At 3:30 in the morning.  The dogs did a good job pinning it down, but I wish it had waited another 90 minutes or so to get caught.

First, here's an old essay that I wrote in July 1997 about our family reunions.  It's one of my old Ramblings, and is long, so ignore it if you want.

---

"Alan," said Mary Ann, looking only slightly puzzled, "how did we ever manage to do all this outside?"

I knew what she meant. I had been thinking the same thing only recently. I finished shuffling the dominoes, pushed them into the center of the table, leaned back, took a long swallow of iced tea, and grinned.

We were sitting inside an air-conditioned building that felt like it was out in the more or less middle of nowhere, but was actually near the small town of Christine, about 50 miles south of San Antonio, just on the edge of where the south Texas brush country begins to turn wild. A few feet from our table, balls clacked as they ricocheted around a pool table. At the other end of this long room, a distant relative of ours had claimed the old piano, and my dad as well as several of my cousins, aunts, and uncles had gathered around her to sing. She had a nearly endless repertoire of gospel hymns and old country-western songs. A few minutes earlier the curious sequence of "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" followed by "Amazing Grace" had almost brought tears to my eyes.  It was right there that I also realized the words of either song fit perfectly with the music of the other.  Try it sometime.

We were playing a domino game called "42." For the reader who may not be familiar with it, this is a game that--I have read--originated in Texas. I read that long ago, a Baptist preacher had some sons who learned to play Spades (the card game), but this preacher considered cards tools of the devil, and forbade them to play any card games. So they got out some dominoes and devised a game based on Spades. This could be true, I don't know. In any case, 42 is similar to Spades except that the high bidder for each hand gets to declare which suit is the trump for that hand, instead of being stuck with only one suit always being trumps like in Spades. My cousin Mary Ann was sitting to my right. To my left was her sister Carol, and across from me her husband Alfred. We had been doing this almost as long as we could remember.

To tell the truth, I do remember learning to play 42. I don't remember the exact year, but I suppose I was 12 or 13 years old, and it was at another family reunion--one of those outside family reunions Mary Ann was talking about. My dad's side of my family has been having these kinds of reunions for years--before I ever came along, I suppose. After so many years, they have tended to blur together somewhat, but the earliest ones I can remember were at a park on the Pedernales River in the hill country near Marble Falls. We camped out in tents, and our parents cooked for us on Coleman camp stoves. The smell of the stove fuel is still fresh in my memory, and the sound of my dad working the little pump to build up pressure in the fuel tank...the hiss of the fire as it ignited, and finally the salty smell of bacon sizzling in a frying pan. We usually managed to come up with a portable barbecue pit from somewhere, and on Saturday noon we would have a huge meal centered around barbecued meats of all kinds.

I mention Saturday noon because this shindig lasted three days. It was customary to take a small vacation for the reunion, get there on Friday--sometimes even on Thursday--and not leave until Sunday. So for two nights we slept in tents or, as I always did, outside on a cot with nothing but the sky for a ceiling.  The sleeping  bag I used always smelled of the citronella I had accidentally spilled on it one time. During the day we would swim in the river, at night we would fish in it. If the fish weren't biting my cousins and I might sit all crowded into one tent, telling ghost stories by the light of a flashlight.  I remember once completely creeping everyone out with a paraphrased rendition of Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth," made even creepier by the sounds and smells of the nearby river.

Later we started meeting at a state park, also up in the hill country. This part of the state is a sort of meeting place for my family, because this is where my paternal ancestors settled when they first came here. My great-grandfather settled near Burnet after emigrating from Germany, and  the Scottish side of my ancestry also came from this area: Marble Falls, Travis Peak, Smithville, Lago Vista, and probably more tiny hill country communities than I can remember.

We always had our reunions where there was a creek or river so we could swim. After we moved on from this state park, we had our reunions for several years at a privately owned park halfway between Marble Falls and Travis Peak. Here we were still outdoors, sleeping in tents or on cots, but for the first time there was a small building that housed a deep freeze and a refrigerator so we had someplace besides ice chests to store food. It was a long steep downhill scramble to get to the creek, and a much longer uphill climb to get back to camp. By walking upstream perhaps a quarter of a mile, we could get to a huge, deep, beautiful swimming hole, where a waterfall drizzled a small but steady and wide stream of water to splash onto rocks about 15 feet below, and over the years the waterfall had dug out an almost perfectly round hole wide enough for several people to swim in at once without having to worry about bumping into each other. This hole, however, was only for swimmers. The sides dropped off too abruptly to allow any wading. It was here that I learned to tread water, going for long stretches without ever touching anything but deep, deep water, and maybe occasionally brushing a fish. It was also here that I learned to play 42, under the attentive tutelage of my dad and my Aunt Betty (Mary Ann's mother).

We may have kept using this park a lot longer than we did, but there was a falling out between the part of the family that owned the park and the part that didn't, so we moved the reunions to Lockhart State Park. For the first time, we didn't have a creek or river to swim in. There was a swimming pool, but we had to share it with everyone else at the park, not to mention the residents of Lockhart itself. So we didn't do much swimming. But, it was here for the first time that we had a big air-conditioned building to stay in, nearby motels for anyone to stay in if they chose, and more than one refrigerator to store plenty of food. Since there was no fishing to speak of, and not much swimming, we spent lots and lots of time playing 42. Occasionally a few of us played Dungeons & Dragons or Call of Cthulhu, but mostly we played 42.

And so we had it there every year for a long time, and eventually, we all realized that we could never go back to the old way. It was just too convenient, too comfortable. Eventually we found out about this other place near Christine, and here we've held the reunion for the past few years. Attendance was down this year, some people didn't come because of illness, some simply because they didn't feel like it, some...well, some you just never hear from, so you don't know what's going on with them.

It was a nice place. During the drive the day before, I had been remembering other times we came to this area, actually farther south past another small town called Charlotte, into the heart of the brush country on a 2,000-acre ranch where the owners had given us permission to hunt and fish whenever we wanted to. There it was common to have close encounters with javelinas and other wildlife, and it wasn't a strange thing to see at least one alligator during our stay.

But, this place wasn't quite so far into the wilderness as that. When we had arrived the day before, the first thing I did was pick up a basketball and shoot baskets for a while on the basketball court. I have never been very good at anything athletic, but I have always liked shooting baskets. In the background was the hum of the air-conditioner on the back of my dad's camper trailer, in the distance was the occasional murmer of voices as someone opened the door to the main building. Other than that and the sound of the basketball bouncing, it was very quiet.

So I grabbed my dad's bicycle and took off for parts unknown. The land in that area is fairly flat, with not too many steep hills to make bike riding difficult. Up the narrow one-lane road I went to the nearest highway, which was an only slightly wider farm road. I turned right and went to the top of the first hill, a long gentle hill that had me breathing a little hard by the time I got to the top. I sat there thinking that I really should do this more often as I caught my breath. As my breathing quieted and my heartbeat stilled, I looked around. It was just the familiar brushy surroundings that you find in that area of south Texas: mesquite trees, lots of prickly pear cactus, and the continuous runs of small brushy plants that I don't know the name of. A nice breeze was blowing, almost chilling me as the sweat evaporated, and I suddenly realized something. It was quiet. It was so quiet I could hear my own heartbeat. The nearest major highway, state highway 37, was so far away I couldn't hear the rumble of the cars that I knew should constantly be there. It had been a long time since I heard silence like that. As I rode back, I did hear a few more cars--other relatives coming to the reunion. When I got back I took a long nap and then started looking for a domino game.

So here we were. The lady at the piano had finished "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain" and launched right into "I'll Fly Away." Everyone else had finished drawing their dominoes, so I scooped up the leftovers, which is proper domino ettiquette for the shuffler to follow. In 42, the person to the left of the shuffler bids first, and so forth clockwise so that the shuffler bids last. If everyone passes, this means the shuffler has "forced bid." This usually means bidding the absolute minimum allowed and trying to make it, usually getting "set" (losing the hand) in the process. Some folks don't play with forced bid, if such a thing happens they just reshuffle and try again. I've found this to make a pretty boring game, some of the most spectacular playing comes when you can make your forced bid on a bad hand. A "good" hand could mean having a double and three or so more dominoes in suit, which you would make your trumps. A fair hand might be a double and only two more in suit, along with a few good "offs." An off is any domino you have which is not in your trump suit. Some of these offs can be very powerful without being trumps, especially if they are doubles. Even a low domino can "catch the trick" (win that particular play of four dominoes) if no one else can follow suit and no one plays a trump on it. A low domino that still catches the trick is called a "walker." There are also hands where you may be stuck with some decent trumps but without a double to support them. I have seen some people who just refused to bother bidding with a hand like this, but 42 is a game of partners, and I always remember what my dad told me when I said I was afraid to bid without the double. "That's what your partner is for." Of course, there are two people there who aren't your partner and could also have the double, but those are the breaks.

I studied my dominoes as I mulled over Mary Ann's question. Carol passed. Alfred passed. Mary Ann passed. I had forced bid. I rearranged my dominoes and studied them a few long seconds more.

"Because," I replied, and looked back at Mary Ann, "we were kids, and everything was just a big adventure." And I led in sixes without the double.

---

So we had our reunion again this weekend, and I'm sad to say it was the worst yet.  The older generation is disappearing, and there aren't enough of the hard core remaining to keep it up.  Next year it will be only a one-day affair, which is about all I can stand these days anyway.  Most of the conversation deals now with health problems, which I simply am not that interested in, and besides, I don't have any such information to add to the conversation, since I am still relatively young and in good health.  If I hear "is there a Splenda recipe for that?" one more time, I think I might scream.  Our family has also seemed to churn out more than its fair share of cranks, crackpots, and social misfits (evidence is at hand).

We bailed out early.  There was nothing to do, and almost no one to do it with.  As time has gone by, I have come to value the company of many people who I have no relation to, rather than those to who I am actually related.

Since we returned a day early, I hope I can at least finish the fence tomorrow.  Mostly finish, anyway.  I'm going to have to borrow a brace and bit from my dad to drill pilot holes for the gate bolts, and I'm going to need a few more steel posts, but I think I can mostly finish it.

I think I'm the only bona-fide gun-nut in my family, but as far as I know, they are all gun-friendly.  My kids and I were passing some time blowing bubbles.  I had a cool battery-powered bubble gun that could churn out hundreds of bubbles in no time, and my son was trying to hit the floating bubbles with a squirt gun.  He squirted me, and I used the opportunity to remind him of the rule to always know what's behind his target.  My cousin Mary Ann, standing nearby, said simply, "That's a good gun rule."  Then my daughter offered the information that I had been teaching them to shoot with a BB gun.  This didn't cause any excitement at all, my cousin only asking my daughter if she was any good at it.  "Not really...not yet," she answered.

Another gun-related moment came as we were packing up to return home.  This place has a no-guns policy, and it's private property so they can do that.  However, a couple of years ago my wife saw that I was packing and mentioned it.  I told her that, just in case the odds were against us and our house was burglarized while we were gone (and they went to the trouble of ripping my home safe(s) out of the wall and taking them), I was going to be sure I still had one gun on me.  As usual, this year I packed the XD40 in my car safe.  As we were leaving, my wife simply asked if I had my gun.  Years ago, my wife at first didn't really get why I carried, but after giving her my reasons and showing her that carrying a gun didn't automatically make one a hothead looking for trouble, she has come around.  This time she asked only to be sure I hadn't forgotten it.

The XD stayed safely secured the whole time, and somehow managed not to sneak its way out of the lockbox and kill someone all on its own.

And just FYI, the "medium" safe at the above link can hold the mid-sized XD with one spare magazine.  I don't know if it would be able to contain the extended 13-round mag for the XD45, but it can hold the standard "flush-with-the-grips" magazine with no problem.

I might slack off some on blogging this week.  I'm kind of preoccupied with my new job, and I still have a fence to finish.

More than $300 just for the materials to put a little fence around my house.  I shudder to think of what it will be to fence my entire 5 acres.

It would have been more than $400 if my dad hadn't had a bunch of extra fence posts that he gave me, along with a fence charger.  I still have to buy insulators and wire for the electric strand.

It will be nice, however, to have a dog moat fence around my house.

I'm ashamed to say that I forsook the assembly this morning, but I had a strong urge to get some fence building done and I did it.  All that's left now is to put in the last gate brace, mount the gate, and drive in a few steel t-posts to tighten things up.  I'll probably put a strand of electric wire around the bottom later to prevent the dogs from digging out, but that's no big deal.

Dad has a spare fence charger.  I'll have to get the last bit of equipment sometime this week.

And boy am I wiped out.

I also put on two batches of jerky this morning.  One that I call Sweet Hickory, and the other my Original Recipe, which I haven't made in several years.  It's only a little spicy, with garlic and onion, some black pepper and cayenne, and just a pinch of sage.

I have a spreadsheet with a bunch of my recipes on it.  There are actually four versions of the Original, each a little spicier than the last, because people where I used to work were so picky about how much heat they could handle.

Not so good news today.  One more doe gave birth, this time--oddly--to non-identical twins, one buck and one doe.  The baby doe was stillborn, and it looks like the little buck will have to be bottle-fed to survive.

This doe was, for some reason, always getting chased by the other deer.  It's very strange, but they never let her rest.  She'll have to go into the new pen when it gets built.  Or we might just have to sell her.

I went over to my dad's house this morning to pick up some fence posts.  One more doe had given birth to twins yesterday, so I helped tag them.  Twin doe fawns this time.  We're going to have to start building more pens pretty soon.

The Total Perspective Vortex.  Another interesting and somewhat pertinent article about mental stability at Damn Interesting:

Studies into clinical depression have yielded similar findings, leading to the development of an intriguing, but still controversial, concept known as depressive realism [emphasis in original--ed.]. This theory puts forward the notion that depressed individuals actually have more realistic perceptions of their own image, importance, and abilities than the average person. While it’s still generally accepted that depressed people can be negatively biased in their interpretation of events and information, depressive realism suggests that they are often merely responding rationally to realities that the average person cheerfully denies.

Those with paranoid disorders can sometimes possess a certain unusual insight as well. It has often been asserted that within every delusional system, there exists a core of truth—and in their pursuit of imagined conspiracies against them, these individuals often show an exceptionally keen eye for the real thing. People who interact with them may be taken aback as they find themselves accused of harboring some negative opinion of the person which, secretly, they actually do hold. Complicating the issue, of course, is the fact that if the supposed aversion didn’t exist before, it likely does after such an unpleasant encounter.

I have spent the last 4 years or so being forced to tolerate a "superior" who, in my opinion, is so irrationally optimistic that he should seek help.  I have been in the top two performers at my former place of employment, and for more than two years now have been doing the job that no one else was willing to do.  Yet, in spite of my job performance and putting myself at greater risk than anyone else, my annual performance evaluation was marked down because I had a "bad attitude."  And almost every paranoid prediction I gave my boss has turned out to be true.

Also, he's one of those who keeps making the same mistakes over and over, but somehow expects a different result every time.  We all know what that means.

So, if I'm depressively realistic, yet evidence supports that I was the one who was actually correct, then who really is mentally imbalanced here?

With all the gimmicky exercise machines that have been invented just so people can simulate activity without actually participating in the activity:  treadmill, skiing machine, rowing machine, etc, why hasn't someone invented a post-hole digging machine?

Talk about a total body workout.

Stung by a scorpion again.  This time it was in my pants pocket.  Stuck my hand in my pocket, and pow!  Same hand that I cut a couple of days ago, but at least not the same finger.

Taking a couple of days of slacktime before I start the new job.  Maybe I'll get some range time this weekend.  Not today, though, because I know from previous experience I'm going to start feeling pretty queasy from the venom.

UPDATE:  Ran into two more of these little suckers today, although they were both outside the house.  One found by the kids in one of their big playground toys in the yard (yard sale acquisition), and the other found by myself hiding behind the switch to the security light.  How did I ever manage to notice a scorpion hiding behind a pole-mounted light switch box?  I don't know.  I seem to have a knack for noticing out of place things that might be dangerous.  Or at least painful.  Unless they're in my pocket, of course.

Been watching closely for copperheads at night when I go out to feed the dogs.  It's been so hot at night lately that I won't be surprised to run into one or two.  So far, no luck.

Dug a couple of post holes today but the sand is getting too dry.  Once I get about 2 1/2 feet down the sand just starts slipping through the digger.  It's only slightly more coarse than baby powder.  Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration, but not by much.

I had to run over to my dad's house this morning to help tag a new set of twin fawns.  We still have four more does expecting, so next time I hope to tag them myself instead of just getting a lesson from Dad.  This time it was a set of bucks, so we're in business.

So now I can add day-old fawns to the list of baby animals I've held in my arms.  One of them got a little alarmed when the tag went through his ear.  They bleat a lot like a baby goat.  The other one took it all in stride and went right back to sleep.

You might not think that a brown-and-white fawn could hide so well in dark green Bermuda grass, but they can.  We had to be right on top of them before we found them.

Unfortunately, I forgot my phone.  I could have taken some pretty good closeups of the fawns if I'd had a camera.  Next time, I promise.

Each fawn has to be cataloged after tagging, so we have a record of which doe it came from.  Another chore is that the afterbirth has to be buried so it doesn't attract scavengers.  Crested Caracaras (which we somewhat derisively refer to as "Mexican Eagles") are especially nasty.  They can be drawn in by the afterbirth, but they will also attack living animals if they are still hungry after they finish.  They won't attack adult deer, but they'll attack anything small and weak like newborn fawns.

Since it's technically illegal to shoot the filthy things, I always just yell and shoo them away without harming them.  Of course I do.

I took the day off work today so I could go take the physical for my new job.  The walking and step climbing was easy, as I expected.  The weight lifting was easier than I thought it would be.  The only thing that stressed me was one particular exercise in which I locked my feet under a bar, laid on my stomach on a declining bench, and lifted my upper body up with back and leg muscles.  It really wore out my legs.  He told me to do it until I couldn't anymore or he told me to stop.  I decided I would do until he told me to stop or I passed out.  Fortunately, I hit the two minute mark still conscious, but wow, I'm still feeling it in my legs.

On the walking test, my heart rate maxed out at 130 bpm at 2.5 mph on a 5 degree incline.  Actually, I think that's slower than my normal walking speed.  Just based on how it felt, my normal speed is probably closer to 2.8 or so.  Two-point-zero felt like slow motion.  Of course, this was in an air-conditioned building.  I'm more used to doing it outside when the temp is 95 and the humidity is typical intense south Texas humidity.  Sometimes I even whistle while I'm walking like that, although I have to stop when I actually read a meter because my brain can't seem to do music and numbers at the same time.

I'm glad I didn't work all day and then go do the physical.  I would have been pretty tired.

My experience today reinforces my belief that I have always been correct in telling my boss that he should have some basic physical requirements for applicants.  He'll hire anyone who doesn't flunk the drug test, and that's just not good enough.

Anyhow, I passed with flying colors.  Only three more days this week and then four next week.  I specified my last day as next Thursday so I can give myself a three-day weekend before I start the new job.

Speaking of air conditioning, it turned out that our old AC was in the process of kicking the bucket.  It was choked with mold and operating at only about 20% of its capacity.  It would have cost so much to fix it that I told them to just put in a new one.  Sheesh.  We had to have it financed, of course.  Another bill to pay.  The old one was 14 years old, and was of course the cheapest the mobile home company could find.  I'm pretty sure the new one is a lot better unit than the old one.

That make me glad I found a different job.  I might have to post a mini-rant later, but now I'm too tired and hungry.

Got home to find that the AC wasn't working.  Apparently it was just a slightly wonky (or perhaps dirty) thermostat, not the actual AC itself.  So that was a relief.

The best part of the day was the look on my boss' face when I told him I had found another job.  He looked like someone had punched him in the throat.

And then I put in another 10-hour day, as usual, trying to plug up the holes left by absenteeism and incompetence.

Just another slow Sunday.  Today I faxed some consent forms to the HR of my soon-to-be-new-employer so they'd be waiting for them in the morning.  Had to download a new version of Mighty Fax since my old one was for Win98 and doesn't run on XP.


And tomorrow I get to tell my boss that I'm quitting.  Heh heh.

Well, no gun show for me today.  I decided to stay home and be responsible.  Spent part of the morning mowing, and then the rest sleeping off the allergy dope I had to take as a result of mowing.

But first, I had to go buy a new gas can and get some gas.  My old gas can that I keep the mower fuel in has vanished from the face of the earth.  I'm sure it will never be seen in this sphere again.

Either that, or some intrepid burglar has braved the dogs, gone directly to the shed where I keep the gas can and taken the old gas can with about a pint of gas in it--but taken nothing else.  Furthermore, he would have had to ignore the other old gas can which contains the chainsaw fuel, which was sitting right next to it.

Dealing with disappearing things is something I've been cursed with my entire life.  And I'm talking about stuff just getting misplaced.  I'm talking about stuff just completely vanishing and never being seen again.

This is something that, for a little while, made my wife think I was a little nuts in the early days of our marriage.  Until the most dramatic disappearance:  an electric heater.  It was gone.  So one Saturday she watched as I systematically mapped and emptied every cubic foot of space inside our house to show her that that heater was no longer part of our reality.

What really happens?  Who knows?  I'm just glad that it's never been anything valuable, and I try not to think about it too much.

I feel a little cheerier today.  I finally got the call I've been waiting for.  I'm going to be starting a new job in two weeks.  It's not 100% official.  I still have to pass the physical, drug test and background check, but I don't see any problems with that.

Now I'm more free to rant about my soon-to-be-ex-job.  But such a rant would be pretty pointless.  Suffice it to say that I will no longer have to tolerate being treated like CPS's red-headed b*st*rd stepchild.

And tomorrow is the gun show.  I've missed the last two or three, so I really should go to this one.  I might even take the XD40 along for trading fodder in case something appealing turns up.