Out With The Old

Happens from time to time. We live outside of town. Vandals hit mailboxes like frogs eat flies. It's a fact of life and as long as it doesn't happen on a regular basis (for some neighbors it does), I can live with it. It used to make me mad, but it's out of my control. They can strike at will and there's nothing I can do about it. My approach is to put up the cheapest box I can find to reduce my costs. I may try to straighten this one out as a backup, but the lid and flag and body are all bent. It may be a junker. I'm still pondering the significance of February (see sketch dialog).

Biz Travel

It's time for travel again. Doesn't happen that often. This time Little Rock for two days/one night. We have an electric utility organization with working committees to address issues of common interest. So I meet with fellow engineers for a couple days to talk about computer modeling and data submittals. May not be interesting to the masses, but it is to me. The meeting was in a nice hotel down by the Arkansas River in a revitalized section of downtown. Glad I wasn't paying for it. The hotel had a neat duck theme going that needed to be journaled about. I missed the marching in of the ducks, but I got to see the 5 p.m. marching out. Can't help but smile. One Mallard drake and four hens. Not perfectly trained, either, if there could ever be such a thing. But the eventually went where they needed to.

Out Of The Blue

I just never know where the next sketch is coming from. This one came out of nowhere. Saturday I was looking out toward our back yard and saw something orange in the pasture just north of us. Thought it was a gas can, since our neighbor was out in his pasture earlier in the day (lives in town). When I walked over to check it out the thing was a plastic parachute rigged up with everything you see here. When I was a kid my Uncle Lawrence found a weather balloon in his pasture and I remember playing with it with my cousins. The balloon material looks the same. The instruments are much smaller and lighter now, though. Some Internet research filled in the rest of the facts I mention in the journal. Pretty neat stuff. I used my voltmeter to check the 'just add water' battery and it's dead. Final proof that it's trash. There's no "If Found Call XXX-XXXX' label. Their trash . . . my treasure.