When you retire you need to have something to keep you busy, like hobbies. One of my hobbies is stamp collecting. That's right, I'm a nerd! Anyway, I subscribe to Linn's Stamp News and they often run a contest where they supply a photo of a stamp and the readers enter captions. I recently won and here is my winning entry.

Memo to Richard Hatch, the first $1M winner of Survivor on CBS: Does the word "MORON" mean anything to you? How could anyone win $1M on national TV and think no one from the IRS would be watching? Only in America.

Today is Inauguration Day, January 20, 2005. It is going to be a bitter cold day in Washington, D. C. It reminds me of Inauguration Day January 20, 1977. My first Presidential Inaugural as a young Secret Service agent. It was even colder in 1977 than it is today. Young agents do not get good assignments. Seniority rules, so I knew I would probably get an outside post. Living in Chicago at the time, I had plenty of cold weather gear and I took most of it with me to Washington. I was posted about 6am outside at the U.S. Capitol building at another nearby government building, 10 feet from warmth. It was cold and windy. Every layer of clothing I was wearing was still not enough - long underwear, 2 pairs of socks, winter shoes, gloves, a scarf, a knit cap and sun glasses. Heh, Secret Service agents wear sun glasses even in the worst of circumstances. My supervisor that day was Richard Jordan, Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago Field Office, who had volunteered to go to the Inauguration. He kept checking on us all day and carried a large thermos of hot chocolate with him. After about 2 or 3 hours of suffering through the bitter cold I had gotten to the point where I had taken my neck scarf and wrapped it around my head like a turbin to cover up my ears. So between the knit cap, the scarf wrapped around my head and my sun glasses, the only part left exposed to the air was my moustache which was frozen and had icicles on it. Mr. Jordan came by to check on me and walked right past me. He didn't recognize me at all. I had a good chuckle inside my cocoon. Finally, he turned around and walked up to me and said, "Darryl, is that you in there?" I began laughing and he knew it was me. He handed me the thermos and told me to go inside and warm up and he would take my post for awhile. What a great boss he was. Then after freezing outside all day, we got to finally go inside and work one of the many Presidential Balls held during every Inauguration. We finally got off work that day about 2 am. So my first Inauguration lasted about 20 hours, start to finish. I loved it.

Welcome to my new website and blog. As you follow my blog over the coming weeks I will share some of my memories from days gone by and post new experiences. I will also occassionally post photos as well. Such as this nighttime photo of Big Ben I took recently while on an assignment in England. Stay tuned.