One day while comercial fishing in Alaska

I was rudely awakened from the coma that is called sleep among fishermen. It was a shout from the skipper that we ‘were on the gear’.

Startled out of a wonderful dream involving…never mind, I started out of the top bunk, caught my foot on something and fell out, landing on my shipmate that was climbing out of the bottom rack.

We landed in a heap and, still in a daze, started grabbing our clothes.

We both grabbed the same pair of pants and started pulling them on ala Laurel and Hardy.

When I realized what we were doing, I recognized that they were my pants, so I elbowed my shipmate and with a dumb look on his face, he pulled his leg out of them.

I put my other leg in them and pulled them up, only to find I had put them on backwards. I simply buttoned them on the back, ran out to the galley and wolfed down about 6 eggs, a bushel of spuds, a pound of sausage, and 8 biscuits and washed it down with a gallon of coffee and got into my rain gear and hit the deck.

This whole process took about 5 minutes.

When the day was over, I took off my raingear and sat down and ate.
Nobody said anything about my pants; there were no comments, no laughter, not a single word about my backward pants.

Now at work, I have to be at least somewhat presentable and look fairly civilized, which I don’t mind.

Still, there’s something to be said about having a job where it doesn’t matter if you have your pants on backwards or not.


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Instant Karma sucks. I make mine from SCRATCH.

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It seems Starbucks shops draw a certain amount of snobs that seem to be above everyone else. The only reason I go there is because their coffee is pretty good, although I’m starting to steer to Dunkin’ Donuts, as the coffee there is OK, and the clientele is a bit easier on me.

As people that know me, I don’t suffer too many fools quietly.

I was in Starbucks, and the woman behind me chided that the coffee there was SO European, and started commenting the usual sophisticate crap about how wonderful Europe was.

I turned on the charm, and with warmth, asked her about Europe and she started telling me about growing up there as a colonel’s daughter and how wonderful Europe was.

Then with true warmth in my voice, I asked her about which part of Europe she lived in. The part we saved or the part where we kicked ass and took names.

She called me a cowboy, and I thanked her. I really was a cowboy for a short time and I’m proud of it.

Then she told me that instant karma was going to get me.

I furrowed my brows.

“Do you mean microwave karma, or instant karma, neither of them of which I use,” I replied. “I make my karma from scratch, the old fashioned way.”

I continued. “I take the course of an entire lifetime of trying to do the right thing to make my karma on. I’m not in this life for the quick here and now, I’m in it for the long haul. That’s how I make my karma, one day at a time, one good deed at a time. I get tired of listening how wonderful Europe is. If it’s so wonderful, then you and your microwavable karma ought to go back there.”

The look on the faces of people listening in made me know I’d put another one into the ten-ring.