Trying to get off the grid

When one retires (or should I say if one retires), certain aspects of your life should slow down. For example, it may not be as important to be plugged in, tuned in and turned on - phone wise, at least. The ability to get in touch with one's spouse with your handy-dandy Blue-Ray equipped, full screen, I'm Touched, GPS equipped, multi-function cell phone does not become as big a deal when all you have to do is shout, "Honey! Would you get me another cup of coffee." Not that I would ever do that, mind you - but you get the point.

Nor is it necessary to read my e-mail off a tiny screen. Chances are, I'm sitting in front of my computer all day, anyway! And who needs a calendar when your schedule is:

• Get Up.
• Eat Breakfast.
• Short Nap.
• Eat Lunch.
• Longer Nap.
• Go to Chuy's for supper.
• Watch ballgames till sleepy.
• Repeat.

And you've already seen how facile I am with texting.

I should point out that I began lugging a cell phone around back when the affordable models were bag phones. Yes, it was that big and you had to plug it into a car to use it. So I'm not a Luddite when it comes to cell phones, it's just that I just don't have as much need for one now. That was pointed out when I divided the minutes we actually used into the dollars we were actually paying and discovered that this convenience was costing nearly 90 cents a minute talked.

Okay, thanks to my grandson, I have been exposed to the Pay-as-you-go concept. I'm way past needing to stay on any plan - so just switch me to a flat .25 cents a minute; I'll be way ahead. Here's $25 bucks for each phone - that will last us months.

Or until the minutes expire, which comes a short 3 months later. No problemo (I learned that in Spanish class). I'll just add $5 when they are about to expire and roll the minutes every 30 days. I've got time on my hands to do this.

Three months later, and I'm looking for the $5 option? What do you mean there's a $15 minimum and it expires in 30 days? I was planning on paying $10 bucks a month for the 2 phones - not $30. Oh, the best deal is $100 a pop and that gets me a years worth of minutes?

Somehow getting off the grid is harder than I thought it would be. Call me. I need to burn some minutes to make me think this is a good deal after all.

Bad Times

If you receive an e-mail entitled “Badtimes”, delete it immediately. Do not open it. Apparently this one is pretty nasty. It will not only erase everything on your hard drive, but it will also delete anything on disks within 20 feet of your computer.

• It demagnetizes the strips on all of your credit cards.
  
• It reprograms your ATM access code, screws up on the tracking of your DVR, and uses subspace field harmonics to scratch any CD’s you attempt to play.
• IT WILL CAUSE YOUR TOILET TO FLUSH WHILE YOU ARE SHOWERING.
  
• It will drink all your beer. For Pete’s sake, are you listening?
• It will leave dirty underwear on the coffee table when you are expecting company!
• It will cause you to run with scissors and throw things in a way that is only fun until someone loses an eye.
• It will rewrite your backup files, changing all your active verbs to past tense and incorporating undetectable misspellings which will grossly change the interpretations of key sentences.
• If the Badtimes message is opened with either the Microsoft or Apple environment, it will leave the toilet seat up and leave your hair dryer plugged in dangerously close to a full bathtub.
• It will not only remove the forbidden tags from your mattresses and pillows, it will also refill your skim milk with whole milk.

Warn as many people as you can….

Better yet, email this to all the people you know and swear that it happened to a friend of someone that you work with. And not only that, Neiman-Marcus sent you a bill for their cookie recipe!

They cease to be fun when there's so much riding on them.

Mom has always said that in the context of the Lady Longhorns. When the tournament begins the games take on too much importance; up to that point we've been able to go to the games, enjoy the experience, feel good about wins, feel not as good about loses, but hey, there's always another game in a few days.

So it is with the football team. Really, most fans would call it a perfect season if we beat Oklahoma, Tech and A&M and the rest didn't matter that much. Now they've gone and named us #1 and every week is agony. Every game is a must-win situation and frankly folks, this wasn't supposed to the year we were ready to play for a National Championship.

After surviving Oklahoma, Missouri and Oklahoma State, I'm glad I won't be able to see next week's game with Tech. You are only allowed 4 anti-acid tablets in an 8-hour period.

Go Horns. But go without me on this one.

More commentary on today's economy

Okay, I admit it. It's beyond me.

Brinnggg!

"Hello."

"Hey Dad! We're at the ACU ballgame and I need you to keep me posted on the UT-Missouri score!"

"Okay. I can do that."

"Bye!"

"All right! Texas scores!"
blip-bleep-blip - - brinnggg!

"Hello?"

"It's seven - oh! Missouri went three and out and Texas scored on their first possession!"

"What? I can't hear you. You are supposed to text me!"

Oh, okay, BUT IT'S SEVEN TO NOTHING!"

"Okay. Seven to nothing. I got it. Text me, okay? Bye!"

"Yes! Texas scores again! Let's see now... (blip) Messaging... (blip) Text Messages... (blip) Write New... (blip) oh, wait! (beep, beep, blip) Okay...(blip, blip) How do I make a number? Never mind... (blip, blip Ty) - uh, no - (blip, blippty, blip Two#) - no, (blip - Two blip, blip, blip) how do I make a space? Okay! (blip Two pop) No, not p! I want to type an s!! (bleep bleep...) Wait! What happened?"

Brinnggg!


"I have a text message! Now what do I do? (blip, blip..) Aha!"

10/18/08
07:48PM
U guys falling
down on the job.
*** End ***

blip-bleep-blip - - brinnggg!

"Hello?"

"IF YOU KNOW THE SCORE WHY DO I NEED TO TEXT YOU!"

"Oh, never mind. The guy behind us has a TV."

bleep!

First year choir directors

For a number of years I have provided sound and lights for the Murchison Middle School Choir concerts. Lacking a good-sized auditorium, they perform at Westover, and do three programs a year - Fall, Christmas and Spring. The director is Mr. B - a no-nonsense, very intense and very strict young man. The choirs (there are usually more than 200 kids participating, divided into 3 or 4 choirs of varying ability) are quite good. They bring their hardware to display after the Spring contests, and they always have multiple tables full of trophy's and plaques. I enjoy doing these programs because the choirs are quite good.

The other night I walked in to get ready for a program and no Mr. B. I finally figured out that the very young woman bouncing around down front was not a student, but the new director, Miss L. Mr. B has moved on to take the position of Choir Director at Anderson High. I suspect the kids at Murchison who thought "Finally, he's gone!" are chagrined to learn he's just waiting for them at Anderson.

Miss L introduced me to Miss F, the assistant director, who if anything looked younger than the students. And yes, this was the very first year for both of them. No one had to tell me that - I could tell from the noise level in the room. Mr. B would have had everyone in their seats, by now, absolutely silent, eyes straight forward. Misses L and F were yelling at each other and joking with various students from across the room and the ambient noise level was approaching the pain threshold.

Mr. B warmed up each choir, one at a time with traditional scales. Miss L had all the choirs doing musical jumping jacks. At one point, she called for a continuous 'oooooo' from everyone. It was a rather unusual, disquieting sound, and as it stretched out, the room gradually got very quiet until you could only hear the 'oooooo'. When she cut it off, she said, "I've never heard that in an auditorium this size. That was kind of scary, wasn't it?" And it was.

I doubt that Misses L and F will be able to show the volume of hardware in the Spring that they have lugged in in the past, but I'm pretty certain the kids will have more fun in choir than they did with Mr. B. It was a fun program and the kids obviously had a good time.

I saw Mr B after it was over. He had been sitting way up on a back row in Tinsel Town, and he had a big frown on his face. Too bad. I think I will continue to enjoy doing these programs because they will be a lot of fun.

Last word for SkyView Baptist church?

I didn't take a picture of it because it won't show up in the photo, but the sign in front of the SkyView Baptist Church now has a nice Plexiglas cover fastened securely over the letters. No more editorializing with the sign. It was fun while it lasted.

Of course, it's always possible that they will continue continue to mispell words.

Big Blue Carts

During the last couple of weeks the City of Austin has delivered a big blue cart to every residence and duplex in the city - some 120,000 carts. It's similar to our garbage cart, but bigger (than ours, at least) - capable of holding 60 gallons of stuff. And what stuff would that be? Why recycled stuff of course.

In the past we've had a little blue bin and we would put all our newspapers and recyclable paper and #2 bottles and our cans in it (actually we had 2 bins - one for paper and one for bottles & cans, but that was just for our convenience). Every Tuesday evening we would put them out on the curb and every Tuesday night someone would come by and scavenge the aluminum cans from them and early Wednesday morning the City would pick up what was left, a meager pound or two of newspapers and a few glass jars.

So what are we going to do with a 60 gallon cart, besides take up the very last space available in the garage? But along with the new carts, the recycling rules have changed. Everything goes in the carts - no more mashing cans and stomping on soft drink bottles. And we get to recycle all plastics from #1 to #7, plus pasteboard like cereal boxes and also cardboard. Just toss 'er in there, thank you very much. And oh by the way, we'll only be by every 2 weeks to gather your contributions.

So how much recycling flora and fauna can our small household generate in two weeks? Well, we've had the cart 5 days and it's half full, about 30 gallons worth. That does include last week's bin offerings which they didn't pick up since we got the cart instead. I'm actually rather amazed. But the cart has put us in a recycling frame of mind and now we look at every bottle cap and container and divert every scrap of paper, no matter how small to the big blue bin. Just call us Ecology in Austin.

New Stock Market Terms for 2008 and beyond

These are not original with me, but I can identify!

CEO --Chief Embezzlement Officer.

CFO-- Corporate Fraud Officer.

BULL MARKET -- A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

BEAR MARKET -- A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry, and the husband gets no sex.

VALUE INVESTING -- The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO -- The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

BROKER -- What my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR -- Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST -- Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT -- When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

FINANCIAL PLANNER -- A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION -- The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW-- The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO -- What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS -- What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR -- Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT -- An archaic word no longer in use.

Did it fall off - or do they still have probles?

And if this doesn't make sense to you, just click on the "SkyView" label below.

Not even Dr Pepper?

The Texas Longhorn football team is nowhere near the top of the "Bad Boys" list, but in spite of Mack Brown's best efforts - and he evidently puts forth a great deal of effort - they still have some players who end up in close personal contact with the Austin Constabulary. DUI seems to be the act of bad choice. After a recent incident, a local sports writer informally asked some of the other 21-year old players if they drank, even though Mack asks them not to. Most said they did not. A few said they did. Colt McCoy said he has never had an alcoholic beverage and stopped drinking carbonated drinks on September 15, 1999. And he was a six Dr Pepper-a-day guy back then. "Water's good for me." he said. I don't know the significance of the date. Maybe I could ask the next time I see him - in church.

Given Colt's heritage it is not surprising to see him on Sunday mornings - even mornings when you know the team didn't get back to town until the wee hours. At first it was a little awkward - he, and usually Jordan Shipley and sometimes another teammate - would come in after services started and duck out before the Amen to avoid creating a scene. I'm sorry to say there were even a couple of autograph seekers at first, but thankfully we've gotten over that and now they usually come and go with the rest of us. Colt usually has a lady friend with him now, and a lot of folks want talk to him, but it's not a groupie thing - just being friendly to folks you see at church regularly.

I'll bet Mack wishes the rest of the team came with him.

Am I in the right classroom?

For some reason, my Conversational Spanish class is meeting in a room that is obviously set up for teaching would-be health workers. There are glass cases full of skeletons and skeletal parts; there are cases of anatomically correct plaster body parts, including one partial body with the label "Annie." There are charts of the muscular system, the nervous system, the gastric system and some systems that I am not sure of. I know that in the closet there are several resuscitation dummies. It's a little unnerving.

However, this might come in handy when we get to the really conversational part of this class. I mean, how better to teach those really important words that you need to know than by pointing to plaster replicas? So far, Aunt Bea has refrained from doing this, but I'm sure that if this class is truly meant to equip one to speak like a native we'll get to that soon.

The sign saga continues...