The Goat Profiles,...these photos were taken in a rural community two hours southwest of Fort Worth.

Day Lilies Bloom

Don't know why,...but they did. They are in an out of the way spot in our backyard and we hardly ever see them until it's too late. Amy cut them and put them on the table for our maximum enjoyment. I think they're kind of exotic looking. Not your run of the mill lily.

Krystal's is HERE!

It seems that all of the wishes that I made since we arrived in the Dallas area are coming to true. All of these wishes center around food that's not really good for you(or anyone else), that I experienced growing up in the southeast. The first acquisition we got in town was Memphis style pork BBQ at a Red, Hot and Blue restaurant. Second, we got a Krispy Kreme,...thank goodness the lines have subsided. Now to complete the hat trick, Krystal's opened a few weeks ago. I have had a Krystal burger once a week since I found out they were in town. Initially my son told me, and I refused to believe the truthfulness of his statement,....not that my son would lie about something as serious as Krystal's, but he could easily be mistaken as 8th graders are so prone to be. It wasn't until our youth minister, who is also from the southeast and familiar with Krystal's, broke the good news unto me that I finally saw the light and believed. I did not walk the aisle to express my faith in his statement that Krystal's had truly come into the metroplex, I just trusted his words and drove to the place that he had told me he had seen the light and smelled the grease. By faith I drove there as soon as we drove back into town from a youth retreat weekend. I partook and I was saved. BTW, those aren't Krystal hamburgers in the photo,.....they are way too thick to be Krystal's,...they should be paper thin patties and we should see a hint of yellow mustard and grilled onion jibblets. I just remembered,...they are open 24 hours! I wish I had not.

The Hoyts

[From Sports Illustrated, By Rick Reilly]I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life.This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs. ``He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an institution.''But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told.``There's nothing going on in his brain.''"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want to do that.''Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. ``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was sore for two weeks.''That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were running, it felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.``No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? ``No way,'' he says.Dick does it purely for ``the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time'? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the Century.''And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.''So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.``The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad would sit in the chair and I would push him once.''Here's the video....http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryCTIigaloQ

Fake Ticket

You don't have to miss any concert with this handy ticket maker. Since I never saw The King,...I thought I would like to see just what one of those stubbs would look like. The web address is at the bottom of the ticket,...but for you far sight folks it's: www.says-it.com/concertticket/ . Have fun! Great for Birthdays too!

Lemon Drop

This is a very sweet and lemony drink that came into vogue during the 1970s in California. It is now a favorite drink of the West Coast. The drink was developed at a now defunct bar called Henry Africa's in San Francisco, a well-known singles bar. At Henry Africa's bar, they developed and pushed "girl drinks" - drinks that are potent, yet sweet enough to cover the taste of alcohol. Think of the lemon drop candies! After making and sampling many different recipes, my husband and I declared this recipe our favorite alcoholic drink!

1 1/2 ounces vodka
1/2 ounce Triple Sec
1 teaspoon superfine sugar
3/4 ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice
Ice cubes
Superfine sugar for dipping
Twisted peel of lemon

Mix the vodka, Triple Sec, sugar, and lemon juice in a cocktail shaker half-filled with ice; shake well (supposedly the cocktail is to be shaken 40 times to make sure the sugar is well blended). Pour strained liquor into sugar-rimmed martini glass and garnish with a twisted peel of lemon.
NOTE: To create a sugar-rimmed glass, take a lemon wedge and rub the drinking surface of the glass so it is barely moist. Dip the edge of the glass into sugar.

Makes 1 serving.

The reason I'm sneezing and wheezing,...my side of the bed!

Big Cherry Spoon

This is a work in the sculpture garden in Minneapolis taken in the wee small hours of the morning a few weeks ago. I have no idea what the name of this work is,....probably something very obvious, like "big cherry in an even bigger spoon", I don't know the artist,...but I remember it being in my college art appreciation book, so it was cool to see in person. There were some famous artists represented by their works in this jewel of a sculpture garden that the bartender in our hotel told us about(she also made us a couple of Lemon Drops that were excellent, see recipe above). It was cool in the mornings there,.....50's,....so it was nice to stop for coffee after a long walk.