OWEN-WITHEE (The Twin Cities of Wisconsin)

I dont know if I ever mentioned it or not but I grew up in a city called Owen Wisconsin. Now Owen (population 1098) was next to a city called (Withee/ population roughly 300 people). So later on I started calling it the "Twin Cities of Wisconsin"...Growing up there was (if I may say so) AWESOME. Sure there were lots of things I did not like (like going to church/ or getting up for school/ you know the usual things kids hate doing)....

To this day I still stay in touch with many of my classmates. The class I had back then pretty much looked out for one another. The parents always looked out for the kids and it was a very safe community. But the one thing that we all remember about the place was OW Sports and Liquor. The lady that ran that place worked 7 days a week and to this day is still working to please her Customers. She has minnows/tackle/bait/ booze/gas and the heart of an angel. And hunters if your ever in the area stop by and see her she has tons of hunting apparel. She is a huge part of the community and when people go back to town they always stop by and see Jackie.

Or there was the Root Beer Stand. Sure the place was small and not really a big restaurant but dam they made good Root Beer.....I cant find anything like that now down in Madison.

Then there was Berry and Gerrie's....I don't think it is open anymore but Berry made the best burgers in Wisconsin. I know he is still alive but got out of the bar business....It was the best bar ever...

In the last twenty years I have worked for Corporations and I have flown all over the United States and I guess had to grow up a little. It's fun to travel for the first several hours but after that it's a drag. I don't' know why but I think I'm finally realizing that I had it good as a kid and I miss going up North to Owen. When you get older and get a family you can't always do what you want. The good news for me is my parents still live up that way and maybe in the next 10 years now that my kids are older I can get up there more often.

The world has changed a lot in my 42 years. One thing that has not changed is I think that Owen-Withee is still the best city on the planet.

The Black Widow

THE BATTLE OF ALESIA

The Battle of Alesia (The Gallic Wars). Ok so today I had to get up and come to work and then when I'm done with work I have to go to my second job. Now imagine that your job is in the Roman Army. And unfortunately for you your fighting against an army 5 times bigger than you. Caesar is going to try and lay siege to Alesia. As he approaches the city he builds a wall around it (see the inside wall with the men in the tower?) Now he realizes he could be attacked from the left side of the picture so he builds a second wall. So it takes somewhere around 60 K laborers to complete this task in about 3 weeks for a 10 mile diameter wall. The outer wall was 15 miles in diameter....what is my point?

A few years ago I put in a brick patio in my house and it took me 3 days to dig out the dirt and put down the brick. Basically my patio is about 11' w by 20' long. What amazes me about this story is that the wall the Romans built was 15' high and they built about a mile of wall each day. On top of this they had to ward off the enemy , shower/eat/ take a nap etc......No bulldozers, no dump trucks nothing like that just labor intensive. I am simply amazed at the Engineering skills of our Ancestors.

If you want to read a great story go to http://www.angelfire.com/me/ik/alesia3.html and check it out. History simply fascinates me but this is gotta be the biggest coolest thing in history I have ever seen. I keep coming back to this story.

The Black Widow

Wisconsin Winter

I'm not sure what I love more about Wisconsin Winter. I grew up on a farm and it was so cool sometimes to be out in the middle of know where with a snow storm going on all around you. Or it was fun to be out milking cows and then somehow have to make it back to the house in 40 mile an hour wind gusts. Then sit in the house by the fire and drink hot coa coa.

It was also cool to walk into a woods near our farm and just listen to the wind. No people around (maybe a squirrel running here or there) but just complete silence. Sometimes silence is golden. The other thing I love about winter is to see a deer near the woods our out in a snowy covered corn field. Nature is just simply cool.

Not sure I love the cold but indeed during the winter Wisconsin is a beautiful place to be. The driving is sometimes treacherous in the winter but above all I guess I still love the change in the seasons. I guess that is why I'm going to live in Wisconsin forever.

Today in the Southern Wisconsin we are suppose to get up to 12" of snow....Welcome to a winter wonderland.

The Black Widow

Space Ship One

So recently Richard Branson and his team unveiled their new space ship which will fly into space and you can buy a ticket for 200K. I had a few thoughts on this so bear with me. My first thought is he should be giving more money to Charity and things of that nature. Then my second thought was to be honest (this thing is fricken cool). Now my third thought was NASA is nothing more than a large Dum Corporation. A guy like Branson can create a company to design a spaceship and go into space for millions vs billions? What's more he plans on replicating the spaceships and having people go into space. I thought the guy was owned a record company? Did you read that....yes a record company and now he's building space ships....????

I think this is so funny because I use to work with a guy that said if we fired him we could never survive. Because he said know one could do what he does.....Well we fired him and we are still surviving. My point is I think NASA'S days are numbered and I think the private company's will take over space exploration. And I think very soon Richard Branson will have competition of his very own. This my friends will bring the cost of space travel down (Competition).

I am not a rich man and I'm sure there will be people like I talked to that yes he should give more to charity and yada yada yada. But see if people don't' push the limits like this you would not have future ability to design better aircraft and or get ideas on how maybe at some point we can leave this world if we have to. Sometimes ideas come from this stuff that give us a better national defense. There are a ton of goodies that come along with this type of invention.

The real moral of this story is and I've said it over and over .....Never let someone tell you what you can or cannot do.........

So Richard Branson you are my HERO for the week.

The Black Widow

EVOLUTION AND RELIGION (how they go together)

Imagine that you are God. And one day you think "I want to create the world". So you create a Big Bang which actually throws rocks all over space. And inside those rocks are tiny little forms of life (some forms of life are good and some are bad so you adjust what is put into the rocks so that life will even out).

BANG......The big bang occurs and millions of years later the Earth was created. And millions of years after that people started living. Maybe God just did not create Adam and Eve but that was a story handed down from generation to generation through stories told of old. And then one day a guy picked up a piece of paper and a pen and put all of these things onto paper. Kind of like Santa Clause.

Why can there not be a way for Religion and Evolution to go together? To me maybe the world is not 7 million years old like the bible says? But maybe its like 20 billion or however old we can document it.

The thing that sticks out of my mind is the Big Bang. For every action there is an equal to or opposite reaction. So what drives me crazy is WHAT created the big bang. And what created the force behind the big bang. Unless there is magic in this world there has to be something that created that bang......And that energy maybe was from God.

An athiest will tell you there is nothing and has a explanation for everthing like the Big Bang. To me there are to many things that have a hole in them. There is something out there and that is my belief.

The Black Widow

GO BACK TO NATURE

Take a deep breadth and look at this photo. Sometimes we forget that if we died tomorrow the world will still keep spinning. Time passes you buy so fast that you need to make sure to enjoy something each day. I'm not even sure anyone reads the crap I write but if you do on your way home tonight watch some squirrels in a tree playing or just go home and watch your pet and relax for a while.

I have a park near my home with a small lake. And sometimes I go there and watch the geese swim and yak. It's funny to watch other species versus man. Often I will sit there and wonder what they think. Or what do they think of in a day that we don't. Whether you believe in evolution and or your a religious person going back to nature or watching animals is a great way to relax. Every day I play with my shitzu and I wonder what he can remember or what he thinks. It makes me laugh and can usually forget about my crap day.

To think it all started with a Big Bang (the planets being made/galaxy etc)...Ever wonder what created the Big Bang?

Its the weekend for me....take some time off for yourself and treat yourself for being a good human being..

The Black Widow

FREE COFFEE???????????

Last year about now my son and I rented a movie from a local grocery store. About two days later we returned the movie and we bought some candy. Funny thing about it was that I kept the receipt for the candy. But about 3 days later the store called and said I never returned the movie. Basically I went to the store and said look that girl there and the other etc. etc. were working that day. No no you never returned our movie Sir and you owe us $65.00. So I said well can you please check the security cameras for that day and I will be satisfied (note the time on the receipt for the candy).

Oh we can't do that he says our cameras don't work. Well that's just grand right next to their cash machine I hope they never get robbed. Anyway I get into this argument with the store manager that indeed I can replace the movie for $25.00. He says no it has to come from his company (because they charge him $65.00 per movie). I said do you still have the case for the movie? Yes he did. Well I said isn't that strange that you have the movie case and not the movie? I brought the movie back and now you have a movie case and no movie?

SO WHAT HAS THIS GOT TO DO WITH COFFEE?

So the guys says look if you don't pay me the $65.00 I will take you to small claims. I said I tell ya what here is what I will do. I will replace the movie (since you have the case) for $25.00 and if that is not good enough I will see you in court. So finally the guy at the grocery store comes to his senses on a movie I never lost anyway and settles for $25.00.

A few weeks later while shopping in the store I noticed they offered free coffee to Customers. So every time I went in the store I kept saving my receipts (tell you why shortly). Now what I do is instead of going the gas station (and paying .65 cent a pop) I stop for a free cup of coffee at my favorite grocery store....I don't stop every day but I do every now and then and its good coffee. So one day this manager I got in a fight with says sir that is free coffee for our Customers. I said really well here are my receipts for the last two weeks of what I bought here "I'm a Customer"....

Until I make up my $25.00 worth of that movie I never lost I'm stopping for free coffee. And until he puts up a sign that says "Free Coffee for Customers who only bought product today" I still consider myself a Customer......Isn't it great being a jerk right back to a jerk?

The Black Widow