quote:

Originally posted by lbj:

Interesting, my Focus is that color, with the exception that it is infused with metalflake, Ford calls it Sonic Blue Pearl. I like it and many people who I know have commented favorably.

In person, the Focus color is a little darker than Lightning Blue, not much though.

Buying a new car is always exciting! I'm excited for you, LBJ. Let the countdown begin -- it'll be here just in time for Summer.

They are nice vehicles, bought the wife the Lincoln MKC which is comparable, she preferred the interior look on the Lincoln so that got the nod, that and the deals Lincoln makes on them since they sell 5 to 1 Ford over them.

That little turbo is a sleeper, you'll get rolling pretty quickly, and they are quiet.

They offer the MKC with a 2.3L turbo.
Did you get that or the 2.0L.
The 2.3 is not offered in the Escape. The 2.5 is but not a turbo.

It's only been a day and it already feels like a long time waiting for the new Ford Escape.

The good news is that time will slow down and that is certainly a good thing given everything in my life.
Therefore, bring on the next 2 very slow moving months.

That reminds me of a hand painted sign on the side of a building either in Quanah Texas or nearby back in the 1970s.
It was an advertisement for a mortuary service and the sign said "Slow Down, We can wait."

I always enjoyed driving by that sign way back then.

lbj - Thanks for sharing this all with us. Your attitude through extremely difficult circumstances is inspirational. I had a bit of a scare recently (not completely out of the woods but pretty much there). Oddly enough, I found comfort in your posts. So thank you.

Thanks all.

Now where is my Escape?
The car I mean. My other escape is already guaranteed.

I was thinking today about the state of health.
Now, I get by and my attitude is decent, but it occurred to me today that each and every day since my surgery, I don't feel very good.

It's been about 15 months now and that's a long time to not feel physically good every day.
There are many people out there who have it much rougher than I do, but still.

I am just venting, not a thing I can do about it.
Treatment tomorrow, wonderful.
Again, it saves my life and I'm grateful, but still.

The wait is brutal. I ordered a Grand Cherokee just over a month ago and I've tracked it's movement from being approved by Chrysler, being built, loaded on a train in Detroit, passing through Cleveland and Buffalo and it now sits at a transfer yard in Massachusetts waiting on a truck ride up here. Been sitting there two days now and it's driving me nuts.

That's the non beauty of tracking.
Sometimes tracking makes the wait seem longer.

quote:

Originally posted by lbj:...
Treatment tomorrow, wonderful.
Again, it saves my life and I'm grateful, but still.

Do you get to eat ice cream after?

My dad just brought home the base model of that car in a bronze color. He loves it, his first new car since the late 80s and he turns 80 this year. I think you will dig yours!

That's good to hear.

quote:

Originally posted by sigmonkey:
Do you get to eat ice cream after?

I don't know if we get ice cream on the other side.
Oh wait, you mean after treatment?

A couple of quick hits for the day.

Youngest daughter just headed out in her new used 2015 Ford Escape with some form or another and a check to get her fingerprints done by the State Of Colorado.
This is the first thing she must do in order to change her last name to mine.
Pretty cool. As I said before, how many step fathers get this? It is such an honor.

On Saturday, I picked up a very minor floral arrangement for youngest, and the card read Happy Early Mothers Day.
Given she is 7 months pregnant, I wanted to be the first to wish her a happy mothers day.
Plus I told her that now that she is a mom, mothers day will take on new meaning and the day will be her day for the rest of her life.

I think I must have gone overboard, she started tearing up and ran over to hug me.

Sometimes being a dad is really wonderful.

Other news:
Mrs LBJ will home in less than a month, she has been in Pennsylvania the last 2 months taking care of her niece who was in a car wreck.
It is really been hard for me to have her gone and now there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Damned monitor got blurry again. Gotta call Samsung about that.....

Oh, now many of you have read this before, my philosophy on what is happening to me and how I feel about it.
That was many months and many many pages ago.

I an reposting it here so some who read this thread and haven't the time to read the whole thread may have a look if they are interested. Here it is.


This is my message and philosophy of living and facing death. It is a message of happiness, so here it goes.

At times in our lives, we wonder who we are and who will be when we are informed of our imminent demise or just plain die.
Of course, we don't spend too much time on the death thing or we would never live.

I wanted to be 5 things when my moment in time arrived regarding my death.
1) I wanted to be a deep thinker.
2) I wanted to be a philosopher.
3) I wanted a relationship with God.
4) I wanted a family.
5) I wanted to know something about life and be able to pass it on.

I can safely say that I have all those things and I am the person I wanted to be for this moment in time.
And then, I began thinking about what happened to me 30 years ago that changed my life.

Back then, I remember telling a co-worker that Friday night was coming and that the days off were truly living.
He told me my life would be short if I was living for the weekends.
He was right of course, I was not living 5 days a week.

Then I began to live every day.
As we are all aware, much of life is mundane, rinse and repeat as it were. So I began to mentally point out the few minutes of true living I was experiencing every day. Then I began to verbalize it every day as living unfolded.

It might be just 5 minutes an a particular day, sometimes more.
It became my Lhasa Apso LBJ greeting me at the door when I came home from work, me and him rolling on the floor in celebration seeing each other.
It might be a walk in the park, maybe it was pizza night and my favorite pizza. It might be a 30 minute sitcom on TV, maybe a 2 hour movie on TV, maybe it was something else. It was Lasher and Van Smack, and now my Lhasa LT along with my family.
There was and is something for me every day.

As I say, I have been doing this for 30 years.
When I look back at my life, I visualize a tunnel on my left with M. C. Escher stairs that do not go up or down. Those steps represent the days of my life.
I can safely say that for the past 30 years, I have lived every day.

Then I got to thinking recently that since I am the person I always wanted to be for this moment of time when my death is at hand, and given the fact that I have truly lived each and every day for the last thirty years, and given that I really have not changed who I am the last 30 years except at the margins, it became clear that I have always been the person I wanted to be, I just never had that answer as God doesn't typically makes us privvy to such knowledge.

How many people get such a gift? Some perhaps, though unfortunately, not all of us.
What I have been given is truly a blessing.

When I look at the tunnel I mentioned above, I would not trade anything from my life for more time, I would not want to be anyone else but me even if it meant living longer.
I do not feel cheated in any way that my life is shorter than I thought it would be. I am not bitter about my circumstances.
I am happy being me and that is all there is to it.

Many of you and others are praying for a miracle for me. It's appreciated, it really is.
But when you pray for me, please ask God for another miracle for me because He already gave me most important miracle of all and it's a huge one... it's called me and my life.

Who could ask for a better miracle than life itself. And trust me, lbj did love to stomp on the terra and it felt and feels darn good.

Yeah, I am not scared of being dead, my guess is that being dead is easy. It's not living that scares me a little because living is all I know.

If any of the above can help you or a loved one facing death, please feel free to share this, as it is a message of life, of death, of hope and happiness.

And all of the above is my philosophy regarding life, death and our Creator.

It's a beautiful thing and I mean every word of it.


Life is always unfinished business.
There is no way to see and do it all.
I don't have a bucket list because it represents unfinished business.
Besides, even if I had one, once finished I'd start another one.
So I don't have one.

I look at my life as the bucket and what has been put in it. Because it is impossible to see and do it all in life, I am focused on what filled my life. My bucket is full, in fact, it is truly overflowing and things are spilling out.
What has filled my life makes me feel complete and whole. I am comfortable with it. It's been an amazing ride.

Perhaps the above is why I am happy with my life and life in general.

Certainly I have made many mistakes over the years, even hurt of lot of people knowingly and unknowingly. Yes, I have regrets.
I could have done some things in my life better.
Did I waste some of the times of my life, yes, I have.
But in the end all of those mistakes made me who I am, so apparently they were needed.

Therefore, everything I said about the philosophy of my life still holds, and nothing has changed.

And we're back to real life again.

I'm exiting the local Safeway today when a 50mph gust of wind blew my hat off.
Now, in true Western fashion, I'm partial to my hat, dropped my bags and the chase was on.

The problem with chasing a hat is that you can't get close and step on it like a piece of paper, you gotta get out ahead of it.
I ran the entire length of the store front without success and a lady with a cart wasexiting the store and it went right to her.
Hat saved.

It was odd to me in the fact that I was not out of breath but really tired, so I spent 2 minutes sitting in an iron chair nearby.
Then it occurred to me that in my old life, I would simply have gone home immediately.

The lesson here for me was knowing my physical limitations and responding appropriately.
It was like second nature for me to rest and not let my pride get me into more trouble that I can handle.
I am happy that I know how to react properly, I mean I'm only here because God's science allows such.
God, science... perfect harmony to me. No?

Up next, hat goes to the western store Monday for a little reshaping.
The wind was not kind.

Ironic, that many people say that "if God is real", He should let us get better understanding of the "other side".

I honestly believe, that you are being granted the privilege to be showing us a glimpse.

And that it will "be OK".

In part, because you give such a blessing meaning beyond words.

And two things.

1. Thank you for being brave and bold enough to talk about all of this.

2. Glad you are whipping the Energizer Bunny's ass.


Thump, thump. Thump thump thump!

And I believe the quote: "God helps those who helps themselves"

You are doing a beautiful job, imho.

quote:

Originally posted by lbj:
And we're back to real life again.

I'm exiting the local Safeway today when a 50mph gust of wind blew my hat off.
Now, in true Western fashion, I'm partial to my hat, dropped my bags and the chase was on.

The problem with chasing a hat is that you can't get close and step on it like a piece of paper, you gotta get out ahead of it.
I ran the entire length of the store front without success and a lady with a cart wasexiting the store and it went right to her.
Hat saved.

It was odd to me in the fact that I was not out of breath but really tired, so I spent 2 minutes sitting in an iron chair nearby.
Then it occurred to me that in my old life, I would simply have gone home immediately.

The lesson here for me was knowing my physical limitations and responding appropriately.
It was like second nature for me to rest and not let my pride get me into more trouble that I can handle.
I am happy that I know how to react properly, I mean I'm only here because God's science allows such.
God, science... perfect harmony to me. No?

Up next, hat goes to the western store Monday for a little reshaping.
The wind was not kind.

Last year, about this time, I came to an intersection along Lincolnway in downtown Cheyenne. A gust of wind came up, blew my hat off and out into the street. Instantly, traffic in both directions stopped and I chased out onto Lincolnway after it. I caught it and looked up to acknowledge the courtesy of the closest pickup truck. He was smiling and raised a couple fingers to say hello. Then I noticed that all the drivers around me were smiling, some waving. The brotherhood and sisterhood of the Wyoming wind, and also the reality behind the saying, "Wyoming, Forever West."