I'm not always quick to embrace the latest technology. Only about six months ago did I break down and get a cellphone. I do not own an MP3 player although I bought one for my wife. I'm still on dial up. (though that one is not by choice) I really don't like computers, even though I love what they can do. I still struggle with all those terms and their meanings. Bytes, megahertz, rams, roms, sis boom bahs. I don't really care how or why it works as long as it does. Yeah I know I'm supposed to know some of this crap for work and despite my resistance a have learned a few things, but my technological know how really isn't the focus of this post.
So what is? I'm not sure, but follow along cause this could be a long explanation.
I started this blog and created a MySpace page (stop in and join my merry band of friends if you wish) primarily to get my name out there, market myself as well as my writing. I love and have quickly became addicted to the blogosphere -- Myspace I find rather tedious and for the most part way more trouble that it is worth.
But Myspace does have its usefulness. Just this last week I logged on and lo and behold I had a new message -- From my best friend through much of my school years.
Jason moved to my neighborhood when we were in the fourth of fifth grade, I think. Maybe it was third grade. Funny how I can remember somethings with great detail and others not at all.
Anyway up until them it had been me and my friend since kindergarten Mark, who terrorized the street. Then in a short time Jason and a kid named Brian Koontz moved in.
I have always been prone to giving my friends nicknames. I trait I still have. Fiddler are your reading this? Anyway Brian Koonts became Cootie, and Jason, who was going by his step-dads surname of Grubb at the time became Grubworm. Yeah I know Cootie and grubworm aren't the most endearing of monikers but young boys aren't known for being all that endearing.
Cootie moved away shortly thereafter and we never saw him again, mark moved across town which resulted in us growing apart although I will always consider him a friend as well. Last time I saw him was at my tenth high school reunion back in 2001.
So that left me and Grub (the worm got dropped after a while) for a lot of years. I'm sure his name will come up in stories on this blog, quite possibly in future installments of Terrible Tuesdays with Travis. When we hit high school our directions veered a bit, but our worlds expanded with the ability to drive so we didn't see as much of each other but there are lots of things that will always tie me and Jason together, including my writing.
Remember that movie Red Dawn, with Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen about a Russian invasion of a small town in Colorado? There is a good chance you don't, but back in the day me and my friends loved that movie along with another one called Cloak and Dagger about a young boy with a military hero as an imaginary friend. We often acted out Cloak and Dagger, but Red Dawn we actually rewrote and that is the first time I actually remember putting pen to paper and creating a story. Even though we stole the plot directly from the movie we changed the setting to Amarillo and the characters to ourselves. Okay, so we were dorks, but we had a hell of a lot of fun doing it.
Anyway after high school Jason joined the Air Force went off to exotic locales like Hawaii and Korea and I enlisted in another government agency the US Postal Service and got to visit other exotic locales like Norman, Oklahoma and Childress, Texas. (More on this town in a future post)
Jason came back once about a year or so after graduation but that is the last time I had seen or heard from him until he found me via myspace this week. He lives in Kansas City with his wife and two kids and is some type of computer guru. Nowadays he goes by his actual name of Jason Adams and if you pop over to his blog today you'll find out he is a traitor to my commune which I shall call Carnivore Cottage. You'll also find out he's not as skinny as he used to be and that his wife just might be smarter than both of us.
In the last week or so me and Jason have exchanged a message or two via myspace, a phone conversation, and he has left a comment or two here on this blog. He has made me remember things I had long since forgotten. I'm sure we are both very different people then we were as childhood friends, but it was very good to reconnect with him and I plan to make every effort to stay in touch. Maybe we'll never crawl around in another huge sewer pipe together, or maybe we will now that we are both legal drinking age, but life is too shy of good friends to let any of them slip away forever.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Heavy Meddlin' Highway
Why do so many people like to meddle?
I'm not talking about your wife or husband. You granted them the right to meddle once you uttered I do.
I'm not talking about your friends either. Sometimes their meddling is the only thing that saves us from catastrophe. Without them there would be even more conversations that started with one of these phrases. I told you she wasn't eighteen. What ever made you think you could make that jump anyway? And for the ladies. How was I supposed to know he was married and had three kids? Who knew regurgitated Cosmopolitans and Apple Martini's would stain the carpet? Trust me we need our friends around for those times we aren't thinking too clearly.
I'm not even talking about your mother. She earned that right by hours of childbirth or by that C-section scar. You owe her the right to voice her opinion. Sure most of us ignore what she says, but let her talk just the same.
I'm talking about the meddling of society at large, especially by those with fancy degrees hanging on a wall. Doctors, lawyers, chiropractors.
It has been well documented on this blog that my doctor has been meddling. He dared suggest I needed to eat more vegetables, shy away from fired foods and donuts. He even had the meddlin' nerve to hint I might need to lose a few pounds.
I won't even get started on those lawyers and their fancy laws, but I don't see any harm if a fellow wanted to place a little wager on his favorite football team. Even if he didn't happen to be in Las Vegas.
Generally speaking my chiropractor is a nice guy. He likes to hunt, fish, and discuss football while he yanks around on my skeletal frame, but today he climbed up the ladder and dove headfirst into the deep end of the meddlin' pool. He blames my recent bout of bad back-itis on the fact I like to sleep on my stomach. So now I got medical professionals telling me what to eat, what not to eat, how much to exercise and now I have one telling me how to sleep.
When I get rich and famous I'm gonna buy up an entire mountain in the middle of nowhere, grow me a ZZ Top style beard and live off the land. I'll only head down to town to head off on a book signing tour and to cash all those royalty checks because we all know that published authors get to do whatever they want.
And for anybody who believes that, I also had a big bowl of lettuce for supper. (In case your new to the blog I happen to think lettuce and 99% of all other vegetables are the devil.) But go ahead eat that stuff all you wants. That just means more meat for me. I know Alex will probably sign up to join my mountainside writers commune. (hope he's better with a rifle than a fishing pole) How about the rest of you, any takers?
Nope I didn't think so. Guess this means I'll have to head to work tomorrow. Damn the luck.
Of course I don't blame you. After all, I'm a long way from being rich and famous. But we all gotta have dreams. Now if people will just stop meddling with mine.
I'm not talking about your wife or husband. You granted them the right to meddle once you uttered I do.
I'm not talking about your friends either. Sometimes their meddling is the only thing that saves us from catastrophe. Without them there would be even more conversations that started with one of these phrases. I told you she wasn't eighteen. What ever made you think you could make that jump anyway? And for the ladies. How was I supposed to know he was married and had three kids? Who knew regurgitated Cosmopolitans and Apple Martini's would stain the carpet? Trust me we need our friends around for those times we aren't thinking too clearly.
I'm not even talking about your mother. She earned that right by hours of childbirth or by that C-section scar. You owe her the right to voice her opinion. Sure most of us ignore what she says, but let her talk just the same.
I'm talking about the meddling of society at large, especially by those with fancy degrees hanging on a wall. Doctors, lawyers, chiropractors.
It has been well documented on this blog that my doctor has been meddling. He dared suggest I needed to eat more vegetables, shy away from fired foods and donuts. He even had the meddlin' nerve to hint I might need to lose a few pounds.
I won't even get started on those lawyers and their fancy laws, but I don't see any harm if a fellow wanted to place a little wager on his favorite football team. Even if he didn't happen to be in Las Vegas.
Generally speaking my chiropractor is a nice guy. He likes to hunt, fish, and discuss football while he yanks around on my skeletal frame, but today he climbed up the ladder and dove headfirst into the deep end of the meddlin' pool. He blames my recent bout of bad back-itis on the fact I like to sleep on my stomach. So now I got medical professionals telling me what to eat, what not to eat, how much to exercise and now I have one telling me how to sleep.
When I get rich and famous I'm gonna buy up an entire mountain in the middle of nowhere, grow me a ZZ Top style beard and live off the land. I'll only head down to town to head off on a book signing tour and to cash all those royalty checks because we all know that published authors get to do whatever they want.
And for anybody who believes that, I also had a big bowl of lettuce for supper. (In case your new to the blog I happen to think lettuce and 99% of all other vegetables are the devil.) But go ahead eat that stuff all you wants. That just means more meat for me. I know Alex will probably sign up to join my mountainside writers commune. (hope he's better with a rifle than a fishing pole) How about the rest of you, any takers?
Nope I didn't think so. Guess this means I'll have to head to work tomorrow. Damn the luck.
Of course I don't blame you. After all, I'm a long way from being rich and famous. But we all gotta have dreams. Now if people will just stop meddling with mine.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Terrible Tuesdays With Travis -- OH Deer!
Welcome to Terrible Tuesdays with Travis. This is actually the second edition, but the first with the brand new name.
So what is Terrible Tuesdays all about? Well it is the new regular weekly feature for this blog. One third a direct rip off of the TV show, My Name is Earl, one third - classic examples of my stupidity through the years, and one third confessional. So with apologies to Jason Lee, all my friends, teachers, ans mentors who tried to educate me, and the Catholic Church (since this is likely as close to a confessional booth as I'll ever get) here we go.
My original plan was to share a recent example of my stupidity since last week was a childhood story, but in honor of all the kids heading back to school and my oldest son who started first grade yesterday let me tell you about the first time I ever got swats at school.
Like my son I was in first grade. Mrs. Williams' class at Oakdale Elementary to be exact. This story takes place in late fall or early winter of 1979.
I come from a family of hunters. Dove, quail, deer, turkeys, elk, pheasants ... you name it my dad hunted and we ate it for supper, so when good ol' Mrs. Williams read Bambi out loud for the class I had a bit different angle on the story than the average kid.
Now even at a tender age of six I fancied myself as a storyteller, so after the teacher finished reading I began to tell my own version to a few of the girls in my class. Now my dad also did all of his own butchering, as do I now. I learned by watching him so even as a first grader I knew lots of gory details to add to my story. The girls shrieked and said things like gross, and ewww, and get away from you are are sick and demented.
Now me and my best friend Mark got quite a kick out of tormenting them and we were the type of kids to seize upon an opportunity. They say a picture is worth a thousand words so the next day I snuck a few photographs from home up to school. I proudly told the girls that here was what happened to Bambi's mom, and his dad too, and boy did they taste good.
Neither Mrs. Williams nor the school principal appreciated my wit or storytelling. The best i can recall both me and Mark got a couple of swats for our trouble and we had to apologize to the girls for traumatizing them. Unfortunately, that wasn't the last time a few tears from a girl landed me in trouble, but it was the last time I attempted to rewrite Disney classic.
Here is a picture of me hand feeding a Mule deer doe in my front yard in an effort to appease all of deerkind. I'm turning over a new leaf in dedicating myself to helping provide nourishment for the critters of the world. What's that you say? No, it is not the same thing as fattening them up.
So what is Terrible Tuesdays all about? Well it is the new regular weekly feature for this blog. One third a direct rip off of the TV show, My Name is Earl, one third - classic examples of my stupidity through the years, and one third confessional. So with apologies to Jason Lee, all my friends, teachers, ans mentors who tried to educate me, and the Catholic Church (since this is likely as close to a confessional booth as I'll ever get) here we go.
My original plan was to share a recent example of my stupidity since last week was a childhood story, but in honor of all the kids heading back to school and my oldest son who started first grade yesterday let me tell you about the first time I ever got swats at school.
Like my son I was in first grade. Mrs. Williams' class at Oakdale Elementary to be exact. This story takes place in late fall or early winter of 1979.
I come from a family of hunters. Dove, quail, deer, turkeys, elk, pheasants ... you name it my dad hunted and we ate it for supper, so when good ol' Mrs. Williams read Bambi out loud for the class I had a bit different angle on the story than the average kid.
Now even at a tender age of six I fancied myself as a storyteller, so after the teacher finished reading I began to tell my own version to a few of the girls in my class. Now my dad also did all of his own butchering, as do I now. I learned by watching him so even as a first grader I knew lots of gory details to add to my story. The girls shrieked and said things like gross, and ewww, and get away from you are are sick and demented.
Now me and my best friend Mark got quite a kick out of tormenting them and we were the type of kids to seize upon an opportunity. They say a picture is worth a thousand words so the next day I snuck a few photographs from home up to school. I proudly told the girls that here was what happened to Bambi's mom, and his dad too, and boy did they taste good.
Neither Mrs. Williams nor the school principal appreciated my wit or storytelling. The best i can recall both me and Mark got a couple of swats for our trouble and we had to apologize to the girls for traumatizing them. Unfortunately, that wasn't the last time a few tears from a girl landed me in trouble, but it was the last time I attempted to rewrite Disney classic.
Here is a picture of me hand feeding a Mule deer doe in my front yard in an effort to appease all of deerkind. I'm turning over a new leaf in dedicating myself to helping provide nourishment for the critters of the world. What's that you say? No, it is not the same thing as fattening them up.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Catching up
I made to Albuquerque and back all in one piece. Despite rumors of my supposed shoddy driving in the comments section of an earlier post. Just for the record I'm an excellent driver if I do say so myself.
As a follow up to the last post guess what we saw at the Zoo. For those you who guess giant Tortoises having sex you are right. But that doesn't mean you're not weird. I mean come on who could have guessed that? But there they were going at, and this was like the second or third exhibit we saw. I wanted to take a picture just to share with my blog readers but my wife wouldn't let me, so blame her for your loss. I guess love was in the air this weekend.
Also I had forty some-odd new visitors who stumbled across my blog after an internet search for Amy Winehouse. I hope the cheerleader story at least made them smile before they went on in search of something else. Usually people who find this blog via a google search typed in something weird like ... penis disease in bulldogs. Read here to find out why that phrase links to me.
So who won the name the, Name the New Tuesday Feature? Cher and MR. Shife will share the prize as I'm going to call it ... Terrible Tuesdays with Travis, so if both of y'all will drop me a line at travis @ traviserwin.com I'll send you both a CD.
I'm way behind on my writing, auto repairs, blog reading, critiquing and just about every other thing in my life so this pathetic post will have to suffice for today.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Taking one for the team
Hilton -- $189 a night
EconoLodege -- $54 a night
Hilton -- $10 a day internet
EconoLodge -- Free internet
So what does the Hilton have that EconoLodge doesn't? Several things, but for this post I'll focus on one. MUCH THICKER WALLS.
Last night me, my wife, our two boys 4 and 6, and a 13 year old girl who is some friends of ours daughter stayed in room 220. An ex-cheerleader with singing ambitions occupied room 219.
You know that song Rehab by Amy Winehouse the one where she sings No, No, No over and over? Well the gal in room 219 had the lyrics all wrong. She sang Yes, Yes, Yes for half the night and let me be the first to say Simon Cowell would never let her go to Hollywood because she struggled to hold a key and sometimes she sang louder other times it almost sounded like a moan.
And then she would fall back into her cheerleader routine. Urge the crowd to give her a ... I never caught that last word but it sounded something like rock.
And then finally after a good bit of singing and crowd motivation, she turned her attention to urging the team on, and BOY you should have heard her when the team scored. Guess it was some kind of cheerleading flashback. I mean what else could it have been?
EconoLodege -- $54 a night
Hilton -- $10 a day internet
EconoLodge -- Free internet
So what does the Hilton have that EconoLodge doesn't? Several things, but for this post I'll focus on one. MUCH THICKER WALLS.
Last night me, my wife, our two boys 4 and 6, and a 13 year old girl who is some friends of ours daughter stayed in room 220. An ex-cheerleader with singing ambitions occupied room 219.
You know that song Rehab by Amy Winehouse the one where she sings No, No, No over and over? Well the gal in room 219 had the lyrics all wrong. She sang Yes, Yes, Yes for half the night and let me be the first to say Simon Cowell would never let her go to Hollywood because she struggled to hold a key and sometimes she sang louder other times it almost sounded like a moan.
And then she would fall back into her cheerleader routine. Urge the crowd to give her a ... I never caught that last word but it sounded something like rock.
And then finally after a good bit of singing and crowd motivation, she turned her attention to urging the team on, and BOY you should have heard her when the team scored. Guess it was some kind of cheerleading flashback. I mean what else could it have been?
Friday, August 24, 2007
On the Road
Live! From Albuquerque it's Friday night!
Okay a few months back at stayed at the $189 a night Hilton of Americas and Omaha Super 8's (that is code for Paris Hilton for those new to the blog - click the link to read more) kinfolk charged me ten bucks a day for wireless internet, and now here I am at the fifty buck a night EconoLodge in Albuquerque's Old Town and I'm bringing this post courtesy of their FREE wireless internet.
Random observations from my whirlwind mini vacation.
Honey covered sopapillas and big hairy goatees DO NOT go well together!
What the heck is a safety corridor? there we were clipping along in the middle of no where and there is a sign that says Entering Safety Corridor- All traffic fines double. Is this just a ploy to rake in cash from us speeders of the world?
My wife is convinced that at any second I am going to kill us in a fiery crash. She constantly grabs what we call the Oh shit! handle and gasps when I merge, change lanes, turn a corner. Did I mention this drives me NUTS?
What we did today. Shopping in old town. (My wife has a turquoise and silver jewelry fetish)
Ate some very good Mexican food outside in a courtyard of a three hundred year old adobe structure. Heard a bit of a mariachi band concert. Ate some Pinon nut caramel apples. Swam. Did I mention the jewelry shopping?
Tomorrow, the zoo, aquarium, botanical gardens, and if I know my wife more jewelry shopping.
Pictures later.
Okay a few months back at stayed at the $189 a night Hilton of Americas and Omaha Super 8's (that is code for Paris Hilton for those new to the blog - click the link to read more) kinfolk charged me ten bucks a day for wireless internet, and now here I am at the fifty buck a night EconoLodge in Albuquerque's Old Town and I'm bringing this post courtesy of their FREE wireless internet.
Random observations from my whirlwind mini vacation.
Honey covered sopapillas and big hairy goatees DO NOT go well together!
What the heck is a safety corridor? there we were clipping along in the middle of no where and there is a sign that says Entering Safety Corridor- All traffic fines double. Is this just a ploy to rake in cash from us speeders of the world?
My wife is convinced that at any second I am going to kill us in a fiery crash. She constantly grabs what we call the Oh shit! handle and gasps when I merge, change lanes, turn a corner. Did I mention this drives me NUTS?
What we did today. Shopping in old town. (My wife has a turquoise and silver jewelry fetish)
Ate some very good Mexican food outside in a courtyard of a three hundred year old adobe structure. Heard a bit of a mariachi band concert. Ate some Pinon nut caramel apples. Swam. Did I mention the jewelry shopping?
Tomorrow, the zoo, aquarium, botanical gardens, and if I know my wife more jewelry shopping.
Pictures later.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Go away, I'm busy
Just when I go to bragging that the hardest part of my workday is getting out of bed, I have a hard day at work and get forced in to work today -- the first of my two days off. Karma strikes again, I guess. The oldest, most decrepit machine at the Ol' Post Office decided to kick up its legs and fall over dead, so I have been getting all greasy and dirty trying to get it back up and running.
HEY, DOES ANYBODY KNOW WHERE THIS WIRE GOES?
What else is new? Not much. Plundered Booty the novel is up to nearly sixteen thousand words. I have not added a single word to my other novel in progress in over a month, so maybe that means I'm officially only writing one novel now. Hope you're happy Debbie.
The name the new Tuesday blog is going well. Gotta say Tuesdays with Travis, the suggestion brought by Mr. Shife is the leader right now, but Cher has her eye on the prize and she has come up with some good ones as well.
Friday and Saturday(I talked my boss into an extra day off for making me work today) me and the family are taking a quick trip over to Albuquerque so I can fulfill my promise to take them to the zoo and aquarium.
I'll leave you with this thought presented to me by a coworker. Used to be, all hurricanes given feminine names. Now days we get Dean and others with masculine names. Does this make them himacanes instead of hurricanes?
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