Guess what big event transpired in Austin this weekend?

I'll give you a few hints-

Monday Meanderings

How did people do home repairs without the Internet? And Google? If your treadmill quits going up and down and the incline buttons do weird things, you just try various search combinations until someone points you to treadmilldoctor.com and there you learn that most incline problems are solved by "calibrating the incline doohicky" and then it tells you how to do it by pushing a few buttons and shazam it works now! Sweet!

And that's where I learned how to read the treadmill odometer - the hours and miles logged. Our treadmill has been used for 499 hours and we have walked 995 total miles on it. Not too shabby for a 1-year old treadmill. Oh, did I leave a zero out? Well, zeros are insignificant anyway.

You know, I think that if I'm going to get this baking bread thing down, I'm going to have to learn the difference between a teaspoon and a tablespoon. But I come by that honestly, thinking back to a batch of my father's muffins.

And I must stop the late-night snacking; it leads to bizarre dreams. Like the other night when I dreamed UT and Oklahoma were playing football and UT scored in the waning moments to give them a 112 to 60 lead. But they missed the 2 point conversion. Stoops was out on the field, he was so livid about the 2-point try.

Mystery solved

It's a Carolina Chickadee (poecile carolinensis). Finally got a good look at it the other day.

• Small, short-billed bird.
• Black cap.
• Black bib.
• White cheeks.
• Back unstreaked gray.
• Underparts whitish.

Yep. That's the new visitor. And for the record, I did not Google "White cheeks." Or "Underparts."

How bad do you hate to lose?

I can assure you it doesn't bother you as much as it bothers Pat Summitt - head of the Tennessee woman's team.

This is the coach that has won more games than any other coach - man or woman, alive or dead. Mike Krzyzewski, the only active coach that has a chance of catching her is 80 games behind.

Summitt's teams have been in the Sweet 16 of every NCAA Woman's tournament held. They have won the National Championship 8 times.

And they lost in the 1st round this year.

So how is Pat taking it? The Lady Vols resumed practice today. They are back in the gym and will be every day until the NCAA makes them stop.

Talk about hate to lose.

Monday Meanderings

SHE says I have to call it Meanderings, he said randomly.

Politics aside, you have to take your hat off to a President that can quickly and knowledgeably fill in a Final Four bracket. On national TV. And warn UNC not to make him look bad. No pressure, Tarheels.

And on that subject, can you imagine the logistics involved for CBS to broadcast the tournament? Every game is broadcast. According to Brad Schulz it takes a crew of about 50 people to handle a network basketball game and about 72 hours of pre-production, broadcast and post-production time for that crew. And even though we may only see those games interesting to our region, every game in the tournament is on the air somewhere.

The bluebonnets are out. Mom saw a few week before last, then there were a number of patches last Sunday morning. Now they are well and truly out, though they won't be outstanding this year, they tell us. Too little rain.

It's South by Southwest time in Austin. What started as a music thing now starts with a week of "Interactive" sessions - having mainly to do with the Internet and Blogging and stuff. This week is the Film Festival - or was that the week before last? I do know that this past week has been music - more than 1800 bands in town looking to get discovered. Some 590 bands are from out of the country; this is a really big deal. However, if you don't go any further south than Central Market you can avoid the chaos.

We may have a clue as to why we haven't seen the owl in a while - too noisy! I heard a sharp "rat-a-tat-tat" the other morning and looked up to see a gorgeous red-headed woodpecker jack-hammering away on the front of the owl house! Had the owl been there that would have been a rude awakening.

And I have noticed a new kind of bird at the feeder. It's about the size of a house sparrow, with a white throat and breast, but a black "vee" on its head. I've Googled every bird image I can call up but I can't name it yet. I'm leaning toward the Black Capped Vireo, but I have only seen the bird fleetingly on two occasions. I'll keep watching.

And did you know that you have to be rather cautious when you Google any search string that contain the words "white breast"? "Really, dear - I was looking for this bird...."

Sign on the local Putt-Putt golf course: "Closed for re-pars"

In your dreams...

Conversation while leaving a restaurant -

SHE: "You know, it occurs to me that at my age no matter how much I diet and exercise I am never going to become a skinny chick."

Me: "Wow. That is really disappointing to hear. I had such hopes."

SHE: "Yeah, well. Whenever you get to be a sleek stud we'll see about my becoming a skinny chick."

Monday Randomness

We have been hip deep in eyeglasses this weekend. After our Peru trip, we volunteered to sort through all the frames, lenses, reading glasses, sunglasses and what-not that make up the components needed for an eyeglass clinic. Everything needed to be sorted out (since the couple that was in charge in Peru said, "Just dump them in any old way - we'll sort them out when we get back) counted (1,487 pairs of reading glasses, 778 individual lenses) and inventoried (so they know what to restock). I don't know what we set out with - we checked the vision of 1,151 people, but didn't dispense that many glasses. Still, we ran out of some strengths of lenses and nearly every adult frame. Thank goodness Peruvians are small people; we dispensed a lot of adults with child frames the last day.

We've had 8 big duffel bags of glasses in the front bedroom for several weeks (and there may be one outstanding duffel - Malena is checking) and decided that this weekend with all the basketball playoffs was the ideal time to sort them.

Had to move the bird feeders. I mentioned how much feed the Finches go through. Thy eat Thistle seed - tiny little black seeds - but they crack the shell for an even tinier edible portion and spit the hulls on the ground. Soon there is a mound of Thistle hulls on the patio, and then the wind distributes it around and then we are tracking in Thistle hulls that get in everything. So, the feeders are now on the back of the house, in front of the bonus room window. Now if we want to watch the birds, we can do it from the treadmill - incentive for walking. You do have to turn out the lights so they can't see you as well. It's hard to be still to observe while walking.

Filed my taxes this weekend. I fretted over them for several weeks, worrying if had remembered everything and if I had it right this time. Mom finally said, "You are going to have to let it go at some point." So I did. Actually get something back this time. Unless I made another mistake.

Decided we could survive the downturn in the economy. If we only had the money that was spent on tattoos by all the basketball players we saw this weekend. Wow.

And speaking of basketball. UT men are in as a seventh seed - better than we expected. Women will probably get a similar seed. We're down to one game left this weekend; Stanford and USC women are playing tonight, then we are cut off until Thursday. Guess I'll have to go to the library and stock up fot the next several days.

What to do when you can't sleep.

Or you're really, really bored. Or nothing is happening over on Facebook, and you are such a miserable couch potato you just can't walk away from the computer.

Go to blueservo.com, sign up to be a cyber border vigilante (it's free), pick one of a dozen or so cameras watching the Texas border and get ready to e-mail Governor Perry the instant you see some illegal alien wading toward the promised land.

I'm serious. The controversial remote cameras that are trained on the Texas-Mexico border are streamed to the web and you can join up with more than 40,000 fellow Virtual Texas Deputies^SM to keep an eye on things.

To date, as many as four (4) instances of illegal entries have been thwarted with the help of on-line watchers. You can make it 5.

Me, I'm saving my watching time for after March Madness when there is absolutely nothing of interest on ESPN.

How was your last review?

Lists of this type have been floating around the Internet for some time. This one purports to be evaluations of government employees. Now I'm really on board with the idea that these reviews describe many government workers I have come in contact with. I'm not certain, however, that any governmental manager types I've encountered have the presence of mind and command of the language to make these comments. See what you think.

1. "Since my last report, this employee has reached rock-bottom and has started to dig."
2. "I would not allow this employee to breed."
3. "This employee is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definite won't be."
4. "Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap."
5. "When he opens his mouth, it seems that it is only to change feet."
6. "This young lady has delusions of adequacy."
7. "He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them."
8. "This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot."
9. "This employee should go far, and the sooner he starts the better."
10. "Got a full 6-pack, but lacks the plastic thingy to hold it all together"
11. "A gross ignoramus - 144 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus."
12. "He doesn't have ulcers, but he's a carrier."
14. "I would like to go hunting with him sometime."
15. "He's been working with glue too much."
16. "He would argue with a signpost."
17. "He brings a lot of joy whenever he leaves the room."
18. "When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell."
19. "If you see two people talking and one looks bored, he's the other one."
20. "A photographic memory but with the lens cover glued on."
21. "A prime candidate for natural de-selection."
22. "Donated his brain to science before he was done using it."
23. "Gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train isn't coming"
24. "He's got two brains cells, one is lost and the other is out looking for it."
25. "If he were any more stupid, he'd have to be watered twice a week."
26. "If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you'd get change."
27. "If you stand close enough to him, you can hear the ocean."
28. "It's hard to believe he beat out 1,000,000 other sperm."
29. "One neuron short of a synapse."
30. "Some drink from the fountain of knowledge; he only gargled."
31. "Takes him 2 hours to watch 60-minutes."
32. "The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead."

Just when the Paris twins are graduating...

For those of you who don't follow Big 12 Women's basketball - okay, for all of you - the Paris twins play for Oklahoma and they are like Shaq and his twin brother, if he had a twin brother. Courtney Paris is so dominant she had some 200 plus double double games in a row. The good news for the rest of the Big 12 is that this is thier last year. The bad news is that Brittney Griner is coming.

Brittney is a 6-foot-8-inch girl who plays for Houston Nimitz. Last night at the UIL girls high school basketball tournament Brittney scored 44 points against Pflugerville. Pflugerville scored 47 points. But that's not the bad news. We've had tall players in the conference before. Six-seven Ellen Bayer played for Texas several years ago, but Ellen was tall thats all. Brittney can dunk. No, Brittney can SLAM dunk. And she's going to play for Baylor next year. Kim Mulkey, the Baylor coach was at the game last night and she was smiling so big they had to get the jaws of life to close her mouth at the end of the game.

Here's one of the seven or so videos of Brittney on Youtube



Maybe we can start following Volleyball for a few years.

Random thoughts

Sign of the neighborhood

I mentioned here that one company has become the people's choice in the business of connecting our neighborhood homes to the city sewer system, and it all starts with the sign in the yard. As you drive through the neighborhood only one company sign speaks to the work being done. You see it so often and in so many yards you become convinced this is the company to use. Throughout the entire neighborhood there are probably half a dozen signs standing; on our block, however, there is only one - but it's quite mobile.

Our local sign first appeared across the street at the Tanguma's. The company came and performed the work and the sign remained - testimony of a job well done. Then after a period it moved across the street and planted itself in our yard as the harbinger of things to come. The workers came and completed the task and the sign testified in our yard for a period. The other day it moved back across the street to the house straight across from us and work began over there. There should be a neighborhood pool for which yard it will move to next.

Digging Ditches

Which leads me to my second random thought: our house is below street level, so in order for the plumbing company of choice to connect to the city line the workers had to dig a very deep trench and brought in a back hoe to accomplish that. Across the street, the lawn slopes gently down to the street, so two men are digging a rather shallow trench by hand.

As I left the house this morning, I looked across at the two men - both Hispanic - and thought about the reality that in Texas at least, we are dependent on immigrants to dig ditches and do the dirty work. I thought about the the fact that very phrase we use for the most menial labor is "digging ditches." And then I noticed that one of the men was kneeling down, adjusting a sophisticated spinning laser device - marking with a bright red line the exact degree of slope needed for the trench. Even digging ditches has gone high tech.

Funny nevertheless

I know you have probably seen it, and it has nothing to do with Austin, Retirement or life in this household, but at least it's a post! And it is funny.