Monday Meanderings - May 31

Happy Memorial Day to you. If you live in Austin, Memorial Day is forever linked to flooding, as in THE Memorial Day Flood. There will be no repeat this year, as it must rain before it can flood.

Our Chuy's has a new feature - a drive in. No, not a drive through; they didn't go through, they just drove in - then backed out somehow and drove away, leaving a gaping hole where the large circular table in the front corner used to be. You know, the place were we sat on occasion when there was a large group of us. Fortunately, this all took place in the middle of the night, so no diners were harmed in the making of this hole. Don't know about the occupants of the car.

And speaking of remodeling, our Wal-Mart is undergoing great change - and this while it remains open. Every trip you have to stop at the "Where is the Pharmacy Today?" sign and figure out where to look for the things you are shopping for, because they are NOT where you found them last. If you are prone to dislike change - as some of us are - this is very offputting. I always wanted to use that word in a sentence.

Overheard this past week in a restaurant: "I woke up this morning to two sick kids and a flat tire, and my Bible verse was 'Rejoice always.'"

The big news in Austin is Formula 1 racing. Land has been acquired east of the old airport, an engineering firm in Germany has been hired to lay out and build the track and facility and by 2012 the high-dollar race cars will be turning left - and right - in Austin through 2021! Let's see - cars speeding through Austin streets, swerving in and out of traffic. How will that be different?

According to the press, it is the economic equivalent of a Super Bowl held in our city every year. I wonder what Willy and Waylon think about it?

You don't often see a shower invitation in the church bulletin that says "As a courtesy, please do not bring cameras, video cameras & no autographs at this event. Thank you for your consideration and understanding." But then it is for Rachel  Glandorf, bride elect of Colt McCoy. I wonder what you get the bride-elect of a multi-millionaire to-be? Maybe to-be is the operative phrase here.

We DVD'd a bunch of Discovery Channel "Life" episodes a while back to get us through the slow days of NBA playoffs we don't care about, but with World Cup coming up we might not need them. A fellow fan at the office figures that since the games are at 8:30am and 1pm (Central) he can work from home between the morning and afternoon game, then go into the office from 4pm to 9pm. Me? I'm going to be retired during that month.

Here's an ESPN promo for the games:

Monday Meanderings - May 24

I was back at work this past week, and will be again next week. However, I have an interesting project at hand, and it looks like I'll get back to my rigorous retirement schedule after that.

I predicted back when Austin's Commuter Train started that there would be a train-auto accident in mere days - if not mere hours. If there has been such an accident it has been suppressed by the train police. No mention in the news or in the Chronicle, which would love to print that story. In fact, since the trains started zipping to and fro I haven't even seen a train until just this past week, and I cross the tracks frequently. Hmm.

The other day I noticed a car pulled over on I-35 and as I approached I could see some kind of large, flat sheet metal thingy leaning up against the passenger side of the car. The passenger was reaching through the window, pushing on this metal object, trying to get it away from the car. As I got closer, I saw that it was the hood of the car that the passenger was trying to move. I'm trying for some scenario that puts the hood up against the car on the passenger side, but I just don't have that much imagination.

And since we are on an automobile theme - I watched a woman at a stop light change shirts. No. It didn't happen like that. First, she put ON another tee shirt, and then with a great deal of contortionist activity, she took OFF the shirt under that. It didn't look easy.

If the sign in front of a Pharmacy advertises a "RX Happy Hour" what do you suppose that means? A bunch of people sitting around the counter talking loudly and popping pills? Inquiring Minds Want to Know.

And, in the latest episode of "Friday Night Lights" Coach Taylor has just pulled up to the pumps at a service station when someone asks him, "Can you tell me how to get to Lubbock?" The someone is Mike Leach. The real Mike Leach. Coach Taylor gives him some directions, and then Leach walks up to the window and says, "You're the coach at Dillon East. You've lost your inner pirate. Have you ever heard 'swing your sword?' You swing your sword like this (demonstrating with big side-to-side movements). You're swinging your sword like this" (demonstrating with small downward swings)."

"You have to find your inner pirate. A lot of times things just happen for a reason. We don't know why God wants it that way, but you can't make the best of it until you get back your inner pirate. You might be the luckiest man alive and not even know it."

Whereupon Leach gets in his pickup and drives off, leaving Coach Taylor dumbfounded.

I am confident no one with FNL gave Leach a prepared speech. You know they probably just said "We're going to roll the cameras and you give this poor coach of a losing high school team some advice."

Have you lost your inner pirate?

Saturday Special - Serve Out II

Yes, it's time to clean out the blog-fridge again. Here are the things that have been lurking in the back, behind the milk and orange juice: like this new take on the classic tortoise and the hare.

And this community of Tic-Taks:

Or the all-purpose door mat:

Or this mixed message:

And just how much breath does this guy have?

So that's  how Fedex does it...

Who doesn't love to dance to accordion music?

Anything that looks this good has to taste good, too.

However, whatever this is, it must be something very, very tasty!

Monday Meanderings - May 17

I went to the Apple store the other evening to purchase an expensive cable (that only Apple sells) to use with iPhones and the sound system at church. Been there before to browse and it's a happening place, but actually buying something is quite the experience - almost. When we found the cable, the clerk said I'll check you out, and she whipped out her iPhone, which had been enhanced somewhat, and scanned the bar code with a little laser beam. Then she skimmed my charge card in a slot on the side of the enhanced portion of the phone, asked for my e-mail address to send me the receipt and I was done.

I would have been really impressed if it had worked. What really happened was she tried for about 10 minutes to get her iPhone to CONNECT IN THE APPLE STORE! All the while she kept shaking it between attempts to connect. Maybe they really are just glorified Etch-A-Sketches. Finally she gave up and went and got a manager's phone and tried it in various places in the store. Thought for a minute we were going to go outside to the street to find a connection. Finally she got connected and then did the little scan and skim trick as described above. Sort of takes the edge off how high tech it all was.

This week is Large Brush Collection week by the city. Bring out your limbs! We have been waiting anxiously for this event because I needed to cut back the fig trees on the north side of the house. They had completely overgrown the space between our house and the Nichol's making mowing impossible. During all the really nice weather I had been trimming off a limb at a time and putting that out for collection, but they won't take but 1 container a week in the regular collection so it was a slow process. If we went ahead and trimmed all the limbs then we would have this mess sitting in front of the house killing the grass under it.

So last week, when the temperature was in the 90's and the humidity was in the 70's we got to trim. It took 3 days of working only in the early morning, but with Mom's help it got done. I just hope they pick it up on Monday and not Friday - though we are not alone - there are a lot of brush piles in the neighborhood.

The other outdoor news is that if the furry, caterpillar-looking tassels produced by the Pecan trees is any indication we will have a bumper crop of pecans this year. There are mounds of "caterpillars" everywhere, and when you step in them they cling and we track them in the house. The front flowerbed looks as if we mulched it - with pecan tassels. Mom's bird bath is now serving Pecan tassel tea.

Have harvested three nice tomatoes and there are two more almost ripe. We're already ahead of last year.

"Friday Night Lights:" has resumed, and there's trouble in Dillon, Texas. I was bemoaning that fact and describing all the problems that surfaced in the opening episode and Barb said, "See. You should have quit after the first season like I did - after they won the State Championship and everybody still liked each other." Sigh.

The Yellow Roads of Texas

I mentioned earlier, describing another trip to Lubbock, how much in evidence the Redbud trees were along the route. This most recent trip can only be described as the color yellow.

By-and-large the Bluebonnets have had their turn - we saw just a few stands of those blooms along the way. Now it is time for the yellow wildflowers, and they were out in abundance.

Fields of yellow, borrow-ditches of yellow, hillsides of yellow! Yellow as far as the eye could see; yellow in the road dividers.

Daiseys, Coreopsis, Black-eyed Susan,
Bitterweed, Desert Marigolds, Engleman, Musterd, Nettle, Dandelions.

Often mixed with the Indian blanket to blend reds and yellows in contrast, and many times frosted with the lace of the white Milfoil.

I didn't take these pictures. If I had stopped for every photo opportunity, we would have gotten home late Tuesday.

Motel Hell

Originally I was only going to write about the Breakfast from Hell, but since then I have learned that the motel has double-billed me, so the scope of the story has expanded!

We decided to break up our trip to Lubbock by coming only part-way during the return and stop in Abilene. This would allow us a break in the 14 hours of car-time and give us the opportunity to visit Southern Hills on Sunday morning, where Phil Ware, our previous preacher at Westover is now.

We thought that a good idea, then and now, but the first hint of trouble came when we could find no rooms available in Abilene for Saturday night. None. Nada. Evidently the Rodeo was in town, and ACU was holding graduation ceremonies (and perhaps others), so there was no room at the Inn - Holiday or Days. Finally I tried our old standby in downtown Abilene across from the convention center - the place we always stayed when we came to attend Abilene Mission Church. They had a room and I booked it over the Internet.

Has anyone mentioned to me that while there are prosperous-looking areas of Abilene, downtown and the area immediately to the north are not sharing in that prosperity? No, I thought not. Even though the marquee said "Newly Renovated" our old standby - now dubbed the Civic Plaza Hotel - looked somewhat past the point of genteel shabbiness. Nevertheless, it was the only game in town and the room itself was relatively clean and the TV worked, even if none of the electrical outlets did and the card reader on the door was hinky (the 4th or 5th try is the charm).

A couple of days after booking the room I got an email from the reservation service saying that the room was already paid for (and already charged to the credit card) so do not pay again at the motel. I pointed this email out to the guy checking us in, and he said that was correct, I was only signing for confirmation. I knew at the time where this was probably going. But first, breakfast.

When we booked the room the reservation system said clearly that this was a European plan room - meaning no meals included. In the old days there was always free breakfast in the attached restaurant, but no longer. However, when we checked in they guy gave us a voucher for free breakfast choices; bacon and eggs, biscuits and gravy, pancakes, etc. Cool. Fool.

The restaurant had also been recently remodeled. It was now painted in shades of Pepto-Bismol. That should have been a clue. The hostess/cashier resembled...well, I'm not sure. Lets just say she was large. Very large, wearing sweat pants and a tee-shirt and house shoes (though in all fairness she did say she had broken her foot). And I don't think I've ever seen jail-house tattoos quite that large.

The waitress, obviously the daughter, wore a tee-shirt, shorts, and flip flops, She was not as large as Mama but give her a few years. We ordered - eggs, bacon and coffee for me, biscuits, gravy and a diet drink for Barb. That was the first problem. "Y'all," Bertha Sue, the daughter explained, "the meal thing only lets us serve coffee. If y'all want a soft drink you have to pay fer that in advance ."

Okay. we'll pay in advance.

"Well, we don't have no diet drinks. All we got is an ol' Dr Pepper."

Then why explain to us about paying in advance? Okay, we'll get a diet drink out of the vending machine. Is that all right? Bertha Sue and Big Mama decide it is, but the smallest bill I have is a five, so Barb asks Big Mama for change, but she can only come up with a couple of bills and a lot of coins. Whatever.

Of course, the vending machine is not vending - what would you expect? - and while Barb is off discovering that fact, Bertha Sue serves the food. Folks, you really have to work at it to mess up scrambled eggs and bacon, but Tank, the cook and possibly husband of Big Mama and Bertha Sue has outdone himself. The bacon is charred, the eggs are swimming in grease and the toast is...well, toast. The coffee is instant, and Barbs biscuit (singular) is floating in what looks like condensed milk. I refused to taste it - I'm not sure she did either.

We had some time, so we escaped to South First and looked for a breakfast alternative and found only a do-nut shop - not the best choice, but it got us through church.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to call American Express and contest a charge.

Monday meanderings - May 10

Wow, what a weekend! At LCU graduation Saturday we saw our lovely, talented (and surprised) daughter-in-law Jana receive a Teacher of the Year award. We were not surprised. One only has to follow the comments she gets on Facebook to know that she connects with her students in many and significant ways. Kudos to Rob for getting the whole family there at the ceremony without her suspecting anything. Well done, one and all.

Lots of interesting moments on the road between here and Lubbock - and back. Like the big emergency-looking sign on the roadside that said, "Incident Ahead." We looked diligently for an incident, whatever that may have been - but only saw another sign on the other side of the road that said the same thing to oncoming traffic. Hmm. Or the custom license plate that said DUCTAPE. It made a little more sense when we got closer and saw that the license plate was issued in Arkansas.

Earlier in the week we celebrated Cinco de Maya  by feasting at our favorite fajita establishment, Papacitas. We were vaguely aware that there would be a big celebration of the occasion with outdoor festivities, but we thought we could get in and out before the party began in earnest. And we did. Barely. The rumors about Barb doing the Hat Dance with a waiter on the Dos Equis stage are greatly exaggerated.

Barb bought herself a small ceramic birdbath for Mothers Day. Well, I contributed by driving her down to the hardware store. So far the birds have only sipped from the bowl. Bathing seems a foreign concept. Dirty Birds.

And I added a new bird to my list. I looked up the other morning and saw a pale blue bird cross the yard - almost turquoise in color, with distinctive wings. I was excited, because this is not a normal bird color. Another Indigo Bunting? I crept up to the corner to peek around and spotted a...parakeet. Melopsittacus undulatus, or the common Budgie. Hey! A bird sighting is a bird sighting!

Next - the Breakfast From Hell.

Revisiting old times - on the UT campus

For a number of years I was a regular visitor to the UT campus - specifically to Bellmont Hall - the home of UT Athletics, actually located under the west stands of Memorial Stadium. Men's Athletics was a customer of ours, and I spent many hours working at the ticket office and other areas in the hall and stadium (I have been places there few others have been - like the tunnel which runs under the field itself, for example).

Parking was always an adventure at UT. Even getting to the stadium without a confrontation with the people in the guard shacks was tricky; we had a back entrance route that took us across two parking lots and down a sidewalk (literally). The company had a parking pass, but it was seldom available when I needed it. There were some two-hour spaces and some parking meters where I took my chances - and most often lost.

Let me just say that I was well-known to the campus parking police. And yes, you will recall that this would not be the first time that I came to the attention of the UT police department. Finally, the campus police called the Assistant Athletic Director we were working with and let it be known that I was persona non grata and he called my boss, and well... you know about the trickle-down theory. But I digress.

Yesterday I revisited my old stomping grounds. The stadium itself has undergone a huge renovation - the two-hour spaces and meters are covered by new construction, but Belmont Hall remains largely unchanged. It was there I met an acquaintance from church who is testing people in various age groups for aging and motor behavior changes. Her doctoral thesis is based on this study.

The testing itself was interesting - you "pinched" a measurement device to manipulate a moving dot across a computer screen. Pressure from your thumb made the dot go up; pressure from the forefinger made the dot move across. The trick was to make the dot move evenly up and down at a 45 degree angle - meaning the pinch was equal in for both axises. It was harder than it looked.

And when I finished and came back to my car... nothing happened, They furnished me a parking pass for my visit. Now if I had just had one of those a few years ago!

Deep thoughts about baby birds. Really.

Daily I watch a little avian drama while walking on the treadmill. There are a couple of baby birds - actually fledglings - that hang out near the bird feeder. They don't feed. They wait for Mommy. When she comes they make a bird-line to the feeder and try to land on the same little perch she's on, or sometimes on Mommy herself, and then they flutter their little wings rapidly and thrust their little beaks to the sky and wait to be fed. Mommy feeds them - for a while - getting seed from the feeder and crunching it up before dropping it down their gullets. After a while, she tires of this and flies away, leaving the babies at the feeder.

Here's the interesting part. The babies are still at the feeder. Mommy's not around so they don't do their little feed-me dance anymore. They are usually on the perch where the feeder has an opening to the seed. They have just seen Mommy reach in and get seeds. Or did they? At this point those two birds have no clue about feeding themselves. They look at the seed behind the plastic; they will occasionally peck at the seeds behind the plastic, but they - for the most part - will not put their little heads in the openings and eat.

One bird will actually reach in and pluck out a seed or two, but then he goes right back to pecking the plastic. I don't know if it is because the seed was not prepared just the way he likes it, or he doesn't associate it with what Mommy gives him, or he is SO STUPID HE DOESN'T REMEMBER WHAT HE JUST DID! So they wait for Mommy to come back.

Now folks, this will preach in Wyoming! You and I are often just like the baby birds, waiting for feeding time, or doing a little feed-me dance, or staring stupidly at opportunity right in front of us, or having once fed, forgetting where our sustenance comes from! Oh, yes. You can write parables as well as I.

But eventually these baby birds are going to mature. Or starve.

Monday Meanderings - May 3

I dropped a bomb on the orchid plant the other day. Actually, I dropped a screwdriver but the result was the same as a bomb - it blew the plant apart! The long spike with 5 blooms was snapped completely off, 2 of the 5 blooms destroyed. The new leaf - that has taken months to get to any size at all - was shredded. I was heartbroken. However, there are still 2 blooms on another spike of the plant and Barb trimmed up the long spike so that we continue to enjoy the 3 remaining blooms as a cutting, but my, that is a fragile plant!

Standing in line the other day, the guy in front of me had on an Aggie tee-shirt with the image of the Texas Longhorn with the horns sawed off - pretty common Aggie artwork. But it also had a scripture reference with it. "I will cut off the horns of all the wicked. Psalm 75:10" He was a pretty big dude so I didn't mention that there is another part to that verse; the part that reads, "But the horns of the righteous will be lifted up."

And I think I  mentioned last week that it is a good thing that the "Fresh Cup Yogurt" place was "not real close or some place we drive by daily." Funny how many trips have taken us in that direction since then - and it is NOT a convenient place to get to.

And it may be time to refill.