Chazd's (Charles Dowdell's) News Burps

I got the following pic of my deer friend that often stops by for breakfast. She is quite calm for a deer. The llamas and the deer are friends and we imagine that they each covet each others situation. "Slow me down, Lord! Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind. Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time. Give me, amidst the confusion of my day, the calmness of the everlasting hills. Break the tensions of my nerves and muscles with the music of the singing streams that live in my memory. Help me to know the magic restoring power of sleep. Teach me the art of taking Minute Vacations ... of slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, to pat a dog, to read a few lines from a good book. Remind me each day of the fable of the hare and the tortoise that I may know that the race is not always to the swift; that there is more to life than increasing its speed. Let me look upward into the branches of the towering oak and know ...

It is probably an urban legend. But in my world it is very believable. 1st place This year's runaway winner was Mr. Merv Grazinski of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Mr. Grazinski purchased a brand new Winnebago Motor Home. On his trip home from an OU football game, having driven onto the freeway, he set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the drivers seat to go into the back and make himself a cup of coffee. Not surprisingly,! the RV left the freeway, crashed &then overturned. Mr Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising him, by reading the owner's manual, that he actually could not do this. The jury awarded him $1,750,000 plus a new Winnebago Motor Home. The company actually changed their manuals on the basis of this suit just in case there were any other complete morons buying their recreation vehicles.

"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Sir Winston Churchill, November 1942

I had a dream about aliens last night. We got up this morning and you can see what the aliens did around the house. Only in Berkshire.

As Peter Drucker put the matter in a Harvard Business Review article, "Until a business returns a profit that is greater than its cost of capital, it operates at a loss. Never mind that it pays taxes as if it had a genuine profit. The enterprise still returns less to the economy than it devours in resources…Until then it does not create wealth; it destroys it." Very interesting. My new glasses, not much different.

I am buying a new truck. I am pretty close on figuring out which one. It will be a duramax diesel with the 5 speed allison automatic I know for sure. Where I am getting it from and whether I am getting the dump trailer is not so sure. The class I am taking (Financial Management) is demanding. I am going to have to really knuckle down. It has been as cold as 26 below zero the last few days around here. It hasn't got that cold at the house, but when I went into work the other day it was so cold your lungs hurt when you breathed in. The diesel starts fine if you remember to plug it in the night before. The llamas don't care for the cold. The heater keeps their house about 25 degrees warmer than the outside temp. These temps are tough on the animals no doubt. I know after last year I would never think of cold temperatures the same again. The animals are just at the mercy of their owners and the temperature. We got one of the GE radios working on the desired frequency ...

I went to my first County planning board meeting last night. I think I will enjoy working with these folks. My Brother's mother in law) passed away this week, Sally. Rest in Peace.