July 29, 2017

Tangled up in Blue...

Love this version, with the original lyrics....speaks to my soul, and even to today with "Revolution in the air"

July 28, 2017

Hey Taco Bell!!!

Do me a solid....if your local stores aren't selling the double chalupa, then pull the damn ads!!! Ahhhhhh!!!

July 15, 2017

A sad anniversary...four years ago

So this morning I got a notification from Facebook that I had memories to look back on. I love this feature because it is a chance to look back at posts and be reminded of things forgotten and old pics from my kids that I haven't looked at in years. This morning's list was a sad reminder of four years ago, the day after George Zimmerman was freed for the murder of Trayvon Martin.

I'm an early riser and this was my post that morning from 2013, a Bob Dylan Quote:

"And you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now is the time for your tears"

I knew immediately what the post was in reference to, and the sentiment persists to this day.

Sadly, who could have predicted that in four short years that we'd find ourselves where we are as a country today? I think our press and our country at large would do well to hear those words and think long and hard about what lead us here.

Despite all that...Rest easy Trayvon...I hope and pray that our world will eventually be a better place, in no small part to your sacrifice!

June 29, 2017

Is this "tweet storm" a gigantic distraction??

Yes, what Trump tweeted today is appalling and debases the office of the presidency, even more than he already has. However, I can't help but wonder if this isn't some contrived way of sucking the air out of the news cycle to divert attention from something bigger behind the scenes. Perhaps I'm giving President Orange Julius too much credit, but it seems convenient, considering all of the bigger issues currently ongoing (i.e. The wealthcare bill in the senate, Pruit at the EPA approving a pesticide that causes birth defects, the ongoing Syria issue)

June 29, 2017

Since we're all carrying "The Weight"

June 8, 2017

Please tell me others here heard Mark Thompson this morning...

I was laughing so hard I had to pull off the road as he read Comey's statement about interactions with Trump in a sultry voice with Teddy Pendergrass's "Love TKO" playing in the background! Lmao...I was in tears!!

June 5, 2017

Is it past time to stop trusting media sources funded via RT??

I was listening to the Friday replay of the Thom Hartman show this morning and I was somewhat shocked to hear the fill in host rant about the Russian ties to Trump and his people. Essentially, and I admittedly caught the rant after it had started, he was lambasting the number of articles online and in mainstream media that are trying to connect the Trump campaign and the current administration to Russia, suggesting that much of it was fake in order to generate outrage from the left. While I agree that some sources should be taken with a grain of salt, I think there's been pretty clear evidence of collusion. I let that pass, thinking perhaps I missed the start of the rant and therefore missed his point. Yet, minutes later, when discussing potential impeachment of Trump, there was ZERO mention of Russian collusion, in fact it seemed like he went out of his way to avoid mentioning that as a cause for impeachment!

I think we can all agree that several of the RT "liberal" commentators have been more keen to attack Democrats than pursuing the Russian allegations. Should we now begin to question the motivation of those media personalities on the RT payroll?

May 29, 2017

On Memorial Day....(Thoughts from Afghanistan)

Trigger warning...for those with PTSD.



The air reeks of an acrid odor that will never come off your clothes or possessions. A smell so bad that your wife will swear you shipped home a dead animal in your footlocker. A smell that you'll come to loathe and yet, at times, you'll open that footlocker and dig through the gear and take a big smell of the contents, just to remind yourself. That overwhelming acridity would follow every action and move you made in country. You can't forget the first time you smelled it as you landed in that C-17 from Kyrgyzstan, the flight where you noted the beautiful Himalayan mountains in the winter. It would follow you from the rear base, appropriately named Camp Leatherneck, until you reached your destination, God knows how many clicks away at the furthest reaches of NATO lines. Your home for seven months would be a small prison, except with the sentry guns pointed outward. You'd be warned of snipers looking to take shots at you as you attempted to exercise in your down time by running around the flightline. Yet, the smell of the country would persist. Despite the raw beauty of the sunsets, the brutal sandstorms that battered your every movement without warning, or even the ever welcomed shower, nothing would rinse that smell away.

I can still see, in my minds eye, our first multiple amputee. I had been awoken by the duty corpsman who got word over comms that we were getting a triple amputee. It was an ungodly hour and I was immediately pulled from sleep to wake with such a fury that the distance from my tent to the STP/FRSS tents was little more than a blur, that's Shock Trauma Platoon/Forward Resuscitative Surgical Services...think M*A*S*H but more austere. Our corpsmen struggled to bring him into the triage area, not because of the weight, but because of the unnatural act of carrying a grown man on a cot that has lost both legs and half an arm. The young marine looked up like a pale ghost with the look of recognition on his face that he was in the hands of friendly medical personnel, and he collapsed. We opened his abdomen to control the blood vessels running down to his bloody stumps of thighs before he had even been put under anesthesia...he wouldn't remember and the catecholamine rush would help his heart restart. After getting in and clamping the pelvis vessels, we got a pulse back. Blood flowing...fluids running...we left the clamps in place and placed a temporary covering on the abdomen. We weren't there to do definitive surgery...our job was to stabilize and send them on to a real hospital...one where sweat wasn't dropping into the wound, or the talcum fine sand that covered everything. After placing the covering over the abdomen, we did our best to clean up the thigh wounds that extended up to the groin and the arm wound that sheered all portions of what could be considered normal anatomy from his right hand except for the skin, leaving behind a ghostly glove of a forearm and hand, the fingers nothing more that a skin silhouette with fleshy bone fragments attached.

That marine would go on to have five times his blood volume transfused, he'd survive the visible injuries, but would ultimately die from the brain injury he endured from the initial blast, but not before his family had the chance to be by his side one more time and say their goodbyes.

We would care for and operate on many more casualties during our time in Afghanistan. Locals, Marines, NATO forces....if I close my eyes, I can see their faces, relive their cases....in my darkest moments, I can still smell the blood on my hands, mixed with that damn acrid desert air...even now, six years out.

We would be given accolades for our trauma care, we'd write articles about how to manage multiple amputees, we would share our experiences far and wide and yet...the details, the horror, the trauma, would only be shared amongst those of us who were there, who knew what we saw, who laughed and cried and fought over what we did...even as we transitioned home, some of our fellow medical personnel had no idea what we had experienced. Sure, they empathized, they listened, but they didn't know....

Even now, six years out...I wake up at night reliving that time...I dream of those we cared for...I still see their faces...I can smell their blood on my hands...and that desert aroma still shrouds my every move.

April 29, 2017

Did Roger Goodell wipe his snot on a handicap child's back at the draft?

You be the judge:

April 23, 2017

When you're a Whovian and your wife isn't...

But your puppy, named Rose, resonds better to "Allons-y" than "Come"...it totally cracks me up!