The Ride Into the Sunset..NO..Just Going After a Newspaper

  I know I'm not the only person facing the inevitable fact that I will have to retire at some date or just work until I reach my grave. I am such a creature of habit..rising for work around 3:30 am., going through the three S's....either you know what I am talking about, or I'll just leave it to your imagination what they are. Remember, I just said a creature of habit, I always set the alarm clock, then double check it to make sure I did it right and that the music station is locked in, clear and not too loud, so not to wake the wife at those wee hours in the morning. I then wash down a handful of vitamins and try to appease my cat Sadie.

  I'll take this time to introduce you to Sadie the cat. She is going on 17 yrs, old and has suddenly turned into a lap cat. She has been a terror her whole life until the last couple of years. She needed no one, wanted no one to bother her, touch her or even enter her airspace. We have several grandchildren and all have been bitten at onetime or another. "Don't bother Sadie, she'll bite you." Next thing you know, a child comes in the room crying, holding a hand or an arm..."Sadie bite me !"  For some reason it always is my fault. Well, she has mellowed and the children, older and wiser have found new ways to pester her and are even able to pet her. SOMETIMES, she has a relapse and spirals back into her old habits, but generally life is good. Enough about the cat.

  If I'm lucky, I can get up, sneak out of the bedroom without waking the wife and even more importantly, without waking Maggie. Maggie is our Lab who thinks she is human and demands equal time with the cat. If she is sound asleep, I can get out of the room without having to take her outside. She is a chow hound and looks as if she never missed a meal and even picked up a couple extra along the way. They need fresh water, separate bowls and there are special instructions for each. The dogs one way and the cats another. I actually have to put ice in the cats bowl. Maggie gets a milk bone and often Sadie gets a wet food treat. We bitch allot about all this, but we created it. Believe me, they never forget anything or miss a trick.

   I grab a bananas and out the door I go. My wife buys bananas and I try to consume them before they get overripe and spotted. The bananas holds me over until I can get my first diet Dr. Pepper.. yes sir, no coffee, no caffeine for me...RIGHT. It is critical that I stay alert, because after all what I do is as important as rocket science...I sell chips..not computer chips, POTATO CHIPS. I guess in some really perverted sense my job is essential. All good tailgate parties depend on me. I TAKE MY JOB SERIOUSLY. Work day done, take it to the house. BORING...

  Well, I follow the same routine back at home with the animals, except this time I have to walk the dog. She really prefers I call her Maggie instead of the dog, but since she isn't here now, she'll not know. I must tell you at this point that it is important to carry little plastic bags with you as you walk to pick up the deposits of the earlier meals. It's nice how I have managed to keep this fairly clean, not R rated. I'm not sure why I worry, because I'm pretty sure no children read this and just damn lucky if an adult does. Same ole routine, day in and day out. WELL, time for bed, first coax Maggie outside to do her business and prevent possible accidents in the house and lock Sadie out of the bedroom because, just because...we can't handle  her walking on our heads and bitch meowing all night. Got to get the beauty rest so I can do it all again in the morning. BORING!!!

   You know, now that I look back at what I have just written, I need to retire and get a real life. Oh well,I  need to make a trip to the store and grab a newspaper and read the obituaries. Later........

Baseball Junkie

   Wow......I can't believe what I just witnessed. I am such a sports nut, getting excited with whatever sport happens to be in season. I must confess though, baseball is my favorite, the Texas Rangers...my team. I grew up with the Rangers as my team even though I was an Okie. I would take road trips to Arlington on the weekends so I could catch a double header. I would go by myself early Saturday morning, hole up in some Motel 6, then take in two games on Saturday and usually an early afternoon game on Sunday and then hit the road back to Oklahoma.

    Then as a adult, I worked for the Texas Rangers as a part time gig,at the old Ballpark in Arlington. I would have done the job for free and thought of it as a way to get a free season ticket. I worked my real job, getting up and starting at 3:00 am and then finishing the day off around 10:00 pm at the ballpark. The jobs at the park had lots of perks...meeting the players...lots of autographed balls and  getting to watch  baseball.

    The era of ball during the early years was not very good fundemental ball. We lost more than we won, but we had our players and managers that always kept it interesting. There was the great Billy Martin, manager at the time who was a great player in his own rite with the New York Yankees. He was fired..hired..fired and hired several times by the same team, the YANKEES. His legacy, besides being a great player and manager was his firey temper and disposition. He was a brawler, heavy drinker and a much publicized womanizer, but when the lights came on he was The Competitor.

      Several years later, we were fortunate enough to have the living legend Nolan Ryan as a pitcher for our team. Yes you are right, the same Nolan Ryan that is President of the Texas Rangers now. In Nolan's prime, you could be sitting in the upper deck in the old ballpark on days he pitched, and with each pitch he let out a grunt that echoed through out the upper deck. He was so animated and gifted that I would buy 5 or 6 tickets every game he pitched hoping for a piece of history to document my presence when he threw a NO HITTER..He left a legacy, a standard and a prototype for pitchers of this era to try to emulate.  He is THE MAN...
     Well the Texas Rangers are on the thresehold of a return to the World Series...ONE MORE WIN.. is all that it takes. I hope they can clinch tomorrow...Well this will sound cheesy, but as I sit writing this at my computer, I can't help but think that I would not have this forum to write my thoughts without the genius of the computer pioneers such as the late great Steven Jobs. Without their visions, I would be sitting at my old typewriter pecking away and wearing out a bottle of white out covering up all my errors. Also, I wouldn't be able to sit in my study wasting time playing Words With Friends with my daughters and wife on my I-phone. Thanks Apple and I can hardly wait to see what new gizmo comes out next. Thanks....R.I.P....

THANKS 2MARA.....

This is just a random post, written in appreciation for all my daughter Tomara Armstrong has done in order to make it easy for my wife Pat and I to have a forum to try our hands at writing. We have admired her writing skill and enthusiasm for so long and the desire has rubbed off on us. The name Paper and Plastic is a reference to the lame line the clerks in supermarkets use when asking customers how they want their groceries bagged. I was in the food services for 20 yrs. plus and have several tales in me, probably really exaggerated and very loosely told  at that. They should be entertaining and I will protect the identity of the guilty parties within. Tales to come.....Thanks again TOMARA......

Bambi Lives

  The weekend was rapidly drawing close and we had made the decision to go camping  for the weekend. Usually we make reservations early in the week to secure a good spot. The importance of the early reservation is to get the great spot with a little character,but basically SHADE.. So you think LOCATION..

  To save time, the night before we leave I usually hook-up the trailer and make the preparations including loading supplies and all the time consuming things that are necessary before leaving. I then bring my work truck home and after finishing work on Friday, we swiftly depart. Man after this extremely hot summer, we are so ready to get out of town.

  We have through a series of trial and error determined our favorite places to camp. We are nature lovers and enjoy the serene stillness of the lake. Even more we enjoy the wildlife, to be exact....we love the wild deer. You approach the entrance to the park and the attendants have feed out for the deer and they are grazing  without fear as huge rigs roll by the gates.

   We park, unhook our Airstream...put out our easy chairs..roll out our outside carpet over the crushed granite and just kicked back. The thought of an adult beverage crosses my mind, only to discover the only thing I forgot to pack was our new favorite beverage..DAILY'S. Just when you think you've tried everything..some new product comes out and you decide it is the end all. Well. dammit, I'll just stick to Dr. Pepper and water I guess.

    As dusk starts to fall, the deer start to emerge from the wooded area looking for food. You can literally just shake the deer corn and they must have such good hearing that they come running. I mean they are so many of them, small fawns, even a few bucks with small racks. It's such a gratuitous experience to see them practically in your lap and we just knew if we had a couple of more days we would have them eating out of our hands. It's times like these that you wish you had your grand children there to enjoy it, however a couple of our kids would probably really freak the deer out totally...I'm not mentioning any names, but their parents will know who I am talking about.

    Two or three times a day they come out of hiding and are frothing over the expectation of a good meal. We brought a 80 lb. bag of deer corn with us and left with none. We always take a ton of pictures with our tiny Fuji camera and our I-phone cameras. Being the Internet Dummies that we are, the I-phone is our choice, so we can brag on Facebook with a few photos.

   The weekend went way to fast and Sunday morning  we prepare to head home doing all our routines in reverse. We left feeling like we left the deer with their stomachs full but the enjoyment they gave us was ten fold.

My Dad's New Blog

My Dad is awesome, and he's decided--pretty recently--that he'd like to start writing. I wanted to help out by setting up this blog.

It's probably going to change a lot over the next few weeks... as he stretches his legs and gets comfortable. I look forward to seeing how things turn out.