Home For Christmas: the Best Place to Be

I feel for the sojourners who find themselves far from home in the Christmas Season.  Like truck drivers, military personnel, traveling business people.   Strange vistas,  unknown towns, hotel rooms, restaurants.  Cold and snow.  Surrounded by strangers.

God bless them all.  May they soon be cuddled with their spouse, kids and dog, by a warm fire with a Christmas tree nearby, glowing with colored lights.

A Pox on the Years 2019 & 2020: I Lose Both My Brothers

Nothing makes you more aware of your mortality than the deaths of friends and relatives, and I have lost several of each during the past two years.  My older brother Ted died at age 76 and 31 days on April 5, 2019, of congestive heart failure.  He sometimes commented on this blog as "Bro."  My younger brother Dennis followed him on February 27, 2020, of Alzheimer's Disease.  Dennis was 72.

I turned 76 last month and this week passed my older brother in longevity.  I do not fear death and often find myself welcoming it.  Old age, aches and pains, the recent loss of our democratic republic to the fraud and ruthlessness of Democrats, is discouraging.  Facing another four years of Democrat gross mismanagement of the economy, the military and the border is very depressing.  

I am in very good health for my age, according to my doctors, but a year ago I was diagnosed with Type II diabetes, which I keep closely controlled with medications and diet.

Dying of old age is not a tragedy, it is a fact of life and a part of nature.  Nevertheless, I don't have to like it.

Above Photo, Circa 1966:  From left to right, my father on steel guitar, me on bass guitar, Ted on guitar, Dennis on drums.

My Family in Houston

I have a niece in Houston, and my younger brother lives there too.  The niece has a husband and three young children.  They just bought a house there maybe six months ago.  The house is a two-story house, and the bottom floor is now trashed from being flooded.  Today they are cleaning out the bottom half, tearing out ruined walls and carpeting.  The bottom will have to be rebuilt.

My brother lost his car.  He parked it at his daughter (my niece's) house to ride with them the heck out of Dodge just before the hurricane hit.  His apartment was fine, but his car was submerged due to its location at the daughter's house.

My brother's cat survived, even though alone for six days.  The landlady fed her each day and she is fine.

Preserving Family History by Scanning and Editing Old Photographs #Photoshop

An Old Photo That I Edited

Our youngest son is getting married in November.  He is 33, and dang, it's about time.  Get busy, boy, we want grand kids.

Our son wants to make a slide show of some sort for the wedding reception, so wifey and I are gathering stacks of old pictures dating back to our son's birth in 1981.  Old pictures fade, become discolored or get wrinkled, cracked or torn.  That's why it's a good idea to scan those old pictures into a non-changing digital format -- into jpg picture files, that can be reproduced countless times on CDs and hard drives, and dispersed throughout the family members.  If you have old paper pictures that predate the digital age, you may want to do the same.

If some of your pictures have become faded, darkened, or discolored, scan them anyway.  There are numerous programs available for editing digital images.  I use Photoshop, but there are cheaper alternatives that do quite well.  Photoshop Elements can be had for $60 to $70, depending on where you buy it.  I edited the picture of my son, at left, with Photoshop.  The top image is how the picture looks in hard copy.  It became purple-pink over the past 33 years, but five minutes with Photoshop restored it nicely (see bottom pic).

We are wallowing in nostalgia, going through old photos that we haven't seen in years.  My son's pictures go all the way back to the hospital delivery room, and progress through infancy, childhood, high school, college and beyond.  After all this work, we darn well better get some grand kids out of this.  Otherwise, I am buying another dog.

Our Scanner:  We are using a Canon CanoScan Lide 200.  Current price is $79.19.  This scanner operates and is powered through a USB port on your computer. The scanner's software allows you to crop the picture before saving it, which is a big time saver.

Off to Disneyland (Anaheim)

Mrs Chomper and I are accompanying the Grandkids to the original Disneyland today.  Thrills.  I'd rather stay home and smoke a cigar.  But I'll try to enjoy it.  I refuse to wear one of those mouse hats.

Yesterday we attended services at the Temecula Calvary Chapel and enjoyed it.  The music, spirit and sermon were all great.  This is one of the very few churches that I have attended that aren't boring.  If you want pure, undiluted Christianity, this is the one for you.  

Carved Pumpkins by Stogie

These are the first pumpkins I have carved in several years.  When my sons were small, it was an annual tradition.  I miss my three sons!!  Tomorrow I'll be driving to Murrietta, California to see the middle one -- the only one so far to give me any Grandkids.  I'll be visiting the Grandkids too.

My gun-toting nephew will be house sitting.