Garyclarkk's Blog

Blog closed due to Memorial Day holiday.

70 degrees. Wind at 0 mph. 93% humidity. It’s a little sticky out this morning.

Looks like 88 as a high for the next 7 days. Nice work-in-the-yard temperature. Get stuff done, get a tan, and do a little sweating. Who could ask for more?

How can you let LeBron James drive – uncontested – to the basket with 2 seconds on the clock for the winning bucket???????

In the immortal words of Charlie Brown after Lucy pulls away the football, ARGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

It’s currently raining in Moore, OK. They are under a severe thunderstorm warning until 09:00 CDT.

Why do I mention that?

Alex went to Moore yesterday to help one of his buddies to clean up the mess the tornado left. The guy’s aunt’s house wasn’t too badly damaged, but the rest of the neighborhood was flattened. They’ll be helping her neighbors also.

I saw the damage to that area. Incredible!

I continue to be amazed by my son’s compassion.

Yep, my son is OK!

53 incredible degrees this morning. Upper 80. 90′s from then on.

We finally got storms from the front that destroyed Moore. Our version only lasted a couple of hours. It did dump a very heavy rain that was blown by 40-50 mph winds. But the winds were straight, no hail, only a little lightning.

Kudos to my son who got the front and back yards mowed just before the storm hit.

I took my Golden to the place I normally get her groomed. They had a new guy. The man looked like a newly recovering meth addict. Didn’t feel real comfortable, but I have successfully dealt with this place for years.

The guy didn’t do a good job. The cut wasn’t even and he left a little mat behind one of her ears.

Went to Amazon to check the price of dog clippers. Sigh. They’re pretty expensive. However they would pay for themselves after a couple of cuts. Pretty sure I know what my Golden is getting for her birthday.

I strongly suspect they kept my spayed Golden with another female that was in heat. Both my spayed female Shepherd and my fully intact male Weim went kind of nuts. I had to put my Weim outside.

Decided to give my Golden a nice long shower to shampoo off any scent she may have. Didn’t work. Brought my Weim back in and the boy started hunching again.

He sure is a . . . . you know, I think I misspelled the the first word of the title.

A very humid 76 only going to 81. Forecast calls for heavy thunderstorms, but that’s not what the radar indicates right now.

Unforntunately, those storms are once again over the ravaged area of Oklahoma.

Because of our proximity to Oklahoma, we were immediately informed of the bad storms near Moore. Alex and I watched live feeds while the tornado was on the ground. The aftermath was unbelievable. My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected.

I Facebook’d about my timing yesterday includinggetting my dog groomed. Well, I dropped her off this morning at 07:15. Then I went to work.

Work at 07:30!
Me!
Work at 07:30!

I’m usually 2 hours into my day already. It was kind of nice to go in late. I was able to get the trash out including a bunch of pizza boxes that the boys had not-so-neatly piled up in my garage. Cleaned up the kitchen. Put a load of clothes on. and a couple of little things.

A very productive morning, but now I’m running late.

I’ve lost a little weight lately. That’s good news and unexpected bad news. The good is obvious, the bad . . .

(OK, requires a little personal information.

I have no hips. Never had. My backside is straight up and down from my head to me heals.

Ok, back to the point.)

I lost a little weight and now my pants are loose in the waist. And since I have no hips, there’s nothing to keep my pants up . . . except a belt.

No problem . . . just wear a belt.

Simple answer . . .

Until . . .

I couldn’t find my one and only belt yesterday morning. I had to keep tugging at my pants to keep them from falling to my ankles. Not a very professional image.

So . . .

I did something even less professional. I went to my computer room so I could have some solitude. Looked around and found a LAN cable that was just the right length.

Yep, wrapped the cable around my waist and tied it in front.

That’s when my brain had a Jethroe Bodine flashback!

74 to 92.

Thunderstorms tonight and tomorrow. 70 to 90 the rest of the week.

Kind of a long weekend. Alex and I went to the Wildflower Festival Friday. We had a great time. And it was all due to one thing. And I’ll get to that in a second.

The opening band was called Black Top Gypsy. A local group with a female lead singer and a female fiddler. Alex hated them. I thought they were . . . marginal. That’s because they really didn’t fit the music theme of the night. And they defintely need a new guy on the soundboad. Couldn’t really hear the singer, or the back up singer, or anyone esle.

And . . .

They had no stage presence.

What made the night so good was the next band: Cowboy Mouth.

I had heard the name before, but I never looked into them. Prejugdicism (sp?) on my part. Cowboy=c&w.

Nope, they played their own rock and roll. The drummer, Fred, was the front man. He was great. The guy worked the crowd better than anyone else I’ve ever seen. Yep, he was incredible. He was having a great time and ‘insisted’ everyone did too.

The highligh of crowd involvelmet was when the roadies picked a 6 year kid out of the crowd and brought him on stage. We finally found out that the kid’s name was, Sam. Immediately afterwards Fred had the crowd chanting, Sam! Sam! Sam!

Fred put the kid in front of a drum and told him to beat away when the song started. The kid was enthusuastic.

And the crowd went wild at Fred’s urging.

Sam did so good, the band kept him onstage for 2 more songs.

The kid was glowing. He’ll be telling his great, great, grandson about the time he was a star!!!

The band played 30 minutes extra to the wild applause of the crowd.

Alex and I agreed – they were great!

We stuck around to watch the Spin Doctors. Once again, I had heard of them, but had never listened to their music. And I found out why. Neither one of us like their music. And the lead guy had very little presence. Very, very little presense.

In fact . . .

After Cowboy Mouth was over, they had a meet and greet behind the stage crowd. So we went and talked to Fred for a while. Meanwhile, a large part of the 1,000 or so people that had watched C.M. slowly walked away. They lost 2/3 of the crowd. A lot of them left so they could talk to . . . Fred.

The best part of this festival is the fact that we walk to and from the place. It’s maybe 1 mile.

I forgot to take my medicine Friday night, so I chugged them Saturday morning. Big mistake!

I missed the bands I wanted to see. Couldn’t get off the couch. Felt terrible.

The doc’s office also called Saturday requesting my presence. I put them off for a couple of days. I’ll make an appointment for today. We’re going to be changing my diabetes treatment.

Felt much better Sunday. Good enough to do 5 loads of clothes. Huge loads! Washed every stitch the both of us own . . . or so it seemed

The Rangers won Saturday night scoring enough runs for the Papa John’s pizza order to be half price on Sunday. 4 large pizzas with lots of extra everything, large order of cheesy bread, delivery charge and a very nice tip for $55. Hopefully we’ll have enough leftover for tonight and tomorrow, so we have have 1/2 price chicken wings from Pizza Hut on Wednesday.

The weather was perfect for the festival. Friday night we had rain all around where I live. The keyword definitely was, around. Lots of wind, nice cool temps. Saturday was much warmer, but once again, it was real windy so that kept the temps bearable.

Sunday was even windier. Low, heavy clouds rushed by all day, all night, and into this morning. Yep, it’s going to storm, but I’m surprised it took 3 days to get here. We might have some big ones. Feels like they been building up for days.

Oh, and by the way. I have a new best friend. Not sure of their name, but they live in Florida and are extremely rich.

73 degrees, no breeze, and 98% humidity.

It’s a Texas Summer morning.

I met my boss for the first time. You can only get so much of an impression over the phone, but I had pretty much nailed this guy. Super nice, intelligent, and understands how to motivate without interfering.

Best boss I’v had in an awfully long time.

We have this thing call the Wild Flower Festival every year. Real nice, and real close. Alex and I walk to it.

You can check it out at www.wildflowerfestival.org

Partly cloudy, 85 today. 90 for the foreseeable future.

The Rangers won last night. My least favorite defensive player saved the game. Nelson Cruz made a great back-handed diving catch late in the game. Texas took 2 out of 3 from second place Oakland extending their lead to 7 games.

The Tigers visit the Rangers starting tonight. Verlander versus Darvish. Outstanding pitching matchup. The Tigers come in leading the AL in all the offensive categories . . . but . . . they just got finished playing the Astros. In fact they’ve played Houston 6 times already this year. So you can probably consider Detroits’ #1 offensive leadership as very, very suspect.

We’ll see tonight.

We had some serious weather heading our way yesterday/last night. Fortunately for us, the worse of it was west of where I live. Not so fortunate to those people who got hit by the tornadoes. Local news reporting 6 people died, 10 people missing and 100 hurt.

My thoughts go out to everyone affected.

We have severe weather. But most of the time, the worst of it splits north and south just before it gets to Dallas. That’s what happened again last night. We had strong winds and lots of heavy rain, but no tornadoes. Several trees are laying on the ground this morning. But that’s the extent of damage in my area.