Leftovers and guilt trips.

Like many of us, my wife has a bad case of “doggie bag guilt”. You know, when you can’t finish your meal at the restaurant and you take the food home only to leave it in the fridge for a week (sometimes more) and the whole time knowing that you would never get around to eating it. You even knew this when you were taking the time to scoop it into the Styrofoam container, but you did it anyway.   You know damn well you will never reheat that pasta. French fries suck when you microwave them. What the hell are you going to do with just 5 nachos anyway?   Guilt. Guilt is the reason you brought that food home. […]

Texas History. The battle of Big Jim.

 A while back my dad asked me to help him move a tree.  It was getting choked out by the larger trees around it and in order for the tree to thrive, it needed to be relocated to a new spot on the Murphy ranch. Of all the things to ask me to help with-he wanted me to help him move a tree?  Moving and protecting trees isn’t exactly something my dad is known for. You see, my dad spent most of my formative years looking for standing trees, fallen trees and stacks of brush to cut up for fire wood. He didn’t just settle for cutting the trees he owned, he would go and seek out trees to cut […]

Choose to be better

I’m sitting in front of a large swimming pool watching my daughter swim; separated by a 1/2 inch piece of plexiglass. She swims from one end of the pool to the other as she practices different skills and drills shouted out by her instructors. This is how I have spent my Saturday mornings for the past few months. This is also when I have a tendency to write. I would say that my eyes lock in on my daughter 60% of the time, while the other 40% is spent looking at the screen and fixing the words that I typed without looking. Yes, most of my blogs and words that are to be put into this book were written on […]