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.