boating on a huge, pretty lake nearby. Apparently there are waterfalls! I will take pictures for you all. Pray they don’t look like my usual fuzzy crap. It will be about 105 degrees, so pray I also weather the heat.
Now, on with the old stuff…
Old stuff in historic Goliad, Texas: a mission, a presidio, and a monument.
I know, more old stuff. There’s not much else to see around Gonzales and Goliad, except historic old stuff.
Before I get to the self-stroking RV stuff I fixed, I want to talk about something sort of important, for once…
My Yahoo! editor has fallen off the face of the earth which means I’ve been able to write more on this blog. Lucky you! (No contact in about a month now, and I’ve submitted a great story idea and an article in that time, along with a few reminder emails.Whatever.) So in between writing the next episode of Tales From the RV Park, I checked my blog stats on Google Feedburner and noticed I lost about 20% of my subscribers within the four days after this post: Online Dating: Oh my. Well, this explains a lot. The post may or may not explain a lot about online dating, but I can’t figure out why I lost so many subscribers. I thought the post about the hunter-gather principle would’ve been the one to turn folks off. Or, far more likely, this post,this post, or this post. Was it something I said?
I don’t try to offend anyone on this blog, but I realize it happens. Heck, I do it in my face-to-face life, too… I suffer from “Foot In Mouth” disease all the time. It’s probably that missing filter thing I mentioned in my About page.
Since I brought up the online dating, some of you may be wondering about what’s going on with the Online Dating Chronicles. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nada. Ziltch. Zero. Concerned I might say something “sans filter” – like I do on this blog – I have been extra cautious when writing back to the few men who’ve sent me a normal email. The conversations always seem to go quite well… and then nothing. They just stop replying, or send one random sentence in reply to our regular email exchange – a sentence that contains no question in which to reply. And, no asking to meet or to talk on the phone.
I do live about an hour and a half (or more) from the ones writing. Maybe that has something to do with it – in the end they just don’t want to bother with the distance. I don’t know, that’s just a guess. Maybe I’m offending the crap out of them, too.
So,I’m done with the online dating thing. The endless emailing that goes nowhere has taken its toll on my level of interest.
Which means I will continue offending and/or boring the crap out of the few of you dear readers I have left…
Self-Stroking Post RV Stuff I Fixed All By Myself
There is a dichotomy to the RV lifestyle: A lot of stuff needs fixing or regular maintenance, which sucks. But when you fix it all by yourself, it’s an awesome moment of pure pleasure. SPOILER ALERT: If you can tell someone about it and they make all the appropriate facial expressions and comments, the moment of awesome lasts even longer.
Maybe it’s just me, but I get a real thrill out of fixing some, often random, item on my RV. Is that feeling why men love fixing stuff?
*light bulb goes on above my head*
Ohhhh, I totally get it, guys. It makes me want to get frisky, too.
I will now tell you about Stuff I Fixed All By Myself because you are a captive audience that’s really nice to me.
Well, it’s this or you could go back to the work you’re avoiding. Ok, we’ll compromise – I’ll keep it short, kind of. To help with keeping it kind of short, just know the links below are all to previous posts so long-time readers can skip those. Everyone new has to read them. Why? Um, you might learn something. Yeah, that’s it.
Now that we’ve got that settled, I shall commence with the list of Stuff I Fixed All By Myself:
Your lesson for today is a Texas saying: All hat and no cattle.
It means pretentious. Like a guy who just bought himself an expensive cowboy hat, but doesn’t have any cattle.
Used in a sentence, generally after some pontificating dork has just left the building, in your best Texas accent, “That guy is all hat and no cattle. My family has known his family since his grand-pappy and my grand-pappy were toddlers and they ain’t never had a pot to piss in. There’s no way in God’s Creation that kid has sixteen oil wells on his property. He don’t have no property!”
All hat, looking for missing cattle.
That’s it, that’s the lesson for today. It has nothing to do with the rest of this post.
Then what am I writing about? A very serious matter: My visitor and blog stats have dropped by over fifty percent during the last month or so.
I agree, it’s tragic!
My writing isn’t the most scintillating or magnetic, but that hasn’t seemed to stop most of you from coming back anyway. So we can’t blame my writing – this time.
The drop in visitors to my blog is possibly due to a trojan. Sadly, I don’t mean the prophylactic trojan. I’m referring to the much less enjoyable internet trojan.
Pescetarian (from Wiki):(pron.: /ˌpɛskɨˈtɛəriən/) (also spelled pescatarianism) is the practice of a diet that includes seafood but not the flesh of other animals. A pescetarian diet shares many of its components with a vegetarian diet and includes vegetables, fruit, nuts, grains, beans, eggs, and dairy, but unlike a vegetarian diet also includes fish and shellfish. The Merriam-Webster dictionary dates the origin of the term “pescetarian” to 1993 and defines it to mean: “one whose diet includes fish but no other meat”.
Bacontarian: A person who supplements an otherwise normal diet – like the one above – with bacon. Lots of bacon.
Before coming to Texas, the land of red meat and BBQ, I ate bacon only once in a while. I was pretty much a healthy pescetarian (but with copious amounts of chocolate).
But in Texas? I was probably the only pescetarian – at least the only one in cow country. No one here has heard of that word. Before I stopped describing myself as a “pescetarian”, Texans gave me the strangest look whenever I uttered (and then had to explain) my diet.
So now I’m a bacontarian, something Texans can respect.
But I’m still adding copious amounts of chocolate to my diet. I heard there is chocolate covered bacon but I have yet to taste it. I looked it up on Amazon… what do you think??
For Ten Things Tuesday: Ten Things You Probably Don’t Realize About Being Off Work
I know it’s probably not Tuesday, but I’m a Lady of Leisure now and can’t remember the day of the week. It was recently Tuesday, or will be Tuesday soon and that’s close enough. Lucky for me Tuesday comes around often. Sorry.
Spotted while in traffic.
For a long time before I got laid off I envisioned what my life would be like if I no longer had to work, like when I win the lottery jackpot. I made lists of all the things I would do, I wrote out a “typical” day in my life of leisure. On that list were such wholesome things such as starting the day with meditation, exercising, reading, spending time with family and friends, spending time with pets, going to the beach, traveling, working a little at my passive income business and/or non-profit, etc.
No, I am NOT prone to delusions of grandeur. I wish you would stop saying that.
I thought I’d envisioned it so well that I knew just what it would look like, but I was wrong. Again. Of course, in my vision I had a LOT more money, so that might change things a bit. I play the lotto because I don’t have enough money to continue this very much longer. Traveling is on the list of things I want to do, but I haven’t done that due to the fact I haven’t yet won the lottery. I also don’t have a non-profit, yet. Also due to not winning the lottery.
Well, here are the things I didn’t foresee about being a “Lady of Leisure”…
1. When you’re off work you don’t have to dress up anymore. Well, I don’t have any reason to. This means I live in sweats. All. the. time. They’re quite comfortable, but I do miss getting dressed up now and then. And I’m tired of always having to wash my sweats so I can have something to wear.
2. You probably won’ t be on the computer as much as you imagine. I thought I’d be on the computer all the time, but I rarely turn it on. However, my Facebook addiction is on the rise again. I blame my not-so-smart phone for both. Because of it, I don’t need to turn on the computer to update my Facebook status, add to my Netflix list, or do a search for something. But, wait! There’s more…
In honor of the resurrection of the Hawaii Five-O CBS television series, I thought I’d tell you all about the time I carried hand cuffs.
For years I carried handcuffs. No, not in the hopes of finding someone hot to kidnap a willing victim. But that’s not a bad idea. Thanks!
In another episode of Jobs I Had: I was a licensed Bail Agent.
Yup, the State of California thought I was sane enough for a Bail Agent’s license. As long as you haven’t committed a felony, you too can get one.
Being a licensed Bail Agent meant I could go on bail “skips” (those who skip out of town or sentencing) and arrest the offender. Neato. Got my own handcuffs, too. This job was in conjunction with my time as a P.I. – my boss, the owner of the PI firm, also owned a bail bond agency.
With two exceptions, no one ever “made” (identified, spotted) me. If I got questioned by neighbors in the area I was staking out, I had a great cover: I was stalking my cheating boyfriend. They were so nice they would offer to help! People are cool.
A couple weren’t cool. Some men were nasty, and even threatened me. Too bad you can’t shoot someone for threatening you. If they’d only known I was armed. And dangerous.
And unstable.
Before you all go thinking: OMG! She was just like Dog the County Hunter! No, it’s not nearly as exciting as they make it seem. Well, not all the time.
But sometimes it is very interesting.
Case: A BIG dude who skipped bail on my boss. I had a mug shot to go by and night goggles.
So I’m waiting near his apartment. The complex has a gym where we know he likes to work out. I’ve been instructed to call for our off-duty police backup when I spot the skip.
I spot him working out at the gym. Score! My heart starts racing. Our off-duty police backup meets me, we ID the guy with the mug shot I have, and the cop handcuffs him. The guy doesn’t have his wallet or ID with him because he was working out, but he says he’s not the guy.
A likely story. Ya, we never heard that one before.
He insists he’s not the guy. He admits to being on parole for killing (Penal Code 187) a cop with his brother 9 years ago, but says he’s not our guy. But he’s a Dead Wringer (pun not intended) in the mug shot I have.
He’s really calm and polite. That’s rare. But it’s ok with me that he’s still handcuffed.
Anyway, we walk him to his apartment to get his wallet and ID. The photo looks like him, but the name isn’t the same as my skip. The cop runs a check on him, and finds only that prior crime he mentioned: The 187 . The murder.
He’s really not our guy. Ok, fine.
The cop goes to uncuff him, but he can’t find his handcuff key. It’s gone. Totally lost. He asks if I have mine.
Nope. Didn’t expect to be doing the handcuffing on this one. Plus my key was taken away from me. But that’s another story.
So the cop leaves me alone in the apartment with the handcuffed BIG dude. Who could head-butt me to death with one blow. Who is innocent of skipping bail. But not cop-killing.
I’m sure I oozed fear the whole fivty-thousdred minutes I was alone with BIG dude.
He was tame as a kitten with me. Very nice of him considering WE’D HANDCUFFED AN INNOCENT MAN.
Rumor has it my family is related to a bunch few famous people. Most of whom you’ve probably never heard of.
Ted McGinley, the cute actor. One of his more well-known roles was as Jefferson Darcy on ‘Married with Children’. Yes, that guy! He really does look like the male members of my father’s side of the family. My aunt knows the details, but we’re distant cousins or something… which is too bad because otherwise he just might have made my previously posted list.
On my mother’s side, we’re related to Bertrand Russell, 3rd Earl of Russell, a philosopher, mathematician, humanitarian, and Nobel Prize winner. (Apparently, the “smarts” aren’t necessarily hereditary, otherwise I’d be famous rather than infamous.) We’re related through the Duke of Bedford. By all accounts a nice guy, but it seems Bertrand’s life was a bit of an emotional roller coaster at times. Here’s a quote from his biography:But, wait! There’s more…
