Lufkin Christmas parade...

From the Christmas parade tonight.

Art hat by Mary.

Cold and wet...

Bunch of rain here. I hate that because the bottoms where we duck hunted this weekend will be flooded and hard to hunt. Ducks will be able to get anywhere instead of just being confined to the slough like they were with the water level banks. Oh well, some places in the world have near not enough water.

Any way the cold. Makes you want to snuggle. Here is an old snuggle picture looks like it was made on Christmas day 2004. These two guys have been missing in action for some time. I think the big white dog disappeared about the time the Micheal Vick thing broke. Always knew he was kind of shady and that other guy has been long gone. Any way I am guessing that's about 150+ pounds of dog snuggled up together there.

Here is what this dog house looks like today. That's El Guapo all by himself in there, about 9+ pounds of dog. I know one thing for sure he is

a heck of a lot cheaper to feed that those other two. I buy the cheapest sack of dog food weighing 5 pounds and it lasts a month. Of course there is a hidden cost, because he sits right beside me at the dinner table in a special little high chair and eats the same thing I eat. I am careful to make sure he gets the proper size portions. I read some where you should not eat a piece of meat bigger than a deck of cards. El Guapo seems to be real pleased with a meat this size.

More Duck...

Got off work yesterday and me and Morgan hightailed it to the Big Slough for an evening duck hut. We got two ducks each.

This is a shot looking up the of the Big Slough in the Davey Crockett National Forest Wilderness Area. About 4:30 Wood Ducks started flying everywhere. If you can picture about 25 coming in for a landing right at the camera, wings cupped feet down you will know what I saw. I picked out the lead one and fired and two hit the water dead.

Here's those two and one of the best duck guns ever made. It's my dads old Model 12 Winchester, and I can't remember if it's and early 50s or early 60s vintage. They stopped making them in the late 60s and they are collectors items now. I am proud to hunt with this gun and I think about my dad every time I knock a duck down with it. He knocked many a duck down right along this same area.

I don't think Winchester is even in operation anymore. I own 4 of their shot guns and Morgan owns one. Nothing fancy good utility guns, they get the job done.

Hunting ducks like this in the bottom is definitely old school. It's walk in, takes 40 minutes at least to get to the spot pictured and that's following a trail that's getting fainter and fainter. Getting these boys was not easy. That's a deep slough, even with waders and the low water right now it's chest deep or better. I ended up crossing two sloughs, each one on a fallen log, which was slick from the 9 different kinds of forest animals that had crawled out there and pooped before I could retrieve the ducks. Took 20 or thirty minutes and I though they were going to drift with the current down to an even deeper looking place.

On the way out we picked up a lost guy. He was a little spooked. He unloaded his gun before he got in the car, He said, " I'm not walking around out here unarmed." We took him to his buddies. I don't know what he was scared of, after I shot my ducks I unloaded my gun because I was finished and walked 40 minutes back to the truck in the dusky dark evening woods.

I also saw two deer, one a doe was 20 yards from me, jumped up and trotted off to about 40 yards and went back to feeding. I watched awhile and started walking, flushing her and one I could not identify across the trail in front of me about 50 yards away.

Ducks...

The ladies my mom go to church with think I am showing to many belly buttons on here. I think the one they are mainly getting tired of is mine.

Hope they don't mind all the catfish pictures. As Mary once pointed out during a lake trip when she was four years old, "These fish have butts!"

So I guess I'll do dead animals for awhile. Morgan shot these two wood ducks yesterday. He hunted about 15 minutes, got these and headed home.

If I get off early enough from work today, I'm headed to the woods.

On This Day in History...

Rose and Juan were married. Happy anniversary!

Check out the pictures of the good time we had on Nov. 22, 2003.
http://www.pbase.com/wallace_6/wallace_photos

These Guys Look Nervous...

Took this shot in the parking lot of a restaurant in Arkansas last weekend.

Fish on...

It's that great time of the year when the national costume of east Texas is camos and rubber boots. You gotta love it, especially when the fish bit like they did today.

We went out and floated the noodles hoping for big fish feeding up for a cold winter in the shallows, but nothing on the noodles. All 21 of these blues and channel cats were caught on rod and reel.




Cathy takes big fish honors with this 2.5# blue.

Hey kids, how about some fish for Christmas dinner? We have a good stock in the freezer.

TKD in Little Rock....

Back from Master Anderson's tournament in Little Rock yesterday and it was a good trip for me and Mary. She took first in forms and sparring and I took second in forms and sparring. Master Anderson is really a great guy, but it was easily one of the smallest tournament I have been to.

Here I am moving so fast I am just a blur to the camera.

We each only had three people in our rings so it was basically sort out who got what. I thought I did good because my ring was me a second degree and a 4th and 5th degree. I beat the 5th degree sparring but lost two the fourth degree who I think badly pulled or tore a ham string on his final kick that got the point to beat me. My judges were two Masters and one Master cadidate, so it was the most esteemed panel I have ever had.

That's me in the fore ground. Blur foot Wallace

Speaking of Wallaces here is a guy I met from Mississippi, Wallace Milam. 78 years old. Hope I am still at it at this age. He did admit to having a little trouble remembering his form sometimes, but the exercise is what he likes.

More RenFest...

So you may be getting tired of this stuff, but I really had a bunch of good pictures, so many that I have trouble deciding which to use.

Here is a little crowd participation, these performers suck you in, get you involved. Here we were supplied with percussion by a group playing old English tunes and we jammed.

Scotsmen with bagpipes and drums. A group called Titantric, I bought one of their cds and it is quite modern compared to the traditional thing they were doing here. The cd had hip hop beats, spoken word poetry all accompnied by bag pipes. I liked it.









This group had a hybrid Greek/Irish sound.
Girl with the guitar was also a heck of a fiddler.

Couple of guys from the same group.

Cathy with son in law Juan.

Making Money at Last...

It's tough making money on the Internet. Everyone is trying to cash in so there is lots of competition. Lot of imitators. And it cost a lot to operate here. Slim profit margins and all.

That's why you have to really take advantage of those Grandfathers with new grand children, first time parents etc...

Course if your head gets cut off in the picture I give a discount.

Gypsy Music at RenFest...

You may have guessed by now that music from the east and belly dancing are minor hobbies around here. Hanging around belly dancing has always been a hobby going back to the days when those guys from Doches moved to Austin formed a band and came back and played bringing with them a belly dancing troupe, The Thundalations. I can remember that name but I can't remember the bands name, that was 20 odd years ago. In fact I can't remember the name of the group pictured here and this was last week.Never fear, I did the middle age guy thing and bought their DVD. If I can find it I'll know the name.

These guys were Russian gypsies.

Gypsy fiddle.

Lots of drumming.

Those belt things they wear, some call them koochie. I bought one at the fest, it's Afghan, made from old coins, chrome hub caps, any metal that would melt. Maybe I'll wear it at my next gig.

They say...

They say I rode an elephant one time before. I couldn't remember so I rode one again. With my wife. And some kid I did not know. We wanted to ride it just us two, maybe do some of that crazy stuff we do when we both get on the ski tube behind the boat in the hot summer time, but no, they said the elephant had to be loaded.

Wait a minute, I am riding a loaded elephant? Reminds me of a joke. What's the difference between a place you get a drink and an elephant poot? The place you get a drink is a barroom. An elephant poot goes ba-roooooom.

Any way people ask me stuff all the time. Stuff like why I wouldn't remember riding an elephant. Stuff like when I stayed underwater two days what those bubbles were. They ask me when I went on that space walk how long my hose was and what I was carrying in that sack. Most of all though they ask about the big white dog. Where is he?

Of course I have questions too. Does this elephant make my butt look big?

Ok,one more free post and then pay like everyone else...

Grayson Koch

Born 7:52pm Nov 7

Female

9lb 8oz

22in

It's a girl...

Margaret and Kevin have a girl. Born sometime in the last 40 minutes. Name is Greyson and I hope that's spelled right. 9lb 22oz. Twenty two inches long.

This first blog post is free.

Haven't Seen This Guy in A While...

Back in the early 1970s I spent afternoons at my friend Joe's house. We hunkered down in his back bed room and listened to records on one of those primitive turntable things. It was not a stereo, but it was just fine for those old Grand Funk Railroad, Neil Diamond, ( he really did rock in those days) and Guess Who records. All that stuff was fine because some years later when my friend graduated from medical school we listened to all those records on the same turntable again at his graduation party. It was good stuff and Joe did not feel it could be topped buy buying records by some here today gone tomorrow bands.

Anyway while we were hunkered down back there with the door shut there was one little guy, Joe"s brother Matt that we paid no attention to. In fact even though Joe pops up in my life now and then as the sands of time slip away from me, I don't think I have seen his little brother since he was 3 or 4. Until this past weekend at the Renaissance Festival.

That's little Mat right there standing on that short guys shoulders. Guy must be 6'6" and his partner,Louis, they make up a juggling and comedy act called the Other Brothers must be 5'6". This was their 16th year to perform at the festival.









It was some pretty funny stuff. Good crowd participation that made for some awkward moments.












Lots of fire involved.

Lots of big guy on the little guy.

More fire. I don't know if Matt would remember me or not. Joe says I should have talked to him, but I just tossed a tip in the tip jar and went on my way with some really great pictures.

Big Family Alert:

Cathy's sister Margaret enters the hospital tonight with the delivery of her first born scheduled tomorrow. Her and husband Kevin are excited. Cathy, Pop and Geneva are all there. Hopefully there will be news and pictures tomorrow.

From the Lufkin Daily News...

I made the paper, and in a good way. You know,not page two where they have the police report and obits, but the local business news section. Our therapy staff at Woodland Heights (see the side link) was recognized during October, which is Physical Therapy month. I'm kind of lost in the dark back right, but that's ok, those are some real fine folks I work with that are up front in the light and this does not even have the occupational and speech therapist that are also part of our department pictured. They get their own month.

Interesting thing is that I have some connection to most of these folks in some other way in my life. Some of us go to the same church, some of us work out at the TKD school and some of us went to the same PTA school.

Something of note that happened to me lately is that I was nominated for employee of the year at the hospital. The folks in this picture make it real easy to do a good job at work so I count them as very important for nominating me, mentoring me and setting a great example for me to go by. I could not do it without them.

There were about 12 folks nominated for this honor, a bunch of them are nurses and since nursing staff out numbers therapy staff when it comes to votes and most of the nurses nominated were better looking than me I probably won't win. Still, I am honored to be thought of highly. I really am blessed to be able to be excited about my job.

Renaissance Festival...

We journeyed downed to the Texas Renaissance Festival Saturday for some fun yesterday. Met Rose and Juan there and got some really great pictures of all the goings on. We dressed up in costumes and it was a real great relaxing day.








Me and Cathy reprised the sultan and belly dancer costumes. I changed mine to black and worn a vest, so I refined my get up a little. I should have been suspicious, since this question was asked in the men's bathroom, but a guy asked how I got in those pants. I informed him they were a bed sheet just wrapped around. Some folks go to great expense on the costumes for this thing. We just us what we have laying around. When I related this exchange, with the guy in the bathroom, I was in trouble again from my wife. She tells me I should not talk to other guys in the men's room.



More on the costumes, as you can see Mary did not bother to dress up. She wore basically the same thing she wears to high school everyday.


More pictures this week, some great music shots and some shots of one of the performers I have not seen since he was about five years old.