Quieting the mind on a Sunday morning out at the falls.

It's funny how quickly depression can turn into anger.

I developed an app a while back called 4xmaps that nobody uses but me. It's great for plotting a destination and then getting four different views from the major mapping platforms.

Today's destination is a marina off Hwy 72 in Alabama where little Shoal Creek in my backyard becomes big and dumps into the Tennessee River.

Here's another app I wrote that nobody uses called OMJRoute that plots the 32 mile trip from my front door to the marina.

...and yes, that little blue line on the left is Shoal Creek.

Tennessee River, Florence Alabama, Black Friday.

I was hanging out with my neighbor this afternoon at his place looking at pictures of his relatives when suddenly my phone woke up and my watch started beeping so I opened my phone screen and a bearded face with a funky hat appeared. It was Santa, otherwise known as my great friend Dave from Kent, WA that I haven't talked to in years, and his wife Sue!

They got my number from Riley, called with Duo, looked terrific and we chatted for twenty minutes. Totally made me want to be there firing up a blunt with my old friends. Oh well, it's Tennessee for the moment...

I texted him and asked for a picture to put here, and this is what I got:

Left to right: Son Jereme and wife, Sue, Dave, grandkids Dakota and Riley.

Left to right: Daughter Sabrina, Dave, Nick, grandkids below: Gianna and Lola.

Riley and I watched Jereme and Sabrina grow up and it's very cool that Jereme named one of his kids after my boy. :-)

As Thanksgiving approaches, all of the regrets and mistakes I've made over the last 74 years are swirling around my brain like dust devils in the desert. I'm very grateful that nobody died or was seriously hurt by my presence here on earth and that I never ended up in prison. It's the big things in life that matter most, and the rest you just deal with...

...

I'm so excited, Thanksgiving is just a few days away and I'm ready. I'll be keeping the head count here below the state mandated eight people (1) and just family members only (me and Piper).

While walking the creek lately I've noticed this object stuck in a ripple. It's been there for three days now, unable to escape as forces from both sides keep it trapped. I thought about making this a comparison to my existence, but couldn't make the stretch...

I'm not stuck, I make a daily conscious decision to be here, until I don't.

Ten million Americans who were employed in February remain without a job and 60% of businesses closed because of Covid will never reopen. Now, China is issuing debt at negative interest rates, taking cash out of western economies as they try to recover, and theirs is the only major economy in the world expected to grow in 2020. Well played, and with Joe in their pocket, checkmate...

Here's a couple shots from the past, Riley at a Seattle car show and me hanging with the Sunlight Foundation folks in Phoenix after placing second in their nationwide programming contest.

I rode up to the huge Manheim auto auction lot today to bring some vehicles down to Lawrenceburg.

My Galaxy Watch 3 45mm counts every step, monitors my heart and tells me I sleep too much.

...and then I go to take a shower and there aint no water.

The battle against darkness and tremors rages on. Nameless people pass through my life. I walk in circles by my creek, clean and sober, just to stay alive. No one really knows me, or cares to. It's time to say good night.

I drove to David Crockett State Park this morning to find a hiking trail and hooked up with a stranger for a hike. We got half way up a hill and just sat down and talked, turned out she rode on the tubing bus with me twice last summer. She took my picture, I took hers, and never got her name.

Back home, neighbor Daniel brought over a couple of cool old things he just found, a 1945 pressure gauge and a 1900 house electrical meter. Good day!

Albert Erway (1/11/1811) was the father of Mark Erway who was the father of Maude Erway who was the mother of Janice King who was my mom. He was my great great grandfather and lived to be my age now. Mark lived to the age of 98.

Backstory: Albert was a rancher and businessman famous for getting down to his last dime a few times and always bouncing back (sounds familar) and Mark was the head stagecoach driver for the Sparks to Virginia City run (sounds familiar).

Printed photographs are becoming rare. I've been a serious photographer for fifty years, investing a small fortune in equipment (Nikon guy), taken tens of thousands of photos, and now I'm down to just a few.

The secret to keeping your photos and equipment intact is to never leave your house, but then all you would have is pictures of your house! I had all of my equipment stolen one day back in Oakland, CA by friends of my daughter Becky who were partying there when I was at work. Never did recover it. I had my entire photo collection, with the exception of a few prints, burned up in a fireplace by Riley's jealous mom, when I was at work.

Now I live alone, in a digital age, and I suppose that is for the best...

...

I've collected a lot of great photos of my boy Riley as we adventured through his young life, along with some cool craft stuff. I realized that I needed to get this stuff into his hands, it's his legacy, so I created a book.

Shipping it off to the kids shortly and btw there's a back story. I tormented Riley for years with the shots of him in the tub with the girl, and I did it one last time here :-) Now you can destroy them son!

In the event that there were doubters about the fact that the teddy bear in my corner has been with me since birth, here's a shot taken with my wayback lens. Only made it back to about one year old, but come on, trust me.

That's my grandmother and brother, btw...

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The towhead kid on the left is my grandfather in Joplin, MO. So for all my grandchildren out there, those are your great-great-great grandparents.

Richard Tilton King (1874-1943), James Lloyd King (1897-1968), Walter (top), Unknown (bottom), Thelie May Smith (1879-1899). She only lived for 20 years?, and they were both from Illinois. I need to research that date...

...
Long gone relatives on my mother's side, from left to right:
• My grandfather, James King.
• My grandmother's sister (Idelle or Irene).
• My grandmother, Maude Erway.
• My grandmother's sister (Idelle or Irene).
• My younger sister Lorelle, still alive.
• My mom.
• My older brother Dana, still alive I think.
• Me, barely alive.

My friend Carol called me last night from a nursing home in Rexburg Idaho. She was struck down as a young girl with a disease that landed her in a wheelchair for the rest of her life, and I used to drove her around in my bus. I normally don't answer calls from out of state but this one came from Idaho and I recognized her voice instantly.

We had a nice chat and she finally asked me why I moved to Tennessee and I didn't have an answer. Am I glad I ended up here? No. Another holiday season is approaching and I only have two friends, Steph and my next door neighbor Daniel. Steph's grand-daughters that I grew to love are no longer in my life, I'm not involved in anything here other than staying alive, and my body is bailing on me.

But hey, I ain't bitching, how could I having known Carol, I'm just commenting on my life because this is my blog and I can. At least here in the South there are new places to explore and I'm doing that tomorrow...

...

Piper, in my lap.

Dear Steph,

I read something recently that listed a couple of side effects from Parkinsons as hallucinations and delusions. Ha! That's a long way off.

Thanks for watching Piper this weekend and I really want you to enjoy the space, unlike the last full day off you had and you didn't show up until late and then I don't think you spent the night.

Be down here Friday morning at 0800, I'll buy you breakfast at that place in the square and then leave you to binge watch the Queen's Gambit on Netflix, enjoy my internet connection and boss the house around with your voice.

You can then work Saturday out as you wish and I'll be back home on Sunday. Is it a date?

Wait, this is email, right?

I'm a technical guy and considering my fifty years as a computer programmer, I damn well should be. I've been involved in what seems like everything and now I write great Javascript, I massage CSS and I push PHP. I'm also into my second blog over the last ten years.

For the last few years I've been doing without cell phones, didn't own one, but now I've allowed myself to sink back into that wonderful magical world of connectivity where my watch, my phone and my brain are now on the same page. So are my two tablets and a laptop, so is my vintage Echo and all of the smart devices around me, so is my blazingly fast development box and her wide screen monitor. We all be hooked up.

Now I can take some time to sit next to my baby, and rub her:

Then I ate some local honey to fight off the allergies:

It's the day before election day and I'm just hunkered down, watching the world and orgasiming over the connections between my Samsung watch and phone, my old original Echo, and my living space. Then I walked down to my creek:

I live at the end of a southern Tennessee dead-end street and my cat Piper is the queen of the neighborhood. Since we've been here she's had to compete with dogs and cats, but they're all gone now and she loves it.

She even has me totally wrapped around her tail, I'm her doorman, chef, and masseuse. We have a running bet about who's going to outlive the other but there's nothing in place, in the event of either.