Friday's here, so you know what's comin'.

First of all, I found some cool gear on the base the other day.



These things look awfully familiar to me, being a gear head and having spent way too much time looking at pictures of weapons on the web. Those upright containers were the big giveaway.



They were in an area that specializes in AAA, or anti-aircraft technology. That is, vehicles with anti-aircraft rockets on them. I was thinkin' these babies might be part of some sort of new anti-aircraft or anti-missile system.



After a little research, they turned out to be the latest version of the Patriot, which our folks used against the Scuds in the first Gulf War. They turned out not to work so well in the conditions of that war, despite all the press hype, and have gone through a huge upgrade. It's always fun to wander into something cool out there on the base.

Anyway, it's Friday, so you know what's coming if you've been readin' this thing for any time at all. I'll head over to Temple this evening to take my laundry to the drive through window to be pressed and then I'll go over and get dad and we'll head to Dynasty for our regular Chinese food dinner.

I just talked to the old folks on the phone, and dad's ready and rarin' to go. We'll eat dinner at the regular time and place and then I'll drive us down to Florence to watch his old high school team, Academy, play the kids from Florence that I teach every morning. It'll be fun. The weather has turned a little colder in the evening, so I'll have to take special care that the old dude doesn't get chilled. It'll be ok. He'll love it.

You know, there's things about these evenings that I dread. Dad's really not the same man he used to be any more. You've heard me talk about this before. He's getting more and more childlike all the time, and seems to remember less and less of everything. He sits down in the stands when I get him up there and before long he's latched on to whoever's sitting next to him. H starts out asking them if they went to Academy, and then he launches into his stories about all the times he had back in the day. He's gotten to where he always asks me at some point if I went to Academy, and it becomes hard to remember that he's the same man that used to give me so much grief back in the old days.

The first time I realized how much he was declining it devastated me. I came back to Killeen a few years back after flying up to Pennsylvania to fish with my cousin and met my folks at the local Outback steakhouse for dinner. Dad looked at me over the Bloomin' Onion and asked me if he'd ever told me about the time he took his father to see my house there in Killeen. Of course, his father's been dead since about 1964. I just looked at him, and then at my sister and mom, and they stared back at me with a knowing look. My sister tried to tell him it was just a dream he was remembering, but he was insistent. I almost burst into tears, the realization hitting me like a ton of bricks that my dad had started to wither away.

Now it's a given thing. He's not the man he once was, but I've learned to deal with it, and not treat him like a fool or a child. He's still a man, and he's my daddy. I love him to death, and I won't let him be treated with disrespect. Most folks around here are great with him. There are times when I think we'd all be better off if he'd just go to sleep one night and not wake up in the morning, but I know that's just my selfishness. It's me that wants to be spared the grief of watching him decline. Turns out I'm the one with the problem. He loves the life he has, and he's happy, so I'm the one that has to grow up and deal with things. I'm cool with it now, and I'll be ready to tote him around so long as he can make the trip. He hauled my ass around, and wiped it when I was too young to do it, so now it's my turn.

So, I'll be headin' over there a little later. I'll take some pictures of the game and we'll see if I've figured anything out with the camera or not. There's a gun show in Ft. Worth this weekend, and I'm plannin' to head up there Sunday. My buddy Jim called me this mornin' in school from a Habitat for Humanity site he's working on, tellin' me about the show and askin' me if I was comin' up. He asked me if I was in class, and I told him "Yea, but it's Friday, so we aren't doin' anything." We both laughed.

I was piddlin' around, uploading music from a CD to the computer in the classroom. I get it uploaded and play it over the bad, tinny speakers built into the computer, and sooner or later the room will get quiet and one of the kids will ask me who the hell that is. This time it was Government Mule doing a cover of "Almost Cut My Hair". I love it when I play some old stuff in the room and these kids look over at me with that quizzical look on their face, and ask me "Who the hell is that?" Then I busted out his little number. There's no video to go with the music, but give it a listen anyway.



Of course, Jimi Hendrix doing Born Under a Bad Sign. While were here, why not have another. Here's one called Bleedin' Heart.



You should have seen the look on their faces. Hilarious. I guess I'm always teachin', and payin' it forward.

Y'all have a great weekend. Cheers.