I should be used to the MSM reporting--but I still always get PO'd. I saw earlier today on FOX that there was a pretty decent turnout protesting. But on ABC nightly news the headline was that one protester spit and there were racial and homophobic slurs against congress men--t they put on a clip to show these slurs--which amusingly did not show anything.
It has been suggested that the MSM, Obama, and I guess Congress are so out of touch they don't realize how angry Americans are--and it is not the kind of anger that is just going to disappear.
But actually they do see it, and in their arrogance don't care. The little people will get over it. while the adults courageously take care of business.
But seriously, by all that is right and honorable, we should be doing more than slurring and spitting at politicians. It is not an exaggeration at all to say that we are more oppressed and less free than were the colonists who took up arms against the British Empire.
If those revolutionaries could see what is going with us who know better(and that includes myself) they would be disgusted.
Even though we know better our efforts are pitiful and willingness to sacrifice comfort and safety nonexistent. We are really not worthy to carry on the flame of the Revolution--and are getting the type of government we deserve.
Becky Chandler, Facebook, March 21, 2010
and
"Let me remind you this [Americans allegedly dying because of lack of universal health care] has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you're going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people."
Congressman John Dingell, March 23rd, 2010 - discussing why Congress delayed the implementation of the individual health insurance purchase mandate embedded in H.R. 3590 until the year 2014.
But one has to wonder whether Congressman Dingell's legislation will in fact do what it was intended to do. Two weeks ago, the Wizard learned that there was going to be a last minute rally in Washington to oppose the health care bill. Upon learning about this, I volunteered to pay $1,200 for the flight of two of my friends (who subsequently made the news) to go to Washington to join the mob, and watch as Nancy Pelosi - all smiles - paraded her big gavel as she waltzed her way to the Capitol to continue - but not finish - the grand project of all Americans having to have health insurance. I stayed at home during the weekend, cut myself in several places when I fell while running a workout, and built some bookshelves for my study room to hold all the tomes I've accumulated over the years.
Yet, when I read what Ms. Chandler wrote, she struck the Wizard with words that are harder than steel. Charles Krauthammer went on television and said that Mr. Obama's health care bill will not be repealed. Why? One very good reason is that what the "Progressives" did during the sausage grinding was ugly (and possibly unconstitutional), but they were very smart. They made sure that the old folks would get all of their pills paid for right away, and that they would not be left with any donut holes, unlike that evil Mr. Bush did to them. If an attempt to repeal the bill is tried, the Democrats will tell the old folks that those evil freedom types are trying to take their Medicare from them. Progressives can get away with government rationing, but woe be to liberty and freedom types if we were to do the same. Yet, even some liberal bloggers are writing that H.R. 3590 is a bad piece of legislation, and list plenty of reasons why that's the case.
The politics of repeal are easy to understand. As long as Mr. Obama sits in the White House, the mathematics of getting a coalition together to repeal are well nigh impossible. That will have to wait until 2013. Meanwhile either lawsuits will have to commence, but more intriguing is the idea that the States should call a convention to offer and ratify amendments to the United States constitution to curb Congressional power. The state legislative races will be just as important as federal ones this November, but judging from Governor Perry's reaction to the health care bill, I doubt he will have the courage to call for a convention of the states. Governor Perry wants to sit in the White House.
And so it was that my puny efforts to defend liberty were, I suppose, not entirely for naught. I rarely watch television anymore and did not watch television on that Sunday night, but rather I took a walk to the grocery store to do my weekly shopping. It was sunny out, but cold and blustery. It was busy in the store, but there was no sign amongst the hundreds of people whom I saw that a momentous decision was being made by their federal government, something that would affect their entire lives. No shouting, no picketing in front of the store. Nothing. Just a traffic jam on Westheimer and lots of people going about their daily lives. It was as though it was just another day and that nothing had ever happened. One of the subtle ideas of the Founders was that government would be far away and out of sight. Only those who had interests, or had the interest and the fire, would care to travel and contest the issues of the day. It worked once again.
It occurred to me that if I really were to have the guts to defend liberty, I should have gone to Washington with a gun, as Becky stated. I did not. None of us did, despite baitings of our opponents and of politicians. We hold ourselves in and resolve to fight against this breathtaking assault on our liberties peacefully. We receive encouragement from sympathizers in Britain, stating that Americans must fight back, and we will. One thing that this issue has raised, is the reawakening of a titan, that of ordinary Americans starting to ask questions all over again about the meaning of the United States and its Constitution.
I have something to say about the issue of people raising objections to ordinary Americans shouting obscenities at their elected officials. An elderly black woman whom I met through the Metro Rail issue did just that to Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee back in late 2007. When she found out in that Metro had changed their rail plans to run a rail line down her street, she called up Mrs. Jackson Lee and let her have it - full bore, with guns a blazing - the only way that a Gospel filled, fiery old black woman could. The result was that Mrs. Jackson Lee dropped everything she was doing to race back to Houston, where she proceeded to call an emergency meeting with Metro brass and the community over the issue. That Saturday, I watched from the back row of an auditorium, the only white boy in an auditorium room filled with black people, as Mrs. Jackson Lee's constituents slugged it out full bore with her and Metro's brass for 4 hours over light rail. It was a night to remember.
If the passion is high enough, public officials should be sworn at. After all, public officials are in no position to be lecturing Americans about swearing.
Auto insurance verses health insurance
Many supporters of the health care bill, in speaking of its favor, have tried to raise the point that Americans are required by governments to purchase insurance for their automobile. They also have raised the issue that Congress has required that automobile makers require that Americans purchase cars with safety belts. So what's the difference between that and Americans being told they must buy health insurance? Aren't you pesky Tea Baggers a little late - like 75 years too late - to the show? We abuse the Constitution every day, so what else is new? This is the way things have been for a long time!
Well maybe, but just because Washington has been trashing the Constitution and doing business as usual since the New Deal doesn't make it right. People who make these arguments are missing some very important points. Arguing that people are compelled to buy car insurance by governments overlooks the simple observation that Americans are not compelled by law, as a matter of being a citizen of the United States, to buy cars. So if you happen to be like my downstairs neighbor, an old lady who does not work, does not have a car, and walks around to do her needed tasks, the mandate to purchase auto insurance does not apply to her.
The mandate to purchase auto insurance comes from State governments, following in the tradition that doing something like this was not an enumerated power given to Congress, and that State governments possess what are called police powers. Generally, police powers are understood where governments can act to protect the health, safety, and morals of the populace. In the case of owning and operating a car, it quickly became clear some 100 years ago that operating an automobile had many ramifications. A driver had marvelous new found mobility, freedoms, and power at his or her disposal, but they could also evade law enforcement or aid and abet illegal activities. Drivers also had it within their power to destroy the property of others with ease, and could take their own lives or the lives of others.
Clearly it was within the public interest to come to some kind of remedy to handle this matter. Therefore, State governments used their police powers to require that would be drivers pass a driving test, require them to submit to safety inspections, and they required that drivers carry insurance as a way to compensate others in the event that a driver were to cause harm to the life and property of oneself or others, but would otherwise not be able to pay. State governments also consider driving to be a privilege, and as such those privileges can be granted or taken away from you.
It has also been pointed out that the governments required auto companies to make cars come equipped with safety belts as a feature of a car. As the wikipedia entry notes, however, safety belt legislation, including requiring someone to wear a safety belt while driving, is a state matter, consistent with the idea of States wielding police powers, in this case that being of safety. But once again and more importantly, this is a separate idea from requiring someone to buy something.
Americans really need to consider very carefully the full ramifications of the claim that Congress has it within its power to compel Americans to buy something. Already, talk has been floated of requiring Americans to use their 401-k monies to buy U.S. Treasuries, and putting Americans on Social Security. Great. So all the money I've saved through my 401-k the past 15 years, and which I could give to my heirs, would be swiped from me and I would then be wholly dependent on government in my old age. If you are someone who still agrees with the idea that Congress can require Americans to buy health insurance, then what happens if you are told you must by a car or a house, all of course in the name of the common good? Even the Washington Post points out that the legislation raises non-trivial issues of federal authority over individuals, and the ideology that the common good somehow always trumps individual rights is not compatible with our deepest beliefs as expressed by our founders.
Misplaced priorities
David Brooks wrote a very interesting column after H.R. 3590 passed where he said
The Democratic Party, as it revealed of itself over the past year, does not seem to be up to that coming challenge [of cutting federal deficit spending] (neither is the Republican Party). This country is in the position of a free-spending family careening toward bankruptcy that at the last moment announced that it was giving a gigantic new gift to charity. You admire the act of generosity, but you wish they had sold a few of the Mercedes to pay for it.
Many people have questioned the Tea Party movement in one way or another. We've been labeled racists, astroturf (thanks Nancy, I'll take back my $1,200 then), amongst other things. Little do such people know that some of my friends have had to yell at social conservatives, upon hearing that gay people who wanted to be a part of the Tea Party movement were left feeling unwelcome. As Mr. Boggs stated,
We have to decide as a Party what concerns us more. The fact that the country is being driven into socialism, or who someone sleeps with.
And so it was with Obama Care. I find it breathtaking that Congress spent a year furiously battling over this issue when we have a yawning federal deficit that threatens to put us into taxation rates of 40-50 percent of all our incomes, hyperinflation, or debt repudiation. Nor have we dealt in any meaningful way with the Baby Boomer Social Security and Medicare tsunami, the first laps of water were felt this past year. Many people want job creation to be the first order of business, but job creation is very hard when you're so busy affecting change that people don't quite know what's going to happen next. But of course, if you really want to affect change, you follow the advice of Vladimir Lenin, who wrote
The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.
Will Americans finally owe up to the mess we have created since the time of the New Deal, or will we have another civil war amongst ourselves with 100 different groups pitted against each other? I don't know. All I know is that this past week, I've been up every night, far into the night, wondering about the future. I've started to read the Federalist Papers and Hayek's Road to Serfdom. We have set for ourselves, in the name of alleviating suffering, policies that encourage us to live for today and not think about tomorrow because tomorrow is not my problem - we'll leave the problem of the future to our children and anyway in the long run we're all dead. The problem with that train of thought is that there's no such thing as a free lunch, and that tomorrow has now come upon us.
I foresaw that this would happen 20 years ago, but even though I knew it would happen, it still hit me like a ton of bricks when it did happen. All I can say is that I haven't felt this afraid for my country since I grew up with the nuclear nightmare, but this time the problem is a cancer that comes from within. Our country is being ripped apart by two parties that are daring each other by walking an incredible high wire act, all while playing with fire. America, it's time to grow up.
I'm going to be up late tonight. After reading some work related stuff, I'm writing a response to Harris County Metro's FEIS for the University rail line. This is the fourth public reply comment I've made on Metro's rail lines. In previous public comments, I've submitted photos to Metro, the FTA, and to members of Congress, that show all the "for lease" signs and boarded up property along Main Street that contradict economic development claims, I've shown empty streets near Crosstimbers and ridden Metro buses to dispute their travel savings time claims, I've predicted cost escalations, have shown evidence that Metro's rosy future cash analysis predictions are garbage (why would Metro Chairman David Wolff otherwise be writing editorials in the Houston Chronicle demanding that Metro's sales tax territorial jurisdiction be expanded?), and have asked whether all we are doing is simply turning bus riders into rail riders, just to name a few things. But every time, Metro gets their FEIS approved, as they simply brush aside any public criticisms with simple one line replies, as they waltz their merry way towards bagging federal grants.
Why bother? The NEPA / EIS process, like nearly everything else the federal government does, is full of nothing but bullshit.
Wizard
The past 15 months or so have not been very kind to the Wizard. A number of setbacks on the personal front, not to mention not seeing things go the way I'd like them to go on the political front, culminating in the possible passage of a major new expansion in federal power via President Obama's health care bill, all don't add up to much very good news.
And so it was that the Wizard was somewhat glad to close the book on the end of the first decade of the 21st century, discerning that maybe I'm not doing the best I can with my own life, when I learned of more awful tidings that came from the winds. I received word from a sister stating that my mother's one remaining sister suffered either a massive stroke or a heart attack. The word has it that she was walking back to her car from a night out with her friends (she had not been drinking, or otherwise been under drugs or medication). The story I've been told is that on the way back to the car, she stopped in mid stride and said, "I can't breathe!" She then collapsed to the ground on the edge of winter.
A fire station was several blocks away and help was summoned. She was brought back to life, but she had been without oxygen for many minutes. I received a call from my sister saying, amongst many things, that people are stopping by to say their last farewells and pay their respects. And so it is that the Wizard will be leaving tomorrow on a mighty drive to a far away place to see my mother's sister as she passes on.
I told my mother that her sister's meeting with the inevitable happened 27 years to the day when her own mother passed away, of fluid build up in her lungs. My mother said to me that my sister had noted this also. How strange the fates that take us.
And yet, my aunt's passing strikes me far harder than the death of my grandmother so many years ago. I did mourn all those years ago, but I've become aware that it is likely that I have fewer years left in this world than I have already lived. Yet, what have I done? Where has the time gone? What am I to do with the time I have left? How can I, in my own small way, make the world a better place than it was when I first was brought into it?
I went out on a four mile run along Westheimer the evening I heard the news. I will always remember how the sun was setting in the west as I ran home. Somehow, as I ran, it seemed to me that all the crap I deal with in my own life didn't seem to matter all that much. Indeed, it is only now, as I reach my middle age, that I am beginning to understand the true meaning of the words, may you rest in peace, because it is only at this time of my life that I've come to see that our souls never really will have true peace as long as we are of this world. I wonder - is that the origin of religion, of faith, or of the belief in God?
My aunt did not have the easiest of lives. My mother and her sisters grew up during the Depression and WWII on a family farm in a small town in southwestern Wisconsin. My grandparents eventually took regular jobs, but my aunt followed my mother to the bright lights and to the big city. Women in those days did not have all the opportunities that they do today, and she did mostly odd jobs to make do. She met her first husband, whom I barely remember, but that was not to be. However, she grew wiser and better at living as she became older and met a second man who was to be with her until he passed away five years ago.
Her second husband, I believe, was the best thing that ever happened to her. He worked in the cattle yards and slaughter houses, then drove a bus, ferrying handicapped children until he was felled by a stroke well into his 70's. They brought stability into each others' lives and they raised a foster daughter, the child of some former employers of hers, both of whom had passed onwards when the girl was small.
My aunt was wonderful at giving me Christmas clothes that I didn't want to wear, but once again she got better as she got older. I still have some sweaters she gave me from 20 years ago. They never went out of style and are nice and warm. We are supposed to go to church on Christmas Day. I think I will wear one as a tribute to her.
And so her life was. I now go to help clear what's left of her life, but the biggest thing I want to take with me are some photos or memories she may have left behind. I am sad, but in a way it was better for me that my aunt passed on before my parents did. I now have a warning of what I will feel like when my own parents leave this world forever and I know it will not be easy.
So did my aunt live a full life, and try in her own small way to make the world a better place? The answer in my own mind, no doubt, is yes she did. May she rest in peace.
Wizard
I caught this post via the Houston Chronicle from Keep Houston Houston entitled A funny thing about transit. It was a most interesting post coming from Keep Houston Houston.
The Wizard has noted before that I can in fact reach my downtown job from where I live via Metro bus. It's just that it would add 1 hour of time to my round trip commute to do so and I've decided that it's not worth my time to put up with a 1 hour and 45 minute round trip work commute every day.
I subscribe to the Journal of Urban Economics, ergo I know there have been plenty of studies that have been done to estimate what the value of people's time is on transit trips. The learned literature strongly suggests that the in time spent in transit is valued at some 40-50 percent of their per hour wage rates, while time spent in accessing and waiting for transit vehicles is perceived at a considerably higher rate.
Another part of the transportation mobility equation for me is that I have social interests that would be a bit hard to satisfy via transit, but not by my car. My social interests are almost all located between my work place and my home, ergo I don't have to drive much in order to live what for me is a reasonably satisfying life. Now if I were to get married that would be another story.
So, KHH has much of it right, but not all of it. Transit does limit your mobility to the extent that you only get to go where Metro goes, so it alters your lifestyle in that extra dimension. It sucks up your time and it is not 24x7. Transit also limits at least some of your shopping opportunities vis-a-vis a car because it's very difficult to haul that 52 inch plasma screen TV onto a Metro Bus or rail car. Allowing jitney competition would aid in transit mobility, but it's still impossible to understand why 30 miles of rail lines have to be built when Metro already has a bus network that runs into the thousands of miles, and where we could achieve close to the same thing rail would offer via adding dedicated bus lanes to major thoroughfares which would remove much of the speed and reliability problem that transit vehicles have to contend with.
Always remember, it's added mobility, not mobility substitution that we're after. As for why the votes for Metro Solutions came from the inner city and not the suburbs, maybe that has more to do with the idea that folks in the inner city might be able to reach the Medical Center via a $1.5 billion train that would run from the Hillcroft transit center, but a suburbanite will not be able to take a train that runs from Katy to Kingwood.
Wizard
Last Wednesday evening, the Wizard spent the hours in the way he likes most - wiling the hours away with the Wednesday Knights, playing several rounds of 10-20 minute chess at a Houston area restaurant. The Wizard won one game and lost two, but due to a peculiar set of circumstances, I still took home the third place pidling trophy for my efforts.
Since the Wizard was doing something more important than watching TV or paying attention to politics Wednesday evening, the Wizard missed President Barak Obama's nationally televised address on whether the United States government should pass legislation on mandating that Americans must have universal health insurance coverage.
The reason why the Wizard didn't bother to watch the President's televised address was because he knew that he wouldn't miss much. That belief was validated when I picked up my old fashioned, fish wrapper version of the Houston Chronicle yesterday morning before I headed off to work. The front page story, carried from over the news wires, was of South Carolina Republican Joe Wilson, who cried out "You Lie!" when President Barak Obama stated that the new universal health insurance legislation would not cover or benefit illegal immigrants.
Much commentary has been inked and typed over Congressman Wilson's outburst, which he later offered an apology to the President that Mr. Obama accepted. Fairly typical of the commentary offered was by this guy, who complained about the halls of Congress no longer being a place of civility. The Chronicle editorial board spoke of the idea that there was no room for such rudeness in the debate over the future of health care and one-sixth of the American economy.
The Wizard takes a bit of a different view over Congressman Wilson's outburst. It wasn't that Mr. Wilson was rude to the President of the United States - he was. But plenty of people are rude to the President (or for that matter, just about any politician) every day in many sorts of ways. Often that rudeness towards others could be justified in some way. Sometimes we read about it in print, or we never hear about it as they may be words whispered between friends in private. To the Wizard however, it had a lot more to do with the idea that one man called another man a liar to his face in public.
Politicians do lots of stupid things, much like the rest of us. Age is no barrier to doing stupid things, thinking of stupid things to do, or for that matter not knowing how to run your own life. Back in 2001, the Wizard worked many hours on the City of Houston TABOR / Revenue Cap proposition drive. After City Secretary Anna Russell failed to verify, after 48 days, that we had 20,000 valid signatures to place the proposition drive on the November 2001 ballot, I suggested to our most prominent plaintiff in our lawsuit against the City of Houston that we get a mob of people out and drive our cars in circles around City Hall, honking our horns as we went. This gentleman, who happens to be older, much wealthier, and wiser than I was (and am) threw water on the idea. He said to me something that I never will forget. He told me that "Republicans just don't do that sort of thing."
I got the message, but it's a message worth repeating to myself. Even when something does not go your way, try to learn from it and move on. Don't try to act like a jackass.
So, fast forward eight years and what do I find Republicans doing? Well, I find that lots of people who call themselves Republicans acting just in the same way that I suggested they do eight years ago in front of City Hall. They are running around holding rallies, flash mobs, and acting like a bunch of jackasses. Those mobs and rallies are being attended by Republicans who tell me that they deserve their Social Security check because they've paid into it, or that they don't want politicians to touch Medicare because they like it. Every time they do that, they're acting like a jackass. Every time a Republican politician proposes some expensive new public welfare entitlement, they're acting like a jackass. In my view, that means that both Bush the elder and Bush the younger were a pair of jackasses. Arguably, the last politician who wasn't a jackass was Ronald Reagan.
And so it is. Hearing things like Congressman Wilson's outburst, or learning that California assemblyman Mike Duvall having to step down because he was caught on tape telling salacious stories of his romps with mistresses lobbyists, point to a political party that has been electing too many guys who turn into jackasses once they get into office, but has not been doing enough intellectual thinking, offering new ideas, alternatives, nor is it a party with members who have spine. Otherwise, the future of the Republican party will belong to the Mike Duvalls, and the Joe Wilsons of the world, and that's not a party worth paying attention to or voting for. Why? Because deep down, those guys (and they constituency they represent) are no different from the jackasses who happen to be sitting on the other side of the aisle.
Wizard
Addendum: In today's Houston Chronicle, the newspaper carries the AP wire story about President Obama now holding the bullhorn. The story states that
Keeping Americans safe, the president says, is "the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning; it's the last thing that I think about when I got to sleep at night."
Bush used to say the same thing.
That's too bad, because both men didn't swear an oath upon ascending to office to keep Americans safe. They swore an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.
Further addendum: A story just came across the wires from Politico. It wonders whether petty GOP cranks are dominating the public debate.
About a week ago, I was invited to go to Congressman Ron Paul's birthday bash, which was held yesterday (August 15th) at the San Luis Convention center along the Seawall in Galveston. At first I didn't want to go because I haven't been of the mood of late to pay attention to politics. However, I had a long week at work, but more importantly a number of events that have occurred in the past year that that have led me to reexamine many aspects of my life. I called the gentleman who had sent the original email invite if he was still going to the birthday bash, to which he said yes. He then - thoughtfully - asked me how long it had been since I had been to Galveston? I answered about 12 years. He said, it sounded to him like I needed to go and get out of town for a day or two.
It was a great idea. I really didn't give a damn about going to hear some long winded politicians get long winded about whatever it was that pissed them off and fired them up, but the prospect of walking along the beach on a hot sunny August afternoon and spending $20 to sit down and enjoy a nice plate of barbeque with some friends for a few hours really sounded like a wonderful thing to do.
And so it was. We took off about 11:30am, got stuck in traffic around Clear Lake City, but made it into Galveston around 1:15pm. The first thing I noticed was that the trees along the medians and esplanades were drab and gray. It occurred to me that the trees might be dead, maybe because of salt water that had been pushed in from the ocean from Hurricane Ike. Otherwise, Galveston seemed lively, though we noticed houses and structures here and there that had been abandoned or were still boarded up. Still, I would judge that Galveston has made a solid recovery from the devastation wrought upon it by Ike.
We had some time before some pre-dinner speakers were scheduled to speak, so we headed over to the privately held Porretto Beach, where we met up and had a nice 30-45 minute talk with Sonya Porretto, about her legal battle with the State over her family's ownership of a stretch of beach.
As we got out of my car, I immediately caught a whiff of the salty sea air, something I had not smelled in years. We walked through a neighborhood of mostly modest houses, nearly all of which were now repaired. Almost immediately, I realized why it was that people loved living near the sea. In the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, environmental attorney Jim Blackburn wrote that before people were to be allowed to rebuild so close to the coastline, they should be shown maps of the devastation and misery that occurred as a result of Ike's wrath. All I can say in response to that is that the moment I basked in the sunshine, smelled that salty air and walked through that neighborhood towards the seawall, I knew that no amount of protest or anger from Mr. Blackburn or his friends, nor would any amount of wrath from God and Mother Nature would convince some people to not want to live near the ocean.
We chatted with Ms. Porretto, as mentioned above, and I immediately resolved to try to start blogging about her story. But more to the point, listening to her made me ask myself for the 100th time why it was that I didn't become a lawyer, or at least go through law school? I've listened to this crap over and over again so many times and it makes me think that there's often no accountability anywhere to be found or had in this world. It's time that I started resolving some of these questions that have been simmering inside of me once and for all.
After our visit with Ms. Porretto, we made our way over to the convention center, where there were packed rooms listening to the invited speakers. It didn't really bother me that I could not get in or hear what they were talking about. I wandered over to the main convention room, where I met some friends and chatted about various things. Eventually the room filled up and we had our dinner. There were auctions to raise money for Ron Paul, as well as speeches from the likes of Barry Goldwater Jr. that weren't worth listening to. I mostly enjoyed being with my friends and chatting amongst ourselves about battles from the past, things we wanted to do now, or were thinking about doing in the future.
About half way through Mr. Paul's speech, I got up to go to the bathroom, but instead of going back into the conference room, I decided to sit outside on the steps of the convention center. I sat, staring into the vast expanse of the Gulf of Mexico, contemplating my life and what I would do with what remained of it. It has become far more important of late for me to be doing things like this rather than pay attention to what the talking heads and windbags are griping about today.
And so it was. I stopped by a store to pick up some drinks on the way back to Houston. When we got back to town, the gentleman I was with pointed out that I should try a burger at Stanton's sometime when I'm in that part of town. I feel like I'm catching a second wind, rediscovering that learning something new about the people you care about, your hometown, and doing things that you find are worth doing is what makes living all worthwhile.
Wizard