Testing the retirement waters

For the last two weeks I've played hooky from work. From the standpoint of work for me specifically, it has been slow since before Christmas. It will pick up again once the client refocuses on the project, but in the meantime I decided to go home and play retired. And it has been nice; maybe a little too nice. I could get used to this.

But it has not been without its moments. Barb and I are still working out the finer points of my being home all day. For example, one wants to avoid - at all costs - the appearance that one has nothing to do all day except play on the computer.  I can make a case that working crossword puzzles is a recommended form of mental exercise, needed to keep the brain working and agile. Plus you never know when it will be important to know that  a goose found commonly in Hawaii is the Nene. On the other hand, playing solitaire or free cell is difficult to disguise as anything but killing time.

Secondly, it is imperative that one does not look on ones spouse as a social director, or arbiter of meals. For example, it is MUCH preferable to say, "I'm thinking I would like to go to IHOP for breakfast this morning. Would you like to do that?" rather than say, "What's for breakfast?"

And if there are chores to do around the house it is wise to realize that you are home without a frazzling thing to do and not at the office all day so pitch in, brother!

I just wish I had thought of that myself.

I mean, carried to extreme measures one finds oneself out trimming trees and bushes and cleaning up some vine-infested areas at the side of the house and actually doing physical labor! That's just not right.

So, when the phone rings and it is your boss asking if you "could come in this afternoon for a project, and oh by the way I'm going to need you next week" just remember: it is not good judgment to pump your fist and shout YESSSS!

Number 32? Really?

From time to time I check on where visitors to this blog come from. Like others, I use a site counter that tells me the number of visitors each day and usually the city of origin. I can count on certain cities, such as Lubbock, Fort Worth, Fresno and of course Austin in the list every day. From time-to-time others check in from Tulare, or Merkel, or Victoria, or Vernon, British Columbia. I always wonder about those "foreign" addresses. How did those folks come this way?

Often they get here from Google searches, such as the one who clicked in from Vernon, BC after a search that included the words "earthquake victims, reflections." Or someone in Phoenix who was searching for "Becky Orick Austin" (I mentioned that she sang at our Christmas eve service). Try it. You'll see this blog in the first page of results.

The other day I saw a saw a search from an unidentified source that had "NetworkedBlogs,com/Retirement" as the search argument. I went there and found that it was a list of the top 50 blogs on retirement. Really? Top 50? And there I was as number 32.

Turns out that this is a FaceBook site. You can list your blog as part of your Facebook profile and I did that when I first got on FB, but I couldn't figure out how it was supposed to work. This list is evidently all FB-enrolled blogs with the word "retirement" as a topic. And the ranking seems to be by the number of people in FB that "follow" this blog. I have 3; me, a woman from church who promised to follow mine if I would follow hers, and a complete stranger to me.

So, there you are. The 32nd most followed blog concerning retirement listed on Facebook. I'm sort of underwhelmed.

Monday Meanderings - Jan 25

Do you ever wonder why you get annoyed when you can't read the sign the panhandler on the corner is holding up? It's not like we don't know what he wants. Do we need to "approve" his sign? Just asking.

I did the sound for a "Youth Talent Show"  Friday night. Wasn't planning on it, but about 4pm I got a panicked phone call; the guy they thought was going to do it bailed at the last minute. After getting there at 6 and talking to the "planners" I became convinced the original guy was smart to bail. About 20 "acts;" each with a CD and specific instructions on "loud here, soft here." We got through it okay, and the kids raised a couple of thousand dollars to help them go to Peru on Spring Break. They are going to the Comunidad de Niños Sagrada Familia- the orphanage in Lima where we were. So I guess it was worth my effort.

I saw somewhere that Austin is home to more marathons, half marathons, 10Ks, 5Ks, fun runs and challenge races than any other city in the US. That being the case at least 3 of them have routes that make getting to Westover a challenge on Sunday race mornings, and the 3M 5K passes in front of the building (volunteers from Westover man a water station in front of the church).

Normally, these races begin early enough that all the runners are long-gone by the time we make our way to the building, and only if there is a delay in taking down the barricades do we have any real problems. Yesterday morning I had to be there early to set up sound, and arrived about 8, thinking that we could go up Steck to Mesa, and if the barricades were still up we could park at Anderson High and walk across the street. 

Much to our surprise, when we got there the mainstream of the 5,500 runners was still passing on Mesa. No way could we buck that river of runners and get across the street! Turns out high winds had blown over many of the barricades along the route during the early morning hours, and with the barriers down, auto traffic was creeping into the race route. Not until they re-secured the route - about an hour later than the scheduled start - could the race begin!

It took about 20 minutes, but there finally came enough of a thinning of the runners that I (and a couple of members of the praise team waiting with me) could maneuver our way across. I don't think more than a half-dozen runners stumbled over us, so it worked out okay.


And either someone has way too much time on his hands - or we have been invaded.

Time to plant

Trees, that is. When the city came though and removed all the growth that surrounded our back yard, they promised us replacement trees. For every tree removed larger than 2" diameter, they provide a replacement tree. We had 5 that size (and 10 more they claimed that were smaller; really?) so we were entailed to 5 but "since we didn't have that much room in the back yard" we ended up with 3. Well, we ended up with 3 after I called the City and inquired about our trees. These trees are euphemistically referred to as the "5-gallon" size because they are "more adaptable." That's City talk for small and cheap.

However, they still require 3 large holes in the ground, which is somewhat of a problem, so Barbara called our friend Ben, who does landscaping and such. Technically, Ben has guys who he finds work for - I'm not sure Ben actually gets a cut, even though these guys use his truck and his tools and he takes care of all the customers. So Ben came, and as long as they are here could his guys clean out the front flower beds and clean up some overgrown vines, etc.?

The plan on the front beds was to take out some dead plants and dig up and divide the monkeygrass, redistributing it in a more orderly manner. Well, Ben's helper got the dig up part right; he dug it all up, bagged it and departed with it - supposedly to the City Dump. I'm not sure when we get to the divide part. I left Ben a message, but he hasn't mentioned the missing monkeygrass yet.

And yesterday I looked up and Ben and his helper were planting the 3 trees. Well, the helper was planting and Ben was sitting in the chair on the patio, supervising. I guess Ben wanted to make sure the trees didn't end up in the same place as the monkeygrass. Supervising means Ben tells the guy in a never-ending stream of Spanglish exactly what to do. Good plan. If you are Ben. They got the 2 Redbuds planted; I guess they'll come back for the Anacacho Orchid. And the monkeygrass part. And the cleaning up the vines, etc.

Maybe when the guy comes back I can supervise. I can even speak Spanglish. Like "That limb over there, por favor."

Reflections on earthquakes - and helping the victims

The pictures from Haiti this past week have been overwhelming. I cannot begin to fathom what that must have been like and the dire circumstances the survivors are in now. Like others, we wonder how best we can help.

Barbara and I have a tiny bit of earthquake experience. We have seen first-hand - though many months removed - the devastation of a major earthquake, and we were shaken out of bed (literally) one night by a quake while in Mexico City. I assure you that our experience is a nit compared to what we are seeing on the news, but it does provide a tiny basis of understanding.

On February 4th, 1976 a magnitude 7.5 earthquake and devastating aftershocks killed more than 23,000 people in Guatemala. It was of particular concern for us because of close relations with several families that our congregation supported in mission efforts in Guatemala. They were safe, but destruction was all around them - particularly in the central regions. There was an immediate response and a collection of goods and money to help. More about that in a moment.

A little over a year and a half later, in July of 1978, Barbara and I and Royce Lindsey took a trip to Guatemala as representatives of the Mission Committee to participate in the dedication of a clinic building that had been built in Tecpan, a fairly large community of mostly Mayan descent in central Guatemala. More than 1/3 of the residents - some 7,000 people - had perished or were severely injured in the earthquake. The existing medical facility was destroyed at that time and a replacement clinic had been constructed through the efforts of many groups, individuals and churches, and we were there for the formalities of turning the completed building over to the Guatemalan Health Ministry.

As I stood listening to speeches I couldn't understand, I was absent-mindedly looking at a pile of rubble across the street when I noticed an old-fashioned metal bed post sticking up out of the debris; a rounded bed frame much like the one in Rob's room. Suddenly the pattern of rubble snapped into focus and I realized I was looking at what was left of a home - now a pile of adobe bricks and clay tiles about three feet tall. We had driven in from the airport and along the way had seen broken buildings, and steep scarred hillsides of the barrios that had simply slid off into the valleys below carrying thousands to their deaths, and highways that ended abruptly at a fault-line and restarted several yards to one side, but it was only when I recognized that bed that I felt the impact of what had happened here some two years earlier.

Third world countries build their structures with masonry - concrete, adobe brick and tile. In tropical countries metal is too expensive (and rusts quickly) and wooden structures are soon consumed by rot and decay (the only wooden structures we saw in Guatemala were bridges ??!!). Even the stop signs are made of concrete. When the ground shakes, tons of masonry - often inferior and cheaply constructed - crushes whatever is below (a thought that did not comfort me as we slept that night in a typical adobe house with a typical tile roof).

A strong and lasting impression of our trips to Guatemala (and later to poor communities in El Salvador and Peru) is how much effort the indigenous peoples of those countries spend in simply staying alive, keeping body and soul together! On a good day, they break even - they are no worse off and found food, water and shelter to survive another day. On bad days the family goes to bed hungry. On very bad days...

How do we help? What can we do? The typical immediate responses may not be the best responses. Immediately after the quake in 1976 as a congregation we gathered goods and medicine to ship to Guatemala. I remember the boxes filled with inappropriate clothing  - shiny party dresses, for example - and many other questionable items. A wig? We were going to send a woman's wig as aid to a devastated country? Good sense diverted the wig, but so much of what was collected looked like cleaning out the closets.

Money to relief organizations? Yes, but I found a word of caution about that and I share it with you here. Read this item titled "Don't give money to Haiti" and form your own conclusions, but I agree that unrestricted giving to responsible organizations is probably the best thing we can do today.

P.S. The picture above? Not from Haiti, but from central Guatemala. It was not the bed post that I saw, but so much like it that it took my breath away.

Monday Meanderings - Jan 18

And a good MLK Day to you. For me it means the RFB&D studios are closed, so I get the day off. However, I'm off most days, I'm informed.

Couple of bumper stickers noticed recently: one said "Midwives help people out." The other was the familiar pink ribbon sticker, but the message said, "Save the Ta-Tas."

Actually, a little Google investigation revealed that the second item is one of several humorous products offered by  a non-profit foundation by the same name. For the sake of decorum, I'll let you explore that link yourselves, if you so choose.

From Barb:  The other morning I was looking for some things and pulled down a box from the top of my closet.  When I looked in the box, I discovered it was full of things I'd thrown into a box to put in scrapbooks, etc. at some later time.  I was proud of myself for giving their own boxes of that type thing to Rob and Julie over the holidays (Julie, yours is on its way with UPS.) so my first thought was I'll just take this straight to recycling.  But then I started digging through it and began finding things like the program from our national championship and the guest book from the reception at First Presbyterian when I left there.  Bob, who was waiting to go to breakfast, finally said,  "Bilbo, the ring!  It's still in your pocket!"  So, sighing, I disposed of the box in the recycling container.  

See, all those hours of watching LOTR came in handy. By the way, Mom was expressing some hesitation about forcing all that memorabilia on the kids; I reminded her that they were going to have to sort it out sooner or later.

We had a cold snap here recently. Really cold - down to 19 degrees, which seldom happens here. Of course the media was full of the usual "save your pipes" advice, including getting those foam covers to insulate your outdoor faucets. I guess our neighbor didn't have time to get to Home Depot, so she improvised. Any boot in a freeze, you might say:

Dog Days of Winter

If most of your TV - viewing is sports related, the latter part of January is the pits. The Bowl games are over, the Pros are dwindling down to Saturday and Sunday only. Super Bowl DXIIV will be just a memory in a short time. Even non-sports TV is a barren wasteland. Sigh.

Yes, college basketball is going on, but apart from your favorite team it really doesn't get interesting until later. Same for pro basketball. Dog days, indeed.

So in times like these, we fall back on the tried and true. Break out the Lord of the Rings DVDs. We're too old for marathons, so it's one disk a night for the old folks. LOTR gets us through 6 week-night evenings; pro football gets us through the weekend. Sweet.

A story in three pictures

The stadium scoreboard:

The proposal:

The answer:

Monday Meanderings - Jan 11

Okay, Uncle! I give! Enough of this below freezing weather. There's a reason we live in Texas, folks - and the  more southerly portion, at that. Call me a wuss, but I like my temperatures above freezing. Just so grateful that there was no moisture with this arctic chill.

He said -- moaning and complaining after a long day at work doing tedious system documentation -- "I don't want to do this anymore."
She said -- in a loving, compassionate response -- "Ok. Tell them that you are not going to do that any more - as long as you have something else that keeps you out of the house all day."

Just in case you don't go back and check older blogs for what others may have commented - like I usually don't - here's what our friend Cynthia had to say about "The Owl is Back!" -- "Only goes to show, your nest is never really empty." Well said.

For the record, if I'm ever in London and lost my wallet / get held up at gunpoint / need emergency care - you might get an international collect phone call from me but I go on record right now as saying you won't get an email! Check out Jason's last couple of blogs for his trauma with hackers.

Went to a Lady Longhorn game this weekend. I'm not saying this was perhaps our worst game ever, but when we left, instead of handing out coupons for free chicken wings - like they do whenever we win - they made us give some back!

Follow-up to my comments about Colt in my last blog. Yes, he was at church Sunday. And the worship minister (interviewed in the news video) said his neighbor told him that he saw the news interview, and then he saw Colt's post game interview and he wanted to know more about what Colt meant about basing his life on the Rock.  And the woman who produced the news video visited services Sunday.   

And I leave you with another of example of Why women live longer than men. If these two actually get Baby home safely, the Mom is going to kill Hubby and his friend when they pull into the driveway.

Reflections on a season

Somehow I feel compelled to comment on the football season just past. Not sure why.

I'm not devastated that UT lost - I would have been elated if they won, but they didn't and that's that. I just skimmed the 10 (!) pages of breathless, deathless prose that the AS published. Game's over folks. Bama won. Let's move on.

In a way, Colt's early injury took the anxiety out of watching the game. I could enjoy watching the UT defense turn in a stellar performance. I could see Gilbert begin to get the idea. I could (with no way to prove it) think that UT would have won the game with Colt.

I guess I mostly want to add my two cents to all that has been said about Colt. Mom said  this morning that she wished there was a way to tell him thanks - something more than one more note addressed to the UT Athletic department. I said "Give it to him Sunday. He'll probably be at church." And I guess that's the thing that stands out in my mind. If he is in town, he'll be in church Sunday morning.

Here are a few links to videos and blogs regarding Colt. You've probably already seen much of this.

You know the media is desperate when they interview the church staff.

And I appreciated Trey Morgan sharing this example.

And here is some insight on what went on in the locker room.

And finally, Colt's post game interview.

See you Sunday, Colt. Good job.

The owl is back!

Monday afternoon we kept hearing a bunch of Blue Jays raising cane in the back yard. When I finally paid attention and looked out, there were 4 or 5 Jays clustered in the pecan tree out back just squawking!  At first I was amazed at the number of Jays - we have a mating pair in the area and we see a Jay from time to time, but here was a flock of Jays and they all had issues!

From time to time an adventurous Jay would swoop down to the opening of the owl house and hurl an invective or two, then fly back to a branch so it dawned on me that there was something in there that the Jays did not want in there! Since the owl house has been unoccupied for about a year except for brief visits by an inquisitive squirrel, I immediately thought that the Jays had trapped a nest-robbing squirrel in the owl house.

However, in the back of my mind I began thinking that maybe an owl showed up this morning (I was pretty sure it had not come earlier because there had been some really rowdy football games in the backyard over the last few days and evenings). So, when evening fell (and the Jays finally gave it up) I kept checking and sure enough, up popped an owl!

I have no way of knowing if it is the same owl that visited last January or not. They all...uh, well, they all look alike to me. Looking back at the picture from last January, this owl may be slightly larger (a year older, perhaps?).

Same owl or some other screech owl who heard about our motel and is only passing through, we are happy to see him. Her? Whatever.

Monday Meanderings - Jan 4, 2010

What a great time of year! The blessings of Christmas, the promise and expectations of a new year, the fact you can turn on the TV anytime and there's a bowl game! Sweet.

How did we entertain the children before there were games on the phones, iTouches, iPods, and other gadgets? I looked up the other evening and even 4 year-old Grace was gaming away on an iTouch!

As great as it is to have all the family together, it is challenging to have 10 people in a 1200 sq. ft. house.  Especially now that you can't just put a quilt on the floor for all the kids. But we survived just fine, thank you.

No point in making New Year resolutions. We've already over consumed in most any category you can imagine. Maybe we'll think about doing that in a week or so, after it calms down.

And sometimes nature photography is not what it is cracked up to be.