Monsters[2010]

Six years after Earth has suffered an alien invasion a cynical journalist agrees to escort a shaken American tourist through an infected zone in Mexico to the safety of the US border.



Okay, time for the crazy album cover:

Head and the youngest went to visit her parents at her brothers house. Her brothers live north. Yes, brothers.  One is a meth head, the other is VP of the largest liquor distributor in America. Guess which one the parents are visiting?  That leaves the oldest and me to hold down the fort.  I put the cornbread stuffing together.  He washed dishes.  He has to go work tonight.  I picked up a bag of burgers and we watched the Spurs vs. the Celtics.  Then he went to shower, I came to The Tower and started this movie.  Work was busy today.  I'm a little bushed.  Ready to start a long weekend. Ready to chill like an Eskimo.

I"ll post some pictures of our Thanksgiving in 2002. I don't know abut you, but it doesn't seem that long ago to me. bu then, I still feel like I'm twelve.  Let me start your education about the history of the Machens.  Head got pregnant in College Station.  I wasn't through with the degree, but I was close.  At least I thought I was.  So, when she got preggers, she was managing two apartment complexes and she was immediately terminated.  She had to go home to Amarillo to have the baby.  Which wasn't the worst thing in the world because both our parents lived there.  I lived in the lab while I finished the degree.  Pearl, remember her, the head secretary, let me have a room at her place for awhile.  I also got a job at the same Department of Defense Veterinary Lab where Eric and Monica worked at.  The officers who had been through public health were happy to hire us to work at Ft. Sam Houston. I got a job there. I had a hard time finishing the degree an kept putting off the job until I had to leave.  The degree wasn't a requirement.  I finished it up while I was at the lab.

Any who, Head's sister moved to San Antonio at the same time. We actually lived with them when we first came to town.  We got our own place, I worked at the lab for five, maybe seven years.  I got a job running the lab at the Water System. San Antonio Water System, SAWS. I was a big shot there for another five, maybe seven years.  They laid off a quarter of the management and out I went. A story for another day.  While at SAWS we bought a house out in the Hill Country, in North San Antonio.  We were five minutes from Six Flags in one direction, Sea World in the other.  We alternated season passes between them.  During this time, my parents bought fifty acres in a farm town, Devine, south of San Antonio.  It was close to the waste water plant where the SAWS lab was.  Those were great times.

When I got laid off, with a great severance package, I started working for myself.  Nothing really took off but a local lab hired me and I ran it for a couple of years.  then I went back out on my own.  Head was the youth director at the church and selling real estate.  We were doing pretty good. I got into the mold business and consulting for labs.  When Katrina hit, I was hired as a consultant by the EPA to work at the command center. First in Dallas then they moved me to New Orleans. NOLA.  I worked there for six months, it was a trip. Met some guys, the guys who decontaminated the buildings for anthrax, and they wanted to try it with mold and I was a mold God.  They hired me as a consult and and I worked for them for two years.  Then we moved back to San Antonio for six months, nothing really took off and I got this job offer at the Forensics lab here in Arlington.  We have been here for five years.  These pictures, in 2002, where in our house in the Hill Country, in a town called Helotes.  It means corn in Mexican.

This is my mom, my niece  and my sister in law.  Head's sister has tow kids, a boy and a girl.  They are in between my boys.  It is my oldest  then my niece  then my youngest, they my nephew, in that order.

My niece.

 

My oldest in front of the house...

...playing football with my dad and brother in law.

There is my nephew on the left.

There's Head.  Notice the picture behind her. She had a family friend, a weekend artist like myself, only better, paint a picture of my quarter horse mare. I called her Big Girl.  Never could ride her much.  She put my Dad in the hospital one night and put me in the dirt every time I got on her. My shoulder is still fucked up, but every good cowboy has some wear and tear. Damn she threw a pretty colt.

Thanksgiving pies.

Here's the turkey and ham.

And all the other sides.

I told you I like to cook and I did all this by myself.  I do it all the time.  Everyone gets in my way.   If you really want to help, clean up when I'm finished.

The adults ate in the dining room and the kids in the kitchen.

Always a game afterward.

And the kids played outside.

Here are some more pics about the same time.

Here is my youngest out at my parent's house, at the property.

Lots of farm dogs came and went.

This is the introduction so I can go back and expand on different times and you'll kind of know what hte fuck I'm talking about.

Today's Tao Chapter 27:

A good traveler follows old paths.
A good speaker needs no dictionary.
A good actuary needs no calculator.

A good separation will not require locked doors to maintain it.
A good union will not require ropes or knots to maintain it.

These are the lessons of the sage,
who teaches all,
rejecting no one.

Teacher and student
are like craftsman and material:
One without the other is incomplete.

This is the key to wisdom .

Okay, this is about getting along with other people.  I think people suck.  Main reason I wouldn't be good at your job.  Too much of it is about the owners and their blah blah blah.
A good person likes every one, and if you don't you end up confused.  That would explain a lot.  I just have no use for most people. But I'm going to try.  Not that I haven't but I'm going to keep trying.