Out of My Head

     It's amazing how fast a year goes by.  It has been over a year since my last entry.  2015 and the beginning of 2016 have brought many changes to the Hall house.  The month of May found me sitting in a restaurant in Tuscaloosa with a young man who asked to marry my daughter.  It helped that I have known David Watts since 2001 and already consider him to be like a son.  He shared his gameplan and invited Sue and I to come to Brownsville, TN, Labor Day weekend to witness the engagement.  Did I mention I had to keep it quiet until then?      Then one July morning my son asks me to go to lunch with him.  After lunch we went back to my office where he closed the door and told me of his plans to ask Callie Brown to marry him.  So after a summer of proposals and engagement parties, Sue and I began the task of wedding planning for both children.  Major change #1.      In November we made the difficult decision to put our beloved Tracker to sleep.  Our faithful Black Lab for nearly 1

  THREE YEARS AGO       Early this morning about 4 o'clock our old, black Lab, Tracker, woke us up in a frenzy which about 30 minutes later we realized was due to an impending thunderstorm.  Within 30 minutes I was sleepily putting his sedatives in a strawberry pop tart (his favorite snack).  The thunder and lightning came with a fury and he paced and panted until Sue got out of bed and got on the couch before he would lay down and let the sedatives take effect.      We had an extra long winter down south and hardly any of our usual turbulent spring weather to date, although we are expecting it for the next 3 days.  Even though it's a way of life for us here in the south, today I am particularly mindful of this month and day 3 years ago.  April 15, 2011 was the day a tornado touched down in our town of Clinton, but spared the daycare where Sue worked as she watched the approaching tornado literally lift off the ground and pass over the church with no damage except for busted

       Thanksgiving is hands down my favorite holiday.  I have wonderful memories of Thanksgivings past and enjoy celebrating old traditions and creating new ones. Yesterday I was listening to talk radio and listeners were calling in sharing their Thanksgiving disasters.  Some were just plain funny while others were a bit awkward.  Every year I can't help but reflect on a Thanksgiving when I was a kid which could probably qualify as a disaster.  The week of Thanksgiving my entire family caught the flu.  One by one we were taken down for the count and the plans for our yearly Thanksgiving dinner with our relatives out of town went down as well.  We began recovering as the big day approached with a faint glimmer of hope that we might not have to cancel our travel plans.  But alas, we were still too weak and tired to travel.   So our Thanksgiving meal was lunch at the luncheon counter at Walgreens in Pine Bluff.  At the time it wasn't what we expected, but looking back, I think it

I recently revealed part of my bucket list.  Since then I've been thinking of things I haven't done and absolutely don't want to do...ever!  So I've come up with this "opposite of a bucket list" which I'm calling my anti-bucket list.  Not sure where I'm going with this but here we go. Things I absolutely don't want to do...EVER: 1.  Sky diving 2.  Eat an oyster 3.  Cliff Diving 4.  Ultimate fighting 5.  Wrestle a bear 6.  Pick up a live snake   (I don't care how little it is or if it's not poisonous...a snake is a snake is a     snake) 7.  Run a marathon   (The only time I run is if the "Hot and Fresh Now" light is on at Krispy Kreme) 8.  Ride a camel 9.  Milk a goat 10.  Ride the Himalayan again at the fair (been there, done that, threw up) 11.  Introduce a bill in congress 12.  Take the S.A.T. 13.  Get a tattoo ( unless it's a barbwire tattoo on my guns) 14.  Get something pierced ( if God had wanted me to h

     As a kid I was fascinated with science fiction and loved those old black and white movies on television that played on Saturday afternoons. The flying saucers and ray guns captured my imagination yet made me a little uneasy thinking "what if?"  But the uneasiness (is that a word?) was replaced with excitement and anticipation as I watched my favorite cartoon, the Jetsons, each week. The flying cars and moving sidewalks were cool but didn't begin to compare with George Jetson's jet pack that allowed him to fly anywhere he wanted. I dreamed of being able to fly, and had even tried many times unsuccessfully in my Superman costume. But a jetpack made sense! The 21st century couldn't come soon enough but seemed so far away. Sometime around the third grade I figured out that when the year 2000 dawned I would be an old man of 42. If jetpacks were a reality in the new millennium, it would be helpful to me since I would probably be having a hard time getting a