Monday Meanderings - 3.19.2012

Really enjoyed Spring Break last week - slept as late as I wanted, coffee on the patio most mornings, ate out with my wife at some of our favorite restaurants, watched some sports on TV of an evening...oh, wait. That's what I do every week!

Though my generation has no room to talk (Moby Grape, Iron Butterfly, Strawberry Alarm Clock), it is amusing to look over names of bands currently appearing at SXSW; animal-related names seem very popular this year:

• Bear in Heaven
• Prizehog
• Dinosaur Jr
• Takling to Turtles
• Duck Fight Goose
• The Iguanas
• Electrics Eel Shock

And my favorite, Two Cow Garage

At a friend's house the other evening it was obvious that they collect clocks that strike the Westminster chime on the hour (over about a 5 minute period; not too together). It reminded me of the clock in my parent's bedroom when I was growing up. It, too, struck the Westminster chime on the hour - and increasingly longer segments of the chime on the quarter-hour. Folks who spent the night at our house used to tell us how many times it chimed overnight. The interesting thing about that clock was that for years I could still hear the chimes - while living in Abilene. And usually, I heard them exactly on time.

And speaking of hearing things, don't you hate wandering around the house, stopping and listening to see if it is the nearest smoke detector making the low battery beep - only to hear the beep elsewhere? This happened for hours the other night; I finally figured out it was the phone in the kitchen. Wasn't set on the charging stand.

Saw, on one of those new LED signs, what was obviously the last part of  the message. It said colorfully, "Best Happy Hour in town." Then the next panel was "Mattress Store." Well, yes, I can understand how that would be a popular happy hour.

We've been saving up episodes of the Mentalist for quite some time. Probably had 10 unseen episodes - so many that sitting down to start watching them was becoming problematic. Time-Warner to the rescue - we had to swap out our cable box this week. We might miss them after basketball is over. Or not.

Busy week: in addition to the visit to Home Depot about carpet cleaning, there were three "Please Hold" conversations with the cable company tech support, one visit to the cable offices to swap the set-top box and one visit from a company technician (problem recurred 10 minutes after he walked out the door); a trip to the respiration therapy store to get Barb's "pressure" increased (I am so not going there); a guy came out to make some needed repairs to the sprinkler system; the exterminator made his quarterly visit; Home Depot called to tell me they found my records in the system, the cleaning company itself called and we are actually on the schedule; and the tree company came Friday morning and removed a very large hackberry tree that was leaning precipitously over the neighbor's yard. I'm going to take next week off.

Bumper sticker: "I am one bad relationship from owning thirty cats!"

And yes, that is a camel in downtown Austin. Why not?