Dudleys Diary

DORMITORY: When you rearrange the letters: DIRTY ROOM

PRESBYTERIAN: When you rearrange the letters: BEST IN PRAYER

ASTRONOMER: When you rearrange the letters: MOON STARER

DESPERATION: When you rearrange the letters: A ROPE ENDS IT

THE EYES: When you rearrange the letters: THEY SEE

GEORGE BUSH: When you rearrange the letters: HE BUGS GORE

THE MORSE CODE : When you rearrange the letters: HERE COME DOTS

SLOT MACHINES: When you rearrange the letters: CASH LOST IN ME

ANIMOSITY: When you rearrange the letters: IS NO AMITY

ELECTION RESULTS: When you rearrange the letters: LIES - LET'S RECOUNT

SNOOZE ALARMS: When you rearrange the letters: ALAS! NO MORE Z 'S

A DECIMAL POINT: When you rearrange the letters: IM A DOT IN PLACE

THE EARTHQUAKES: When you rearrange the letters: THAT QUEER SHAKE

ELEVEN PLUS TWO: When you rearrange the letters: TWELVE PLUS ONE

AND FOR THE GRAND FINALE:

MOTHER-IN-LAW: When you rearrange the letters: WOMAN HITLER

Yep! Someone with waaaaaaaaaaay too much time on their hands!

for a few hours fishing. He caught the nice large mouth bass in the above photo. Dudley was not able to go this time as he had to go have another sleep study done at the hospital. I have not been home long and as always I am glad to have that over with. Last night they tried me out on a machine with a backup rate which I have not tolerated well in the past but last night they gave me not one but two sleeping pills. I went right to sleep but woke up multiple times during the night as usual. They did not give me an supplemental oxygen last night so I woke up this morning feeling more tired than usual. The doctor will call me when he gets the results and will be ordering me a new Bipap machine. Hopefully I will be able to sleep better than I have been. I don't plan on doing much today, will watch the Rangers at 11:00 AM in a day game with Tampa Bay. The Rangers won last night but I had to miss the end of the game because of the sleep study. Dudleys wife and daughter received their pass ports in the mail yesterday. Dudleys wife's came in the regular mail yesterday afternoon. Dudleys daughters came yesterday morning special delivery. I guess she is a special case, the guy delivered hers to the door in a pouring rain storm. I hope they have better weather on their trip to Cozumel Mexico.

Dudley called the local fire department and told them he had a relic from WWII, a Japanese model 97 hand grenade that appeared to be live. I spoke to a lieutenant who said he would talk to his superiors and call me back. In a few minutes he called and said the Fire Chief will be right out. The fire chief and assistant showed up a short time later and I explained how I had come to acquire this hand grenade. The chief came in and I showed him the grenade sitting up on the top shelf of Dudleys wife's china cabinet. He took a close look at it and said it was the real deal all right. He then said he would take it outside and call the ATF to come pick it up and dispose of it. He took it outside and placed it in the street across from Dudleys house in front of the house that is vacant and for sale. The fire chief got out his cell phone and took a few pictures of the grenade sitting on the ground. I told him he could show the photos to the guys back at the fire station and tell them this is why he gets paid the big bucks. He got a laugh out of that. About twenty minutes later the ATF agent showed up. He went and looked over the grenade and then picked it up and took it to the rear of his SUV. I could not see what he did exactly but it sounded like he hit it several time with a hammer. The fire chief said he did something to the fuse on the grenade. They got here just in time as it started pouring down rain soon after they left. Now we can sleep better at night without worrying about a hand grenade blowing up and waking us. I noticed the ATF agent had snow white hair, little wonder given that he defuses and disarms bombs for a living.

the Trinity River and Frank fished for a few hours. He had a good time and got a few strikes but missed the hook set. Sometimes that happens when fishing. Dudley sat in the truck and listened to the Texas Rangers get beat up by the Devil Rays. Dudleys wife and daughter came down and Dudleys daughter went out and kayaked for a little while. Then Dudley gave her some money and sent her to the Jack In The Box for some tacos. It was a nice way to spend a few hours, Sitting in the truck eating tacos, watching the kids kayaking and fishing and listening to a baseball game on the radio.

yesterday morning. That is Frank in the center of the top photo in the red shirt. The river in the back ground actually looks pretty good. When I was growing up in the seventies, the Trinity River was really polluted. A lot of companies were polluting the river back then and had been for years. They put a stop to the industrial pollution years ago. There is still a lot of runoff of pesticides from the lawns and oil from the roadways and it is not a good idea to eat fish caught from the river. But they sure are fun to catch. Frank caught a small bass and he said when it first struck his spinner bait, he thought it was a better fish because it put a good bend in his medium weight spinning rod. I told him that river fish are stronger than those caught in ponds and lakes because they have to swim against the current their whole lives. The bass above was caught by one of the other kayak fisherman on the trip and looks to be well over three pounds. The guy said he hooked a bigger one that got off. It looks like Frank may need to make another trip down there after the golf tournament is over. There appear to be a lot of hungry bass in that river and the best thing is they don't get much fishing pressure and it is a total catch and release fishery unless someone is foolish enough to risk eating one of those bass. If anyone cares to watch the coverage of the Colonial Golf Tournament on CBS today from two until five PM central time watch for the segment on people riding bicycles and kayaking to the tournament. You may catch a glimpse of Frank on national television, how cool is that?

he was an officer and is proud of the fact that he never lost a man in his unit during the time they spent on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. His unit was not a combat unit, the Marines were handling that task, he was in charge of a radar site. They were instructed to go to the top of a mountain and install and run a radar unit. He said when they arrived on the islands there was heavy fighting going on around them as the Marines were mopping up the remaining Japanese army. Last year, Dudleys stepfather and mother sold their house and moved into a condo as a means of downsizing and cutting down on their expenses and responsibilities. They sold a lot of stuff in an estate sale and one night Dudleys son and daughter came home after being over at their house. Dudley was sitting in his recliner watching t.v. and Frank came in carrying a .30 caliber ammo box saying look at this cool ammo box that Papa Howard gave me. I looked at it and said that's cool and commented that Dudley had a .50 caliber ammo box that he kept his gun cleaning supplies in. Frank said I bet you don't have one of these, and proceeded to open the box and pick up and object and toss it to Dudley. It was a model 97 Japanese fragmentation grenade which Dudley caught and exclaimed what the HE&$!!! Dudley looked at it and saw "pin" was in place and all of the parts appeared to be intact. Dudley stated that no doubt it had been defused and Frank said he asked Papa Howard and he said he could not remember and honestly did not know. It had been sitting up in that ammo box in his attic for over fifty years in the Texas heat. Dudley took the grenade and placed it carefully up in his wife's built in china cabinet where it has been sitting ever since. If any one knows anything about these things let Dudley know what he should do with it. I hate to get rid of it because it is such a cool relic from WWII but then again, I don't want this seventy one year old grenade to go off unexpectedly.

hanging up in the breakfast bar between the kitchen and the dining room. It is called "Farewell To The Chiefs" and is a favorite of Dudleys. If you don't know, that is a 1948 Indian Chief Motocycle and the Santa Fe Super Chief somewhere along Route 66 in the Southwest United States. Dudley regrets the passing of the streamlined passenger trains of the past. That locomotive with its rounded front end is so much more visually appealing than the squared off boxy locomotives of today. Of course the motor vehicles of that era were much more visually appealing than those today as well but I guess that is what you call progress. Who knows, perhaps the record high gas prices could bring about a resurgence of passenger trains in this country. I bet you are going to see more and more people riding motorcycles in the future. Several years ago, the old Indian Motocycles were reborn and they made new modernized versions of the Indian Chief and Scout. They were awesome looking bikes and Dudley would be lying if he said he did not want one badly. By that time, Dudleys motorcycle riding days were over. Dudley keeps hoping to win the lottery, then he could afford to buy one and have it converted to a three wheeled bike as Dudley could still ride one of those. Dudley would not be able to ride a three wheeler at a high rate of speed into a curve, lean the bike over at a sharp angle and then back up as he accelerated as the bike straightened up like he used to on his two wheeled bike but he would have just as much fun I bet. At least Dudley has fond memories of riding motorcycles in the past and Dudley and wife rode a stream liner on one memorable occasion.

and her best friend Melissa. This was taken at their Soccer Banquet the other night. The girls had a fun time as usual. Melissa is going to go to Cozumel in June with Dudleys wife and daughter. Melissa's seems to be real excited about the trip on the other hand, Dudleys daughter makes a point to not show the least bit of excitement. Whey would a teenage girl act this way to her parents? It must be a common trait as I remember a commercial for a cruise line which featured a teen aged girl who cracked a smile on a fun filled cruise and the girls parents made a big deal out of it. I can guarantee you if we went on a vacation and Dudleys daughter was told she could not go, you would see some emotion at that time. I don't think I will ever understand teen aged girls so I might as well quit trying. Come to think of it, I know I will never understand grown up teen aged girls either. Wait a minute, Dudley may be on to something here. Dudleys daughter is anxiously awaiting the end of school as are all of the kids though probably not nearly as much as their teachers. Dudley has observed one thing about the local high school. It seems that as the school year begins to wind down each year, the school officials must run out of money and they frantically look for new and creative ways to secure additional funds to keep the school functioning till year end. About this time every year, they start cracking down on students who park in the school parking lot and don't have an official parking sticker prominently displayed on their windshield. The sticker costs fifteen bucks I believe and it gripes Dudleys ass that we have to buy a parking sticker. Dudleys and all of the other parents who own homes or property pay thousands of dollars in property taxes each year to support the school system. Then the school has the audacity to charge the parents to rent their kids a parking space, the same parents that paid for the damn parking lot in the first place. Another creative way the school extorts money from the parents is regarding the cell phone policy. Students are not to take their cell phones out during class which is a good rule. However, the kids are all experts at secretly using their phones during class to send text messages back and forth to their friends. Earlier in the school year, if a teacher catches a kid with a cell phone out during class they simply tell the child to put the phone up or the teacher gets the phone and holds it to the end of class and returns it to the child with a warning not to do it again. Now the school administrator has mandated that on any offense the phone is to be taken up and turned into the office. Then the student/parent is forced to pay a ransom of five dollars the first time, ten dollars the second time and fifteen dollars on the third and subsequent offenses. All of this is a cleverly disguised plan to replace money in the school budget that the school administrators foolishly overspent before the end of the school year.

A father watched his young daughter playing in the garden.

He smiled as he reflected on how sweet and pure his little girl was.

Tears formed in his eyes as he thought about her seeing the wonders.

Suddenly she just stopped and stared at the ground.

He went over to her to see what work of God had captured her attention.

He noticed she was looking at two spiders mating.

'Daddy, what are those two spiders doing?' she asked.

'They're mating,' her father replied.

'What do you call the spider on top?' she asked.

'That's a Daddy Longlegs,' her father answered.

'So, the other one is a Mommy Longlegs?' the little girl asked.

As his heart soared with the joy of such a cute and innocent question he replied 'No dear.'

'Both of them are Daddy Longlegs.'

The little girl, looking a little puzzled, thought for a moment, then took her foot and stomped them flat, saying 'Well, we're not having any of that broke back mountain shit in our yard. '

Brings a tear to your eye...doesn't it.

At Saint Mary’s Catholic Church they have a weekly husband’s Marriage Seminar.

At the session last week, the Priest asked Luigi, who wasapproaching his 50th wedding anniversary, to take a few minutes and share some insight into how he had managed to stay married to the same woman all these years.

Luigi replied to the assembled husbands, ‘Well, I’ve-a tried to treat-a her nice, spend-a the money on her, but best is that I took-a her to Italy for our 20th anniversary!’

The Priest responded, ‘Luigi, you are truly an amazing inspiration to all the husbands here!

Please tell us what you are planning for your wife foryour 50th anniversary.’

Luigi proudly replied, ‘I’m a-gonna go and get her.’

on television. It was a shootout between the Texas Rangers and the Houston Astros. The Rangers ended up winning 16 to 8. It was a great game if you are are Ranger fan like Dudley. They have a trophy of a silver cowboy boot that goes to the winning team at the end of their series in Arlington and Houston. I think the Rangers have won three out of the last four years. Dudley felt sorry for Frank who missed going to a game in the suite earlier this year so he bought a couple of tickets and a parking pass for Frank and his friend Chace to go to the ballgame tonight. The tickets are in the lower home run porch which is one of Dudleys favorite places to sit at the ballpark. Following the game, Country Artist Robert Earl Keen will be performing a concert outside the stadium. Admission is free with a ticket stub for the game. He has some good songs, Dudleys favorites are THE ROAD GOES ON FOREVER and FIVE POUND BASS. They should have a good time at the concert and the game. I hope the Rangers win again tonight. Dudleys daughter went on a weekend retreat with the youth group from our church to East Texas. She will be back home tomorrow evening. There is not much else going on here around the Dudley domicile. Am going to watch the Preakness in a little while, sure would like to see a triple crown winner this year. It has been a while since one horse has won the big three.

of the place Frank and Dudley will be spending a week in June. We can not wait to go as it is a beautiful place. We will be staying in a nice log cabin located on the shore with a view of the trophy bass lake. If we get tired of fishing on that lake, there is a second lake just down the road we will have access to fish. We will have use of a jon boat with an electric trolling motor and Frank will also be taking his new kayak. When we went four years ago, we caught a bunch of small bass and some huge bluegill. We are going to be there during a full moon so the bream fishing may be really good as they should be in shallow water spawning. There are some huge bass in these lakes and we hope to land one this time around. If we get tired of all the peace and quiet, we will probably go over to Shreveport LA one night for some good Cajun seafood and may go spend some time on one of the Riverboat Casinos. Dudley has not set foot in a casino in almost fifteen years and those slot machines are calling. Dudley is not a big gambler, I will just set a reasonable limit to spend and when I lose that amount of money, I leave. Dudley will then write it off as entertainment expense. This is the same thing Dudley does when he goes to the horse races. Come to think of it, Dudley has not been to the horse races in almost fifteen years. I told you I was not a big gambler.

It is a Motorola RAZR V3xx 3G. Dudley tried the charge his cellphone the night before last and it would not take a charge. Yesterday, Dudley tried again with a second charger and figured it had to be the cell phone as he had tried not one but two different chargers. So Dudley called his cell phone provider to see if he was eligible for a new phone to replace his Motorola SLVR which was not taking a charge. Dudley was told he was not eligible for a new phone until August when his contract expires. Dudley explained the problem with his phone not taking a charge and they told me to file a claim with the Insurance Company for replacement. They transferred me and I told them of my problem with the phone not taking a charge. They approved me for a new phone which arrived yesterday via FED EX less than 24 hours after making the call. Talk about speedy service. When Dudleys daughter got home yesterday and saw Dudleys new phone boy was she jealous. She has one just like it except Dudleys is new and improved and is a little bit bigger than hers. She helped set up my phone book and transfer my photos from the old phone. Dudley was unable to transfer his song list from his old MP3 player. He will have to start over from scratch. I have to find my Itunes play list, it is not on the home computer and must be on Franks lap top. Will have to check. When Dudleys daughter got home from school, she said she did not think anything was wrong with his old phone. She proceeded to go into her room and brought out a charger and hooked it up and his old phone took a charge. Could it be that her charger broke and she went and pulled the old switharoo with Dudleys charger? Seems a little suspect to me though she is denying knowing anything about such a scenario. How could she have known the problem was with the charger and not the phone? I hope Dudley does not get charged with Insurance Fraud. Dudley will probably end up getting a new phone in August as this phone does not appear to have a better quality camera. It is the same as the camera on his old phone with a low pixel count and resulting poor quality photos. Dudleys wants a camera that will take good enough pictures to post to his blog.

he has had it out twice now and only has one complaint. I knew from reading some of the reviews online for his particular model that some people had indicated that there was a problem with the scupper holes under the seat. There are two holes under the seat placed strategically so that one hole sits squarely under each butt cheek. These holes are designed so that water will drain out the kayak seat area and in theory keep your read end dry. However in practice as you are paddling, Frank advised water tends to splash up through these holes and after a time, your butt gets pretty well soaked. On one of the reviews, I read that it is a simple fix to buy a pair of plugs to put in the offending holes thereby stopping any water from splashing up onto ones posterior. Dudley measured the diameter of the holes and got online and began to search for the proper size rubber plugs. After looking around, I found a pair that I thought would work here. They came yesterday and we put them in. They fit perfectly and I think they will do the trick. I do hope they work as advertised as I think Frank is getting a little tired of pretending to be one of the Soggy Bottom Boys, though we do both like their music.