Rish is kind of like my dealer. As is always the case when I go to visit him, he has a bunch of toys for me to take back home. This time, he helped me acquire a couple of things I really wanted in my collection.
To start with, today's post, the Crimson Guard. I have three Cobra BATS that I happened upon one day while out looking for toys. Not only was finding them a surprise. They rang up for half price after that. So, I built a little mini-army for very cheap.
I made a video about the toy hunt that landed me those BATS back in the day. You can watch it here if you want.
And here's how they look on my shelf:
So, why did I waste your time with that story? Well, I really wanted to do the same with the Crimson Guard figures that they put out this year. I made sure to pre-order one of them from the online toy store, just to make sure that I actually got one, because the Crimson Guards were my favorite. I would have been so sad not to get any at all.
It seemed as though that was the only one I was ever going to get, because I never saw them in stores at all. If I had, I probably would have bought any of them, full-price or not. However, I never had to. Surprisingly, back at the start of August, I was walking down the clearance aisle, and I found this one:
I don't know where that thing had been hiding. I had been in that same Walmart the week before, and they didn't have this guy on the shelf. I definitely would have paid the full price for it, but now I didn't have to.
I brought him home and put him with my other guy.
Sorry, the picture is out of focus, but it's too late to redo it, because there's a third and final one on the shelf now.
As I said, my dealer, Rish Outfield tracked down one of the newly released, but never seen in stores anywhere, "vintage" Crimson Guard. He gave it to me while I was out there, and I brought it back in my carry-on. Now the squad is complete.
I don't know if you can tell, but the vintage one is in the middle. He has a silver face plate instead of black like the other two. Not sure why, because actual vintage Crimson Guards don't have that difference. But who cares. I figure he looks like he's the commander because of his slight differences. I sure do like having the mini-army again, though.
I wonder if there's any other figures that I'd like to make an army out of...none come to mind.
I guess it's time to trade my toys out for their Halloween related counterparts, but I really don't want to. The thought of it just makes me tired. Maybe I need to sell off all those toys if this is the way I feel year in and year out...
A few months back, I got a second flagpole for my front yard. I wanted to be able to display a second flag along with my American flag. I wasn't sure the right way to do it, though, so I petitioned the folks on Facebook.
Everyone insisted that the American flag being on its own right was most important, but I couldn't switch it because the two poles were different sizes, and the American flag would only work on the skinny pole. So, I had to leave it like it was, and be out of code.
However, the universe was unhappy with that arrangement. I had to get a new flagpole. The mount that I got a while back broke on me. It was made of plastic, and was pretty unimpressive, so it's not too surprising that it broke, and it was actually the second time that it broke on me. It came with two mounts, and the first one broke within days. The second lasted a few months, but now it's gone too.
After dealing with the crappy mounts, I figured there's no way I'd deal with that again. So, I bought the same metal mount and large pole that my other flag was on. It came from Amazon today, and I quickly mounted it on the tree.
The good thing is, now that they are both on the same pole, I can switch the flags from one side to the other. This is what it looks like now:
You can tell that it's been a few months of drought since the last picture was taken, but now the flags are in the proper order. In line with flag code! It's probably stupid, and has bored all of y'all to death, but it makes me happy.
I did alternate day fasting the whole week through, and made some good progress, but a sort of cloud was on the horizon, because by the end of the week, I was leaving on a road trip. Could I keep it together while on the road? How does one do that? What are the options?
I've been doing a couch to marathon program for the last few months, running every other day at increasing lengths to one day in January arrive at the ability to run a marathon. A month and a half ago, I made it to the 5K, which was the first big milestone of the process.
Well, today I hit the second milestone, the 10K.
I was horrifyingly slow, and it took an awful lot out of me, but I did it, and I can be proud of that. I suppose, over the next few months, I can increase my speed, because this won't be the last time that I run a 10K. No, pretty much every Saturday from here on out my run length will exceed a 10K. So, I'll be getting used to it.
Joel is back for more of his adventures in the past. He establishes himself and gets used to how things are now, but not everything is hunky dory. There were problems in the past, and they begin to rear their ugly heads at him. What will he do? How will he change things for the better? Keep listening to "Do Over" to find out!
This time, I do the episode solo. I talk about the struggles of writing and pose the question of whether it's worth it considering the trajectory of the world, particularly the new addition of AI to the mix. I really want to know what you think, so comment on it, my friends.
You can find the episode on your podcast feed (because I'm sure you are subscribed, right?) or you can right click HERE to download the episode. Or you can just click the play button down below to listen right here and now.
This past week, I had to drive with my daughter across the country to get her back to college. She had to get her car back, so she couldn't just fly. Instead it was a two day drive, and we weren't about to let her make that drive all by herself. The last thing we wanted was for her to be pushing herself to finish the drive and falling asleep on the road.
So, I drove that two day drive with her, and then flew back a few days later. Along the way, we had a quick stop off at Wilson Arch, which is just south of Moab.
That was pretty cool, because it was right off the side of the road. It was just sitting there like one of those roadside attractions...you know, the world's largest Dutch clog or the world's largest ball of yarn...except this was an arch worthy of being in Arches National Park, and it was just a three minute hike up a hill to get right on it where you could touch it!
My daughter is going to college in the same city that one Rish Outfield lives in as well, so while I was there waiting for my flight home, I had a few days to spend hanging out with him.
It's been a little while since I've seen Rish in person, so it was pretty cool. The first day, we went to a place called Antelope Island.
This is a spot that is right on the Great Salt Lake. It's supposed to be an island, although the lake has been lowering its levels so much recently that it's become more of a peninsula. Record snowfall this past winter raised the lake level about five feet, so it's filled in a lot of those shallow spots, but it needs a lot more record precipitation to get it high enough that it's a complete island again.
We go there a little late, so I made Rish drive straight to the visitor center. I collect patches for places like this (national parks, state parks, etc) and I wanted to get one before they shut down and I was too late to buy one. This is what I picked.
It was pretty much my only choice. It's just a state park, after all, it doesn't have the notoriety of a national park to merit several patches to choose from.
The first thing that we did was drive down toward the lake. There was a little hike there we could take that would put us in a good spot to take pictures like this:
I've never been to the Great Salt Lake before, and I've heard a lot of talk that it is disappearing, so maybe this picture will be even more meaningful that just to mark my one time there.
While up on that overlook, we decided to walk down to the lake. I wanted to put my finger in the water to say that I had. I've heard that if you swim in it, it's so salty that you will float without even trying, but I wasn't prepared to swim...and when we got close enough, the smell made any thought of testing that floating thing out leave my head forever.
See in that picture above where the sand is darker right on the edge of the lake? You probably assume that it's because it's a little bit wet from the waves that lap up on the shore. Well, let me disabuse you of that theory. Turns out, when you get to the actual shoreline, this is what you find.
Gross, right? Absolutely gross. Those are flies, millions upon millions of flies. The dark spot on the edge of the water was not wet sand, it was millions of flies. Rish loved the way that they flew away like ripples in the water, and had a grand old time waving at them and watching them go.
How can so many flies just sit there happy and unmolested? We saw several lizards in the short hike we took. How are those things not massively fat from gorging on fly after fly? They wouldn't even have to be good hunters. There are so many the lizards could be like the nasty elites in The Hunger Games that would eat until they were stuffed then take something that would make them vomit so they could eat some more.
Eventually, we headed back toward the car. On the way, we saw this thing:
It's a spiral that somebody created out of rocks...probably to honor the Spiral Jetty, which is somewhere near Antelope Island, but is much bigger and more impressive than just some rocks. Not that this wasn't impressive. Imagine how long it must have taken to put all these rocks here like this.
Once we were done here, we moved on to the thing that Antelope Island is most known for. You might think it's the herds of antelope, but that's where you'd be mistaken. Antelope Island is the place to go if you want to see bison. I don't know if there are even any antelopes on the island, but there are thousands of buffalo, and we were going in search of them.
We saw our first bunch not far down the road.
Can you see them? There are five in the shot. They are the dark spots out there on the prairie. We were warned by the rangers to stay well clear of them, and there were signs posted everywhere too.
Fifty feet wasn't far enough. They recommended at least 150 feet. So we didn't approach any closer than this.
Yeah, it's not very close, but we didn't know what we'd see, so we had to take what we could get. Look at how well Rish pointed out the buffalo in the background. His finger is almost right on top of the thing.
After this, we got back in the car and drove a while longer. We saw another small group of bison, but this time we didn't stop, because they were similarly far away.
Then we got to the ranch, and all of a sudden it looked like this:
Not only were there tons of them, but they were right next to us. Right off the road, super close.
It was really neat. We were surrounded by them, and I saw about four times the amount of buffalo that we saw years ago when my family went to Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone is supposed to be famous for that kind of stuff, but they didn't deliver a quarter as much as this place did.
It was pretty neat, and we hung around that spot for at least a half hour before we finally hit the road to head back to the mainland. Oh, by the way, in case you were wondering, we took all this pictures from the safety of our car. We never did approach the bison. We're not stupid like the people I've seen in videos getting launched into the air by sweeping bison horns.
On the way off the island, we did stop at the marina for a moment, where we were greeted by millions more of those disgusting flies. We found a spot where I could stick my finger in the water without traipsing through the flies, so now I can say I've been in the water of the lake...or at least touched the water.
After Antelope Island, Rish and I got up to our old tricks. We went to a GameStop and a Target looking for toys, and then ate at a Carl's Jr. Don't worry, I didn't eat the bun. I just had plain burger patties, so I didn't ruin my diet.
They were really good burgers. Much better than the dry things I get from McDonald's usually.
The next day, Rish and I got together earlier in the morning, and drove out to my old town out in the west desert. We looked at the two houses that I used to live in, and I was surprised at the rundown nature of the yard. Look at this lawn:
Look at how high those weeds have grown. When we lived there, it was a beautiful patch of open grass that you could play a game of football or soccer on if you wanted to.
All the fruit trees in the backyard are super overgrown as well. I suspect they don't get much fruit from them, and whatever they do get grows too high for them to get to because they let the trees get so huge.
It's such a shame. We spent so much time and money making that backyard into something so beautiful, and these folks wasted it all simply with laziness. Mow your lawn, man. Jeez!
We went to a few more stores in search of toys, and hung out at Wendy's like we used to in the old days...not the same Wendy's, but they're pretty much all the same, so it might as well have been.
Then we drove out to a park and recorded a few sketches that Rish wrote for us to perform. They were both pretty funny. I think you'll enjoy them when they show up on his show. After that, I had to get over to my daughter's new apartment to help her move all her stuff in, because today was the day they were giving them their keys and letting them take possession of their new homes.
The last day I was there, Rish and I went out to see a movie. The new movie for the week was Gran Turismo, and Rish said it looked pretty good.
I was willing to give it a shot, and I'm glad I did. It was a great show. I recommend it. You'll likely enjoy it too.
After that, I made Rish take me to the local In-N-Out Burgers.
I got me a few Flying Dutchmen...that's this:
We hung out, eating on the outdoor tables, because it was an absolutely beautiful night. It was the kind of weather that I haven't felt in Houston for about six months. I could have stayed there forever, but eventually it was time to go home and go to bed, and that was it. I had to fly back home the next day, and I suppose I won't see Rish for another long while.
Sometimes I wish life wasn't so full of curves, and I still lived out there near Rish. It would be so fun to be able to hang out, watch movies, write together, and podcast like we used to do in the old days. But who knows, maybe those days will come again. I guess you never know.
.png)
