Monday Meanderings - 2.27.2012

Okay folks. I am simply not ready to deal with this!

Fortunately, exactly 24 hours later things looked much better!

There's no icon or symbol on the weather app to show how windy it was Friday, but it was blowing. We came out of Wal Mart with our purchase and the wind scooped up a full-size bed pillow and two or three unused shopping bags and blew them across the parking lot. A good Samaritan stopped the pillow and I finally chased down the bags. About that time a cart with (I hope) an empty cardboard box in it went whizzing by, on its way to South Texas.

And speaking of shopping, our IKEA store, which is already so large you need to stop halfway through and eat Swedish meatballs in order to build up your strength to continue, is expanding. Another 54,000 square feet of store space is being added to the current 252,000 square feet. Maybe they will provide motorized carts, or at least a shuttle bus.

The hotel and lodging industry in Austin is very, very happy about the Formula 1 races coming next November. Piece in the Statesman revealed that the rack rate for a room during that week is 4 or 5 times higher than the week before, and the week after. That's if you can still find a room.

Not uncommon to see street-side vendors selling paintings,  or rugs or tapestries, or sometimes bonsai trees. We passed a guy setting out - according to the sign - 800 count 6-piece bedding sets. I remarked that I found that an unusual item to sell on a street corner. Barb said it all depended on what you had heisted earlier.

And Barb wants one of these banners to hang in the kitchen:

 

Enjoy your week.

No sugar tonight - in my coffee

No sugar tonight - in my tea.
No sugar to stand beside me
No sugar to run with me

Or so the lyrics go to a  favorite Golden Oldey song by The Guess Who. And it's literally so; in order to make the necessary life changes to continue on my weight loss, sugar has to go.

If you know me at all, you know I love me some coffee. Coffee on the patio to start my day, coffee of an evening to top off a most excellent day. Sometimes coffee in mid-afternoon just because. No foo-foo frilly barista-type drinks - just coffee. Good, plain coffee. With lots of sugar. Uh-oh.

I became a coffee drinker fairly late in life, but not as late as my parents. They took up coffee drinking well after they retired. Oh, I tried it in college, but mostly it was incentive to stay awake while studying. If I got sleepy, I had to drink some of the wretched stuff. Somewhere along the line I found out what good coffee tasted like. Especially good, sweetened coffee.

Barb does not drink coffee, so I'm left to my own devices. I'm a prime candidate for a Keurig machine, but they will have to get way cheaper. In the meantime, I know to the drop how much water and to the ground how much coffee is needed to make my two cups in the morning and two cups in the evening. And to the granule how much sugar to add. No cream, thank you.

Sugar. That's the problem. Nothing else tastes like sugar in hot coffee. Iced tea? Give me a couple of packets of the pink stuff. Works great in iced drinks. Pink stuff in coffee? Bleeaahh. Same for the yellow stuff, and the green stuff and the Stevia, and everything else artificial I have tried.  Sigh.

Sugar; a class of edible crystalline carbohydrates, mainly sucrose, lactose, and fructose; responsible for the formation of colonies, perpetuation of slavery, transition to indentured labor, migration and abuse of people, wars between 19th century sugar trade controlling nations, ethnic composition and political structure of the new world, according to Wikipedia. And sweetness in my coffee cup no more.

By the way, according to Randy Bachman, who penned the first half of the song, the inspiration for the lyrics came after an incident when he heard a woman in a car shouting at a nearby man; as she was driving away she said: "And one more thing, you're getting no sugar tonight".


Neither am I.

We have a problem, people!

I knew it! I knew it!

I told you last Wednesday that our health-care appliances, such as hearing aids, CPAP machines and the such were invading our privacy and keeping detailed records about our activities and our life styles. Well, it's even worse than I thought! Now the devices are turning on us! This past week the the FDA issued a consumer update with regard to those battery-powered Spinbrushes that are all the rage. While these brushes may seem innocent, healthy, and, with their cutesy slogans and vibrant colors, good for kids,etc., they are not to be trusted. Avoid being alone with them in closed quarters, like your bathroom!

It turns out the devices have caused injuries ranging from chipped or broken teeth to mouth and gum cuts and injuries to the face and eyes from poking people in the eye and in the cheek. They've cut lips, burned people with their batteries, and lodged their bristles in tonsils. Could this be the result of angry dentists, reacting to secret tooth brush snooping? Remember, I cautioned you about this. What's next? Hearing aids planting subliminal, self-destructive messages in our ears? CPAP machines silently shutting off the flow to our oxygen-starved brains? Oh, it gets worse, people...

Last week, in another visit to the Audiologist, I kept hearing terrible, retching noises from the adjacent office. I found this very puzzling, and somewhat upsetting, but the Audiologist just ignored the sounds. Finally, I asked her what was going on, and she said, "It's nothing - just a balance test." I pressed her for more, and she finally admitted that they were torturing some poor soul afflicted with vertigo by upsetting their "balance" - in other words, they were making this person so dizzy, by alternating warm and cold air in the ears, that the subject was leaving breakfast and some of last night's $20 sirloin in the porcelain convenience!

Subliminal messages, I'm telling you! "You must come to my office and let me make you sick as a dog! I'll teach you not to wear your hearing aids!" I demand a government investigation into the devices!

Wait! What if it's a government conspiracy? Folks, it may be time to hightail it to Montana or the Australian Outback. Remember, you heard it here first!

Monday Meanderings - 2.20.2012

You gotta hate it when you are working on this year's taxes, comparing them to last year's return, and something just doesn't look right - in last year's return! Can you say 1040X?

I have good news and bad news. Leslie, Austin's most iconic street person, is departing for greener pastures. He says he "feels like Austin has forgotten him, and left him behind." He plans to move to Oak Creek, a small town northwest of Denver where he once lived. Where, he said, "I'm loved and respected." Only one problem; he's having trouble buying a train ticket since nowadays they require a photo id.

Over Valentines, I heard radio stations featuring "love songs." Now, just how "loving" the song was depended in part on the genre of music that the station played. There was a distinct difference in the overall messages delivered by the radio station that played Mantovani and the station that featured Merl Haggard. Nevertheless, it got me wondering how many songs were out there with the phrase "Baby, Baby" in the lyrics. Would someone with a 4S iPhone ask Siri for a list of those and share it? Thanks.

 SXSW Interactive starts soon and I'm still waiting on my invitation to address the unlearned in how to become a blogging zen-master. Must be lost in the mail.

Strange week. There was snow on Sunday (well, sort of) and it reached 80 degrees Wednesday. My reverie during my normally peaceful afternoon patio-sitting was interrupted by my neighbor mowing his lawn!

Took my wife out for a movie and dinner on Valentines day. Awwww. Actually, we got invited by some friends to meet them for a movie we were all mutually interested in (we're all fans of the book series this was based on), then Barb and stopped at Paneras for a bite. Hey! That counts! The movie was PG-13; correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't PG stand for Parental Guidance, as in you are supposed to discuss these things with your impressionable young children. Things like, "Mamma, what does *&%-*$%& mean?" Or,  "Dad, get a load of the &%$#@s on that babe!" No wonder we don't go to movies much. Too much explaining to do.

And speaking of Parental Guidance, did you know that if you subscribe to the print issue of Sports Illustrated, you get an e-version on your iPad? And that version comes with extra photos, movies and closeups? Just saying.

Old timey radios - stories for my grandchildren

If you are of a certain age, and that would certainly be older than my children and grandchildren, you may recognize that the item in the picture above is (part of) an old crystal radio. This particular radio was made by my father when he was a boy. I'm estimating that this set is more than 90 years old. I'm not sure where it has been all this time, but it turned up out at the Lake Cabin and I claimed it, since I am a sucker for nostalgic memorabilia. I really feel sorry for my children, but that's a different blog story.

Crystal radios were just about the only kind of radio available during the era that this set was made. You could make them out of a cardboard tube (oatmeal boxes were favorites), some wire and a crystal diode. Actually, you didn't even need the diode; my father showed me how to make a similar radio using a razor blade and the lead out of a pencil as the detector! Attach the set to an antenna stretched from the house to a nearby tree and with careful manipulation of the "cat's whisker" contact on the galena crystal, you were assured of picking up a strong station or two in the headphones!Certainly, this set tuned in WFAA and KRLD when it was first used.

My immediate response when I saw this radio was to restore it to working condition. There are some parts missing - the crystal and the cat whisker, and the contact that slid across the coil of wire to tune the station(s). In the good old days, you ordered a galena crystal from the Johnson Smith and Company catalog, at a very low cost. Interestingly, Johnson Smith and Company is still in business, but alas, they don't sell crystals anymore. I did find a company that sells the entire component - crystal and cat whisker - for $25.00 plus shipping and handling. Sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

 

In this picture, the crystal is in the little round "pot" on the left. The cat whisker is the tiny wire touching it.

Crystal radio kits are still popular, and plans for making the sets used to be published in Scout Manuals. Perhaps they still are. But the "modern" crystal radio uses a little glass-enclosed diode that requires no adjustment. Sort of takes the fun out of it.

Big Brother is Watching. And Listening. And Counting...

I told you about needing hearing aids. I'm currently in my "evaluation period" where I wear them during all the different activities I engage in and all the places I go, so that I can get used to them and determine how helpful they are. In theory, I wear them all day, every day. Of course I do.

Monday I went back to the Audiologist for a follow-up; she hung a little bluetooth device around my neck, clicked on the computer a couple of times, and lo-and-behold the little suckers ratted me out! There on the screen was a graph of my daily use!

"Well," said the Audiologist, "You did wear them for 6 hours one day, but on average, you are not doing too well. Let's check the programs. Hmmm, you spent very little time in a 'loud environment' and I see that you turned them down twice. You spent just a few hours in 'medium' noise level. All the rest of the time is measured as 'quiet environment.'  Perhaps you need to get out more during this evaluation."

For all I know these things are tracking my movements, as well. Maybe the Audiologist is listening in! Does the CIA know about these?

But that's not all. When I got home, Barb demonstrated her new CPAP machine.

She said, "The good news is that Medicare covers it, if you use the machine a certain number of hours out of the month."
He said, "Oh? And just how is it that Medicare finds out how many hours a month you use it?"
She said, "It keeps a log, and you send the download to the doctor's office."

In other words, it rats on you. Just like the hearing aids.

Just to be on the safe side, right now I'm examining my toothbrush very carefully. It did come from the Dentist's office, you know.

Monday Meanderings - 2.13.2012

About that comment regarding no winter; it snowed yesterday here in Austin! Well, if you stood very, very still and looked very, very hard, you might have noticed  - for the briefest of moments - some teeny, tiny frozen precipitation thingies falling from the sky that could possibly be interpreted as snow. Or not. High expected to be near 70 tomorrow.

Yes, I am still trying to adopt a healthier eating style, thank you for asking. I confess that after Christmas, and Super Bowl, and several other excuses I'm still a couple of pounds above my pre-Christmas weight. Time for another attitude adjustment.

I've been working on my bucket list. You know, that list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket. Here's what I have so far:

1. Seek medical help

Watched some of the Grammys last night. I'm not normally a Grammy Watcher, but after small group, we stopped at Waterloo Ice House and that's what was on the big screen. It got me curious, so I turned it on when we got home (and promptly drove Barb into the other room). It didn't take long for me to remember why I don't do Grammys - I didn't know any of the artists, never heard any of the songs, and after seeing Niki Minaj, I don't think that will change soon. If it wasn't recorded in the 60's or 70's I have little use for it.

Having said that, there was a lot of homage to groups and singers of my prescribed era; they caught Brian Wilson in a lucid moment (he only forgot the words once) and the Beach Boys, with some help, performed "Good Vibrations" in a 50th anniversary performance. Glenn Campbell, suffering from dementia, held it together long enough to sing "Rhinestone Cowboys." Tony Bennett can't hit the high notes (for that matter neither can Sir Paul McCartney). Joe Walsh looked good, but he didn't have to sing.

I'm not sure what the intended message is here, but I, for one, think it's rather rude, whatever it is!

And since that was so unappealing, how 'bout something in better taste? Like this pig in a blanket.

The Last Picture Show

I have previously mentioned that I'm watching old movies to help me while away the miles on the treadmill. Since I get them from the public library, there has been an odd assortment of films - The Gods Must be Crazy I & II, Zanuck's The Longest Day, Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, Mr Roberts, and Day of The Jackal, to mention a few. Most recently I watched The Last Picture Show, based on Larry McMurtry's book of the same name.

The movie has garnered a number of accolades. It won Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress; and was nominated for awards in six other categories. In 1998, The Last Picture Show was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry. It also ranked number 19 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies. In 2007, the film was ranked #95 on the American Film Institute's 10th Anniversary Edition of the 100 greatest American films of all time.

It also ran afoul of a number of court cases until a Federal case ruled in favor of it. Let's just say it was ahead of it's time.

McMurtry is a native of Archer City, a community just over an hour's drive from my hometown, and the similarities, not unexpectedly, are legion. Archer City is actually seeing better days currently than it was in 1971 when the movie was filmed there (thanks in part to McMurtry's legendary multi-building bookstore "Booked Up"). Set in 1951 and filmed in black-and-white, the movie depicts a bleak, barren place, where mesquite trees rule and the oil patch provides a hard scrabble existence for all but a lucky few. To say that this movie resonated with me is an understatement.

I had seen it before - about 10 years after it was released - and I had read McMurtry's book, as well as his sequel, Texasville, but I don't remember feeling so strongly empathetic to the locale and the circumstances of the story as I did this time around. It was a real "Wow" moment for me - so much so, while watching I walked significantly further on the treadmill than I usually do, and limped around for a couple of days to pay for it!

The last picture show is literally that - the Royal Theater - the movie house in Archer City/Thalia (the book name)/Anarene (the movie name)/Breckenridge (my hometown) is no longer economically viable and with a meager group in attendance, shows its last feature and closes. The characters, for the most part go separate ways, as is so often the case with small, dying towns and young people. A few stick around and become the next generation of locals trapped in a desolate place.

The characters, the forlorn frame houses, the over-bearing court house, the shabby high school gym, the Christmas decorations, the dirt roads, the pump jacks - all could have been from my home town.
And they say you can't go home again.

Famous flour bombings

Disclaimer: I was not responsible for the ACU Chapel flour bombing. I knew nothing about its planning and execution, and I was in no way involved in its execution. But I know who was.

A few days ago, French Socialist Party candidate for the 2012 presidential elections, Francois Hollande was flour bombed. The woman in the picture rushed onto the stage and dumped a bag of flour on M. Hollande. Crude, but effective.

Think how much more effective it would have been if the payload of flour had been positioned in a mechanism hidden in the ceiling above M. Hollande, and a timer had been employed to drop the flour on the head of the unsuspecting victim.

It wouldn't have to be anything sophisticated; a simple wooden box to hold the flour and a trap door that could easily be released by the action of a wind-up alarm clock. And if you knew that at the exact same time every day - say, at the daily ACU chapel service - some member of the school establishment - say, Dean Adams - would stand in the exact same spot on a stage, below where a spotlight used to shine down on the podium, but since the light was no longer in use only the hole it previously occupied remained, well... well, it would cause quite the kerfuffle. And the perpetrator, unlike Mille.Claire Seguin in the picture above, would be unknown to the public and not be in a world of hurt.

That's the way I would have done it should have been done.

But even clever schemes like that sometimes fail. The graduate student delivering the chapel address went a little long, and it was he, not the Dean, who was flour bombed.

So they say.

Monday Meanderings - 2.6.12

We watched the first Sherlock Holmes movie the other night. That's one of the DVDs we found in the bargain bin around Christmas (didn't want to rush into anything). As a youth, I read the complete works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Every Sherlock Holmes story written. I have even read the contemporary Holmes book that was published by the Doyle's estate this past year. I have to say that my over-arching impression of the Holmes character based on all that reading did not match the characterization presented by Robert Downey, Jr. Not even a little bit.

Well, the groundhog predicts that there will be six more weeks of winter. I'm not sure how that can be since we have yet to have any winter! Seriously, the grass is green and the trees are budding here in ATX. It got up to 80 degrees on Friday. Other places, it's not so balmy; Denver and Europe, for example. Here are a couple of pictures from a friend in Sarajevo.

 

Yes, those are cars under there! See?

However, that much snow allows you to do this:

Admit it. That would be a lot of fun!

The Super Bowl party has become a firm and hallowed tradition in our nation. For some, the get-together and the food is far more significant than the game itself. In honor of that tradition, Barb and I started our celebration early. Let's see, I think we began last Friday, or maybe it was Thursday. We celebrated in an ever-increasing crescendo of good eats throughout the weekend, and if there are any goodies left, we'll taper off throughout the day today. Nothing exceeds like excess.

Noticed in a Statesman article that the student enrollment of Reagan High School - Rob and Julie's old alma mater - is now 1,051.5. Wondering which half of that student they counted.

Okay, I admit this is subtle.

Addendum to "the Honda era"

 Two things that have been brought to my attention:

First, Rob reminded me that they now drive a CR-V, so make that 10 Hondas in the family. I knew that.

And I found out that the proper terminology is "Foreign-Branded" instead of foreign-made, since the auto industry has become rather global. 

The cars in my life - the Honda era - Stories for my grandchildren

There was a reason why US auto-buyers turned to Japanese-made cars in droves in the '70's and 80's - and that reason was American-made cars. I ditched the Buick Century for a 1981 Honda Civic wagon; that was the beginning of 9 Hondas in the immediate family, counting the two my son-in-law and daughter now drive. Plus a Toyota Highlander. You only have to look at the Consumer Reports Editor's Picks and the repair history charts to see why. Not to mention the mileage.

Then there was the little white '78 hatch back that Barb drove, the '85 Accord that became the school car for Rob and Julie (well, that was the theory), The maroon '89 Accord that I drove, Barb's '91 red hatchback; the sort of greenish blue '95 accord (the one we picked up while the bomb squad was at the dealership), the Honda that Rob bought in Abilene, the '04 Highlander, Barb's '05 Civic and Julie and Jason's Odyssey and Accord.

How did the Toyota Highlander get in there? It was an experiment that has worked out very well.

They say that American-made cars are vastly improved these days. That would certainly be good for the auto industry, but the line is pretty blurred at this point. Our Highlander was assembled in Princeton, Indiana, with the majority of its parts manufactured in the US. Hard to call it a foreign car under those circumstances.

Can I hear you now?

If you look up at the banner at the top of this blog, the captions says "Occasional thoughts on growing older." Truth be told I don't write many blogs on growing older, but this is one. I got fitted with hearing aids this past week. I am feeling my age.

I have been well aware of my hearing loss for some time. Noisy rooms, such as restaurants, made it almost impossible for me to understand what was being said. Even in quieter environs, I was missing a lot of what was being said to me. Barb wound up repeating questions and comments to me, but she speaks very softly (and mumbles a lot) and I still ended up not catching all that was said. Finally, just to make her happy, I went to an audiologist and got tested.

This is not my audiogram, but it illustrates my problem. Notice that everything sort of drops off on the high end. In my younger days these two lines would be almost straight across (and closer to the 0 line). Not now.

So to get on with the story, I'm in my "Thirty day evaluation." That means I wear these things everywhere I go and when I watch TV and when I talk to Barb, and I try to get used to the fact that I now hear all these high frequencies that annoy me and startle me, and get used to things sticking in my ears, and a lot of other bothersome details.

So do I hear better? Yes. Am I happy about it? I'll get back to you on that; I'm convinced that not everything is worth hearing, but I guess that's the curmudgeon in me. That happens when you grow older.