Bye Bye House Next Door

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We bought the house next door a month or so ago. After much unnecessary delay thanks to the City of Bellaire, it was demolished yesterday. That big ol’ Hyundai Excavator levelled the entire house in less than a half hour. Then it loaded the remains into big dumptrucks that hauled it away. It was really fun to watch.

After we move the fence and do a little landscaping, we’ll have a nice yard to run around in.

Father’s Day

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I can barely remember anything about my father. He died on November 14, 1968. I remember watching Combat with him in the very room we’re standing in above. I remember driving to Virginia with him once. That’s about it.

Most of what I know about him is second hand- things I’ve read or been told. He was a fighter pilot in World War II. Flew off of the Intrepid and received a DFC and 2 Air Medals. They are in a frame in our Media Room. I have a book on World War II with his picture in it. He was a pretty good golfer. He smoked too many cigarettes.

I don’t know if he had a good sense of humor, or what kind of music he liked. I don’t know if he liked to dance or what kind of beer he drank. My kids have some vague idea that I had a mother, who died shortly before the oldest was born. My dad is nothing more than a picture they’ve seen once or twice. I’d tell them more about him, if I knew more.

It’s not something I think about a lot. Maybe once or twice a year.

A Band is Born

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Cassidy and Rachel got out my guitars this evening and decided they were going to learn how to play them and form a band. Here’s a shot of their first jam session.

Hopefully, they’ll become famous and record all of my songs!

Leap Year Flashback

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Thanks to the magic of the WayBack Machine at the Internet Archive, click here to see what Newsome.Org looked like on February 29, 2000. It’s interesting to see that the date code at the top still works and returns today’s date!

Somewhere around here I have an old copy of the first web site we put up back in 1996. It’s pretty frightening by today’s standards, but one of these days I’ll post a picture of it.

Bookmark

I enjoy photographs, but I have never bought a book of them, and I have never bookmarked a web site just for the photos…until recently. Thomas Hawk has a great web page that is very much worth reading for the digital media discussion alone. That’s why I started reading it regularly. But I have found that the true joy of his page is his amazing photos. A thousand of my words could not do justice to one of his pictures. Bookmark Thomas Hawk’s Digital Connection. I promise you’ll look forward to going there every day. I certainly do.

Camping Fun

We went camping last weekend and had a great time! Cassidy and Delaney went on their first trail rides. We also went fishing, rode bikes, cooked marshmellows on the campfire and fed some alligators.

This is a picture from one of three trail rides the kids went on. There was one for the youngest ones, one for the middle ones, and this one for the “big girls.”

We have a regular group of families who love to go camping. It was our group’s 3rd camping trip of the season, and we are already looking forward to the next trip.