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URSULINE CONVENT

New Orleans

Vampires in the Attic?

Stress Relief

1. Picture yourself lying on your belly on a warm rock that hangs out over a crystal clear stream.
2. Picture yourself with both your hands dangling in the cool running water.
3. Birds are sweetly singing in the cool mountain air.
4. No one knows your secret place.
5. You are in total seclusion from that hectic place called the world.
6. The soothing sound of a gentle water fall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.
7. The water is so crystal clear that you can easily make out the face of Nancy Pelosi, the person you are holding underwater.
There!! See? It really does work

The Great Tomato Growing Contest of 2010

It's that time of the year again! Time for the great tomato growing challenge. For a lot of years my brother-in-law and I have competed growing tomatoes. It is sort of a loosely ruled competition for who gets the FIRST RIPE TOMATO from our plants. Not the first on the plant, but the first RIPE one. We used to have a twenty dollar bet but have sort of let that slide. Actually what happen was I lost last year due to my limited space (patio), limited sun (only morning) and I refused to pay him when he won since he had an outdoor REAL garden. It seems to me that I should have some sort of allowance for the handicaps that patio growing has in comparison to outdoor country growing like he has. This competition allows us to show what pros we are by doing things like rushing to Lowe's and getting a plant already sporting a tomato. There is a lot the novice grower can learn from us pros. This years competition is open to any of our children who would like to accept the challenge from both of us professional tomato growers. It think that it is time to pass down the skills of planting, soil preparation, fertilizing, prune or not pruning, and how to attach a store bought tomato to the vine with tape, toothpick, plastic string etc long enough to get a photo to show the other competitors. To enter this competition one must be able to lie, cheat, fake it, bluff, and do all of the fore mentioned with a straight face. But I figure none of those sissies or their pansy husbands or boyfriends will be up to the challenge. They will all have some flimsy excuse like work, a baby, or something cause they are all city slickers who just ain't up to the challenge. After all it takes a real farmer to handle this. So it is on, Rich. Let the lying, cheating, bullshit talking (and a little growing) begin!!!!

Saturday Night in the Complex

AH!! The joys of apartment living. It is four-thirty am and the cops have been called and now everybody is wide awake and a bit pissy about being up this early. Earlier in the evening there was the usual comings and goings, extra traffic, loud talk and slammed doors that reflect Saturday night in the complex. We have 12 families in this building and there are 27 building so there are a lot of people close together. As expected there is a difference in living in a complex and a private dwelling. One difference is the number of times the cops get called. One night there was the third floor group who insisted on playing their boom-boom music at top volume. That would not have been too bad but they opened the patio door so ALL the rest of us could savor the sound too. Somebody call the cops. He told them to shut it down and waited in his car to see if she did. Nope! Back up the stairs he went and that time he had a real attitude. Quiet!!! Then there was the teen who sat in his truck which features straight pipes and listen to HIS boom-boom music. Again not a problem except his truck sounded like a skidder pulling a log out of the woods. He would start it and stop it; all at four am. Again someone called the cops. Then tonight we had the saga of the prom queen. She had on a prom dress and the boy a tux. They walked around and around the area while she cried and made a high pitched whiny sound that only dolphin 20 miles out in the Gulf could hear and evidently all the dogs in the complex heard her too cause they all barked. She told the boy she wanted to leave and would hit his keys and his truck horn would beep; he said no and hit it again which brought a second beep. So it was sort of EEEEEEK! BOO! HOO! BEEP! BEEP! for about two hours outside the bedroom window, until the cops came to this one too. It was a big female cop and she was not happy! Again quiet! The strangest thing of all is that I DIDN'T call the cops. Someone else did it. I have spent a lot of years in apartments and have about seen it all. Thirty years ago when I lived at Brittany Apartments every Saturday night was party time. Cops knew the residents by name. Brittany was an upscale apartment then but come Saturday night and we had fist fights, screaming break-ups (straight and gay), skinny dipping in the pool, squealing tires, broken beer bottles and loud, loud Led Zeppelin. If the cops came there was a reason. All in all I think the new apartment dwellers have lost the ability to really party down. Back then we lived up to the phase, "It ain't a party till the cops break it up!"

Zu the Vampire - Excerpt (No. 2) From Storms

Zu Poydou walked to the mirror over the fireplace and stared at his reflection. He saw a thin dirty face, with high strong cheekbones and full curved lips. His eyes were green and intense with dark bruised looking shadows beneath them. Zu’s hair was dark and long and hung in thick tangles past his shoulders. Monster. That was what his grandfather had called him. Monster. What kind of monster? He stared at himself trying to see the monster that must be there. He reached up and pushed his hair back and then looked at his hands. They were thin with big knuckles and long fingers. His nails were dirty. He should bath, but he didn’t seem to have the energy. And no one cared if he was clean or not. He wondered if Norton would return. He hoped so. He waited for him. He wanted to kill the man when he did return. He felt the tingle in his mouth at the thought of the murder that he longed for and he pulled back his lip and touched the tip of the extended canine tooth with his finger. It was not there all of the time and he wondered why. A monster? He turned from the mirror and walked to the door, stepping over the thick vines that had pushed their way under the door and were now reaching for the interior of the dark house. He stood on the veranda and looked across the swamp. He could leave, but he had never been anywhere but here, he did not know anyone in the world and he had no idea of what to expect if he tried to leave. Was he a monster? Would others see that he was and lock him away again? He did not think he could stand to be beaten again or tormented for reasons he didn’t understand and so he stayed. He turned and walked back inside to the piano that stood dust covered in the center of the room. He sat down and watched a large field rat move inside the opened grand piano; on the wires that connected the keys. He sat very still for a long time, watching the glittering eyes of the rodent as it became bolder and moved nearer to him. He could see the tips of its small yellowed teeth just below the furry jaw and the small whiskers as they twitched near the black nose. The rat watched him and he watched it. Then with a movement so quick that it didn’t allow the rat time to react Zu snatched the rodent up. He sank his fangs into the rat and sucked the blood, swallowing it in big greedy gulps until the creature was sunken and dry. He dropped the body of the rat on the floor, wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his shirt, closed his haunted eyes and began to play Rachmaninoff’s Concerto No. 1.

Woolmarket

Woolmarket was the first school that I ever taught. I had a first grade class in 1969. My first principal was Mr. B Hill. Those students would be in their early forties today.

Why I Voted Democrat

I voted Democrat because I love the fact that I can now marry whatever I want. I've decided to marry my horse.
I voted Democrat because I believe oil companies' profits of 4% on a gallon of gas are obscene but the government taxing the same gallon of gas at 15% isn't.
I voted Democrat because I believe the government will do a better job of spending the money I earn than I would.
I voted Democrat because freedom of speech is fine as long as nobody is offended by it.
I voted Democrat because when we pull out of Iraq I trust that the bad guys will stop what they're doing because they now think we're good people.
I voted Democrat because I'm way too irresponsible to own a gun, and I know that my local police are all I need to protect me from murderers and thieves.
I voted Democrat because I believe that people who can't tell us if it will rain on Friday can tell us that the polar ice caps will melt away in ten years if I don't start driving a Prius.
I voted Democrat because I'm not concerned about the Slaughter of millions of babies so long as we keep all death row inmates alive.
I voted Democrat because I believe that business should not be allowed to make profits for themselves. They need to break even and give the rest away to the government for redistribution as THEY see fit.
I voted Democrat because I believe liberal judges need to rewrite the Constitution every few days to suit some fringe kooks who would never get their agendas past the voters.
I voted Democrat because my head is so firmly planted up my ass that it is unlikely that I'll ever have another clear point of view.