Before and After

Those that have been in my office are aware by it's appearance that i'm one busy man (or so it appears), but not many know how busy my sweet angel Connie is at work. You'd think by seeing our offices that we are some how related. What would we do without sticky note pads.

Connie's office before


Neal's office before


Connie's office after


Neal's office after

Playin' around at the Cabin

Connie & I took the opportunity to go to the cabin since it was Presidents Day and we took the day off. It was a fantastic beautiful day with sunshine and warm weather, and it was great to see all the snow. We wanted to take pictures of wild life but we saw none although we did take a couple of pictures of some bison, (not really the wild life I was thinking about) but we had a fun time. There was so much snow the roof was creeking and moaning.

A Risky Collection

The other day I was rumaging through a bunch of my personal things that I have collected through out the years and found my stamp collection. I have more then a thousand stamps in my collection and I thought I would scan a few of them that in some cases was a risky way to get them. Here is the story... Way back in the early 70's our family took a vacation to East Germany where my grandparents lived. As our flight landed in West Germany we had to rent a car for the remainder of our journey. I was but a mere lad of 12 and as such was a restless and curious individual and in our course of traveling to East Germany we had to travel through a few check points. The guards at the check points were poised in communist uniforms with rifles in hand and pistols on their hips, they searched all of our luggage to make sure we were not bringing anything in the country that was illegal and to make sure our passports were in order, not once did I see any of them crack a smile. We visited with our relatives and some of my mothers friends and as a result of some of these visits they learned that my brother and I collected stamps. Don't ask my why but it was illegal to take such items out of the country (you could lick a stamp and put it on a letter to mail but a package of stamps was illegal, go figure) My brother Frank and I were given hundreds of collectable stamps many from the great depression in europe and many from Russia. I was very excited to have these in my possession and very nervous when I found out it was illegal to take them home remembering the uniformed guards at the check points. My father suggested we stuff them down the front of our pants and act normal... HUH!!! I was a 12 year old curious and restless kid... there was nothing "normal" about me! anyway, I did it, we pulled up to the check point, we all got out, they searched all of our luggage, they had mirrors on wheels that they rolled under our car to make sure we were not smuggling anything out of the country, they had their guns and bullets and I was sweating bullets but we made it. I have scanned a few stamps in my collection and some of them spent time down the front of my pants.