The treasure in the attic has been found!

I mentioned on Monday that my plan to get my children to empty the attic of 45+ years of accumulated stuff in search of some fabulous treasure that might have been inadvertently stored up there was not panning out. I guess I should take pleasure in knowing that my kids are smarter than their old man.

So Barb said Enough! and she crawled up there during our unusually cool mornings last week and dropped handed more than 2 dozen boxes full of stuff down on to me. With the garage floor covered in boxes, we then began the process of sorting through them, trying to determine what was of value and what might be disposed of. Let me just say that after going through a few dusty, crumbling boxes, our standards of what might be valuable dropped to an amazingly low level and we now have an empty attic and a garage full of bulging trash bags!

Goodwill will get a couple of boxes of useable items, and there were some things possibly of value to a teacher of little people, and enough dinosaur material to make up an entire year's curriculum. Barb insists that we did NOT recover any actual dinosaur artifacts, but I'm not so sure.

A number of boxes had old Christmas paraphernalia and Easter baskets and stuffed animals and such. Each item evoked a memory or two, and there were even a couple of misty-eyed moments, but thankfully, these were in the latter boxes and all our nostalgic moments were just about spent, so none of it escaped the trash!

And then there were the boxes of letters and keepsakes and old yearbooks and such. These we have set aside to cull through more carefully. Almost all of it will go into the recycling bin, but it is interesting to look at and comment on. Like pictures of old girl friends. "Why, no, honey - I don't even remember her name."

The big treasure? Okay, I admit that we did not find a long-lost Picasso original, or the violin from the Titanic. But we do treasure an empty attic, and I have a ton of blog material that you will soon see in a new series entitled "Stories from the Attic."

Monday Meanderings - 7.8.2013

After a wickedly hot weekend, last Monday brought low(er) temperatures and very little humidity.We had some running around to do; left Barb's car for service, enjoyed some Eggs Benedict at Mimi's (well, I did, anyway), went by Home Despot to look at some shrubs, and shopped for a 4th of July Tee for Barb. I even spent a few minutes with coffee on the patio after we got home. A fine morning (as long as one could get inside by noon).

With the cool morning, Barb was inspired to go through some of the boxes we have stored in the attic. I keep insisting that there is a treasure worth millions up there - say, a long-lost Picasso painting -  and someone should get all those boxes down and go through them all. So far, the kids are not falling for it, but we will have the last laugh.

Thus far, among other things, Barb has uncovered a stuffed Easter Bunny that belonged to Rob at, oh, about age four, a box of candle wax (no, not candles, just the wax after it all melts in a puddle), and most of the papers she wrote in college. But I'm positive that treasure is still up there!

I have had an extended vacation from reading at Learning Ally. The A/C went out there last week, and the sound-proof booths that we read in are NOT the place to be when the temperatures are in the triple digits. In fact, they are uncomfortably warm when the A/C is working. Repairs are slow in coming - looks like I will have this week off as well.

Barb's car is the original "owned by a little old lady who only drove it to church on Sundays." Low, low mileage, but getting high in years, so it's a hassle to figure out what kind of service should be performed. Even the service tech had to ask his boss about the spark plugs - replace based on mileage or time?

He told Barb that he had a car back on the lot that a guy brought in to have the plugs changed and it has been more than a year and he hasn't been back to pick it up. Maybe he's saving up his money to pay the bill.

And speaking of autos, just so you'll know, if I had my leg hanging out the window while I drove, it would be because it had become unattached, and I was headed to the ER to have it put back on!

Noticed a small item in the Optimist

Last week in the ACU campus newspaper:

    "A smoke machine in one of the dorm rooms in Mabee Hall caused the fire alarm to go off on Thursday night. ACU Police responded to the incident.

    Jordan Bunch, area coordinator of Mabee Hall said, the smoke machine was included in a party in one of the rooms.

    The ACU Police responded to the alarm at 9:30 p.m. Thursday night and showed up to Mabee Hall before the fire department...“There wasn’t any kind of illegal activity going on other than the fire alarm being activated,” said Chief Ellison from the ACU Police Department.

    There isn’t a rule against smoke machines in the dorm rooms, however, Bunch said the smoke machine itself wasn’t the issue, it was the smoke. ACU is charged $250 every time the fire department is called.

    “It wasn’t that big of a deal except for the fact that the fire department had to come out and we had to evacuate the building because we thought there was a fire,” said Bunch.

    The residents who were involved took responsibility for their actions and wish to remain anonymous.

    The consequences for those involved remain unknown. The incident is still being processed through judicial affairs."

Really? There are so many things of interest in this story, I don't know where to start.

First, the idea of having a party in a dorm room! I lived in Mabee dorm and the rooms are about 12X12. Put 2 beds, a desk and a footlocker or two in there and you could squeeze in about 5 guys. And if it's a party, there's a stereo, oh, and don't forget the smoke machine.

A smoke machine? Just what mood were were we trying to evoke here? I can't figure what a bunch of guys would do in a room full of smoke that they didn't personally create. Do you suppose there were girls at this party? It would make sense to fill the room with smoke if that were the case, but I don't even want to go there.

There isn’t a rule against smoke machines in the dorm rooms? How did that slip by the administration? I think it's in the same section as the nuclear weapons.

They evacuated the dorm because of a little smoke? I can't tell you how many hall trash cans were set on fire during my dorm life. I'm not sure we ever had a drill, let alone evacuate the dorm!

The residents who were involved ... wish to remain anonymous. Really? Everyone on campus knew the names of  "the residents who were involved" within two hours!

The incident is still being processed through judicial affairs? When I was there, I knew guys who were dorm residents at 4pm and were catching the bus home by bed check.

Some time I need to tell you about bowling in the hallways. Real bowling balls, real bowling pins. Now that was a party.

Monday Meanderings - 7.1.2013

You know how, when you place an order at Chick-Fil-A, they ask you for your name so that they can call it when your order is ready? Did you know that in addition to your name they record other information about you?

Yes, I was wearing a blue button-up shirt. The NSA would be proud. BTY, that MlkShk Pch (peach) Lg is totally worth it. You won't find it at Sonic, 25 flavors or no.

You may find it interesting that Apple ear-buds are washable. It is my understanding that iPhones are not. Glad it was the ear-buds I left in my pocket and not the phone.

It was hot this weekend, dear hearts. It reached 106° on Friday and 108° on Saturday. That's hot. The good news, according to the weatherman was that it felt like it was 106° and 108° - none of this phony temperature business. When it's that hot, you do your errands early in the day and then then go home and bunker up. We even flipped a coin to see who had to go out and get the mail.

Spent more money this week on a pair of shoes than I have ever spent on any shoes before - and they were walking shoes. You know, what we used to call "tennis shoes." Found out the hard way that you can't cheap out on your shoes if you are serious about spending time on the treadmill. Barb said, "I told you... oh, never mind."

Almost weekly Austin seems to be on some top 10 list: best place to start a family, best place to start a business, best place to start a list. Saw one recently that listed Austin as one of the top-10 Terribly Overrated Destinations. The author listed popular vacation sites such as Buenos Aires, the Caribbean, San Francisco and Chicago, but placed Austin as the #1 overrated spot, "a city whose entire purpose for breathing is to not be like everything else around it." He then suggests traveling instead to (wait for it) Houston, which he calls an “impressively creative and very fun town” despite being, in his words, “so ugly that sometimes you may be tempted to put a bag over its head.”

Yes. I agree. Visit Houston instead. Please. Then maybe we won't have to stand in line to get good BBQ.

Oh, no! Not another Soccer post!

I know. Soccer is an acquired taste. I get that. So you can skip this one if you want to, but the FIFA Confederation Cup is going on. Group play was this past week and the quarter-finals begin today. I'm loving it. 

The Confederation Cup is sort of a dry-run for next year's World Cup - the big one. Held in the World Cup host country, it gives FIFA and the host nation - in this instance, Brazil - a chance to see if everything is ready. Or will be ready. With the spotlight on Brazil, hundreds of thousands of protesters are taking advantage of the world's attention to demonstrate against the government. "Millions to spend on soccer stadiums, but no money for services." FIFA is a tetch worried.

Fewer teams compete in this competition; the participants are made up of the reigning World Cup champions (Spain), the host nation (Brazil), and the current holders of each of the six FIFA confederation championships. Normally, these are big name national teams, like Italy, Uruguay, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria...and Tahiti. Here's a team picture. Okay, maybe not.

 Yes, Tahiti - ranked 138th in the world - but in the tournament by virtue of having won the Oceania Football Confederation title by surprising New Caledonia in the Oceania tournament final! To give you some sense of scale, think a parks and rec football team playing the Pittsburgh Steelers. Every three days.

The players on national teams are professional soccer players; they do this for a living. For example, the players on Spain's National Team earn annually an average of about $7 million dollars each (Fernando Torres earns $17 million all by himself). By contrast, the players on that Pittsburgh Steelers team earn an average of $2.9 million. Tahiti has one professional player, who earned $1.5 million last year. The rest of the team plays amateur club soccer and support themselves as best they can, as teachers, truck drivers and such. Nine are currently employed.

So, how did they do? The final count for 3 games was 24 goals to 1. They did score a goal, and their keeper stopped a penalty kick. And the crowds loved them! This week in Brazil, they were Rock Stars!

Speaking of scoring goals... Abby Wambach needed but two goals to match all-time top scorer Mia Hamm. The US team played South Korea in a "friendly" last week and Abby got her two goals - and two more for good measure. I guess that's a hat trick with a feather stuck in it. The four goals gave Wambach a total of 160 international goals in 207 games, two more than Hamm had in her 275-game career that ended in 2004. By comparison, Ali Daie of Iran holds the men's record with 109. Not too shabby.