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This visually striking memorial is located within Anthem Community Park. Featuring classical architecture with a contemporary twist, five marble pillars in graduated sizes represent the unity of the five branches of the United States military. Precise alignment and elliptical openings in the pillars allow sunlight to pass through and illuminate a mosaic of the Great Seal of the United States at the foot of the pillars at 11:11 a.m. each year on November 11th, Veterans Day. Haydon’s services included constructability reviews and cost estimating, as well as earthwork, concrete work, and overall project supervision for the Memorial. Click the picture for more details and construction pictures.

• On Friday night FamilyGeeding ate dinner at our local Mama’s Daughters’ Diner.  The atmosphere as well as the clientele brings a real small town feeling to it and reminds me and WifeGeeding of our small town roots.  It would be a perfect place to film a scene in a movie about a presidential candidate coming in and making rounds to garner votes.  We were about half finished with our meal when our waitress informed us that an anonymous person in the restaurant paid for our meal in full.  While surprised and extremely grateful, I felt bad because we could easily afford our meal and just wish someone else could have been on the receiving end on this random act of kindness.
• That act of kindness did make us order dessert as I didn’t have any cash to leave our waitress a tip.  Not to mention, WifeGeeding loves their homemade pies.
• It would have been great to have the deductive observatory skills of Sherlock Holmes that evening so I could have identified the gracious person that paid for our meal.
• There have been a few occasions in which I purchased a stranger’s meal and asked to remain anonymous, one time it ended up as a quite embarrassing moment that I should write about later.
• DaughterGeeding knocked all the food out of the dog bowl and WifeGeeding started to pick up all the loose pieces when DaughterGeeding said,”No mommy, stop.  I made the mess, I need to clean it up.”
• During halftime of Fox NFL games you’ll see the NFL on Fox cast sport Microsoft Surface tablets which is an obvious advertisement.  But on Saturday night I was watching the UT/West Virginia game on Fox and during a commercial Curt Menefee was in an Amazon Kindle Fire tablet on the NFL on Fox set.  Conflict of interest plugging two tablets?
• Mack Brown stated that was the first overtime game he coached.
• If you excuse all the off field stuff there’s absolutely no reason why Johnny Manziel shouldn’t win the Heisman again.  His stats are not only better than last year but butter than any other candidate.
• The Dallas Morning News had a good article about how Lee Harvey Oswald’s widowed continued to live in the area and even had a small quote from one of his kids and how her mother revealed who her father actually were.  It must have been odd having some paparazzi follow your school bus to school and not know why.  When I first read the article there this picture of Marina Oswald standing in front of the assassination spot with the Sixth Floor over her shoulder, but the photo has since been removed.  I guess I never really thought about it before, but it took a lot of courage to move from Russia to the U.S. at that time in history and then to continue to live in Dallas as a Russian immigrant whose husband killed the president.
• I actually laughed-out-loud watching the new Discount Double Check commercial with Ditka and the sausage pillow.
• Last night Barry posted an interesting article from the Boston Globe about Ted Cruz which give you more insight on how he’s always been taking a logical approach at being the odd ball.  I will agree with Cruz on his one quote, “And one of the virtues of age, one of the virtues of getting married and becoming a father, is it often leads one to take a more measured approach to life.”
• More observations from Double Down: Game Change 2013
  • Jon Huntsman seems to be a very nice guy, but he seemed too nice of a guy to sling mud or play the game and was very disappointed in what his party was becoming, especially how it was trying to appease the Tea Party and wanted to run as an independent.  He did however have a major conflict of interest when secretly starting his campaign while being Obama’s Ambassador to China.
  • Karl Rove was responsible for convincing Rick Perry to switch political parties.
  • The Bush family really don’t like Perry and there’s a lot of history between the two.  When Perry was leading in the polls, W actually told Romney not to worry, that Perry would be do something to screw things up and not to take him seriously.
  • The Bush family really wanted Robert Gates to be the president at Texas A&M and Perry was trying to keep that from happening which made Barbara livid, and Rove warned Perry the one person you don’t want to tick off is Barbara Bush. Remember, Bush 41 has his library on the campus and he and Barbara will be buried there.
  • I wasn’t aware there were any gay rumors about Perry but it was enough of a concern that he had to address major potential donors that nothing like that would pop up.
  • Right before the campaign Perry had major back surgery that compressed nerves and used a non-FDA approved experimental stem cell procedure.  The back injury caused him to stop his beloved hobby of jogging which helped with his insomnia, but once the jogging stopped he no longer could sleep which made him appear dumber than normal.  During the campaign he even went in for a sleep study and stated to use a CPAP machine which he didn’t like.
  • Donald Trump introduced Kim Kardashian to Perry during a meeting in NY.
  • When Romney’s staff started to quote stuff from Perry’s book, Romney thought they were joking because it all sounded so absurd.  There was even one point where Perry was giving a speech and stated he had four points to make and held up five fingers.  As he made he point he dropped a finger and at the end had a confused look at why he still had one digit remaining on his hand.
  • In some closed door meeting Perry yelled at Romney who stood up as if he were to leave and then just sat down and sulked.  From that experience Perry worried how Romney could stand up to someone like Putin.
  • W’s nickname to Chris Christie was Big Boy and he even had a 45-minute conversation with him about the costs of running for president.  There seemed to be two major hurdles for Christie to entering the race, he didn’t feel he was ready and his family wasn’t really on board.  When the Bush team got word of Mrs Christie’s concern about raising children in the White House, Barbara Bush actually called Mrs Christie at her Cantor Fitzgerald office for about an hour long conversation that alleviated a lot of her concerns and let her know how kid friendly it actually is.
  • The book goes into a lot of detail on how much pressure Christie was getting to run, especially from a lot of billionaires in a surprise meeting saying he would basically have unlimited funds and from the Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes stating the would have the full backing of their media resources.  But through it all, Christie never felt he was personally ready for the job and had too much respect for the office to just run on momentum when he didn’t feel it in his gut.  And it that, I really admire the man.
  • Christie was the path to all the New Jersey fundraising money, which is substantial, and Romney was livid when Christie wouldn’t allow the fund raising.  Christie wanted to hold off to a more narrow field so the money could be better targeted and spent.
• If you are going to shoot such a pic, clean the seat first – Ohio State – Michigan rivaly at its finest
• 12 Funny High School Mascots In Texas
• The magnetic light switch is a nifty idea, seems like a good place to keep your keys.
• How IKEA cleans the ball pit – looks like each one is washed individually.

• If you would have told Sooner fans two years ago that Bob Stoops would lose to both Texas and Baylor in the same year they would have said you were out of your mind and on the off chance of that happening, they would want Stoops fired.
• Last night was a very good win for Baylor, but I still don’t think they are sixth in the nation good especially when you look at their competition.  OU is having an off year, especially offensively and losing to a weak Texas team who started their backup.  The Sooners simply were ranked too high coming into this game.  I think OU really should have been ranked either in the high teens or low twenties and I feel Baylor is in the lower teens.
• The most interesting play last night was in the first quarter when OU tried to score on fourth down and hurried to the line and the Baylor safety had his back turned trying to get the end crowd to cheer when the ball snapped.  That safety is not looking forward to film session.
• Just what America needs, a third party – Philly elects first Whig in 157 years – If the description of that party in the article is accurate I think it’s a good thing, but it will be one heck of an uphill climb
• In the Double Down: Game Change 2012 book I’m reading it talks about how most of the Republican establishment wanted then Indiana Gov Mitch Daniels to throw his hat in the ring, but he just couldn’t convince his wife and daughter to go along for the ride. Bush 43 even had Daniels over to his house when the Super Bowl was in town and he offered up all of his family political resources and then he and Laura called Daniel’s wife to try to sway her.  One reason Mrs Daniels was reluctant was that her and Mitch divorced, she married a doctor, divorced the doctor and returned to Mitch and didn’t want to talk about that period in her life.
• There’s a lot of references to the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of D.C. which I never heard of before this book.
• The book also mentions and goes into great detail how much Romney detests fellow Mormon John Huntsman.  Interesting fact, Huntsman father founded the packaging company that created the clam shell box for the Big Mac.
• Bob Sturm was on the TICKET morning show and stated how the folks up north where he grew up overwhelmingly preferred pro football over college football.  I kind of thought that for DFW since the Cowboys were so good for so long and without there being a major university football program in the area.
• I wasn’t aware that Lou Diamond Phillips was a product of the University of Texas at Arlington.
• Bacon deodorant?
• Sriracha candy canes??
• Franklin Graham pimped out his father on his 95th birthday.  An author used the occasion to plug a book and write about the time Obama visited Graham.  The author pointed out that Obama was the first sitting president to visit the Graham home.
• It’s not rocket science – A team of BYU physicists who like to call themselves the wizz-kids think they have found how to minimize urine splash-back in a urinal-like environment.
• When I first read this story, I thought the double amputee was going to parachute into the Cowboys Stadium roof.
• I don’t like it when the Cowboys play Sunday or Monday night, it throws off my Sunday.
• Things I learned from this NFL Cheerleaders Infograph: The Cowboys Cheerleaders have not altered their uniforms in 17 years, the average age is 25, and a Seagal is an ordained minister but despite five minutes of searching I can’t find in what faith or denomination and he Facebook page doesn’t provide any details.
• Kevin Pollak is under-rated.
• A California high school has an Arab mascot.
• I wasn’t aware that I didn’t have to work on Monday until someone reminded me yesterday.
• Another one of those emotional touchdown stories, these are getting as common as a soldier coming home from deployment and surprising their kid at a school assembly  – A kid from a small West Texas town who survived a stroke and brain surgery was allowed to score a touchdown.
• Texas sales tax collection rises for 43rd straight month
• Dad ‘unfit parent for refusing son McDonald’s’