ON YOUR FEET, SOLDIER!

In a feeble attempt at humor Saturday, I said a walk in the park always relaxed me, even in Washington, D.C., and showed this picture.

I started thinking about that and about what people would think: there he is in the nation's capital, right outside of Congress, and he's lying down on the job!

So, I decided to take back my dignity and show you that I wasn't always such a goof-off. In fact, I had been working so hard I was just a bit tired.

So there. Your true hero back on his feet in front of the Capitol (and in front of legendary photographer and friend Steve Torbeck) doing my job like any self-respecting news reporter. I have no idea what fool's mission had taken us to the District of Columbia but suffice it to say we had a good time.

Oh and, by the way, you might have noticed the two spellings of a word that sounds alike. I checked (Googled) it. Capital, with a second a is the correct spelling of the city in which the capitol, with an o, is located.

Told you I worked hard.

CELEBRATION!

According to the wizards at Blogger who keep track of such things this is my 2,000th post on this blog.

Amazing!

To think when I began writing this blog I was only a young lad.

Actually, y'know, Blogger is wrong. I can't remember when I began this blog but I wrote it for a long time, then got tired of it and dumped it. Then after awhile I began writing it again. Then I apparently deleted the new one. Then, on March 2nd, 2008 I brought it back to life once again with this post.

Due to a vast number of (well, okay, a few) requests, I am bringing back Oddball Observations for another run at blogging. This will be the third time and I can only hope it's a charm. The next time I get bored with blogging, I will try my best not to delete my blog. I'll just put up a notice saying I'm "On Hold" until the juices start flowing again.

There was a little bit more but nothing of importance. To be totally accurate, I doubt that anything I've written in the ensuing seven years has been "of importance." It's just given a longtime journalist and writer the opportunity to keep plying the keys.

So thanks for reading and commenting or maybe just "lurking", as the saying goes. I'm not going anywhere, at least that I know of, so I'll just continue trying to make Oddball somewhat interesting, if not "of importance."

TESTY RAND AND A WALK IN THE PARK

Republican presidential candidate Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has already gained a reputation for being testy with news reporters. The political cartoonists have taken note.

Maybe what the Senator needs is a calming walk in the park.

That certainly used to calm me down, even in Washington.

Los Viernes Funnies (The Friday Funnies)

Everybody should learn a little Spanish, right?

All right, on with it.

Here, kitty kitty. 

Oh, guess not, huh?

Hey folks, have a great weekend, thanks to my contributors, and keep chuckling!

THROWBACK THURSDAY

We now have two candidates for President of the United States as the campaign season begins to heat up. It's 9 months until the first primary election and 19 months until the general election but I guess it's never too early to begin boring the electorate with speeches and campaign commercials.

It took me back, on this Throwback Thursday, to 1968. President Lyndon Johnson had announced that he would not run for another term. His Vice President, Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, then announced that he would seek the Democratic nomination. He did visit Bismarck, North Dakota, where I was news director of a radio and television combine but the picture I have of interviewing him is so faded that I can't reproduce it here.

But I did find a photo of me interviewing Humphrey's son Hubert Horatio Humphrey III,who went by the nickname of Skip. (In Googling him I learned that he gave one of his children the family monicker, making him HHH the Fourth. He went by the nickname of Buck!)

Anyway, Skip and his attractive wife came to Bismarck campaigning for his father and I interviewed him in the North Dakota Governor's mansion.

The older Humphrey did win the Democratic nomination for President that year but, unfortunately, was defeated in the general election by Richard Nixon.

Skip went on to a fairly illustrious career in Minnesota politics, serving as the state's Attorney General for many years but lost his bid for governor to an independent candidate, the former professional wrestler Jesse Ventura.

I went on to other adventures.

WEDNESDAY WINDOWS

SWMBO prepared an elegant dinner for our big day yesterday. Thick pork chops baked in a white wine mushroom sauce, asparagus, a mix of golden quinoa and jasmine rice. Lovely and it followed a couple of episodes of "Newsroom".

Today is laid back. A chance to use some windows pictures I took awhile back and have been hanging onto until inspiration struck. No inspiration today, really, except for the alliterative muse.

I wonder if architects ever think about the window cleaners.

APRIL DAYS

April is a celebratory month in our family. On the first, April Fool's Day, the BRD and her Beau Jack go down to the county courthouse to take out a marriage license. It's not that they intend to marry. It's just become a silly tradition with them. Six years and counting. Then they take a chauffered limousine to a luncheon spot and meet a bunch of friends. This year we joined them. I took pictures but for some reason this is the only one I saved.

The BRD said she liked this one because she looked thin. As usual, I just think she looks beautiful.

It's crazy but I did save a couple of other pictures, shot through the window of the club where we had lunch.

Amazing what a little (a lot) of money can do in a desert climate, isn't it. This is the Club at Prescott Lakes. I guess those two bodies of water are the lakes. Beau Jack told me when visitors from the Midwest come to play golf they say "Those aren't lakes. They're just ponds!"

But, getting back to the subject of this blog. In another few days, the BRD will celebrate her birthday. Then one of my sons has his birthday. A couple of weeks after that I will have an epochal birthday (more on that later). And today is the 44th anniversary of the day SWMBO and I got married. (Happy anniversary, dear.)

So, all in all, it's a good month for the greeting card industry.