Portobello by Ruth Rendell

Portobello is a sort of detective novel about several widely disparate characters who live in the Portobello section of London. It centers a middle aged antiques dealer who discovers some money on the street near his home. He wants to return it to the rightful owner so he posts an ad inviting the owner of the money to come claim it. As you can imagine this invites all sorts of losers into his life that he wouldn’t have otherwise come into contact with.

I don’t think that I’ve read any of Rendell’s books before but I’m intrigued by what she did in this book as she deals with all the different paths the characters take. The book is somewhat of a mystery but is more of a character study that is very interesting.

I give the book three and a half stars out of five, which is good, but not great. It is worth reading.

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Skywatch Friday – Morning Run #2

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Sometimes I like to get up early and take a run on Arkansas River trail system here in Tulsa. Daily Savings Time gives me a little more light. Sorry for the blurriness. It is hard to hold the camera steady after you have been running a few miles.

Yogi’s Deficit Reduction Plan

Hey, are you fed up with Obama and Palin, the Red States and the Blue States, Glenn Beck and Rachel Maddow, and all the finger pointing and yelling, screaming, crying, and just general bellyaching going on these days about health care and the cost of health care and deficits and who is at fault and blah, blah, blah.

The New York Times has a link where you can balance the deficit yourself. Try it out here, I did. It only takes a few minutes.

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Appoint me and my able sidekick Kings for a day. Just 24 hours and he and I will solve the nations financial problems. And we work cheap.

Through a carefully selected blend of selective deep cuts in Spending and and increases in Taxes. I will have angered the left who think we can just print money clear to the moon and the right who worship tax reductions but don’t want to cut spending.

We are going to have to work longer before retiring, we are going to pay taxes on medical insurance benefits, its going to be a pain in the butt, but(t) we can do it, together. We’ll preserve Medicare, at drastically lower benefits. I’m keeping Social Security but you are going to work until 68 to get it. The military is getting shrunk, a bunch. We are cutting the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m getting rid of farm subsidies (big secret they go mainly to multi-billion dollar companies not struggling family farms.) Earmarks are gone. I’m cutting the Federal workforce by 10%. The nuclear arsenal is getting cut in half. The Navy is losing a bunch of ships, the Air Force a couple of fighter wings.

What are the results? Check out the details of my plan here.

Basically the way I’m going to run the country is that we’ll go from a 2015  revenue shortfall of 418 billion to a surplus of over $200 billion. It’ll be worth it even though everybody will hate me.

By 2030 we will have a balanced budget from a project shortfall of 1.345 Trillion Dollars.

Try the link out and tell me what you end up with.

What I’m Thankful For

The Real Housewives of Oklahoma are asking what we are thankful for.

I’m thankful for my wife Sweetie. She is the greatest wife anybody ever had.

Alan and Heather

I’m thankful for SuperPizzaBoy. He is quite the boy.

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Together they make a great team.

Heather Logan Fountain San Antonio

I’m also thankful for my mother-in-law Nana. She is great, just ask SPB.

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I’m also thankful for my Dad, Gramps. Its best to keep Gramps and SPB apart. They are always up to something.

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I’m thankful for the rest of my family. Here we are in Idaho. On the back row left to right, my sister Ellen (check out her awesome blog!), her husband Irv, Sweetie, and me. Front row is SPB, Mr. Beans, Gramps, and brother Bob. Brother Bob has recently moved to Tulsa from California.

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Here is a portion of my extended family in Idaho.

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Go check out the Real Housewives and let them know what you are thankful for.

The RHOK

Shadow Shot Sunday – Teaching Gardens

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Nope, its not Benjamin Franklin, it is the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. Namesake of the Tulsa Garden Center’s Linnaeus Teaching Gardens. If you are in Tulsa sometime. Check it out. It is small but it is packed. If you know what I mean, and its free. Even the parking is free. Take your camera is my advice.

It has got lots of plants if that is what you are looking for. It has lots of shadows also.

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This is my new satellite office. Shady in the Summer, sunny in the Fall. All I need is WiFi and a coffeepot and I’m ready to roll.

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I love nice benches. Isn’t there a blog meme featuring benches? I can’t find it on Google. I just know that somebody will let me know.

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Maybe this could be a satellite office also.

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Yeah, well SuperPizzaBoy beat me to it. I snooze, I lose. That’s our family rule.

Check out Shadow Shot Sunday for more shady photos by shady bloggers.

Hey its Sunday. Here’s my text for today.

Genesis 1: 11‑12

Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed‑bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.

Go check out That’s Baloney for more pairings of photos and scripture.

Vibrational Sound Massage

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We went to a street festival here in Tulsa last week. It wasn’t very big but it was cool. The artists had all sorts of different and interesting pieces for sale. There was a band that had kind of a never ending riff going on. It reminded me of the late 1960’s in New Mexico except people were drinking bud light and chai instead of smoking stuff they shouldn’t be smoking. In fact the only smoking going on was some mesquite in a Chiminea.

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Somebody had set up a “Vibrational Sound Massage” booth. You sat on a pillow in the middle of several large gongs with a mask over your eyes. Then you chilled out while the guys and gals manning the booth played (as opposed to beating) the gongs. The gongs were cool. They hit them lightly with a cushioned mallet and the sound just went on forever. I loved listening to them.

They didn’t charge anything nor take tips. It was their gift to the people.

Check out Weekend Reflections for highly refractive photos from very reflective bloggers from all over the world.