No snow yet

1/19/07 Friday
Well the weatherman missed the mark this morning. No snow and no ice. There is just a steady drizzle of rain. The temperature is right at freezing, 33 degrees in Midland. They say the temp will fall to thirty degrees and that will be the high for the day. All the rain will turn to sleet and then ice and finally snow but we will see.

I am not doing bad this morning. Running at my average of 7 on the bob scale. As always hope it stays that way. I might go out and continue working in the garage. Yesterday I really enjoyed the simple task of making backs for the two cabinets and putting them on. The best part of that was using the hand plane to shave down where the backs of the shelves stuck out due to their poor construction. Love to hear the sound of the blade I had restored and made razor sharp cutting through the wood and the curly shavings it created. It was a very relaxing and stress reducing activity that works well when I am enduring a petite seizure. Allows me to just focus on one thing.

I greatly miss the large collection of antique planes that were among the “everything” that was stolen while I was in the coma. I had restored many of them to a usable condition and had been learning the old ways of woodworking. Among the things I plan on buying here is a fine saw for cutting dovetails and other forms of joinery. The cabinets and furniture I plan on building will incorporate as much of that as my resources will allow.

I washed the carpet yesterday to get Carman’s cat pee smell out. It didn’t work well, still smells. Got to go online and see what will work. Yesterday I wrote the letter to the courts regarding my ticket. Here it is. If you have any suggestions I’m open for advice.
To the Court;

Your honor, I am writing this because of the nature of my disability. I woke from a coma just before Christmas 2001. I have a traumatic brain injury that along with partial paralysis makes it difficult for me to process information when under stress. This results in me sometimes having a hard time answering questions or even speaking. While my brain doesn’t always freeze up I can never be sure so thought it advisable to communicate my position with this letter.

I was aware that my Ohio handicap tag was expired but didn’t renew it for the following reasons. I just inherited my grandmother’s farm so my wife and I are in the process of moving into this area. It didn’t make sense to me to renew it in Ohio when I knew I was leaving the state. I still hold an Ohio drivers license and have an Ohio address for the moment. We have almost finished moving and obtained Texas auto insurance January 7 of this year. The truck I was driving when the ticket was issued was registered in Texas when purchased because I knew we would be moving here. We are waiting for my next veterans disability check to get our Texas drivers licenses. Because I only receive $900 a month we have a hard time covering basic living expenses so must do this.

While I must plead guilty to having an expired handicap tag I ask the court to show leniency. We are currently unable to pay the $250.00 fine and pray that you help us find a way to resolve this matter.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Robert Westbrook Jr.

I think the judge will let me get a Texas handicap tag and then drop the case. At least I hope so but it will take time because of how long it takes to see the doctor at the VA hospital, as in two or more months. We’ll see.

Can’t think of anything else to write at the moment so I’ll post this and get moving. Have to wash my hair cause it’s itchy so I’ll start warming up a pot of water to do that with.

I just got off line. Took me almost an hour to get an E-mail off to Amy. She had sent one to me asking for our physical address in order to figure out how to get here. I answered from my bobcarver1 address and said I would send her a picture from the bobcarver2 one because I couldn’t figure out how to send pictures from the new updated beta Yahoo. I know I had included a picture of Cherie and I with the last E-mail I had sent her. Going there it quickly got confusing. There was no icon for photo’s like there was before. I went to Yahoo update and then Yahoo tutorial to figure this out. Finally get to a spot to download the program. “Finally” I thought and pushed the download button. Up pops a screen telling me my computer is not good enough to use the program and saying I needed to download Explorer 7. “I already have Explorer 7” I angrily thought. Nuts, what’s going on here. Did I somehow uninstall it? I start to download it again when it dawned on me. I am using the Mozilla Firefox browser because it uploads photos to my blog much better. In fact Explorer often refuses to do it. That’s why this won’t work. Dweeby Yahoo is a Microsoft clone so is set up not to cooperate with Mozilla. That figured out I turned off my Firefox and turned on the Explorer browser. Problem solved. That cost an hour and greatly heightened frustration.

By now the water I was heating up to wash my hair and take the stand up washcloth bath has nearly boiled away. Oh well. I’ll put some cold water in it to cool it off and get cleaned up. Can’t believe it is already 11:00. Time flies when your not having fun. Still no snow but the water is barely freezing out on the metal hand rail.

6:26 – Actually the water wasn’t freezing. Just looked like it from the window. It rained all day long and it never snowed or turned to ice. We dodged the bullet on that one. I worked out in the garage most of the day but didn’t get much done. Seemed to have a hard time figuring out what to do and how to do it. Began to slow down at maybe three and decided to quit at five because I needed to use power tools and didn’t feel it would be safe because of being slow.

I decided to expose the spot I had written my name in the concrete when the foundation of the garage was poured. Only remember one part of that event. That would be putting a sun symbol on it. Don’t remember writing my name or the actual pouring of the floor but that’s the way it is with my memories. Just have little fragments, little snapshots.

The flock of Quail were again feeding nearby so I took pictures of them. There are many who would love to shoot these birds and they are good eating but I have no interest in doing that. Love to see these guys scurrying around. They’re pretty fat, probably augmented by all the winter wheat they ate.

That is all I will write for today. Watching a movie called Tears in the Sun that is a heavy look at the ethnic cleansing that goes on in Africa. It…well I’m done writing for now.