Long time no blog.  I made so much useless noise that I didn't see a point in it anymore.  Writing without a point is, well, a huge waste of time for everybody involved.

So, since my last real post about 2.5 months ago, I've moved to a new place in town.  Costs are split three ways, which makes it rather afforadable.  It's another duplex, but this duplex is a standalone house, not part of a complex.  The gentleman we rent from is very straightforward and takes no bullshit.  From all I can tell, he's a pretty good guy.

The only other major event was recently getting diagnosed with arthritis and possibly Ollier's Disease, which have come about because I don't have a car and have to walk to many places.  Apparently, walking a few thousand miles over the last ten years will put a little wear on the joints.  As for the Ollier's Disease, it's a condition of having several benign tumors around or near joints of long bones.  The doctor found them on my ankles and right knee.  At best, I'll be making periodic checks with an orthopedic specialist to make sure they don't do anything.  At worst, one or more will turn malignant, requiring surgery to remove them.  Chances of that are low but still significant.  The disease is rare, but not particularly life threatening.

I don't regret not blogging for the last few months.  I needed to stop making so much noise and be still.  It's easier to contemplate and think that way.  I'll update as often as I feel like again, rather than force myself into daily posts.

Despite being fairly busy, last weekend was perhaps one of the more restful ones I've had.  I had last Friday off so I could attend my 10-year high school reunion in Stratford.  Because it's just plain cheaper to do so, I stayed my nights in Fritch, a good 1.5 hour drive away (as long as I don't make a stop for anything).

However, the reunion didn't start until Friday evening.  My folks came down to pick me up Thursday night.  That left a good bit of daytime to kill.  Well, the morning was killed because I slept in until around 11:00.  It was very nice.  This was followed by lunch at Subway and some time with the television.

This was the first time I got to watch the Price Is Right in many, many years, and while I knew Bob Barker had stepped down as host, I did *not* know that Drew Carey had been hosting the show.  Now, Drew Carey just doesn't have Bob Barker's style.  However, he does have the guts to do a little slamming on the prices.  At the beginning of a round, when the four people have to bid on an item, they paraded a very sleek, nice looking cell phone around, and it came with a year of service.  Now, all four people bid prices that they've seen on cell phones before, prices ranging from $300-500.  When Drew pulled out the card with the actual retail value, he spluttered and said, "Are you serious?!"  The thing cost $3500!  What the hell?!  I'll take the crappy cell phone and get an astoundingly powerful gaming box instead!

Anyways, Price Is Right.  Good fun!  Watched some more TV, then my stepmother and I embarked on a time-honored ritual that usually takes place every time I visit: the bowling match.  Not too long back, a new bowling alley/gaming center/bar and grill was built in Borger, and it's every bit as good as Western Bowl in Amarillo (though with fewer lanes, but c'mon, it's Borger).  It's also much closer.  The first game we both did terribly on.  The first two frames were nothing but gutter balls.  We haven't played in a while, so we needed a good practice game to get us on our feet again.  I managed to win that one because I got lucky at the end with a double on the 8th and 9th frames.  After that, my stepmother won the next two games by about thirty points.  I think I broke 100 on the third game.

Once we finished with that, it was about time for me to take off.  So we head back to Fritch, unload the bowling stuff (we each have our own ball and shoes), and I prepare to take off.  I have my iPod, I have one of those devices that pumps it through the radio, I have drink, I have the other necessary items for traveling, it's time to go.  The drive was uneventful except for a stop at the Wal-Mart in Dumas to withdraw money from my bank so I can pay for my share of the activities.

Stratford is a small town located in the northernmost part of the panhandle of Texas.  It's located basically on the intersection of U.S. 54 and U.S. 287 and also at the intersection of two major railroad lines.  My family moved there at the end of spring break in 1997, after a 2.5 month stay in Dumas that ended as a result of bad landlords.  Before then, we lived in Carlsbad, NM, for nearly eight years.  To say that Stratford was a change is to make gross understatement.  I went from a class of a few hundred to a class of 41. (I know I said 42, but it was disputed at the reunion, and I went back and counted.  It's 41.)  It was probably the best thing to happen to me before I left home for college.

However, my family moved from Stratford to Borger in May 2000.  I had only been through once before in the summer of 2004 on the way back from Spence's wedding in Wyoming, and a few things had changed then.  Unlike my brother, I haven't made periodic trips to Stratford to see what's going on and see how people were doing.  I had lived in my own world in Plainview.  It was kinda nerve wracking to suddenly jump back into the past and make contact with these people again.

But it didn't turn out so bad.  However, I was one of the first people in my class to show up at the hamburger dinner Friday evening, and that ended up a good thing on my part because while the organizers of the event (which included all the classes having a reunion that weekend) thought of how to serve a few hundred hamburgers, they didn't think of efficiency, or even getting enough head start so they didn't run out of hamburgers halfway through and have to have people wait in line while they hurriedly cooked more.  Some folks were standing in line for an hour.  I did get to see a few faces there, but as the crowd grew, so did my desire to get out.  After all, I still don't do crowds well.

There was a get together at a classmate's folks' house.  It was just for our class, and that was much more pleasant.  It took place in a beautiful back yard, and the night was clear and beautiful.  I got to catch up with several folk who I had wanted to see again, enjoyed a few beers (which appeared to have been anomaly, because Chris never drank in high school (the fools, little do they know!)), and got to see several little ones running around.  It's interesting to see the party still in some of them, and interesting still that the party was tempered with the maturity that only parenting can do.

Yes, I was asked about my wife and kids.  I wish now I had thought up some sort of BS story about the nonexistant bunch.  Somebody even asked me if I had a girlfriend and kids.  That would've made for another great BS story.

Towards the end of the night, there was a spectacular explosion in the other side of town.  Apparently, an older woman crashed into the lumber yard near the general store.  She made it out that ok with some scratches, but you don't know that when you're not near the source of the crash.  We were only in the dark for five minutes, however.  This is Stratford, after all, and by the time somebody called for information, the news was all over town.

I kinda like the semi-anonymity in Plainview.  If somebody dies next door, I probably won't know about it until three weeks later.

And thus was Friday evening.  I drove back not long afterwards and crashed in Fritch.