One of the things I am not is a clothes horse.

It is an embarrassment at times but that is just the way it is. I do not really dress very well, my general uniform at home being 501 Levis and a T-shirt unless it is cold. Then I put on an old LL Bean wool shirt.



At work it is oil-spotted khakis. I look like a WW2 submarine junior officer underway most of the time.



When my mother died a few years back I was at sea and much to the credit of my employer, they got me off the boat in record time and I made a beeline to my kid sister's house. About two minutes after I arrived we were in my pickup headed off to the clothing stores where she took me and helped me pick out an outfit that made me look pretty damned good, according to everyone that saw me.



My kid sister has a pretty good eye for clothes and can take a homeless wino and make him look like the CEO of a Fortune 500 company in just a few minutes. She's got an eye and for that I am grateful.



She did a good job of keeping me from showing up at my mother's funeral looking like Jethro Bodine.



****************************

This is a Sunday morning and I am cooking myself a pretty good breakfast of eggs, peppers, ham and cheese. The radio is on also and I am listening to a conversation between 2 bored hams on the 160 meter band which I have not been on for quite some time as the usual antenna tuner I have been using will not tune 160 meters very well.



Today I will start in on my plan to raise my 43 foot vertical antenna and see how it works for DX (distant exchange). My plan being to try and make contact with 100 different countries over the next period of time.



The 43 foot vertical supposidly sends the radio waves off at a lower angle so when they hit the ionesphere they will skip differently than they do on the wire antenna I have been using.



Years ago I made a pretty good living by simply doing odd jobs that came up. I generally kept pretty busy and did things varied. One never gets bored when you do not know what you are going to be doing next. Now I am older and my foot is still not 100% andI am looking for someone to do something for me and there is nobody to be found.



You would think that in this economy that there would be a few people out there willing to pick up a few bucks but for the life of me I can not seem to find anybody.



I swear that when I am dead and gone and someone tries to figure out what I did that the tally is going to be that I spent about half my life shod in army boots. I have had a couple of leg/foot injuries over the years and when the cast/camwalker/whatever comes off the doctor generally puts me back into army boots.



Younger docs don't seem to know this trick, but old ones sure do.



I remember back in 5th grade when Dr Kilfoyle put me in them after a nasty break. The break was in my leg but he put me in the boots because I had been in plaster so long that he figured my ankles could use the support until the muscle got stronger.



He was funny. My mother looked at him oddly when she told him that the easiest and cheapest thing to do was to simply take me to a surplus store and buy them there. Then he grinned and told me that he had just ordered a fancy-fancy, fashion-fashion type of woman into them and she turned purple.



Even now I can picture the snooty woman. There she is in the latest dress, perfect makeup, manicured nails, hose, diamond jewelery and she is headed into the salon to get her hair done shod in none other than USGI combat boots.



There she is in her glory. Makeup by Madame Carstoy of Paris, Jewelery by Diamonds of Capetown, Nails done my Monsieur Theodore of Rome and Government Issue footwear by Bob's Army Surplus of Weymouth, Massachusetts.



Of course, she was horrorfied to be put in combat boots.



Still, there are a few women out there that could pull off coming to some social function dressed to the nines but shod in GI boots. These are the women who know WHO they are and know that they are the same person and that they are who they are no matter how they are dressed.



What was so funny is that the doctor knew that this woman was one of those that based her entire self esteem on what she was wearing and I guess he decided to have a little fun. He told her that she could NOT wear one boot on her injured foot and a high heel on her good foot and she'd be better off wearing both of them.



This was back in the day when there were not a whole lot of females in military service and one of the biggest childhood insults was to be told that your mother wears army boots. I wonder if she had any kids?



Anyway, I am now in army boots again by doctor's orders.



What else is new?




my other blog is: http://officerpiccolo.blogspot.com/ http://piccolosbutler.blogspot.com/