Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time

There, in the lonely Florida scrub, I met The Wanderer. A wise bug, indeed, on the path to enlightenment and rust.

No, seriously, what a cool old tree.

Soloman's Castle in the background, The Boat in the Moat in the foreground. It was there, at that boat, where I was to prove my tough guyness.

Yeah! Tough guy. You know you know it. You know you want him. But you just don't mess with a tough guy. Or his homemade banana milkshake.

On the Hillsborough River doing, apparently, my best Jabba the Hutt impersonation. You know you know him. You know you want...... oh, nevermind.

After a short week (Tues-Thurs) I am off. Florida is warm and green and thoroughly doused with much needed rain. So, with that said, looks like I'm headed back to Massachusetts. Damn! Another week on the road. Well, bright side, may morph into a Friday road trip. Got wise and booked a Saturday morning flight home.

Up there again because we're still trying to sell that machine to TSA and still doing it, as I so undelicately put it Wednesday, with one brain tied behind our back. Other than telling you that, when it comes to my work and the equipment, you neither get to, nor want to, hear anything more.

Today's pictures are from a road trip we took a few weeks ago. I just got the pictures in. So I will share them now. Just don't want you to think I'm repeating my repeating myself.

Got a friend headed up from St. Pete tomorrow. I was gonna barbecue out and visit with him and the family. Low key. The wife, God love her, started calling in a bunch of other folks because me saying "it's just us and the Johnny FN family. No need to call a bunch of other people because it's not a neighborhood party. It's just them and us.", translated, somewhat suspiciously (as do most things) as, "Hey, why don't you go ahead and do whatever you want." So now we got burgers, dogs, hot links, satay, a Thai dish that I will not even attempt to spell, gyoza, and lumpia. Mad Jack is bringing a cooler full of Yuengling. Apparently, we're having a party. Yay us!!

From the redneck bottom of the corporate ladder, out

Ramblin' Ed

-------- More old stuff from the 80s ---------

For Reuben Walker (His Family & Friends)

There's a ragged young man
who's been lost in the shuffle
of daydreams, and nightmares, and newspaper scenes
But he knows for sure
what he wants out of dying
And all he can say is life is not what it seems

There's a woman with blue eyes
that rain every day
she knows she's wasting her whole life away
Sitting and crying,
forever it seems
for a man that she knows only lives in her dreams

Hey, Rueben, now I've gotta turn out the lights
Sure hope you're not tossing and turning all night
What crazy thoughts could have run through your head
To wake you up screaming, alone in your bed?

Rueben Walker
his family and friends
walked all night towards the chessboard's end
there an awesome silence
relentless as rain
was played on the jukebox, again and again
Ed

Wandering Child

long ago in an olden land
where lovers walked by hand in hand
and candy canes and wishing wells
were mine to be commanded

I took a journey, took a trip
on a long forgotten sailing ship
only to discover that
my mind had been expanded

It's there that I met Misery
I smiled at her and she at me
we shared a scotch and water
and I could not let her pay

She took me to her house in town
she hung me up, I laid her down
seems we were only puppets
in some left unkiltered play

She disappeared into my head
left me lying on that bed
that two had shared
but now held only one

I cried out, "Please! Don't go away
I really don't know what to say
Don't think we need our last words
to be spoken by a gun

'Cause you left me broken hearted here
all alone and feeling scared
you know, a manufactured dream
it's just a sugar coated nightmare."

Then men that are more wise than I
with cotton shirts and sullen eyes
they told me that
I did not want to stay there

(they said:)
"Take that ship back home again
you find a lover or love a friend
or pass along these words
that all have heard but few have spoken

Misery, she's a heartless bitch
she'll leave you all a nervous wreck
then just drop you on the sidewalk
like a child's toy that's been broken."

Those men were much more wise than I
So I opened up and closed my eyes
And I caught that last train leaving
for a place called coming home

And all along the railroad tracks
ex-lovers waited, holding back
the fears and things that make a town
a place called coming home

Misery, that wandering child
born of spirits running wild
spoke of candy canes
and wishing wells to be commanded

Misery, that wandering child
playful eyes and deadly wiles
touched me in my dreams, you know
my mind has been expanded.
Ed