Ketchup

Being unemployed means doing lots of fun stuff, but I've gotten behind so here's what I been up to:
This is my new truck. It's a beaut.

Here's one of my brother Joe's goats. The shaggy pile next to it is all the fleece that we just finished shearing from it. My job was to pin the goat down by holding his horns on the deck. Just in case none of you've tried it before, let me tell ya: shaving goats is hard, smelly work and you get absolutely no appreciation from the animal. But it's satisfying work all the same.
During a weekend trip to visit sister Ruthie in College Station, we had a hayride for her student ward. Here is Ruthie coaching us from atop a 10 foot stack of hay bails while her brother and fiance are at the bottom pitching bails on to the trailer for the hayride. It was tons of fun and I got to know her hubby-to-be better. What a guy.
Today I took my nephew Sterling to the park. We went exploring in the woods and found this "bwokin summawine" I have no idea what it really is, but it sure is cool. Joe's entire fam came over for dinner tonight, and for some reason, it was just like a family reunion: total blissful chaos. Children were screaming, photos were oohed and ahhed over, and at least four people were involved in a turbulent swarm of kitchen activity that somehow resulted in a wonderful Sunday dinner. Good times.
Other than that, i've been looking for a job to tide me over while I finish this phase of Operation Build a Successful and Fulfilling Civilian Life. I will start a full schedule of correspondence classes after the holidays in order to get an AA and become acceptable to a four year school where I will get a bachelor's in Audio Design, and go on to an exciting, lucrative, and creatively satisfying career making and processing sounds. I've been getting out to Joe's farm at least once a week lately just for fun. They are always up to something there wether it's re-flooring their house, rearranging their rooms, fixing cars, etc. It's all good stuff plus, once we've done enough useful stuff to feel productive, there's always time for fishing, tractor driving, rabbit hunting, armadillo chasing, home run derbys with golf balls, camping, or just playing with the chickens or cats or goats or cows or frogs or dogs or turtles or anything else we can find.