odds and ends

So I'm sitting here starting to go through all of my stuff to see what I want to keep and what I want to toss out before I move to Dallas in a few weeks. I have this nasty habit of keeping stuff for some reason, thinking "hey I might need that someday". Well, guess what? I never did.
Some of the following items were found in various backpacks, junk drawers and boxes...so far:

1. A flashlight (albeit a cool one) that I was given about 10 years ago...it hasn't worked for about 6 years. I had it when I did all my stints in Bosnia and I was kind of sentimental about it, maybe I was hoping it would magically come back to life in a flash of smoke
2. A knife with the blade broken in half. I have no idea.
3. A box of birthday candles, unopened. If you have one coming up, I'll let these go cheap!
   
4. About 10 M-16 ammo mags.
5. A spool of purple thread. I don't think I even want to know. I hope I can chalk this one up to an ex-girlfriend somewhere.
   
6. A bunch of markers that don't work.
7. A deck of cards with "Good Work" written on them. And half of them are missing.
8. A couple of tshirts I don't remember wearing in the last 5 years. Goodwill here I come.
9. More dead batteries than I can count
10. A picture of me playing bass while drunk off my a$$ in Korea...I'll keep it so I can laugh at myself occasionally.
11. A patch off a Serbian Army uniform. I could tell you how I got it, but I would have to then kill you.
12. A metal plate with Cyrillic writing on it that I pried out of a Russian anti-aircraft gun.

Some of this stuff I'll keep, as it's kinda cool and will remind me of all the places I've seen and been.

But what I was really REALLY looking for was The Oz's Secret Book of "How To Shop On Less Than $12 a Day", he said he had misplaced it somewhere and asked me if I could take a peek around for it. Sorry buddy.

tick tock

Wow I am almost done with the Air Force....I have another couple of weeks of work left and that's it. 13 years, 4 months, and 10 days will be the official count when it's all said and done with...that's a long damn time. When I started out, it was more for a change than anything, I thought I would do 4 years and that would be it...well, one thing led to another to another to another. So my time is winding down, kinda like a clock about to strike midnight.

But this means me getting to move to Dallas soon, which will be good for a lot of different reasons. But one of them I am most looking forward to is I will not spend anywhere near as much time in my car as I have been. Now, I like my car, it is pimptastic and has cool things like heated seats, automatic steering wheel memoryy, hydraulic cupholders, among other things. And it's fast. But man, the driving is getting old. Just the other day I thought I saw some road workers putting up a road sign that said "Dallas - Temple: The Westheimer Memorial Hwy" which made me kinda nervous, because usually "memorial" implies that the object that is memorial is usually dead, haha.

Anyway, what is up with gas prices??? Seems like one minute gas is $2.61 a gallon, then I turn around after watching The Family Guy and now it's $2.90??? what the? Are oil executives playing wheel of fortune with gas prices? "Go ahead, Jimmy Ray Exxon, spin the wheel and let's see what super duper unleaded is gonna be today?"

And why am I paying 15 cents per kilowatt hour for electricity in Texas, where a lot of the oil refinieries are, and my mom is paying like 7 cents in northern bum$%^ Minnesota where there is a noticeable lack of oil refinieries? Huh, TXU are you listening??? Bastards.

I think I will spend the next couple of days planning on how to build my own pocket-sized nuclear reactor in my spare bedroom, haha.

See you in Wichita Falls next Friday!!!!

smooches, your favorite (and better be ONLY) bass player,
MSgt (for a couple of more weeks) Westheimer, USAF

this week, on The Twilight Zone....

Well, I have returned from my venture to the Great White North, aka Minnesota, where I had spent a week relaxing in the non-98 degree heat and visiting with friends and my mom and stepdad. It was great getting up there for a bit, but now I'm home and ready to get back to some monkey-bidness.

There was some Twilight Zone definitely going on on this trip though. I had a connection in Cincinatti on the way up....so as I'm walking off the plane, fooling with my cellphone and not really paying attention to much other than nor running into a trash can or a post, I notice out of the corner of my eye two women looking at me, one about my age (you know, like 24) and one a bit older....I keep walking, playing the text message game when I hear "Keith? Is that you?". I look up....holy crap. It's my ex-girlfriend Shannon who lives in Louisville, Kentucky who I went out with for a couple of years, we split up 5 years ago....but here she was, with Mom, on her way to NYC for the week. Kinda cool, we all got a cup of overpriced coffee from Starbuck's and caught up...we split after about 20 minutes, and as I walked away I thought, 'what are the odds of that happening?"

Fast forward a couple of days...I'm now in Minneapolis, Minnesota at the Mall of America, the biggest mall in the country...I'm in Old Navy with an old friend who lives in Minneapolis, coincidentally named Shannon (or is it coincidence? do dee doo doo, do dee doo doo) and I hear a guy's voice say 'Keith?" and I ignored it, I thought it was someone talking to someone who worked there, but oh no....it was Will, the floor manager from Bum's in Temple, where we often play (like this Fri night), he was by pure random coincidence up visiting family in Minnesota and Wisconsin. And I run into him in Old Navy, a store I never go into....hmm, strange things are afoot.

So what are the odds of both of those happening, much less within a couple of days? I kept waiting for my ex-wife, who I haven't heard from or seen in going on 6 years and have no idea where she is, to jump out from behind some bushes and say 'surprise!' the thought of which kinda scared me, so I had to sleep with the lights on for the rest of my trip, haha.

anyone else have some crazy coincidental 'it's a small world' kind of stories?

home's where the heart is....

Sorry about slacking on my blog, I know a lot of you leap joyously out of bed each and every morning to see if yours truly has come up with some new random genius/idiotic ramblings and dash madly to your computer. My apologies.

We had this upcoming weekend off, so I cashed in some of the 2.7 million frequent flyer miles I had racked up due to work over the years and flew 'home' to Minnesota. Now, I'm originally from Texas (Houston aka Swampy Muggy Crime-Ridden Hell), but lived for several years in Minneapolis...gradumacated high school here, got arrested for the first time here, went to college for a couple of yrs at the U of MN (go Golden Rodents! I mean, Gophers), so even though I'll never live here again as I can't deal with 4 or 5 months of near-arctic weather conditions in the winter (any place you might have to plug your car in for the engine block heater to keep your oil from freezing into a sludge block is too cold for me), I do have kind of a warm spot for the place.

My mom and stepdad live waaaaaaay up in northern MN, like 70 miles from the Canadian border...now, I'm a city boy to the bone...but there's something about sitting on their deck looking out over the lake they live on as the sun goes down with a tasty adult beverage in hand, thatis just extremely peaceful and calming. Nice to get away from the hustle and bustle and traffic of the city once in a while. Not to mention I take their kayak out on the lake for hours, and cruise the backwoods on the 4-wheeler trying to hurt myself and find the biggest mudholes I can find! haha.

And some of my oldest friends live up here, peeps I've known for 15, 16 years....so its always nice to hook back up with them whenever I come to town. So it is chill and relax time, this way my batteries will be fully charged by the time we hit Wichita Falls on the 30th!!!! Break out the Chili Cheese Fritos, Falls here we come.....

well so much for that

As you may have noticed, in a Shiner-induced fit of brilliance/stupidity I created an auction for me NOT to go to any Mavs games, as I seem to be Bad Dallas Sports Juju. Well, I let the auction run for a few days on a lark, and I got 4 bids, the highest being 30 cents!!!! Wow thats more than I was really expecting. I would like to point out that my boy Colin bid first, so Colin...you had me at 'hello'. (good game).

But I had to take it down, I was getting swamped with emails. Most of them were funny, like 'hey why don't you buy my husband and I tickets then since you can afford them, and you stay home and watch the game?" or "you're the man!" and we all had a good laugh, because that's what the whole point was.

But I got a few nasty ones, which kinda surprised me, the basic gist of them was "you're an #$%hole". I mean, come on, you actually took the time to write me that and tell me something I already knew? haha.

So Operation Keep Keith Away From the Mavs is over...I suppose I will just watch the game from the comfort of home, go Mavs! Shaq ain't got nothin!!!!

oh, it is SO ON!!!!!

This is what happens when I drink beer and am bored in front of the computer, haha.

My auction for me to NOT go to a Mavs Finals Game!!!!

bad juju

Okay, as Colin blogged about earlier, he, I and "The Oz" got tickets from our new bestest friend Chuckliff to the Desperados playoff game Sunday afternoon. I had never been to an Arena Football League game, but it was a riot...lots of good hits, great catches, so on and so forth....and guys...if you haven't seen the Desperados Dancers, you NEED to put it on your Things-To-Do-Before-You-Die List, haha. But I digress....

The Desperados got toasted by the team from Orlando....if they woulda won, they would have gotten to go to the Arena Bowl in Vegas, which would have made Chuckliff very VERY happy as he is one of the Desperados photographers...sorry, buddy...but Tyler is a close second to Vegas, you down??? But then I started thinking....I have been to two sporting events in Dallas: Games 6 of the Stars series against the Avalanche, which they lost in OT, and now the Desperados playoff game.

So maybe I am Bad Dallas Sports Playoff Juju...so my new plan is to post an auction on eBay to sell myself to NOT go to any Mavs home games during the Finals! I will keep you posted, and please feel free to bid, haha.