Monday Meanderings - 3.31.14

Still playing blanket roulette. My thinking is that we may just play it safe and wait til July or so to take the extra blanket off the bed. In a 24-hour period we have had both the AC and the heater running. Plus, driving back from Silver's Gym the other afternoon I got caught in a 5-minute hail storm. The instant I got the car safely in the garage the hail stopped. No damage that I can tell, but it sure was loud there for a few minutes.

And I may have been wrong about not having a good blue-bonnet season. They were late arriving, but they seem to be coming on strong, and in areas where they normally don't show up.

At some point during our basketball watching on TV this week we saw a commercial encouraging people to sign up for a chance at a free colonoscopy! Makes you wonder what second prize is.

Ran across these "modern" antiques. Raise your hand if you have ever used any or all of these.

In search of a house

Recently my son Rob and his family, while on a trip to the Trans-Pecos area of Texas, visited Fort Stockton, the town where I was born. He asked, before the trip, if I knew the location of the house we lived in at that time. I consulted with my brother Jim and my sister Pat, and with their memories,  the help of a 1945 USGS topo map and some clever map manipulation on his part, Rob came up with the probable location on the corner of 6th and Texas. Here's what they found on that spot:

It might be the correct location, but it probably isn't the actual structure. After all, the crust of the earth was not yet cool when I was born.

That sent me in search of more information however, and this past week I dug through boxes of old photos and came up with this picture:

This might be the house where the family lived briefly in Eastland, Texas, prior to the move to Fort Stockton. Pat points out that the summer clothes suggest that it is not the right time of year for the family's brief stay at the 1st house they lived in in Fort Stockton, on 4th Street, and both Pat and Jim agree that there were no trees at the house on 6th. Their ages in the photo also agree with the time line when my parents lived in Eastland.

Or, as Jim pointed out, it might be in front of some friend's house and we have no idea where. Obviously, I didn't take the picture, so who knows where this is.

Which prompts me to say that you should go right now and get out that box of old photos that you have been meaning to do something with and write down who all is in the picture and when and where it was taken.

If you do that, then years from now your children can look in the box and say with certainty "This is a picture of the house where my father was born; 1 1/2 miles northeast of the Johnson County Courthouse in Cleburne, Texas, a 2 room, box construction house located on the Grandview Road."

And this is where my mother lived as a child in Stubblefield, Texas. This was most likely across the street from the house where she was born - that house burned down in 1918 when she was 10 years old.

And this is the house where my Grandmother Anderson was born in 1883 - the "Old Knight Ranch House" in Palo Pinto, Texas. 

From the looks of it, that house may still be standing. Perhaps that should be Rob's next quest.

How about you? Do know the location of the house where you were born? Will your children? Just saying.

Monday Meanderings - 3.24.14

I am not ashamed to admit that taking the extra blanket off the bed this weekend was premature. I know we are going to beg for some of these cool temperatures later this year, but really?

The Bluebonnets finally began showing up in abundance this past week. We were beginning to wonder. Jury is still out on what kind of wildflower season this will be.

Guy came into the Allergist's office the other day wearing shorts made of flimsy looking jersey-type material. Not to worry. He had them hitched up with suspenders. Then I encountered an old grey-bearded dude walking down the street with a skateboard in hand. Old geeks rule.

 You know you are getting old when someone you watched play Lady Longhorn Basketball has now retired after a long and successful coaching career.

Stopped in at a place we seldom go (read: the waitstaff does not know us, unlike some eateries in town), ordered lunch and then I noticed the ticket was highly personalized.

Since I had not given the clerk my name (like you do at Chik-Fil-A) I was a little startled about that. Did Burger King make a deal with NSA? Did Google suggest my name to the King? Then I remembered that I paid with a credit card. Don't know about you, but I find that a little creepy.

Some Unfortunate Adjacencies

Back in the day, before the earth's crust cooled and I worked in Radio and Television, the people in "traffic" that positioned the advertisements for broadcast were careful about adjacencies, commercials that are scheduled one after the other. For instance, you didn't want to schedule two different auto dealer's ads together in the same time slot, or two different soft drink ads, etc.

But here's a whole string of adjacency fails and bad product placement:

The van door doesn't exactly endorse the coffee

 Oh. That could have been placed better

 Uhhh

Oh, Shell

Wow. Heart issues are cheap these days

Yumm!

 So THATS where he is!

 I don't think that's the direction you want your plane to go

Not going to open that door!

Monday Meanderings - 3.17.14

SXSW experienced a major setback with the death of two and injury of a number of attendees. In the midst of the tragedy it has been heartening to see the response of the community and festival organizers. Blood banks are overflowing with volunteers, funds have been raised, memorials have been spontaneous and pervasive.

The first part of SXSW was the Interactive segment, and as festival-goers lugged their bags of giveaways and swag through ABIA security on their way home, they discovered that something buried in the loot was setting off the scanners. TSA reported major back-ups as they had to dig through all the bags to find the offending articles. I am reminded of returning from Prague one trip with a crystal globe in my carry-on. Crystal, for some reason, really shows up on the x-ray, and at every check-point, security wanted to look inside my bag. I finally began saying. "It's the crystal globe - right there on top where you can easily find it."

We store birdseed in large paint buckets out on the patio to make it easy to fill the feeders. Last week we discovered on of the lids had cracked and water got in the bucket and made the seed all clumpy and moldy. We set that bucket out to catch some sunshine and it wasn't long before the squirrels found it and began hopping in the bucket and chowing down. I tried to get some photos of them peering over the edge of the bucket; I figured they had stuffed themselves to the point they couldn't hop out quickly, but I wa wrong about that.

After we got another lid and closed everything up again we had some irate squirrels. I figured they would stand out on the patio and throw rocks at the door, or gnaw the alarm wires again. Thus far all they have done is knock over an empty pail, trying to get to the bird seed again.

I have discovered a hedge fund for those times that the stock market goes down. It seems that whenever the market plunges, Chuy's stock rises. Maybe that's because investors go and try to drown their sorrows in a margarita or two. The bad news is that when the market goes up, Chuy's stock seems to go down.

Strange sight in the skies over Austin this week. In honor of pi day - 3.14 - five skywriters circled Austin and wrote out pi (to several hundred places). It was literally "Pi in the Sky." Each of those numbers is about 1/4 of a mile across.

A follow-up to "A small family mystery"

Almost exactly a year ago, I blogged about a small family mystery that I had uncovered in the Family Tree. You can read the original blog here, but the gist of the story is that Lester Starnes, a great grand-uncle of mine, married a woman named Mary Payne in Indian Territory Oklahoma in 1909, and a few years later we find their four children listed as "inmates" of  the David and Margaret Home for Children in San Dimas, California, with no trace of what happened to Mary, and just a few hints about Lester's later life.

Last week, someone who blogs (but not recently) under the name "FizzyLizzy" responded to that post with the following:

From the San Bernardino County Sun, 25 May 1918:
"ONTARIO Woman Drops Dead With Her Baby in Her Arms"
THE SUN'S Staff Correspondence ONTARIO, May 24.
"That Mrs. Mary Starnes, wife of Lester Starnes, who dropped dead with an infant in her arms after completing the family washing came to her death of hemorrhage of the brain was the decision tonight, following an autopsy by a physician of the county hospital. Just before the end, Mrs. Starnes called to her husband that it was getting dark. She died before a doctor arrived."

So now we know what happened to Mary!

FizzyLizzy went on to state that "Lester married Eva Barth (nee Greffin) in Orange County, CA in 1921. However, he was single by 1923 when he crossed the border from the U.S. to Canada to join his father. By the time of his registration for the WWI draft in 1918, he had "changed" his birth year to 1876. I think he continues with this false assertion through the remainder of his life. I believe he died in British Columbia."

This fits with the fact that Virgil Starnes and his wife Marien, found and talked to a man in British Columbia that they believed to be Lester  , but was never able to get him to admit kinship.

A few more answers drop into place in regarding this family mystery, and a few more questions pop up. We now know what happened to Mary, and no doubt Lester could not care for for four young children, but he evidently remarried but still didn't come back for the kids. Who is Eva Barth, and what became of her? And the really big question is who is "FizzyLizzy" and what else does she know about this family's history. FL, if you are still out there, I would appreciate a note.  Check my profile.

Monday Meanderings - 3.10.14

Springing forward and falling backwards are now my primary means of exercise. That, and leaping to conclusions. Maybe that's why I celebrated Fat Tuesday this past week.  And Fat Wednesday and Fat Thursday and...

Not that we needed it, but here's confirmation of Austin's terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad traffic problem. According to a study by the National Traffic Scoreboard, Austin is ranked as  the fourth-worst city in the nation for traffic. And look who is fifth. 

1. Los Angeles
2. Honolulu
3. San Francisco
4. Austin
5. New York City

According to the study, gridlocked commuters in Austin waste 41 hours annually, up 3 hours from 2012. I knew that. 

And speaking of traffic, last Monday afternoon, a note from Google popped up on my iPad to let me know that the drive time to Chuy's was 6 minutes in "light traffic." And later in the week, Google sent me a note about traffic conditions for my commute to "work" - the Learning Ally studio that I visit twice a week. I'm not sure Google is that smart, however. It has said nothing about my daily commute to Silver's Gym, and Rob pointed out that it ought to know that I am aware of the drive time to any of the Chuy's locations at any time.

Barb and I went to the final Lady Longhorn basketball game of the regular season. Now that we get the Longhorn Network, we have been able to watch a number of games on TV, but a friend passed on a great incentive to actually go to a game in person - her primo parking pass, right next to the Erwin Center.

This was our first time in the Center since a big refurbishing; all the seats are new - and closer together. Like the airlines, they found a way to squeeze in an extra 660 seats, much to our wide-bodied dismay. The national anthem was already on "At the twilight's first gleaming" before I could free myself from the armrests in my ribs and stand up.

UT has begun selling beer at most sporting events, which, at $8 a cup should fund the athletic department quite nicely. The Lady Longhorn game we attended was among the first events with beer available. Barb stopped to get a bottled water and the concessionaire told her if she bought a beer it would be the very first one sold at a LL game. Barb asked if she would get a special commemorative cup for the occasion but he only had plain plastic cups.For $8 she should get a crystal glass.

Woke up Tuesday morning to a covering of ice on everything. By afternoon, we were walking around in our shirtsleeves. What a long, strange trip this has been.

Monday Meanderings - 3.3.2014

Didn't take long to get done with February. Now if we could just get done with winter. Seems strange to hang out on the patio on one day and burrow under the blankets the next.

Last week when I was talking about the weirdness that is Austin, I neglected to mention the City Water Department. That's the department that goes to extraordinary lengths to promote water conservation; free low-flush toilets, free water barrels, free rain gauges, staged irrigation etc.

They have done an outstanding job - in fact they have done such a good job of enticing us to conserve water that now they are going to have to charge us more for water because we are not using enough of it! Seems the Water Department's income has fallen to the point that they are going to have to up the bill.

I think the City has been talking to the folks who want to lower lake levels around the state so that they will have more room to capture rainfall.

My doctor wants me to cut back on salt in my diet. Waaay back. I told him that to meet his goal my diet would consist of raw turnips and rainwater. He was not amused. Restricting salt does, of course, impact my love of chips and salsa, or chips and queso, or chips and creamy jalapeno, or simply chips. I have a solution, though. I just lick the salt off the chips before I eat them.

I just noticed that this is my 900th blog posting. Wow.