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Al, the lawyer, and Joe, the loan officer, are bungee-jumping one day. Al says to Joe, "You know, we could make a lot of money running our own bungee-jumping service in Mexico." Joe thinks this is a great idea and provides financing. Then, they buy everything they’ll need: a tower, an elastic cord, insurance, etc. Al obtains the necessary permits to operate, etc. They travel to Mexico and begin to set up on the square. As they are constructing the tower, a crowd begins to assemble. Slowly, more and more people gather to watch them at work. When they finish, there is such a crowd they decide it is a good idea to give a demonstration. Al, the lawyer, being quite adventurous, decided to jump. He bounces at the end of the cord, but when he comes back up Joe notices that he has a few cuts and scratches. Unfortunately, Joe isn't able to catch him, and he falls again, bounces and comes back up again. This time, he is bruised and bleeding. Again Joe misses him. Al falls again and bounces back up. This time he comes back pretty messed up-he's got a couple of broken bones and is almost unconscious. Luckily, Joe finally catches him this time and says, "What happened? Was the cord too long?" Barely able to speak, Al gasps, "No, the cord was fine, but what's a pinata?"

Nobody wants a gun. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJC2asdziAG/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

I know it should be "aisle".

https://inspirationfeed.com/dad-memes/

I like her. Never heard of her before but I watched all of the things I could before Instagram shut me off. And I like her.

Ordering coffee at the Vatican Café https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJjz6jGo3-U/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

Me too and still full of equipment that hasn't been plugged in in over 20 years!

I still have mine.

Pedestrian hit by electric car. Driver charged with battery.

So not only does everything want to kill you, Australia now offers death in designer colors!?!! Regards Gateway Kid

Funny! A good many years back I was invited to visit an Ostrich Ranch, where you might ask? North Dakota, USA. Really amazing. They had a very small car padded with old mattreses, window openings covered with chain link fence material - no engine! Floorboards were cut out and they walked it out to collect eggs. The most amazing thing to me, and possbly only because they were in fenced compounds, is that the birds ran in flocks as other birds fly. With Meat, eggs, leather and feathers, they seemed to have quite a good business. Have to see if their card is still in my file from business days. Ostrich boots are some of my most comfortable.

With friends like you guys, I'm always disturbed. Another Gym T-Shirt:

Aussie summers get quite hot. maybe the snake was looking for a cooler place to eat lunch.

BACON FOR BREAKFAST The honed edge of Maxwell steel shone bright in the moonlight. The blood was almost as bright and shining. The cut was not deep, but the cut was on the throat. The hand that laid over the Sheriff's wrist was cool, gentle, a woman's hand: he could not move, he could not resist as the hand pushed his wrist away, his hand with it, and with his hand, the knife. The Sheriff looked up at the glowing, partly-silhouetted face of Sarah Lynne McKenna, wearing a white nightgown with ruffles at the throat, ruffles darkening with her life's blood. Her face either glowed or moonlight played tricks: the sky above her, behind her, was black, with sharp, accusing light-daggers for stars. The Sheriff could not move. He lay on his blanket roll. Sarah sat a-straddle of his belly, her head tilted a little to the side, almost smiling. He blinked, horrified at what he'd done: the cut on her neck was shallow, but it was bleeding steadily, darkening the ruffled collar of her flannel nightie. Sarah's expression was gentle as she released his wrist. She reached up, pulled down her ruffled collar, ran a fingertip very precisely the length of the three-fingers-long, shallow, steadily bleeding cut. At her fingertip's passage, both incision and exsanguination disappeared. She lowered her hand, leaned forward, caressed his lightly stubbled cheek, whispered "Rest now," then she leaned down and kissed his forehead, and his eyes closed, and he relaxed. Esther Keller was awake with the sun. She was usually an early riser, but she was up earlier than usual -- the maid was distressed to find Herself already in the kitchen, staring out the window at meadow and mountains and frolicking colts. Esther turned with a gentle smile and raised a calming hand: "My husband slept in the mountains last night," she said, her voice gentle, "and I know the nightmares that plague him." The maid muttered worriedly about men who'll sleep on a stone bed rather than a warm one, men who'll leave their wives alone to worry for their well-being and not get a wink o' sleep, all the while firing the big Monarch stove, shaking ashes, carefully laying the gradual fire so as not to shock the cast iron and cause a heat crack: her sister unwisely fired a stove with hard coal, back East, and it cracked with a gunshot, and only the fact that the Master of the House was well into his cups, and thought it a good joke and quite funny, only his drunken, good natured roar that he was tired of that stove and they should have a new one on the morrow, saved her from the sack, or worse. Mary had tea as quickly as she could possibly arrange; water in the kettle was warm from the banked stove, and it did not take terribly long to boil, and all the time Mary was preparing tea and laying out bread and butter and preparing to fry up bacon and eggs, diced ham meat and diced onions and Mexican peppers, Esther stood at the kitchen window, looking to the lightening horizon, worrying for her pale eyed husband. The Rosenthal household was a study in feminine decorum. Levi Rosenthal, who'd married Bonnie McKenna when his no-good brother was murdered in Denver (good riddance! Levi thought uncharitably when he'd heard the news), was the sole rooster in a henhouse populated with what he honestly had to admit were genuinely, absolutely, utterly, beautiful ladies. Bonnie Lynne McKenna made it her personal mission to emerge from her bedroom fully dressed, fresh-faced with her hair elaborately done up, in a properly-fitted McKenna gown and matching gloves. Her daughters, her children, were as children everywhere: they learned by observation and by imitation, and so they, unfailingly, did not emerge from their own bowers of slumber until they, too, were styled, fully dressed, and presentable as Very Proper Young Ladies. Levi had always been tidy about his person; he'd been a businessman all his life, and he well knew the value of a proper presentation, a proper first impression, and so, here at breakfast, a man in a tailored suit and a properly knotted tie sat down for breakfast with his beautiful wife and three genuinely beautiful daughters. Their younger children begged to be allowed to sleep at a classmate's house; they would be along later in the day, but neither Levi nor Bonnie doubted that they would be as well dressed and as decorous as Bonnie, Sarah, Polly and Opal were at this moment. Bonnie blinked big violet eyes and looked at Sarah with an interested tilt of her head. "Sarah," she asked, "I know you're a light sleeper. Did you hear anything ... unusual ... through the night?" Sarah Lynne McKenna smiled, her eyes wide, innocent, pale as the Sheriff's: Bonnie swallowed, for she knew those eyes, and she knew why Sarah had those pale eyes, and there was an active conspiracy to keep the truth from Sarah until her next birthday -- at fourteen, she'd be old enough to be told. Not until. Sarah blinked, long, curved eyelashes sweeping almost audibly as she did. "I heard nothing ... unusual, Mother," she said, her voice gentle. Bonnie puzzled a little at this. "I thought ... I may have been dreaming," she finally murmured, "but I thought I heard a door, and a horse." "I dreamed a cow was looking at me last night," Levi said, laying his hand carefully over his wife's smooth-skinned knuckles: he smiled a little and looked at his daughters and winked. "There are few things more terrible than to be judged by a cow in the middle of the night!" Feminine laughter, subdued, gentle, a father's smile, a maid turning away so the family could not see her indecorous stifling of her own laugh: such was breakfast with the day's dawn, there in the Rosenthal household. Sarah hadn't lied. She'd heard nothing unusual. She'd crept barefoot down the stairs in her ruffle-collared, white-flannel nightgown, carrying her flat-heeled slippers: she'd saddled, she'd mounted, she'd ridden, following a call, a trace, she followed the nocturnal summons of a man who was fighting ghosts, a man tortured by nightmares, a man who lacked the wife who would lay a hand on his breast and absorb the horrors so he could fall back, exhausted, sweat-drenched, and sleep the rest of the night. Sarah hadn't lied. She'd heard nothing unusual the night before. She spoke but the truth, there at the breakfast table: the sounds she heard as she left the house were perfectly appropriate for someone slipping away unnoticed, and then returning unnoticed. Sheriff Linn Keller was reading the most recent communications to the Sheriff's Office when a sharp double-rap at the closed door seized his attention. He lay the letter down, turned the four-wheel swivel chair, rose: the heavy door opened and an old woman labored in, hunched over and on a cane, unsteady for even the few steps she took: she stopped, her long sleeves covering her hands, both hands laid over the heavy wooden cane's crook head, her face hidden by the heavy shawl pulled over her head. The woman finally turned a little, and with what seemed to be the last of her strength, managed to close the heavy door. The Sheriff swarmed out from around his desk, seized a straight-back chair, strode for the old woman. His visitor straightened -- smooth, youthful hands emerged from long, thread-worn sleeves, threw back the shawl -- Sarah Lynne McKenna, eyes bright and delighted, seized the astonished Sheriff in a delighted hug. "Did I fool you?" she asked, and her voice was that of a happy schoolgirl, and the Sheriff released the chair and seized his visitor and hoist her from the floor, laughing quietly -- he was a man of strong feelings, and the laughter he felt would normally have been expressed loudly and powerfully, but his cheek was against hers and his lips but an inch from hers: she felt his breath, warm on her ear, and she felt the tickle of his iron-grey mustache as he hoist her from the ground. He set her down, carefully, then frowned, as if a memory returned: he raised a hand, loosed her collar, drew it down, examining her neck quickly, pale eyes serious, as if expecting to find something. Sarah waited while strong fingers drew down the collar on the left of her neck -- then the collar at the right side of her neck -- he blinked, clearly uncertain. Sarah gave him those big, innocent eyes. "Is everything the way you remember it?" she asked quietly, then she reached up, traced a fingertip along her neck. A fresh cut -- raw, bleeding -- appeared. The Sheriff was a strong man. The Sheriff was a man not easily startled. The Sheriff's eyes widened. His hands came together, he seized the bedsheet kerchief from where he carried it in his sleeve -- the telltale habit of a military man -- Sarah's smile never diminished as she ran her fingertip over the bleeding cut, and it -- and the blood from it -- disappeared. Her hand raised, caressed his cheek, then ran around the back of his neck and pulled. Her pull was gentle, but she drew his head down to hers as easily as a plow horse might draw a postage stamp along behind it. "You have such nightmares," she whispered, "and I did not want you to suffer as you slept." She kissed his forehead, the way she'd done the night before, then she stepped back, threw the shawl back up over her head, picked up the cane from where she'd hooked it over the hardback chair he'd brought. A crippled-up old woman labored unsteadily out the door to the Sheriff's office, and onto the boardwalk, and as the Sheriff stared at the open door, he heard her cane and her heavy breathing, until it gained the end of the boardwalk, and was gone.