I feel better now

Today's book at the Reading for the Blind was tough reading. It was a World History book done in the very latest style - very little text on a page, but lots of flashy pictures, bunches of icons with lengthy web references, marginal notes, colorful side-bars and info boxes, graphs galore, and oh, here's a big complicated map to finish up with. For the sighted, this is probably a good thing; for the impaired (and the reader), not so good.

I struggled through my two hour session (with a teen-aged director who spent all his time texting friends - not checking me as I read), and grumpily went to put the book back on the shelf, where I saw a little sign that said:

"Kristen W. in Pomona CA and John H. in Minneapolis MN are reading this book. They have learning disabilities. Sharon S. in Tulsa OK, who is sightless, is also waiting for this book. They thank you for your help."

So, whats a few graphs and maps?

Say what?

The cheerleaders couldn't figure it out. Why was the crowd laughing? It was the point in the game where they come out and hold up the placards that first spell out T E X A S and then they turn to the opposite stands and spell out F I G H T and we all yell accordingly. Well, we were yelling, but we were also laughing.

It's Christmas break on the UT campus and there was no basketball band at the game today. In fact, there were just barely enough cheerleaders to hold up the placards. Maybe they were cheerleader trainees – and that's why they never noticed that they were spelling out S A X E T       T H G I F.

They never did figure it out. But we won anyway.

We got Finches!

I mentioned some time back that on a whim we put out a sock-type feeder that's supposed to attract Finches. Like the Owl House, this turned out to be a well-intentioned but fruitless exercise. No Finches came to our feeder. My sister mentioned that she sees Finches in the Spring, so we sat back to patiently wait.

Right after Christmas, I looked up and there were four brightly-colored Finches feeding away! I immediately set out to get a photo of these colorful little birds, but Finches are very camera shy. I tried sitting motionless on the patio for what seemed like hours (okay, very long minutes), but they wouldn't come while I was there. I tried opening the patio door a little and lurking there in the opening, but they weren't buying that either. Mom can stand in the room and fill the frame with her zoom lens, but that's a film camera, and I wasn't interested in blowing an entire roll of film on four little birds, so the battle continues. In the mean time, here's a nice photo from the Internet of somebody else's Finches.


Then I became interested in just what type of Finches these were. After eliminating Goldfinches (ours are more chartreuse) and House Finches (ours are more colorful), I decided they were Lesser Finches. Hmmm. Some neighborhood; we don't get Greater Finches, or even Plain Finches; we get Lesser Finches. Sort of like this church we go by that I have dubbed as being named after "Albert the Adequate." Maybe we should get the City to outlaw Lesser Finches, sort of like Farmer's Branch did illegal aliens. That should work.

Meantime, I'm off to stalk the elusive Finch. Wish me luck.

Add garage door repairman to the resume

The other night we came home from somewhere, pressed the garage door button and went in the house. The door made its normal grinding noises...and made its grinding noises...and continued to make grinding noises. I looked out and saw that the door was closed, but the motor was merrily grinding away. Uh-oh.

I pushed and pulled and prodded, but the door was down and wasn't going anywhere and the motor was on, but wasn't moving anything. Hmmm. Okay, my choice was climb up there and see if it was anything I thought I could fix, or call someone. There was a coupon on the front of the new phone book offering $50 off on a service call (was that a sign?) but I figured if they were giving $50 off, the final bill was going to be a dilly. Soooo...

Well, to make a long story short, see if you can diagnose my problem. Hint: the new part is on the left.


When I opened up the housing, it looked like it was snowing there was so much nylon dust ground up in there. Sears had the part (but you had to order the entire gear kit) and it took only one trip to Home Depot (if you need a 5/32 punch, I have a barely used one) and we had to get out and open the door manually for the week it took to get the part, but the total cost was less than the discount coupon amount.

Maybe I should think about supplementing my retirement income by repairing garage door openers. Oh, wait. There is the part about not being able to get out of bed the next morning because of all those trips up and down the ladder.

Never mind.

Cousin's Christmas

For years, the Anderson family-at-large gathered at the lake cabin for Christmas. After Mom and Pops moved to Ft Worth, the Christmas get-together moved there, too, and evolved into the Cousin's Christmas - Cora and Leon's children, families thereof, and all cousins, near cousins, and anyone foolish enough to be friends of anyone in that group. Kinship-wise, it's loosely defined on purpose; one can never have enough family, and Christmas sure beats funerals for getting everyone together.

There is usually a food theme, which we mostly ignore and bring whatever is our favorite dish at that time, and a gift theme for the exchange. We do the draw numbers and each person in turn picks a gift from the stack, or steals an already opened gift. There has been a broad range of gift themes, from books to music, to things made from wood, etc. Some themes work better than others, and the quality of gifts has varied, accordingly.

This year the gift theme was White Elephant. What gift have you received that you really, really want to re-gift? And as you would expect, the class of gifts really matched the theme. We took a candle and holder, which was a heavy base with two cherubs holding up the candle - sort of like Atlas holding up the world (and almost as heavy). Our second gift was the dinosaur costume that Mom made years ago; she would wear it when she taught her dinosaur unit, and I even wore it once at an IBM sales meeting. I'm sure it was to illustrate some point regarding marketing computers, but for the life of me I can't remember it.

And what did we get, in turn? Mom first got some Roy Rogers TV episodes on DVD, which for some strange reason someone took from her. She then stole a white elephant - really - a cute stuffed plush toy from IKEA - (which she then gave to Taylor, Melissa's nine-year old daughter).

Me? Check this out.



These are staplers. Hot. Pink. Staplers that take teeny, tiny little staples (good luck finding those in the office supply). I know these were re-gifted, because they showed up at this same gift exchange last year. And will they be re-re-gifted next year? Count on it. Next year's theme is "Tools" and if these aren't tools I don't know what is.