Monday Meandering - 11.30.2015

We saved thousands during Black Friday! So to speak.

When you are making a conscious effort to avoid the Black Friday crowds, you have to plan your weekly shopping carefully. Proud to say that we were successful. That's not to say that we completely missed the onslaught if you count 50 e-mails a day landing in your in-box. And the Statesman - which we subscribe to electronically - happily delivered a Thanksgiving Day print issue, with all the ads, to our front lawn.

Truth told, we did sneak in an early trip to Best Buy early last week when they put Apple iPads on sale. I distinctly remember my spouse emphatically stating that she had no use for an iPad. Once upon a time.

The weather has been dreadful, but thankfully no ice or freezing temps. Sorry about those of you who live closer to the North Pole.

Looking for new football team(s) to support. Rooting for the Cowboys sort of helps me understand why people stay in abusive relationships, or continue to stay with a significant other that continually disappoints. And then there's the Longhorns. How in the world, we keep asking ourselves, how did we manage to beat Oklahoma, who probably will be in the National Playoffs?

Thank goodness the Lady Longhorns - both volleyball and basketball teams - are having excellent seasons.

December on the very near horizon. Seems like we just did this a few weeks ago. Let me be the first to wish you a merry Christmas. Stay warm out there.

Monday Meanderings - 11.23.2015

Just in time for Thanksgiving - a cold front rolled through and dropped overnight temperatures into the low 30's - in this area. Much colder elsewhere, I recognize, but this is Central Texas, after all. However, there is talk of colder weather here before the week is over. Be safe out there.

Barb brought all the plants inside a couple of weeks ago and I put the covers on the faucets, so I guess we have winterized. We did have to return a bright green grasshopper-like creature to the great outdoors yesterday. Mr. Green-hopper came in with the plants and decided he liked it inside, I guess. Sorry.

During a Sunday afternoon football game, I saw a referee throw a flag, then because there was a 2nd infraction, he had to throw down his cap. It set me to wondering; in the unlikely event there was a third foul, what else could he use to indicate it? TV commentators sometimes refer to "laundry" on the field when there are multiple flags - could that literally be the case. Flag, hat, shirt, pants? IMWTK

Saw an obituary for one recently deceased Richard Buckman, of Evansville, Indiana. It said, "In lieu of flowers, please do not vote for Hillary Clinton."

This has been a traumatic weekend. Not to be too technical about it, I set out to "partition" an external hard drive that I use for various tasks so that it would appear to the computer it was attached to as 2 smaller drives, rather than 1 large one. I followed the manufacture's instructions closely in this endeavor and all went well until the very last minute, when the host computer tossed up a simple, but fatal message that said, "Sorry, Dave, but I can't do that."

From that point forward, it has been total frustration trying to revive this little drive. According to the drive maker, the last option is "a low-level reformatting of the drive." Okay, there are multiple ways to do this, and I chose the one that seemed best, but 2 days have passed, and it has not finished reformatting.

True, a low-level format has to look at each and every "sector" on the drive and decide if it has been naughty or nice, and then keep a list of naughty ones and there are 1,953,525,168 sectors on this particular drive, but if by the time you read this it has not completed, come by and see me playing street hockey with my new little hockey puck.

But that was not the most frustrating event of the weekend - not by far. Saturday evening my coffee maker went on strike. Probably one of these union sympathy things. "If the hard-drive is on strike, so am I. Not crossing that line while my brother machine is in dire straits."

Hah! I will have the last laugh. Both of these problems are solved with 1 trip to WalMart!

Stay warm and well-fed this week.

Monday Meanderings - 11.16.2015

Evidently I have become the "hard-to-read book" go-to guy at the Learning Ally studios. The first one was filled with Japanese and German names and places - but this book happened to have an audio version, so all I had to do was transcribe all the foreign words and pronunciations onto cheat sheets to use while I read. Again, you may wonder why we were making another audio book if there already was one; the short answer is we produce a book formatted specifically for use by visually impaired readers.

The second "hard-to-read" book is my current task and the challenge is that it is chock-a-block full of Ancient Greek names and places. You may recall that I mentioned there is some dispute among scholars about Ancient Greek pronunciation, so consistency is the key. I ended up with six pages of single-spaced, double column cheat sheets for that one.

My next project is "The Ponds of Kalambayi: A Peace Corps Memoir." What makes this book challenging is that Kalambayi is a small precinct in what was then Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) and the primary language spoken is Tshilumba, a dialect of Bantu. There's also a smattering of French, but that's a piece of cake.

Not surprisingly, there is no Tshilumba-English dictionary. I even researched the Peace Corps training materials. At the time, they sent all Zaire volunteers to language school in country.

About the best I have done thus far is find the four essential travel phrases:

1. Where is my room?    - Muaba wa kulala udi mpeni?
2. Where is the beach?    - Muaba wa kowa mayi udi meni?
3. Where is the bar?        - Muaba wa maluvu udi mpeni?
4. Don't touch me there!  - Nkutashi to!

 (I'm not kidding about these phrases; you can find them in more than 900 languages and dialects at www.travelphrases.info/. )

But, as Barb points out - who is going to challenge my pronunciation when I read this book? All I have to do is be consistent.

Article in the paper said that it is time to change to the Fall house decor. Barb thought this a good idea, so she is hunting for the brown and orange throw pillow.

I have seen this list several times floating around on social media; perhaps you have too. Nevertheless...

Dentist's Hymn                    Crown Him wih Mary Crowns
Weatherman's Hymn           There Shall Be Showers of Blessings
Contractor's Hymn              The Church's One Foundation
Tailor's Hymn                      Holy, Holy, Holy  
Golfers Hymn                      There's a Green Hill Far Away  
Politician's Hymn                 Standing on the Promises  
Optometrist's Hymn             Open My Eyes That I May See  
IRS Agent's Hymn                 I Surrender All    
Gossip's Hymn                      Pass it On    
Electrician's Hymn                Send the Light  
Shoppers Hymn                    Sweet Bye and Bye  
Realtor's Hymn                     I've Got a Mansion, Just Over the Hilltop
Massage Therapist's Hymn    He Touched Me  
Doctor's Hymn                     The Great Physician  

AND for those who speed on the highway, here are a few more:
—45 mph...     God Will Take Care of You
—65 mph...     Nearer My God to Thee
—85 mph...     This World is Not My Home
—95 mph...     Lord, I'm Coming Home
—100 mph..    Precious Memories

Stay safe out there.

Monday Meanderings - 11.9.2015

This past weekend Barb moved all the houseplants from their summer spot on the patio back into the house, in preparation for cooler weather. It will get cooler, won't it? Over the course of the summer these pot plants grow long and full; especially the Ivy, which sent out runners in every direction. Some of those runners took root in the narrow space between the house foundation and the patio, and prospered.

Interestingly, the free-range Ivy leaves were 2 and 3 times the size of the potted Ivy leaves. That probably means something like the plant is root-bound, or needs to be fed something or other. Ivy is a survivor, so it's own it's own.

 

And Barb took down the hummingbird feeder as well, but she had to time it carefully.

 Bees have been feeding here of late, and they come in swarms. They will feed, then everybody goes away, all at once. I was not able to figure out the pattern, but the bees sure knew when it was dinnertime.

I mentioned free food last week. This week it was two guys at the adjacent table in Chuy's. They ordered a flan for dessert (Barb and I looked at each other and agreed, "You have chosen poorly"). Sure enough, the waiter, subconsciously knowing the correct dessert to order at Chuy's, brought them a serving of Tres Leches cake. The dudes said, "This is not flan." Whereupon the waiter said, "Oh. My mistake. Help yourself to this free serving of Tres Leches while I go get a flan!" I wonder if they heard our groans.

Meanwhile, at the table on the other side of us a woman was showing her friend pictures of a recent family member's wedding. The most interesting part was her comment, "And here's Harley. He was a bridesmaid."

 

Monday Meandering - 11.2.2015

Well, the big news hereabouts is that it's flooding down in Texas. Again. Not sure what it is about Central Texas and Holiday flooding. This is 2 Halloweens in a row, and any Memorial Day seems to bring a deluge.

We normally avoid bad weather by staying home and battening down the hatches, but as luck would have it, we really needed to be down in the UT area Friday morning during the worst of the hard rain. We got home safely, but there were a few scary moments.

I was sitting in the CVS parking lot the other day, checking my phone while waiting on Barb to run in and pick up a prescription. Every few minutes, a Capitol Metro login screen would pop on on my phone screen, courtesy of the free WiFi on city buses that would pass up and down the street. I guess if I ever needed free WiFi, I could hang out at a bus stop. Intermittently.

I noticed that Blue Bell has a plan for ice cream lovers that are not able to get their product yet. They will ship it to your door overnight! Four half gallons, packed in dry ice and delivered, for a paltry $130! To those family members that enjoyed the Blue Bell we brought to the Lake on Labor day - - the bill is in the mail!

Abby Wambach has announced her retirement from soccer and the U. S. Women's National Team. I wrote about Abby and the team here, in a post that I regard as one of my best. Not counting the final 2 Victory Tour matches yet to come, Abby has scored 184 goals in 252 matches for the U.S. women's team -- more than any other male or female player in history. She will call time on her 15-year career after December's meeting between the USWNT and China.

Who doesn't like free food? Especially really good free food. We enjoy dining at Pappadeaux and do so regularly. The other day we had ordered our meal and after a longer-than-usual wait, the manager came by to apologize and say that our meal had been prepared - but suffered a mishap in the kitchen and she was pretty sure we would not want it after they scraped it up off the floor! She assured us that our food was being freshly prepared and would be right out, compliments of the Chef!

And to all of you whose internal clock is as messed up as mine, have a good week!