Easily entertained

A couple of nights ago I surfed over to CNN and saw a "Live! Happening Now" banner that said California police were chasing a woman in a stolen U-Haul truck.

I confess that for a moment - just a teeny, tiny, fleeting moment - the thought came to my mind that Julie had flipped from the stress of moving across the country in a U-Haul, had hi-jacked the truck and was headed for who knows where. How silly of me.

Turns out it was a woman in LA, and sure enough, she was tooling down some major freeway in a U-Haul truck, passing cars right and left as she wove through traffic. The feed was was from a TV helicopter; no audio, just a continuous picture of this truck racing down the freeway. Now we've all seen news clips like this - some dude eventually heads up a one-way street, inevitably hits a car or two, jumps out of the car and runs through a backyard or two while the helicopter camera stays right on him and then the police tackle him, handcuff him and haul him off to face justice.

S0 I'm thinking, okay, I'll watch until the dramatic ending, which will be soon, right? It is late afternoon in LA; she's going to hit something pretty soon. Wrong. She successfully navigates through all the traffic and finally ends up on a four-lane highway heading up the coast. I still haven't seen any cops in pursuit so I'm wondering what kind of chase this is. Finally, the camera pulls back far enough for me to see a couple of motorcycle cops, leisurely following at distance. They eventually get replaced by a black-and-white, then another.

Meanwhile, the U-Haul lady is making time on the highway, mostly by driving down the the center turn lane. The camera gets close enough to see her in the cab and she looks like this is an everyday occurrence for her. She's calm, cool, and whipping through rush-hour traffic like a pro. She comes to the next community up the road and the highway turns into a city street, complete with intersections, but it's no big deal - she blows through them all.

Back on the highway, you now begin to see evidence that the cops have called ahead and most traffic has been pulled over - a la the O. J. Simpson chase. You even see local police cars in the middle of intersections, stopping all traffic to let her go by. In the mean time, the black and whites are being very cool about this - no hot pursuit, no dare-devil maneuvers. They just hang back, waiting for the inevitable.

Finally, you see evidence that the cops have laid down a nail strip - the truck starts weaving back and forth and slows to a stop. The woman hops out, makes a run for it and it ends up like paragraph 3 above. All in all, it only took an hour and a half from the time I started watching.

An hour and a half! You've got to be kidding! I watched this loony lady drive a U-Haul truck for an hour and a half? Oh, well. It was cheaper than a movie.

And if you want to cut to the chase - so to speak - here's the last three or so minutes.

Roasting marshmallows while the pole burns

I'm pretty sure this problem is not limited to Austin, but it certainly qualifies under the unofficial motto of the Chamber of Commerce - "Keep Austin Weird."

Today's American Statesperson has a front page article about all the utility pole fires around town - some 17 at press time early this morning. You don't have to make up stuff like this folks; you just read it out of the paper!

It seems that when there is a prolonged drought, such as we are experiencing, "grime" builds up on power lines. Then, if it drizzles - not rains outright, but drizzles - the mist causes the grime to "ooze" from the lines to the poles, creating a path for the electricity. The electricity seeping into the poles causes them to smolder, and in the case of 17 poles and counting, burst into flame.

Think of it as the old boy scout experiment where you attach live wires to frankfurters to watch them sizzle (unless you happen to substitute a finger or 2 for the wiener, in which case you only see stars - if you're lucky). Only in this case the wiener is 40 feet long and soaked in creosote. They burn like roman candles!

If it were not for the fact that your electricity goes off soon after the pole turns on, it would be a spectacular sight to see. At last count some 10,000 customers were without power for a period of time.

There's always something exciting going on in Austin. Gotta' love it.

Quick Connect

You may recall all the disruption we lived through when the City of Austin dug up all the neighborhood streets to install sewer lines. Well, that project finally finished and the work crews gathered up all their Road Closed signs and took their backhoes and went home. Now all that is left is for each homeowner to contract with a plumbing firm and get connected.

You have two years to make this happen (without penalty) and I was in no big hurry, since a) it cost a princely sum and b) you have to go through the selection process of which plumber to use. Part "b" sort of worked itself out. At first you saw a half-dozen different signs for companies doing work, and then you saw only two or three different signs, and finally you only saw one company's signs, and they would just move from one yard to the next as neighbors compared notes. Obviously, this was the company to do business with - the neighborhood was filled with satisfied customers.

So I called that company and they quoted a price far below what I anticipated, so we went on the list. Before Thanksgiving. Good thing I was not in a hurry. Last week they called and said they would start mid-week. Uh-oh. Rob and the kid's are coming this weekend. Are we going to be flush-able by then? Wednesday morning the crew came and by sundown we were connected! On Thursday they unconnected long enough to get the City seal of approval and when I came home from work there was no big hole in the lawn - just a small section of the yard waiting for new grass.

Only problem was I thought Luke would really like to see the hole and the machines. "You see that grass that's a little different color? There used to be this really, really big hole there."

We've got (had?) an owl!

This is a picture of Howland, our latest visitor to our Avery.

Howland is a gray Eastern Screech Owl (Megascops asio) and he has taken up residence in our Owl House (or maybe not; more about that later).

I knew the housing market was bad, but we've had a "For Rent" sign on that house for more than a year and a half. We had pretty much given up hope that we would ever have a resident in our little house - then the other day I looked out and there was an owl!

I say he - Howland may be a Howletta. It's hard to tell unless you can see one of each side by side (lady owls are larger). He or she sleeps all day down in the cozy confines of the house and comes out of an evening and perches in the opening to survey his kingdom until it gets dark, and then it's off to rid the world of rodents and other critters (like unsuspecting Finches, we suspect).

He's very camera shy (more support for the lady owl theory?) and won't let us get terribly close to take a picture, though he was OK with Luke and Grace standing at the base of the tree, looking up at him. Once we step off the patio, however, he ducks down in his nest.

The good news is that we don't have to buy feed for the owl - unlike the Finches, who can devour a sock of seed in 2 days. The bad news is that we haven't seen Howland in a few days. Did he find a nicer apartment? Was he just passing through? Has he already moved to a cool branch now that the cold days are past and it is unseasonably warm here in Austin?

I guess only time will tell. Oh, and extra points if you can tell me who the original Howland was - without Googling it.

Deep thoughts about the Dixie Chicks. Really.

I'm doing my daily grind on the treadmill, working through the play lists on the iPod, and I get to some Dixie Chicks - specifically "Evening with the Dixie Chicks" recorded at the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles. Nice venue, great crowd, really exceptional recording - especially for a live show. The Chicks (is that politically correct?) do a show of new material based on the "Home" album, and then for the encore come back and do the standards - and invite the audience to sing along.

And they do. The audience knows every word to every song they sing!

What must it feel like to hear your music echo back to you? To know that something you created and recorded has been taken to heart by so many that they can sing it as well as you can? The Kodak Theater seats just over 3,000 people, and in the video it looks like all 3,000 are singing along (and that's just a tiny fraction of the potential - even I can sing along!).

Yes, I agree that "Cowboy Take me Away" will not become an enduring classic for all ages; but I wonder if Beethoven or Brahms or any other classical composer ever had 3,000 people stand up and sing or hum their composition back to them? I'm not sure I can even name three of Beethoven's greatest hits!

It makes one think about what one's own legacy will be? What song will I sing in my lifetime that someone would even remember, let alone sing it along with me? What song will you or I plant in the hearts of people we come in contact with, and will they be able to recall it later?

I think I have some composing to do.

Who needs $100?

Someone recently handed me a crisp, new $100 bill. It was "payment" for my part in a recent wedding.

The truth of the matter is, you can't pay me enough to do the sound for a wedding. If it was on a commercial basis I would do the wedding for free but charge $100 a minute for the rehearsal. So since no one I know can afford to pay me on that basis, I just do them for nothing. It's my gift to the happy couple.

So here I am with $100 of "found" money. There's a lot I could do with $100 - night out with the wife at a fancy restaurant and a movie (but we're Chuy's kind of people, and we would never agree on a movie); buy a fancy new gadget (I splurged recently and paid $19 for a wireless mouse); down payment on an iPhone (but I'm getting off the grid, remember?).

So I figure the best use of this bill is to give it to someone who needs it and can put it to far better use. But who? There is no end of deserving charities and organizations. We currently contribute to several on a regular basis. We spent a week in Peru at our expense working in a medical clinic for one. Everyone of them needs substantial, on-going support. But who needs $100?

I know there are organizations that buy cows or goats or such on your behalf. There are groups that loan money to men and women in third world countries to get a small business started. I know $100 would furnish a number of meals for impoverished people. Where do I send this crisp, new bill?

Help me out here. Give me some specifics and a plug for where you think the $100 should go. I'll use some semi-scientific method for evaluating them (like drawing one out of a hat) and if it is your recommendation, I'll send them the money in the name of your choice.

And we'll all be the better for it.

A few follow ups...

I mentioned here how delighted we were to have Finches at our feeder. Who knew the little buggers ate multiple times their weight daily? We've refilled the sock twice and swept a big pile of thistle seed hulls off the patio. If they keep inviting their friends (I've seen as many as six clinging to the feeder) we may have to raise the price of lunch!

And in the same Finch article I mentioned the Albert the Adequate church. Noticed a blurb in the paper that Sunday they "staged a medieval Boar's Head Pageant, which is a traditional English performance marking the end of the Christmas season and the Epiphany." They even had a dude dressed up like the knight guarding the chalice in "Indiana Jones and the Quest for the Holy Grail" who "guided people into the church."

And we thought a Christmas Eve candlelight service was edgy.

Oh, the teen-aged director that kept texting instead of keeping up with me? Won't be back. It seems that after he completed his 4oth hour of volunteer service he whipped out his letter from the judge and asked the studio director to sign off on his volunteer hours. The director says that happens fairly often; they used to have people assigned from the courts but the School for the Blind (on whose property the RFB&D studio sits) put a stop to that. Now they just get "stealth" volunteers.

And here I talked about the "community" of children in Peru. This past week two of our Shepherds were in Peru visiting with Miguel and touring the community compound, seeking ways to establish regular and on-going support from Westover! Now that's good news!

Two services

With the New Year, we began two services each Sunday morning at Westover. That's nothing new for many congregations - and it's not new at Westover, either. When we first began attending there they actually had 3 services - 2 in the morning and another in the afternoon. Then in 2000, we moved into the new Worship Center and with attendance divided in two groups we sort of rattled around in that big room, so we soon dropped back to one service.

We've grown, and of late finding a seat has been difficult for latecomers. People who purport to be experts in this sort of thing say that if people can't find a seat the congregation will stop growing. I don't know if that's really true, but for that and other reasons, we are now counted among the two service churches. All we had to do was figure out which service we wanted to attend. Early? Uh, everyone wants early; would you mind switching to late? And no one seemed happy with the schedule: 9:00AM and 11:15AM with class in-between. If it had been me, I would have the times as [insert favorite times here]. But of course, if you operate the sound system, or work upstairs in video, or sing, or preach or shepherd, you attend both services, so the time doesn't really matter.

And of course, to encourage togetherness (and help the communion servers) they roped off the wings and Tinsel Town, our affectionate name for the elevated sections. Now, there was grumbling about the times, but there was REVOLT when people found they couldn't sit in their regular seats. Trapped behind the sound console, I was the target of a lot of the dissent. I told them I had nothing to do with it, but if they really wanted their seat back they should do what they could to get the numbers up so their section was reopened. That didn't seem to appease anyone.

All in all, the first Sunday worked out okay; 770 for the first service and 450 for the second. And everone found a seat. It just wasn't their seat.

I feel better now

Today's book at the Reading for the Blind was tough reading. It was a World History book done in the very latest style - very little text on a page, but lots of flashy pictures, bunches of icons with lengthy web references, marginal notes, colorful side-bars and info boxes, graphs galore, and oh, here's a big complicated map to finish up with. For the sighted, this is probably a good thing; for the impaired (and the reader), not so good.

I struggled through my two hour session (with a teen-aged director who spent all his time texting friends - not checking me as I read), and grumpily went to put the book back on the shelf, where I saw a little sign that said:

"Kristen W. in Pomona CA and John H. in Minneapolis MN are reading this book. They have learning disabilities. Sharon S. in Tulsa OK, who is sightless, is also waiting for this book. They thank you for your help."

So, whats a few graphs and maps?

Say what?

The cheerleaders couldn't figure it out. Why was the crowd laughing? It was the point in the game where they come out and hold up the placards that first spell out T E X A S and then they turn to the opposite stands and spell out F I G H T and we all yell accordingly. Well, we were yelling, but we were also laughing.

It's Christmas break on the UT campus and there was no basketball band at the game today. In fact, there were just barely enough cheerleaders to hold up the placards. Maybe they were cheerleader trainees – and that's why they never noticed that they were spelling out S A X E T       T H G I F.

They never did figure it out. But we won anyway.

We got Finches!

I mentioned some time back that on a whim we put out a sock-type feeder that's supposed to attract Finches. Like the Owl House, this turned out to be a well-intentioned but fruitless exercise. No Finches came to our feeder. My sister mentioned that she sees Finches in the Spring, so we sat back to patiently wait.

Right after Christmas, I looked up and there were four brightly-colored Finches feeding away! I immediately set out to get a photo of these colorful little birds, but Finches are very camera shy. I tried sitting motionless on the patio for what seemed like hours (okay, very long minutes), but they wouldn't come while I was there. I tried opening the patio door a little and lurking there in the opening, but they weren't buying that either. Mom can stand in the room and fill the frame with her zoom lens, but that's a film camera, and I wasn't interested in blowing an entire roll of film on four little birds, so the battle continues. In the mean time, here's a nice photo from the Internet of somebody else's Finches.


Then I became interested in just what type of Finches these were. After eliminating Goldfinches (ours are more chartreuse) and House Finches (ours are more colorful), I decided they were Lesser Finches. Hmmm. Some neighborhood; we don't get Greater Finches, or even Plain Finches; we get Lesser Finches. Sort of like this church we go by that I have dubbed as being named after "Albert the Adequate." Maybe we should get the City to outlaw Lesser Finches, sort of like Farmer's Branch did illegal aliens. That should work.

Meantime, I'm off to stalk the elusive Finch. Wish me luck.

Add garage door repairman to the resume

The other night we came home from somewhere, pressed the garage door button and went in the house. The door made its normal grinding noises...and made its grinding noises...and continued to make grinding noises. I looked out and saw that the door was closed, but the motor was merrily grinding away. Uh-oh.

I pushed and pulled and prodded, but the door was down and wasn't going anywhere and the motor was on, but wasn't moving anything. Hmmm. Okay, my choice was climb up there and see if it was anything I thought I could fix, or call someone. There was a coupon on the front of the new phone book offering $50 off on a service call (was that a sign?) but I figured if they were giving $50 off, the final bill was going to be a dilly. Soooo...

Well, to make a long story short, see if you can diagnose my problem. Hint: the new part is on the left.


When I opened up the housing, it looked like it was snowing there was so much nylon dust ground up in there. Sears had the part (but you had to order the entire gear kit) and it took only one trip to Home Depot (if you need a 5/32 punch, I have a barely used one) and we had to get out and open the door manually for the week it took to get the part, but the total cost was less than the discount coupon amount.

Maybe I should think about supplementing my retirement income by repairing garage door openers. Oh, wait. There is the part about not being able to get out of bed the next morning because of all those trips up and down the ladder.

Never mind.