California nights

It is almost nine o'clock on Friday night.

My beloved cooked us dinner, grilled veggies & fish and some forbidden black rice.

Now we are sitting outside on the first truly warm night of the season.

Lovely

Oh dear a deer

A hiking trail almost anywhere early in the morning is a beautiful place. Quiet, reflective and sometimes stunning.

This past Sunday I hit a trail at about 8:00 in the morning and it was so tranquil. When you are the only one on trail and quiet you see lots of things.

This hike was full of bunnies - they were everywhere hopping from one side of the trail to the other. Stopping to take a quick peek at me and then jumping into the underbrush.

I glanced to my left at some point and this is what I saw:

I thought to myself - this is what a quiet hiker experiences.

Then on my way back down the path the bikers had arrived. The loud, rude, don't know trail ettiquette fucking bikers. They talk so loud I am sure every deer within 10 miles was running from them.

So to my many readers that may ride a bike on a trail once in a while - shut up except when you are screaming down the hill in back of me, call out to let me know you are coming.

Gas please

I was talking to a friend of mine on the phone on the way home from work. We were both driving. I was doing 10 miles and hour and she was doing 75. Just love my commute.

She started to laugh and said you are not going to believe what I just passed.

A blond was standing next to her car on the two lane road with a cardboard sign that said GAS.

So Bead Girl says what an idiot. Can you believe it?

I said, think about this. She has a sign already made. I would say this was not the first time she had had to use it.

Hmm..

Another idiot

OK, what are the chances.  Two murder for hire idiots in two days!  

So Lesley Dorsett's daughter was married to a man named Moore.  She had a child with this man.  Their marriage fell apart.  Her family hated him.  One day as the daughter was in the house changing the babies diaper, she heard a scream.  She did not worry, she knew it was her father killing her estranged husband.  He had waited in the back yard and hit the guy in the head with a chain.  Once the daughter was done with the baby she went out and helped her dad put her husband's body in the trunk of a car, which he paid someone to torch the next day.

Lesley Dorsett said she took an envelope with Moore's mother's name on it, stuffed it with cash and handed it over at a department store to someone she believed was a hit man. But the supposed hit man was actually an undercover cop.  Imagine that!

So the entire family is in jail.  Except for the baby.  She is in the care of Moore's mother and the Dorsett's are not happy about that.

Hiring a Killer

So how many idiots have to get arrested before the rest of them realize that trying to find a killer for hire, rarely works out.

The most recent dope?  Tim Lambesis of the Christian metal group As I Lay Dying.

Yes friends, you read that correctly.  The Christian metal group.

Yes, I also find that a hard to imagine combination, but there you have it.

He wanted to hire someone to murder his estranged wife.

Now, I am thinking that might be not just against the law but also something Jesus might frown on.

I just don't get it.  Just divorce the spouse you no longer want.

Shake a hand and buy a card

Last week I went into CVS to get a birthday card for my nephew, who is 21 today. How can that be?

So a man was at the cards and said to me that he was buying a birthday card for is wife, who was turning ....

I said be careful, it is very important to get this right.

Well, she will be 65 and the bathing suits on this card remind of suits she might wear a long time ago. You would not remember you are too young, you are about my daughters age.

Then he started talking about Alameda and its hey day as a Navy base and when I said I did not know that time, he asked where I was from.

Ah another East coaster. I am from Buffalo. My best friend joined the Marines and I went into the Navy. I really wish I had gone into the Marines.

I commented on the Colonel and the Colonel's son being Marines, my dad in the Navy and how I agreed that there was not much better to look at than a Marine in his full dress.

He showed me a picture of his son (Henry who works at Beverly's in South Shore) and his wife and himself at the Marine Birthday Ball at that Marines Memorial Club in San Francisco.

I told him one of my dearest friends was the general manager there.

He told me that his youngest son drowned at 10 and the Marines at the base gave him a full honor guard at his funeral and that he was buried not far from where we were.

When he noticed the tattoo on my forearm he told me about his and to never get one on my chest cause it hurts like a son of a gun.

He also told me of his youngest son who is fantastic artist and had tattooed his sister and how it took his daughter a long time to show him her brother's work on her back.

He asked my name and shook my hand. He told me that he volunteers at the Alameda Naval Museum and how it was started by a Wave that died last year at 93 years old. How she had raised a million dollars in war bonds during WWII. And that he and another guy were the only ones on the board of the museum that had served and those that have not just do not understand.

He is an 85 year old veteran and he was a great guy to talk to.

He made me wonder how many more years until there are no more WWII vets around. Korean vets? Vietnam vets are in their 60's now. There will always be veterans I know that. But how long until they are in the minority. When the people running the museum's dedicated to our armed forces have never served their country.

How many members of our government have never served? How can they possibly understand what it means to put your life on the line for your country.

I do believe that military service should be mandatory. That everyone - male and female should serve a four year military tour. Perhaps it is easy for me to say this because I have no children. Perhaps it is easy for me to say this because I come from a family that served and continues to serve.

I think a trip to the Alameda Museum might just be in order soon.