And the winner is...

It is obligatory for bloggers to write a year-end retrospective piece. If you don't, you lose your blog license, or they send all the spam comments to you or something bad happens. That's a fact. And, judging from the other blogs I read that retrospective must be a recap of your own blogginess.

So, cutting right to the chase -- the Retired In Austin blog entry that received the most hits this year is:

Monday Meanderings - Sep 20. This blog is rated "PG" 

Followed by:

You can't go home until you pee
We need more cowbell!!
The Adventures of Bob the Dog – the Meat Market Massacre   and
I once dated a girl... 

Google has a lot to do with blog hits. It's amazing what people search for, and these are some of the search keywords have led people to my blog this year:

retired in austin
phone outages austin texas wednesday september 8 2010 
acl fest 2010
breckenridge high school buckaroos
colt and rachel's wedding
jerry gibson breckenridge
robert earl keene  (Hop on your Harley - it's ROT Rally)
splat the cat chuy's (now that's a strange combination)
university of texas cowbell

and interestingly enough - watch band calendars.

Counting the number of visitors is a bit of a challenge. I have a couple of sources, but they don't exactly cover the same periods, so I'm extrapolating some (hey, what's a few thousand hits among friends?). As you would expect, the majority of visitors came from the United States - 1,075 of them. But I also had visitors from:

South Korea (82)
Canada (53)
United Kingdom (27)
Brazil (24)
France (23)
Denmark (19)
Italy (18)
Malta (18)
Plus some others that the site meter seems unable to count unless I pay for the premium $ervice.

Far and away more Windows users (1,646) visited than Mac users (496), but some came calling from iPhones, iPads, Blackberrys and one soul was using Playstation 3 to browse the web. Go figure.

As best as I can tell (since I didn't write it down last year) there have been 3,922 page views in 2010. I can't tell how many individual people that actually is -- it may be only 6 loyal friends clicking more than 650 times  apiece. Thanks, guys. The check is in the mail.

Oh, and Happy New Year!

Back on the grid

Barb and I gave each other iPhones for Christmas. This probably rates higher than the garage door openers we gave each other a number of years ago, but in my defense, we really needed garage door openers.

I wrote with some pride a while back that we were slowly getting off the grid; our cell phones had dwindled down to Pay-As-You-Go plans and I griped because I couldn't get any lower level (cheaper) service. But I slipped up and got Barb a Palm for Christmas several years ago. She loved the Palm. She depended on the Palm. And when the Palm finally played out there was great trauma and angst about replacing it. After a lot of deliberation, and a lot of trepidation, we got her an iTouch. Great choice, only she kept having to retrieve it from me so much she finally insisted that I get my own. I did and we were a happy couple.

For a while. Then it became obvious that our old phones weren't going to last much longer - they would hold a battery charge about 12 hours or two phone calls - whichever came first. In fact, when we went to the AT&T store the guy took one look at our old phones and said, "Wow, I haven't seen one of these in forever!" Okay, we get the point.

So, now we have new, out-of-the-box iPhones, and if we want all of our existing stuff from the iTouches transferred over to our iPhones we just sync them in iTunes, right? iNot! Let me just say that we got the phones last Tuesday and we finished cleaning up all the apps and profiles on Christmas Day. Oh, wait. We still have to call the Bible software company to find out what happened to the versions previously bought and paid for. I give iTunes sync a big F minus!!

Then there is the matter of documentation. If you have an Apple product you know that Apple doesn't believe in documentation. Saves them a ton of money. So Barb picked up an "iPhone for Dummies" type book, and I confess I took the Apple approach and said, "We don't need no stinkin' book." Which was fine until I slipped up and showed her a neat short-cut and had to confess that after she went to bed I read her book. Her helpful, interesting book.

There. Is that a sufficient apology?

So now we are down to one device apiece for all our phone and mobile Internet needs. Right? Then why does our docking area look like this?

Oh, yeah, I remember. It has to do with that F minus for getting all the stuff synced up. Maybe someday soon.

Monday Meanderings - 12.27.2010

I'm still officially in Holiday Mode, so this may be a short blog. That statement does bring up the question though - how is my Holiday Mode any different than my Everyday Mode? I'll get back to you on that - after the Holidays.

The Missus and I had a very nice Christmas. Our kids and grands came during the Thanksgiving week and that was our big get-together so we just sort of quietly slid into Christmas from there. Whenever folks would ask if we were ready for Christmas, we would reply that we were done!

We did the traditional Christmas Eve Candlelight Service at Westover Friday night. That service gets a little more complicated (from a technical standpoint) every year, but the house was packed again this year and a very high number were visitors, so it seems to be well received.

Sunday morning when we got to the church building, Brent - the sound guy for this week - was scratching his head. Every time he tried to turn up the volume on the singer's monitors he would hear a flute and guitar playing Christmas music, with no apparent source for that music. No CD, no feed from upstairs, no nothing. I told him that maybe we have had it wrong all this time and this was a sign. However, it went away before the service started, so maybe not.

Good news on the "If I eat this I might pass out on the floor" front: the tests for a beef, pork, and lamb allergy are negative. No word about the chocolate allergy test, but there has been a great deal of independent research carried out this Christmas season and the results indicate no allergy there!

Lots of Bowl games on the TV. Which has prompted a couple of questions on my part:

    1) Do you think it is in Allstate Insurance's best interest to sponsor the big nets behind the goals? You know, the ones that say. "You are in good hands" with the image of the cupped hands prominently displayed? I have never seen those hands catch a single kick through the goals. Not a one! The "good hands" always drop the ball.

   2) Where do the Army and Navy football teams get their cheerleaders? I recognize that both academies have female members, but it strikes me that the type of young woman who is seeking a career as a military officer is not interested in participating in the cheerleader stereotype. Just saying.

And in the spirit of keeping Austin weird, here is a photo I snapped - highly visible on north-bound IH-35:

Merry Christmas

"God bless the master of this house,
And the mistress also,
And all the little children
That round your table grow.

The cattle in your stable,
The dogs at your front door,
And all that dwell within your gates
We'll wish you ten times more."

And perhaps you have not seen this:

Here's a link so that you can watch it full-size.

The Christmas Calenders

At the family Christmas get-together way back in 1971, my brother-in-law Arthur unwittingly started a tradition that now begins its 40th year - the giving of the watch band calenders. Once upon a time, unless very expensive, watches did not have calender and date functions, so a popular item back then was a little band of aluminum, imprinted with a calender month, that one could fit around the watch band.

They looked like this:

 

Snap the appropriate month off, bend the tabs around the band, and there you go, all calendered up. They even have popular holidays designated.

So, that Christmas, Arthur gave me a supply of watch band calenders. About 10 pounds of watch band calenders! Thousands of watch band calenders! And did you notice the date? That's right, 1971 - the year just past.

As you might suspect, these bands have been re-gifted. Many times. The year 1971 repeats about every 11 years, so these became appropriate family gifts again in 1982, 1993, 1999 and 2010. Not only that, these little strips of aluminum have been glued to various and sundry other gifts, such as a waste-basket sized container given on the occasion of my sister and brother-in-laws silver wedding anniversary. They have decorated many a Christmas tree, they have been craft projects for many a Pre-K class. They have been used in a variety of ways, but fear not - there are still plenty of watch band calendars left.

 And yes, they definitely were re-gifted this year. John is the new Keeper of the Calenders. You may want to congratulate him on this auspicious honor. Can't wait till 2021.

Monday Meanderings - 12.20.10

I had a store clerk (in a Santa hat) describe to me the 4 "Santa" stages of life:

1. You believe in Santa
2. You don't believe in Santa
3. You are Santa
4. You look like Santa

 Got a dollar bill in change the other day that was stamped with "WheresGeorge.com." These marked bills are sort of like geo-cache travel bugs; the serial numbers are logged on the web site and you can look them up to see how they have traversed the globe. This bill was pretty old and worn and I thought it would have quite a travel history, arriving in Austin from somewhere really remote so I looked it up and discovered it had started its journey some 4 days ago in Lockhart Texas, and I was the bill's first finder. Oh, well.

Went to Fort Worth on Saturday for the Cousin's Christmas (I'll have more to say about that on Wednesday). Traffic was typical IH-35; that is, bumper-to-bumper. Fortunately, it's only that way between Austin and Fort Worth.

Halfway between Salado and Georgetown - in wide open country - there is a highway sign that says "Downtown - next exit." Excuse me? There may be a downtown somewhere on that exit, but it is not anywhere in sight. And while you are pondering that, in a few minutes another sign presents itself with the message "Higher Education Campuses." Uhhh, the University of Jarell? Round Rock U? You got me.

And who knew you could have so much fun with duct tape?

Ho Ho Ho - again

I first posted this in December of '07 - in my first 6 months of blogging. Since then, not only have I learned about "reblogging" I found out there is this wonderful idea called "reposting." Ho, ho ho, indeed!

It’s becoming pretty obvious. I catch more and more small children looking at me with a great deal of interest these days. I think it’s the beard and the belly. You know, like the waitress at the café in Salado who said, “Hon, with your beard and your belly you can play Santa Claus!” I won’t tell you what I told her about her tip! But she’s right. Every time we are out somewhere, I catch some wide-eyed child really checking me out.

Even Grace. Mom was reading her a Christmas book when were up there and the last page had a picture of the jolly gent himself. Grace looked at the picture, then she looked up at me; she looked back at the picture and then she pointed at me!

I have even begun going “Ho, Ho, Ho” to some of the kids. Sometimes I want to say “I’m keeping a list – and you’re on it!” The other day in Central Market a kid was really acting up – so much so that other store patrons around him were commenting about his behavior. I really wanted to go up to the kid, point at my beard and say, “Do you know who I am? Do you know that I check up on naughty children?” But judging from the mom’s yuppie attire (and lack of restraint of her bratty kid) she probably would have sued me for perpetuating a myth and traumatizing her little dear.

The other day a friend called and asked me if I wanted a gig playing Santa at a bank opening – two six-hour Saturdays dandling kiddos in a hot Santa suit. I was so sorry that we were going to be in Fort Worth one Saturday and anywhere else I could think of the next. 

P.S. Mom just came in from shopping with... a Santa Hat for me. Anybody got a red suit?

Words to live by

Every family has them. Sayings or phrases that are deeply ingrained in the life and culture of the family. Sometimes they are trans-generational; other times they are born of contemporary experience. My mother always said, "Folks in Hell want ice water" in response to my many demands. Who among us has not heard: "If your friend jumped off a building, would you do that too?"

I coined "You can't walk and gawk"  in response to my stumbling over uneven sidewalks in Mexico City, and it is a phrase that  has continued to serve us in all our travels.

Our daughter introduced us to "Isn't that baby cold?" from her experiences in Prague. There, every one - even the nineteen-year old male museum attendant - is a Babushka, a grandmother, at least in heart, and no one hesitates to give child-rearing advice. We have discovered that this shared concern does not play out as well in the U.S. as it did in the Czech Republic.

"We've been wet (and cold) before"  was a catch-phrase from trekking in the Colorado mountains, where we were often wet. And cold. It allows us to apply the measure of relativity to our current condition, because we seldom get as wet and cold as we did then, so never mind.

"Toys break, balloons pop, the best players get to play and you're too old to cry" was standard child-rearing advice as our children were growing up, and has even been offered up in adulthood.

How many times has Barb counseled our kids - usually on the phone - to "take a long, slow, deep breath?"

How about you? What are the words you (and your family) live by?

Monday Meanderings - 12.13.10

Local billboard - a jewelry store advertising a large diamond pendent - "She'll reward you with the remote."

Looked out the back the other day and saw a LARGE limb leaning into my neighbor's tree. Hmmm. Look at that. My neighbor has a big limb that has fallen. Glad it's not one of my trees. You know the rest. The tree service will be out today to get MY big limb out of the neighbor's tree.

There is a large duck pond behind Mimi's Cafe here. Went there for breakfast the other day (Mimi's - not the pond) and found that some of the ducks had figured out that there's better eating by begging at Mimi's front door than hanging out back in the pond.

Did the sound for a pre-school program at church the other evening. I think I've mentioned before that I wish I had the money invested in video recorders and cameras that were present at that event.

There's news regarding Barb's anaphalaxis problem (when she passes out and takes an unscheduled nap on the dining room floor). There's a slight chance that chocolate is the culprit. Or maybe beef, lamb and pork. Or both. Barb is NOT happy about this development. Stay tuned.

The University of Texas zealously polices any use of logos, slogans, images, etc. that are linked to the University. By doing so, they generate more than 1.5 million dollars in trademark revenue each year - more than any other school. New high school? Want to name your team the Longhorns? Probably not. Not only is UT afraid they might lose some trademark revenue, this year they are afraid that some might confuse the two football programs.

Latest to join the hit list is a guy in Cedar Park who built a car wash and stood a big white 60-foot tower beside it. A tower that looks suspiciously like the 300-foot one in downtown Austin. It took UT lawyers less than a week to file against this infringement. Maybe they were afraid students would confuse the two and head for Cedar Park and then fail to show up for class. Or they might lose revenue on visitors to the top of the tower. At any rate, it looks like the guy will have to make like an Aggie and "saw the tower off."

Serve Out

Once again, it's time to time to empty out the photo files

These little guys are juice boxes. Clever

Take a long look at this picture and tell me if this is remarkable serendipity, or Photo Shop.

IH-35 in downtown Austin

A doomed relationship.

 

Pesky Chickadee!

Oh, this is a good idea.

 

This is not my owl.

Cat or Penguin?

Is this dog named Spot?

Choices, choices.

And the winner of the "Hey, look at this!" award

(Awarded posthumously, I might add)

Stories for my grandchildren - Basil Clemons

This photo of  downtown Breckenridge in 1920, which I first showed you in Stories for my grandchildren - Thurber Brick was taken by a man named Basil Clemons. Mr. Clemons was the resident commercial photographer in Breckenridge from about the beginning of the oil boom in 1920 until 1949. I was only eight years old when blindness ended his career, so I never knew about him from his photography business. What really stood out about Basil Clemons was that he lived in a wagon - think iron-wheeled Gypsy Caravan-type wagon - that was parked in a field on North Breckenridge Avenue.

There are various descriptions of the wagon - some say it was a gypsy wagon - others that it was originally a canvas-covered cook wagon from cattle drive days. I don't clearly remember and there does not appear to be a picture of it available. I do remember that there was a stove pipe on one side of the wagon and that there were wooden steps placed at one end. This was home, darkroom and office for Clemons, and he lived there until his death in 1964.

Clemons learned his art in Hollywood at the beginning of the movie era. Later, he trooped with the Tom Mix Wild West Show. In 1909 he departed for Alaska, recording in pictures gold discoveries in the Yukon River area. He introduced motion pictures to Alaskan residents by making and developing the first movies shown there. The Handbook of Texas writes about Clemons:

"In 1919, while traveling with a circus ... he headed west to Breckenridge. He chronicled on film every aspect of life in the small town as it boomed from oil production in 1920. When the oilfields declined, he remained and continued to photograph everyday happenings. His photographs included not only oil-derrick scenes, weddings, downtown display windows, rodeos, parades, and portraits of prominent citizens, but also funeral processions, Ku Klux Klan rallies, lakeside picnics, and the entire public school student body.

To develop photographs, he never measured the chemicals poured from jars. By tasting the finger he used to stir the mixture, he determined the correct proportions. He developed black-and-white and sepia-toned photographs. He also produced pictures on fabric and did hand-colored tinted prints. His skill was so perfected that he formulated a process for color developing before the Eastman Kodak Company. When he received a letter from Kodak in 1936, offering a fabulous amount, plus royalties, for his technique, Clemons had his teen-aged helper, Frank Pellizzari, Jr., type a refusal to the offer with the remark that the Kodak chemists should "figure it out for themselves." The trademark of his work was marking negatives with a fine pen and India ink so that the developed prints bore the subject label, date, and his signature in white lettering."

"Our Fire Chief - Heaven Bless Him for Doing the Best He Can With What He Has To Do With. In Front Of Another Notorious Breckenridge, Texas Fire 4-22-21."

The Pelizzari family were Italian immigrants who lived across the street from Clemons. They owned the shoe shop in town and I remember seeing Clemons sitting at that shop while Frank Junior and his father plied their trade.  After his death, the thousands of photos and negatives that were piled in Clemons' wagon were acquired and cataloged by the University of Texas at Arlington.

Monday Meanderings - 12.6.10

Last week I mentioned that I was emotionally surprised by the movie UP. Turns out I'm not alone. Ran across a blog this week that listed the 10 most depressing Disney movie moments.

10. Toy Story - Buzz Lightyear learns he's a toy
  9. Robin Hood - Skippy's coin gets tax collected
  8. The Fox and the Hound - Fox is abandoned
  7. Oliver and Company - kittens for sale
  6. Beauty and the Beast - Beast dies
  5. Dumbo - Dumbo visits his mother in the cage
  4. Bambi - the mother's death (traumatized since childhood)
  3. Wall-E - Wall-E's loneliness
  2. Lion King - Mufasa's death
And the number 1 most depressing movie - UP - "For the introduction to this “high-rise” comedy, the folks at Disney decided to build up the viewer’s expectations by showing a lifelong friendship and romance between Carl Fredrickson and his eventual wife. And once we’ve all become emotionally invested in the couple, the writers rip the rug out from under us."

Should I be concerned that the American Express bill arrived in a large flat envelope that cost $1.22 to mail and contained 12 pages front and back? And this BEFORE Christmas!

It seems that the target demographic for advertising on Monday Night Football is high-end luxury automobiles and bail-bondsmen. Is there a relationship there that I'm missing? And speaking of football, by ending the Boise State Broncos' BCS bowl hopes, the Nevada Wolf Pack cost themselves and every WAC team a million dollars each in BCS revenue. Not one to encourage immoral and illegal actions, but they probably should have just tanked.

On a sports role - any time you can hold a World Cup in a hot Middle East country that's smaller than Connecticut and has zero soccer tradition, you just have to do it. No truth to the rumor though that Cam Newton's dad brokered the deal with FIFA.

And this is a must-have toy for Christmas - the Avenging Unicorn Play Set:

"The set has everything you need to use the power of the unicorn to rid your life of irritations. Put the posable, 3-3/4'' tall, hard vinyl unicorn on a flat surface and then impale one of three 3-1/8'' tall, soft vinyl figures included. Also includes four interchangeable horns (classic spiral, chrome, glow and pearlescent)."

Brought to you by the company that also makes and sells "The Avenging Narwhal Play Set" featuring penguins and baby seals, and the  "Fairy Swatter" for when you are tired of those pesky magic fairies (includes 5 cling stickers of splattered fairy remains).

You can't make this stuff up, folks

Brother Bob's Traveling Salvation Show

The beginning of  Bob the Dog's adventures can be found here.

And the emphasis is on traveling. When I went back the next day to the field off North Lamar where Bob and his group had pitched their tent, literally, all I found was an empty lot. There were a lot of tire tracks and gouged-up real estate, but no trace of Bob, or anyone else, for that matter.

I tried the only phone number I had but it was out of service, so I e-mailed Bob and immediately got his "Out of Office" message:

Still on the road Re: Caught your show; need to talk

Bob Dog bobdog1215@gmail.com to me

G’day Mate;

No time to chat. Bob and the Back Yard Howlers are currently on tour and it's load in, do the show, load out, and back on the bus.

Back at you later.

I guess he needs to update his message.

However, a couple of days later, I got this email:

Crikey! You saw the service?

Bob Dog bobdog1215@gmail.com to me

G’day Mate;

Glad you stopped in. I wanted to come by the old howlin' grounds, but as it turned out, we had to nick off  in a bit of a hurry. In fact we came a cooee of getting a ride in the divvy van. I really thought the Austin coppers would cut us some slack, seeing as as how much good we were doing the locals, but some blokes get aggro at a little free enterprise, I guess.

I guess you saw in the journos that the tour was bollixed. Bugle Boy and I simply couldn't agree artistically, and I swear, the young Sheila that the Sheriff was inquiring about told me she was old enough! I guess it's all for the better, though. I've finally found my true calling!

We've fetched up in Lubbock; the blokes here seem to appreciate a little old-time religion.

Hallelujah!

Bob the Dog

So all you Lubbock readers keep a lookout for a big white tent in an empty field somewhere. And lock up your daughters.

...More about Bob? Who knows? It may depend on the police.

Keeping Austin Weird

There seems to be no end to unique characters in this town. We've talked about many of them, but a new guy popped up on the radar last week - the protest guy.

Currently, Eric Anderson (he may be a cousin or some other kin) has been standing on the side of various streets in Austin for the past few weeks, protesting lawyers while dressed in a pink pig costume that he bought online for $50. According to news stories, he's an old hand at the protesting business. About 20 years ago, he was a fixture at City Council meetings, dressed as a chicken. He was there so often that he doesn't even remember what he was protesting. He has also worn a Revolutionary War outfit, a vampire suit, a pirate suit and a "wicked judge" costume.

Anderson didn't say why he was protesting lawyers, but you probably don't need a specific reason. General principles is probably good enough.

I just hope he doesn't break some rule and need a lawyer to get him out of a jam.