Doug Van Pelt

Hurry! Cane! Ike!

That's what an old man yelled at his grandson, Ike, when he needed help walking across the porch.

Maybe not. This hurricane has got Texas on alert. The University of Texas Longhorns was scheduled to play a game at Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium this Saturday against the University of Arkansas Razorbacks; and it was cancelled/postponed until the week of ACL Fest. Most of the schools in the area were cancelled today or will be letting out early. It's weird, because the sky is blue and it's a beautiful day. But sometime after midnight this hurricane is supposed to hit Houston and move right up here.

If anyone has the time to keep track of the storm and can email us and let us know if we should evacuate the HM Ranch (the office building is a temporary/manufactured/mobilehome), please let us know. With so much to do at deadline, I usually don't watch the news and/or keep up with what's happening in the world around me.


Here's some pictures of some of the activity around here lately.



INO Records bribed us to put Disciple on the cover. In addition to some grits, some iced tea, they sent us these pork rinds. Wow, do they taste nasty, or what?







Levi got some hang time recently with the Kern County Kid (not pictured), down by the "broken" pond.







Why is Levi trying to headbutt this cow?







This cow is just lazy. He'd rather chew someone else's cud than his own.







Levi wanted to name all the cows. "What's this one called?" he asked. "Cat back." He probably wondered why it had that name, until he saw the cat on its back seconds later...







This is a donkey that I really own.







I think art imitates life, because this Shetland Pony is Douglass the donkey's girlfriend; but I think it's really more wishful thinking than a real relationship -- like when I wrote "Doug 'n' Marylou" in my scrapbook, wishing that Marylou Buckley was my girlfriend, when she hardly even talked to me in 6th grade. What a loser.