In the Summer of 1779 the land of Tatum Park near Middletown, NJ was a small farm owned by a family that was struggling to just keep the farm running. To make matters worse, British soldiers were occupying their land. Young Emily had a magnificent garden of native flowers, but the wildflowers that grew in the meadows were her favorite. Emily watched with irritation as the troops made camp in a field that was being allowed to grow natural that season. They crushed down her beloved wildflowers & greedily ate the berries she had been cultivating all Spring.

One of the soldiers took notice & saved a large bouquet of flowers, which he presented to her one morning. Despite their differences, the two fell in love. Though she never tried to change his mind, her love of the land was infectious & soon after being deployed into battle the young soldier defected to the Colonial Army. He promised to marry her when he returned. He wrote to Emily frequently over the next year but one day the letters stopped coming. The years piled up, the war ended & she lost hope & began to despair. She was inconsolable. As Emily’s health began to fail so did the farm. Crops withered, fruits dried on the vine & not a flower could be seen on the property.

On the occasion of the first frost in 1783 Emily took a walk in the North East meadow, sat down to rest under a willow tree & never woke up. She was buried in that same meadow. On Christmas Eve of that season her lover finally returned. He had been captured by the British & sent over seas as a prisoner of war. The revolution ended before he could stand trial & eventually he was able to make his way back to the colonies. Her soldier was saddened when he heard the news of her death but war had hardened him & he could shed no tears. Emily’s mother led him to the gravesite. As he knelt by Emily’s final resting place, her Mother placed a bundle of dried flowers alongside the headstone. The soldier recognized the flowers as the very bouquet he gave her when they first met. His heart finally broke & he began to weep.

On the first day of Spring life returned to the farm when a lone Morning Glory bloom unfolded to greet the dawn. It had sprouted alongside Emily’s grave where her love’s tears fell to earth.

This is our first Thanksgiving in our new home and we decided to spend it in said home. When faced with the delicious decision of which side of the family to visit over this holiday we decided that we’d just stay here and avoid the drive, the traffic, the headaches and… did I mention the drive? Since nobody is actually From New Jersey, everyone Leaves New Jersey on Thanksgiving. That puts us in our cars in what amounts to a mass exodus and the roads just aren’t wide enough for Everyone at once.

Don’t get me wrong, family is always worth the trip but if I spend 4.5 hours making a 2 hour trip they wouldn’t want me there, ya know?

Anyway, so… yeah we stayed home. We cleaned up the house a little, ate a big pancake & sausage breakfast, cleaned up the house some more, had a nice lunch of leftovers from this past week and then decided to go for a hike in Cheesequake State Park. We explored the new trails, the lake and a marsh we hadn’t been in before. I caught leaves and climbed horizontal trees while Heather found some lovely moss. We had a nice hike too & even borrowed time to find the Geocache that’s closest to our home. I dropped my “Moving Man” geocoin into the cache. It can do the moving from now on! While signing the log a Turkey Buzzard lighted heavily on a nearby branch. Cool.

Back at home it was time for Thanksgiving Dinner! We microwaved a turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes & cranberry green-beans. We shared it while eating over the sink - just as the pilgrims did! I gave thanks for the microwave bounty that we ate. Of course, this wasn’t the last of the meal… since it was such a nice day we fired up the grill for one last time and cooked hot dogs & the last of the bacon wrapped filet mignon. For desert we had chocolate.

That’s my kinda Thanksgiving. I’ll close with a short poem from our dear friends at Rathergood.com. Happy T-Day everyone!

It’s the best day of the year.
Every body shout and cheer!
Because there no religious reason
Why we’re all gathered here.
It’s secular you see?
And that’s alright with me.
Now say your thanks and eat a Turkey Knee!

I’m filing this one under just about everything because it contains one pertinent bit of info from most of the categories. Whee! Here we go:

News: I’m upgrading my computer so my connectivity is somewhat limited. I dropped in a second video card to complete my SLI upgrade path & swapped out my old Athlon 64 3000+ for a shiny new Dual Core Athlon 4400+. I would have went with the 4600 but couldn’t find the part on the cheap. I ran some benchmarks before and after and it looks like my (synthetic) FPS scores nearly doubled in games while my gigaflops (processor speed) actually increased by a factor of 2.4. Very nice and well worth the upgrade. Just wait until I start cranking some multi-threaded apps. The downside is that Windows was horrible unstable when I got done so I’m reinstalling the OS and it’ll be a few days before I’m fully productive again.

New House: We’ve passed another “final” deadline on gettig bank approval. Then he attorneys went on vacation. Now we’re waiting (over a week now) for the seller’s attorney to return the phone call & emails that our side has been sending. In the mean time we’re looking at other houses. The bank’s delays have now cost us over 5 grand in interest (over the full term of the loan) thanks to the ever-increasing rates.

Geocaching: Heather & I woke up at 4:30 AM this past Saturday to make it to the “07/07/07 at 07:07″ Event down near Cherry Hill. The turnout was unbelievable! Any cacher who’s missing out on events is missing out on a lot of the fun of the sport. Afterwards we teamed up with 7 other cachers and hit 7 additional caches. Funny how that worked out, eh? We took off for South Jersey after lunch and ended up meeting a cacher from the early days of the sport at the family BBQ. We’re everywhere! Also, for the past 17 days I’ve had a streak of geocache finds. I’ve set a new record and I’m still going! Check out my statistics at It’s Not About The Numbers.com.

Brain Dripping: I hate to see news like this. In a nutshell, someone named Eric Dalton got shot in the chest in Winston-Salem NC. If Sarah Connor had paid more attention to the news she could have beat feet before The Terminator found her and killed her friend. But seriously, I hope he’s Ok. I’ll keep ya’ll posted if I can dig up more news.

Independence is a grand thing but too many folks around the Fourth of July mindlessly celebrate by drinking, blowing things up and watching Will Smith movies without remembering from what they happen to be independent. No, I don’t mean The Redcoats. The British are not coming back and it’s time to lay down those arms. No I mean a generality of being without dependence as an individual. I mean more along the lines of the definition from the Oxford English Dictionary:

independent

• adjective 1 free from outside control or influence. 2 (of a country) self governing. 3 not depending on another for livelihood or subsistence. 4 not connected with another; separate. 5 (of broadcasting, a school, etc.) not supported by public funds.

On the Fourth of July 2007 I celebrated my own personal lack of outside controlling influence by not buying a Dunkin’ Coolata, watching TV or going to see the Transformers Movie. I proved myself self-governing by deciding to sleep in and not take a shower until mid afternoon. I depend not upon another for livelihood! (I made my own ball-park franks & “peace, pasta & parmesan” mac & cheese) I may be connected to my wife, but we did our own thing almost all day. We even have our own separate cats. Oh, and though I did enjoy the benefits of some public fun I do not enjoy the benefits of any public funds.

I think for myself, feel my own emotions & do not buy into propaganda. I pay my taxes, vote my conscience & hate how all the fireworks I heard yesterday were made in China. I’m proud that an American is once again the hot-dog-eating-champ but sad that comic book writers killed Captain America and the final Sopranos episode was filled with thinly veiled political rhetoric.

It seems lots of folks have lost their pride in America. Maybe I just have too much faith or maybe I can’t let go of the dream because my name is right there in the middle of the word America for goodness sake. Whatever the reason I hold out hope that more Independents will emerge. They’ll turn off The News, crack a book and think for themselves. They’ll see the big picture. They’ll run for office. They’ll win. Congress will be filled with Independent Thinkers and a new square peg who just doesn’t fit into the old system will toil in the oval office every four years.

But that’s a ways away… first things first! Before you can take pride in your country, start by taking pride in your back yard, your children & most importantly: yourself. See yourself independently of how others tell you how you are supposed to look. Work independently of the limitations others have prescribed for you. Think independently of the groupthink others have thought for you. Be your own person for God’s sake! Or, failing that, be your own God for man’s sake. Have pride in yourself and everything else starts to fall in line like so many ducks in a row at a Cheney family reunion. Start now and by this holiday next year you too can celebrate Independent’s day and nobody will ever be able to take that away from you.

My wife just attacked me with a mud mask. Here I sat ready to type out a blog about human nature and mountains when she slides up and starts smearing “warming” mud on my cheek. Then my chin. Next thing I know it’s EVERYWHERE and she says it’s detoxifying and I say it’s smelly.

What have I become.

I just had a look at myself in the mirror and I feel a little better. It just looks like I’m smeared over with vasoline. Not that being covered in vasoline makes me feel more masculine, but at least I don’t look like I’m supposed to be in a spa commercial. Yaurgh. I’d rather have coins on my eyes than cucumbers.

Ok, so anyway… as I’ve been Geocaching all over the state the past few weeks a pattern emerged that I had been noticing subconsciously my entire life….

Every time I crested a hill and found a nice high place with a view… I also found a fire ring. At first I wondered about the paleolithic remnant of our brains that insists that mountains need fire. Then I realized that even Mountain Men like to enjoy the view now and again, but male bonding isn’t possible without Beer or Fire or - better yet - Beer AND Fire. Then I reflected on the Mountain Boys who had been up here recently and had the same problem but instead of two guys toting a faggot of firewood up the hill, these two boys carried spray paint and wrote “faggot” on the rocks. I can only assume this was in brash defiance of the feeling that “if my friend’s hand brushes mine one more time I’m going to grab it and if he doesn’t pull away I’ll squeeze his hand tight in mine for the rest of my life”…

My mind tends to wonder while I wander.

Of course the truth of the fire-rings has nothing to do with human nature.

That is where the space ships land. Obviously.

Is that an irate Washington or what? I would just like to point out a travesty that will befall our country in 2012. I mean besides the end of days thanks to the Mayan Calendar! I’m referring to the new dollar coins being stamped out at the US Mint. I don’t have anything against the mint trying to make a mint by making me try to “be the first kid on your block to collect them all!” but I do have a problem with them elevating Cleveland to “Super Grover!”. You see it went like this: President Cleveland lost to Benji Harrison (Defeated by the electoral college!) after only one term. Then Harrison screwed up, lost the support of this party & was defeated by the best foot the Mugwumps could put forward: Super Grover, presidential retred! This made Grover Cleveland the 22nd president & allowed him to claim the 22nd & 24th presidency. Note the difference between President & Presidency here folks.

Slash forward 120 years & congress has decided to put all of the presidents on the coins. The trouble is that despite Congress making a special provision for the “REDESIGN AND ISSUANCE OF CIRCULATING $1 COINS HONORING EACH OF THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES” they’ve gone & done pissed off George Washington, Abe Lincoln & even Franklin Pierce by giving Grover Cleveland TWO, count them again, TWO full sets of coins! Are we commemorating the Presidents or Terms of Presidencies? Are they really stating that Cleveland was two unique people capable of being two presidents? Is there precedence?

Way back in the days when A Renaissance Faire was just called “A Faire”, King Henry The Sixth was succeeded by Edward the Fourth by some nasty business. Then the comeback music started & Henry The Sixth took back his throne becoming… Henry The Seventh? Of course not! We wouldn’t see one of those for another 15 years. Grover is simply El Presidente the 22nd & nothing more. It simply boggles the mind that a guy who lost the popular vote, slipped in anyway & then went on to become a One Termer not once, but twice is going to have double the number of coins in circulation as Adams, Roosevelt & Bush. Well, bad examples by name there, but you get the idea.

This cannot be allowed to go unnoticed! I say this good people: In the year 2012 - do not, under any circumstances accept a Super Grover coin! If it has the number 24 on it, refuse it as you would a pine nickel! This is a man who had his sister for the First Lady (Look it up!) then married a woman 26 years younger than himself! Ok, that’s actually pretty cool, but he never even earned a collegiate degree. Yes, he’s one of our Presidents, but in the end he was just another Lawyer from New Jersey.

Linky’s!
Presidential Coin Release Schedule
Benjamin Harrison Bio
Grover Cleveland Bio