Bright New Day

After sleet and snow yesterday, the sun is out and it looks much warmer than it really is outside.  It looks like a typical April day but here at 9 AM it is just above freezing.   Our normal lows are in the 40's and we generally are seeing days in the 60's with a flirting of 70.  The weatherman is promising us that for this weekend but I'm not sure if I trust those guys. 

Yesterday I played with printing some business cards from an online format.  It was kind of fun but then getting the final version past my resident editor was problematic.  In short, the computer did exactly what I told it to do.  The final product looked a lot like the High School cards that I included in my graduation announcements.  I did put numbers and my e-mail address on them but it still felt kid of strange to be at the mercy of the machine format and colors. 

This morning I started to use the Dragon speech recognition program to write this but my efforts fell flat.  It will take some time and practice to get where the normal flow of my voice is good for Dragon.  I think as slow as I type I am able to think and type (Now if I could just learn to type and spell).  Dragon doesn't cut me any slack and it wants to start and stop in inappropriate places.  Right after I finished typing places, I stopped and thought how to tie the next sentence in.  Dragon would wait about a half second and move to the next line. 

This morning I watched a program about Helicopters in Vietnam.  There was a pair of helicopters that extracted about 100 ARVN soldiers in five trips into a hot LZ.  It was kind of funny that several of the higher staff officers were really pissed off that the pilots had done damage to the helicopters and there was even a scuffle over the event.  Finally one General said he was pleased with the result but unhappy about the damage.  That is pretty much what was wrong with that war.  Combat is really how the training of the soldiers kicks in when the need arises that is important.  Two Warrant Officer Pilots were able to save 100 lives of our Allies when things were crunchy.  "Atta Boy Guys!"  

As I moved my computer station around this last week, I discovered a lot of CD's that I haven't listened to for a while.  One of them I am listening to is the theme and music from the TV Series Miami Vice.  Heavy drum beats with synthesizer theme.  Kind of neat to hear what I haven't been listening to for many years.  I also have many strange CD's that I picked up at different times and places.  There is a collection of Pan Flutes that is the music of the Andes.  One of them is even Christmas themes.  I haven't listened to that one again, yet. 

It was very nice that on what would have been my mother's 91st birthday I got a nice Oil Royalty check in the mail.  Thanks mom.  In her honor, we had the kids over for dinner and had pie for dessert.   What do you do when you have left over pot roast and potatoes?  Yep, make a great stew.  It was cold and windy and a good meal of hot steaming soup was just the ticket.  I tried to not imitate what my dad would have done.  I only used half of a stack of crackers and I used Chipotle Tobasco not catsup. 

The other day I watched a program about coffee.  I had no idea that there are two kinds of coffee and one is kind of considered a filler and inferior brand.  I'm currently surfing the kinds of coffee I buy and have not hit just the right kind.  I am far from a coffee snob but I do enjoy a full flavored cuppa coffee.  I really don't enjoy the over roasted flavor of Starbucks.  There is a fine line there and I haven't found it yet.

Oh well, moving on to a better and brighter day.  Hope you have one too.

MUD