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This shall be the last post about the Great Wall of Geeding.  Below are some before and after pictures and one final timelapse video of the sod being laid down.

The first and second “Before” pictures are from when we moved into GeedingManor back in January of 2005, that’s why there’s a gray fence.  All other before pictures were taken this year.

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• During my sabbatical there was really one one time I really wanted to blog and that was over David Letterman’s retirement announcement.  I basically wanted to express that his announcement was no surprise and the reason it hit straight to the heart for a lot of folks wasn’t because there was sadness over a successful, wealthy, famous person who was not going to be on late night for our enjoyment, but it’s really just another sign a part of our youth will be gone and all we’ll have left are the memories.  I was then going to tie that in with Kidd Kraddick’s surprise death.  A lot of local people my age grew up with Kraddick and then drifted away after our mid-twenties, and that’s similar to folks who were Dave fanatics but no longer watch. We don’t know these people, but they forever connect us to a time in our life when we had no worries and the road of life looked endless.  Now, that connection is lost and that road looks much shorter and even wasn’t as smooth as we imagined.
• Letterman’s Top Ten yesterday focused on that story that Jesus may have had a wife and the top ten things you may have heard at his wedding.  The ones that cracked me up the most were:
  • 10. “On his wedding day you’d think he’d shave.”
  • 9. “I didn’t know Jesus was so religious.”
  • 7. “Who invited Judas?”
  • 3. “This wine tastes watery.”
• To that list, I would have probably added “I hope she took out a life insurance policy.”  But that also makes me wonder if the policy would still be valid if someone rose from the dead three days later and then disappears after 40 more days with no body to be found.
• My afternoon at The TICKET’s Mothership got moved to Monday since the Hardline has a lot of remotes this week.  For five bucks, I could take DART rail which would take 41 minutes.  Driving would take me about 25 minutes with light traffic, but I’d have to pay for parking.  I just might give DART a try.  In terms of having a user friendly website, I’d have to give DART a D.
• I didn’t know Craig Sager was first treated in Dallas and sent to the hospital by the Mav’s physician regarding his soon-to-be leukemia diagnosis.
• Man, ‘Fargo’ on FX is just darn good, and Dallas and Baylor folks should be proud of the work the lead actress is doing.
• I’ve been upset over the performance of my laptop and after a lot of research and weighing options, an upgrade to Windows 8 would be best. And then I remember that I’m still listed as an adjunct professor for a university based out in East Texas and I get discounted software.  The upgrade only cost me $20, the download took less than ten minutes, and if I didn’t forget about leaving a SD card in the built in flash drive the install would have finished in about a half hour.  Surprisingly Windows 8 takes up less room than Windows 7 and my laptop is much more efficient.
• I made mention yesterday that I was contacting people that have meant a lot to me but I haven’t reached out to in over five years.  The latest person was a colonel and base commander at Dyess AFB when I was a college student.  For my leadership studies minor, we had to do two interns, one associated with our major and another that had nothing to do with our major.  I attended church with the colonel and “somewhat” dated his daughter and he arranged an internship for me. To this day the only office I had with my name on it was the one he arranged for me.  When I finished my internship I wanted to actually become an Air Force officer, but I couldn’t qualify. My exposure at the base helped me bond with my father who was in the Navy and Army for 28 years like we never had before.  Of all the cool military stuff I got to experience with the colonel, what I remember most his a certain act of grace.  DadGeeding was dying, was pretty much in a coma, and I was his only visitor at the time all tired and stress.  I thought I was hallucinating when I saw the colonel walk through the hospital room door – he was kind enough to drive from Abilene to Mineral Wells just to check on me.  I’m glad I called him and told him how much that meant to me, how I admired him, and thanked him one last time for saying the final prayer at my father’s funeral before he was lowered in the ground.
• There was a tweet that made me think a lot yesterday.  It basically said that when I hear ten years ago I’m thinking the 90’s, not 2004.
• My grandmother died on this day back in 1986, I think I was the only one that liked her, candy can cloud a child’s judgement.
• Grace

• Thanks for the warm welcome back, y’all.
• If you stopped by this website during my sabbatical you would have noticed I took the entire thing down except for a simple page that said I “Gone Fishing’.  One reason I took the whole thing down was the number of spam comments I was getting, and I thought if I took it down for over a month perhaps the spambots would go elsewhere.  I’ve only been back one day, but there’s been a very significant difference.
• Because of my beard, my pastor now calls me Rutherford, as in President Rutherford B. Hayes.
• During my spring cleaning days I decided to throw away some old newspapers I thought would increase in value.  For instance, I had a Star-Telegram with the Magic Johnson story on the front page.  If that paper was the LA Times, it might be worth keeping, but there’s no need to keep a Star-Telegram edition.  I did keep the Dallas Morning News editions of all the Cowboys Super Bowl victories in the 90’s.  Too bad I won’t live to see another one of those covers.
• Tempting picture of the Day: The swollen face of a baseball player after being hit in the face with a 90 mph fastball.
• I like the our Major League Baseball club name, the Texas Rangers, but I do admit I get annoyed when I see or hear “Rangers” and it’s the NHL franchise.  I also learned that when it comes to local news stories, I sometime have to do a double take because when I thought the story was referring to the baseball club, it was the actual law enforcement agency.  All that came to mind when I saw this CNN headline: Ex-Ranger: I may have killed Pat Tillman.  My first thought was, I always knew there was something suspicious about that Geno Petralli, despite his good-guy image.  Believe it or not, but there’s even a Fake Geno Petralli Twitter account which references his Dr. Pepper delivery man days.
• The actor that plays the old man advertising executive that replaced Don Draper use to be a stand-up comedian.  Here’s his first appearance on Letterman.
• When the wife and the kids were visiting their grandparents last week I hung out with a friend who goes to trivia events held at local restaurants.  Heck, he and his regular teammates actually compete in tournaments across the state.  That night it was just us two and we were competing against eight or nine teams, most had more than just two members, some were as big as eight.  We ended up getting second place and winning a $25 gift certificate (first place prize was $50) and I have to admit it was really fun.  We probably would have won if we felt more confident in our answer for the final bonus question which was:  From oldest to youngest, put the following drafts in order – MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL.  I’ll leave it up to you to find the answer.
• I’m spending this week contacting people who’ve meant a great deal to me but I simply haven’t kept touch.  The first person I contacted was a neighbor in Mineral Wells who actually served with my father.  If you looked up the biblical definition of ‘servant’ his picture would be next to it. When he was 49 he had a massive heart attack which resulted in quadrupedal bypass surgery.  He was told that he could expect to live another eight to ten years, but today he is now 82-years old.  I think of him every Halloween because instead of candy, he gave out dimes, and if you actually knew him, he’d also sneak you a dollar.  When asked if he still carries on the tradition, he said “You’re darn tooting.”  When DadGeeding died and I had to go back to college, and as tough as that was, it was comforting to know he was just a few houses down to watch over a newly widowed single parent with an 11-year-old girl.  It was nice to hear that the neighborhood hasn’t changed all that much other than a three story apartment building was being put up near by, one that would block my view of the Baker Hotel from my street.  He did say one neighbor broke a hip mowing her lawn, but after surgery and rehab she’s back to mowing again.  Unfortunately he is also recovering from a broken hip, but his heart isn’t strong enough for surgery to be an option.
• Speaking of dimes, and I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before, but DadGeeding grew up in the Depression and FDR was his favorite president.  With FDR being on the dime, Dad never spent a single one, he instead saved them in a piggy bank which overflowed through the years.  I’ve carried on the tradition.
• The other day at church I heard a woman describe how Pharrell Williams song ‘Happy‘ is a very terrible song because when one looks at it from a Christian perspective it has nothing to do with happiness, and she went on to say how she and a companion were playfully trying to put Christian lyrics to the song.  It just so happened the song came on the radio on my ride home and I listened intently to the lyrics, and I think one could reasonably argue the lyrics could be interpreted as very Christian.  For instance, “Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth.”  I’m not saying it is a Christian song, but I think some folks just need to tap the breaks a little bit.
• When I first saw Lt Gov David Dewhurst’s commercial aimed at Dan Patrick changing his name to hide from bankruptcy, I thought it was pretty damning.  PolitiFact rates it as “PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.”
• A drone quadcopter flew into a fireworks show.  The footage isn’t as good as I thought it would be.
• Google just revealed the incredibly simple formula for killer résumés – Here’s the GeedingNote’s version: Frame your strengths as: ‘I accomplished X, relative to Y, by doing Z.
• When JFK made his speech about sending a man to the moon and returning him safely to Earth speech, an Englishman sought out a bookie and made a wager at 1,000-1 odds in favor of a successful mission.
• Grace