Play-Doh Recall

 

The Play-Doh Sweet Shoppe Magic Mountain Play Set is designed for kids three years old and up and retails for $19.95.  It contained a two piece extruder tool for decorating Play-Doh cakes, but that tool is being recalled.

It is not being replaced because it’s dangerous, or even because it didn’t work.  Hasbro announced it is using a new design in all new play sets – and will replace the extruder in sets sold for Christmas – because too may mommies complained that the tool looks like a penis.

Hasbro posted on its Play-Doh Facebook page. "Should any consumer want a replacement extruder for this item, they can contact Hasbro's Customer Service Department at 800-327-8264."

Last 2nd Monday of the Year

If you didn’t see my post yesterday, here’s what you missed -

 

 

 

 

 

Yep, nothing to say yesterday, and could have posted more of the same today. 

But - Since we seldom have snow here, I thought I would share this tip from up North ….

Some Days It Pays To Play

Honey and I spent our 50th anniversary at Coushatta Casino in Kinder, Louisiana.  We had a great time. 

Shortly after we arrived, I hit a jackpot on a Hot Shot slot machine like the one pictured above.  I didn’t get the biggest progressive jackpot, but one big enough that play stopped while the casino processed a W2-G tax form and paid me in cash.  After that, we spent the afternoon playing on “House Money” and both of us had a successful day.

Normally, we visit Coushatta’s Big Sky Steakhouse for the prime rib, but yesterday we opted for the Terrace Cafe and a meal of soup and sandwiches.  Their potato soup to die for – maybe literally, it must be about a thousand calories per spoonful – but worth every bite.

We played for a while after dinner, but left earlier than we had expected.  It’s about 170 miles from our house to the casino, a three hour drive on a good day, and yesterday we had drizzling rain all the way.  I didn’t want to get too tired before I faced the traffic and miserable driving conditions on the way home.

As we drove out of Kinder, Honey did a count and reported that we both brought back all of our “gambling money” and a little bit more.  That did not include that wad in my pocket wrapped around that W2-G.

We got home safe and sound – and a little richer than when we left.  I’d say we had a very good day.

The Big Five-O

We made it! 

Honey and I have now officially been married for fifty years!

That sounds like a long time, but it doesn’t feel like it.  Life with her is just the way things ought to be.

Happy anniversary, Sweetheart.

Demonstrations

I have a lot of thoughts about the current state of affairs, but I think I’ll hold on to them for another day.

Give Me Back My Boring Year!

A couple days ago I posted what was essentially a complaint about how boring 2014 had been.  Boy - I spoke too soon, and wish I could take it back.

We left yesterday morning for Christmas in Bertram and Liberty Hill.  We’re back now, tired as Hell but all in one piece.  That, as they say, is the good news.

We didn’t make it out of Houston, were still on the beltway approaching I-45 when the check engine light came on.  I glanced in the mirror and saw that we were blowing fog like the mosquito man.  I took the first available exit, pulled in to the parking lot of Texaco station/convenience store, and called Good Sam Roadside Assistance.

The wrecker showed up remarkably soon, we loaded up the truck and went looking for a shop that could help us on Christmas Eve. The first shop they sent us to, an NTW, had tire changers on duty but no mechanic.  They sent us across the Freeway to Mac Haik Dodge.  They were open, but only until noon, which didn’t give them time to look at it.  Their service writer suggested we take it to the Firestone dealer next door.  Their mechanic diagnosed the problem but said it was a high pressure diesel leak, something they were not equipped to fix.

After a discussion with Good Sam, they sent a wrecker back to take the truck back to the Dodge dealer.  The Firestone store called Enterprise Rent-a-Car and we rented a fire red Hyundai.

It could have been worse.  Several people showed us the true Christmas Spirit:

• Our Good Sam contract calls for a free tow to the first available repair facility, but they agreed (after a little explanation) to pay for hauling us to four.  All within a mile of each other, and the second one was also the fourth, but still.. 
• Firestone worked on our truck for over an hour, carried our dogs (in their crate) into their lobby to keep them warm and refused to to accept any payment when they weren’t able to fix our truck.
• The girl at the desk at Enterprise, when she found out what had happened and where we were leaving our truck volunteered to give us the Mac Haik discount – a free size upgrade and unlimited mileage on the car.

At a family gathering yesterday, my son-in-law’s brother-in-law told me that he recently had the same thing happen on his Dodge diesel, and the part only cost $36.00.  I’m praying that he is right.

Ho, Ho, Ho

Looking Back on 2014

Satchel Paige was quoted as saying “Never look back.  Something might be gaining on you.”  Good advice, but for the past few days, Facebook friends have been posting their past year in review. 

I looked for an option that would allow me to do that, but there wasn’t one to be found.   Then, this morning, Facebook posted one for me.

It was so bland, so boring, that I decided not to share it on my timeline. 2014 hasn’t been a bad year, just a dull one.

I’m still holding out hope that the final week of the year – what with Christmas and our 50th Anniversary – will be great enough to call this year special.

An Explanation for Everything

The Creator sent knowledge and understanding down from Heaven like raindrops from the sky, and when they struck the earth, they became mud.

Slightly paraphrased, that’s a quote from one of my favorite books.  I think it is an elegant metaphor for the human condition - a great explanation of why equally intelligent people can hold such widely divergent views.

While it may be our duty – our purpose in life – to seek truth in all things, we must always maintain a healthy skepticism about what we think we know.  Few things in history have caused more damage than people who were sure they had a monopoly on the truth.

Reason for the Season

Today marks the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere (longest south of the equator) and the official first day of winter.  The weather may actually get worse for the next couple of months, but you can take heart in the fact that, after today, each day will be a little longer as we work our way toward spring.

Not only that, we are now almost 1/4 of our way through “Meteorological Winter.” That’s a term weathermen sometimes use for December, January and February – the coldest three months of the year.

Fine Dining vs. Jeopardy

I can’t remember the actual occasion – Honey could probably tell you – but sometime in the mid-1960s, we went to our first high-end restaurant for an evening of fine dining.  The place was Tony’s, which was supposed to be the place to go in Houston for a true gourmet experience.  This was after we were married, but before I got drafted, so it must have been 1965. We wore our best clothes, but still felt slightly out of place.  Other diners were oil barons, politicians, and at least one local TV personality dining with a lady who may have been his wife. 

The food was okay. 

The escargot sautéed in a light garlic butter sauce – our first time to eat snails – was wonderful, but the main course was a disappointment.  It was chicken prepared with a wine sauce that was so overwhelming that it could just as easily been any other protein from catfish to alley cat.

The entire experience cost us $50, about half of my weekly take-home pay.  We agreed that we were glad we had done it, but would probably never do it again.

Yesterday, I stopped by a local barbecue joint and picked up four sliced beef sandwiches, which, with tax, cost just over $32.  We ate them at the coffee table while watching Jeopardy (Honey had recorded it while I was shopping) and the local news.

We agreed that we thought $32 was outrageous, but even considering that I am retired, that was just a fraction of what our trip to Tony’s had cost in terms of percentage of income. 

And, I’m pretty sure that we enjoyed this dinner more.

YUK – Cabin Fever

It’s 58° this morning.  That was the overnight low, and it is close to the forecast high for today.  Not only that, it’s been raining all night.

I know I should be grateful – appreciate what we’ve got – but I can’t. It won’t officially be winter for another couple days, but I’m already sick of it.

I know there are folks up north who would sell the soul of their first-born for temperatures like this at this time of year, but I just don’t care.  Starving children in Africa never made me want to eat my Brussels sprouts when I was a kid, either.  I do like them now, but Africa did not play a part in that decision.

We had one day in the past week when the temperature here at the Boggy Thicket actually hit 80°.  That only served to remind me how much I’m ready for spring.

Enemies

There were a couple of news stories yesterday involving long-time adversaries of the USA – a combination of political sanctions and falling oil prices have the Russian ruble near collapse, and President Obama announced steps to resume normal diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Our attitude toward Cuba has never made sense to me.  Even during the missile crisis, Cuba itself was never a serious threat to the US, but although we have encouraged trade with Russia and China, we have kept the clamps on Cuba.  I’m sure it made life there that much worse, but what (if anything) did we ever gain from it?

I have never considered Russia to be friend in spite of cooperation on things like the International Space Station.  My dad’s unit fought alongside a Soviet brigade in Mongolia during WWII, and he wrote home predicting that our next war would be against them.

With that background, I couldn’t help a smug first reaction – serves ‘em right – but a collapse of the Russian economy could very easily lead to a world-wide monetary collapse, a depression as bad or worse than the 1930s.  Now, that is a very scary possibility.

Unicorn

Over and Under

As a little kid “helping” my dad, I probably rolled up my first extension cord before I was five years old. I mentioned that because I recently learned that I have been doing it wrong for over 60 years!

I suspect that, like me, you hold the cord with one hand and use the other to coil it around your elbow.  The problem with that is that you introduce a lot of unwanted twists in the cord – the longer the cord, the more twists you add.  You may end up with a coil shaped like an 0, but when you hang it on a peg, it transforms itself into an 8, and when you try to unroll it, the cord becomes a mare’s nest of kinks and knots.  That’s a real pain, and even worse, it’s very hard on the cable.

The right way to do it is explained in this video.  The guy who recorded it gives a pretty good explanation of how and why it should be done this way, but he is pretty full of himself and likes to hear his own voice, so you might want stop after the first three minutes or so….

There are dozens of “how to” videos out there, including those touting several other methods for coiling cables – the Shepherd’s Knot, for example – but this one actually works and is fairly easy to follow.

This same over and under method (with a minor modification) works great for the hose for your air compressor or even your garden hose.  Just use the over and under flip as you coil the hose as it’s lying on the ground.  Even an old hose that always kinks will uncoil perfectly.

Stress Test

Movoto, the real estate website, has published a piece listing states by stress levels.  Their quasi-scientific report is based on criteria such as:

• median income
• income percentage spent on housing
• commuting time
• unemployment rate

Texas, according to their figures, came in at number 11, and leads the nation in the percentage of uninsured.  They don’t specify what kind of insurance Texans are going without – health, auto liability, or what – but since it is a real estate website, maybe it’s homeowners.

Their latest list carries this to the next step, listing stress levels by zip code.  According to this list, 77032 is the most stressful zip code in Texas, and the eighth worst in the USA.Movoto says that residents of this zip suffer from 22% unemployment, and 42% live below the poverty level. 

That may be true, but if you’re familiar with the area, you know that there just aren’t many people living there.  The area, which borders the west side of Bush Intercontinental airport, is almost entirely warehousing and industry, with only a couple of small residential areas.

Of course, right in the middle of 77032 you’ll find the Houston Police Academy.  Not sure how that affects the stress level, but it’s something to think about.

Christmas Spirit in South Carolina

Here is a story so bizarre that I first thought it had to be a hoax. 

Lily Bullock in a brand-new mom and a student at Clemson University.  Her husband, William, an Army Sergeant stationed in Missouri, is currently on leave to spend time with his wife and two week old daughter.

Now, her landlord at the Groves Apartments in Central, SC, has informed William that he has overstayed his welcome and has to get out. 

He says that Lily’s lease only allows “visitors” to stay for a maximum of seven days.  He has threatened to have William arrested, double Lily’s rent, or possibly have her evicted. “Chuck,” the landlord, says that since Sgt Bullock’s name isn’t on the lease, it doesn’t matter that he is her spouse.

A local TV station has taken up their cause, but meanwhile, now that Lily has finished her semester exams, the Bullocks are going to go visit relatives for a while.

Countdown to 50

Headed over to our old friends and traveling buddies' house later today. 

We’ll be joining Travis and Cheryl Shelton in celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. The actual date of their wedding was the 18th, but a weekend gathering is more convenient for friends and family.

Christmas Song

For the past two years, I have posted a slightly out of the mainstream Christmas song about this time of year.  So far, 2014 has not produced anything new that lives up to my expectations. 

I do have a little time left – last year’s post was on the 14th, and the year before was the 20th – so I’m still holding out hope.

I’d bet the album above could provide something, but all I can find on-line is the album cover.

Blowing Leaves

No, that isn’t me, and it isn’t our house.  It is a somewhat blurry representation of what I was up to yesterday afternoon.

Most of the leaves that were going to fall have fallen, and they were piled up on the roof – as much as a foot deep in some places – so I decided that yesterday was the day to clean them off. 

After only one nearly disastrous episode with an extension ladder a dozen years ago, Honey never thinks it’s the right time for me to get over a couple feet off the ground - That’s why we no longer put Christmas lights on the roof – so she watched nervously from the back yard the whole time I was up there.

The job went off without a hitch.  The roof looks a lot better, and there’s nothing to dam up if it ever does rain.  All-in-all, the operation was a success, but my legs are so sore this morning that I can hardly move.

Feinstein vs. CIA

Knowing that her days as chairman (chairperson?) of the Senate Intelligence Committee were numbered, California Democrat Dianne Feinstein rushed to release a report on what she sees as illegal activities by the CIA.  She claims that Bush administration employees and contractors engaged in torture  in the days following 911.

The activities were deemed legal at the time, but her report has already generated calls for several officials from that era to be tried as war criminals in the World Court.  Wow, that really helps enhance the image of the good old USA!

As numerous veterans have pointed out, nothing was done to any of the Al Qaeda terrorists that wasn’t done to hundreds of US servicemen in SERE training, but Feinstein is quick to label it as torture.

To quote Hillary Clinton (while testifying about Benghazi) “What difference does it make?”

As far as I’m concerned, I don’t believe their methods constituted torture, but I really don’t care if they did.  They could have set the bastards on fire if it accomplished the goal of saving additional American lives.

More Horsing Around

I mentioned Sunday that it was a challenge to find the right number to call to report an injured horse in the ditch.  That was a piece of cake when compared to finding the right number to call to get it picked up.

When the sheriff’s deputy shot the horse on Saturday, he told my wife that he would make arrangements to have the horse removed, but, since it was the weekend, that it wouldn’t happen until Monday morning.  When nothing had happened by yesterday afternoon, I called the sheriff’s livestock control office back.  The operator told me that removal was handled by the precinct, but that she would figure out which precinct was involved – a lot more difficult than you might imagine, I may have to do another post about that – and give them a call.

The horse was still there this morning, so I went on a quest, and finally found a direct number to the Precinct 2 Crosby Work Camp, the people actually responsible for picking up dead livestock from roads and ditches in our area. 

The lady who answered the phone told me that they had come by yesterday, but didn’t see the horse.  I explained that a concerned neighbor had covered the corpse with a tarp, but it was definitely still there and even if they couldn’t see it, they could damn sure smell it.

She assured me that they would be back out to get it this morning.

Aging on the Fritz

 

If you’re like me and  consider old age to be a good thing, but not necessarily funny, the video below might change that.

Here is a great fifteen minute talk about aging from Fritz Coleman, weatherman at NBC4 in Los Angeles. It was delivered at this year’s conference on aging at the First Church of the Nazarene in Pasadena, California.  If he ever does retire, he could have a whole new career in stand-up comedy.

If you look at the top of the video, it is labeled “Final” Conference on Aging.  Don’t let that concern you – it is only final because this is part two of a two-part series.  If you want to watch part one, and you have another 15 minutes to waste spare, you can find it HERE.

Boring is Better

For several months now, Honey has been walking five miles a day, five days a week.  I walk most of the days that she does, but I only walk about 1/2 mile or so – I don’t walk any further because it is so boring.  Honey has come up with several ways to keep the walk interesting, but none of them work for me, and it seems the only exciting things that happen on the trek are usually bad – a rattlesnake on the road, or the dog bite that had her limping for weeks.

Yesterday was that kind of day.

Honey hadn’t been gone very long when I got a phone call.  There was an injured horse in our next-door neighbor’s ditch, and she needed me to try to get some help.

We first thought that the horse was from across the road – they have sixteen – but when I went over to let them know, nobody was home.  The injured horse, almost too red to be called a sorrel, looked a lot like one of the foals born across the road last spring, but theirs was still in the pasture.

We were sure that the poor horse had been hit by a car (or, out here, more likely a truck) but there were no skid marks and no broken glass, so it must have gone some distance before collapsing in the ditch.

Who do you call in a situation like that?  The 9-1-1 operator had me call the Sheriff’s Department non-emergency number and ask for the livestock control division.  She also recommended that I contact the Harris County SPCA’s injured animal hotline. 

An agent from the SPCA called me back almost immediately and told me she would coordinate with the Sheriff’s Department.  Only a few minutes later. deputies from livestock control arrived on the scene.

Sadly, they determined that the horse was too badly injured, so they put it out of its misery.  They told Honey that was the one thing about their job they really hated.

Tough Bananas, Tommy

Back in May, I had a post called Monkey Suit.  If you don’t remember, you can click the link for details, but the gist was that an animal rights group was suing the owner of a chimpanzee for false imprisonment.

This week, the New York Supreme Court ruled that Tommy the Chimp is not a person and does not enjoy the same basic rights and legal protections as a human being.

Trash Talk

 

I may have mentioned a few months ago that we changed garbage companies. 

We did - mostly because the old company’s trucks broke down a lot and we could never be sure they would actually come by on their appointed days.  When they announced a rate increase, we decided enough was enough.

We’ve been pleased with the new service, but there are a few drawbacks.  Their charges can be cheaper because, instead of using a crew riding on the truck’s bumper, their truck picks up the trash with a hydraulic arm – the driver handles the entire process from his seat in the cab. 

They provide garbage cans designed to work with their system, so, if it doesn’t fit in the can, it won’t get picked up.  As bad as that might sound, it hasn’t been a problem.

We have scavengers who patrol our neighborhood looking for scrap metal, or anything else of value.  I have found that I can put anything out by the street, and it will be gone in a heartbeat – old lawn chairs, a rusty gas grill, used appliances - nothing has lasted over 24 hours.

Just before Thanksgiving, the remains of a huge old television appeared in our ditch. (The picture above is from the web.  The actual TV was much bigger and in much worse shape.) 

I don’t know how it got there, and I didn’t know what to do with it.  We used to have one like it – an old RCA with a cathode ray tube the size of a bus – so I knew it was too heavy for me to want to pick up by myself.  I also knew it was too big to fit in the garbage can if I did, and I was sure that it was too broken up to be of any value.

Before I could decide what to do, the problem resolved itself.  When we went out yesterday, the TV was gone.

Oak Mountain Eagles

One of the nicest State Parks we’ve stayed in on our travels is Oak Mountain State Park in Pelham, Alabama.  Facilities there include a small lake with a nice swimming area, an 18 hole golf course, and an equestrian area where you can rent a horse or board your own.

It is also the home of the Alabama Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, which takes in almost 2,000 orphaned or injured birds a year.  The idea is to get them able to be released back into the wild, but they do have some permanent residents, like the totally white vulture we saw there when we visited.

The rehab center has taken in two bald eagles in the past week.  The first was a young male less than two years old.  The other was an older female with a band on her leg. When they checked the band and figured out how old she is, they were amazed.

A fisherman had seen her hopping around on the bank of Lake Guntersville in apparent distress.  When he saw her again the next day, he contacted the game wardens who captured her and delivered her to the rehab center on Thanksgiving.

"We looked at the information on the band and she had been banded so long ago -- with a band today there would be a URL to contact, a website to go to or perhaps a phone number to call," facility director Doug Adair said.

"Her banding had taken place so long ago, the instructions were if you found this bird and you have this information, please mail the information to Washington, D.C. It turned out she had been banded in Tennessee in 1987."

For a bird that has been living in the wild, the age was impressive.

"We were surprised to discover that she was at least 27 years old," Adair said. "And she appears to be in great shape and feisty and active, and has many more years to live, we believe. We were surprised to discover that band. We don't often see birds that are almost 30 years old."

Scottie Jackson, the Alabama Wildlife Center's director of education and outreach, was amazed by the bird's age. "In the wild, obviously there are a lot more selective pressures. You have to find your prey. You have to be a very effective hunter. It is not common to see 27-year-old eagles flying out in the wild, so it's a pretty amazing thing."

The old girl has a couple of broken talons, but other than a really sore foot, she seems to be in good condition, so her prognosis is very good.  She’s almost four feet long from beak to tail and has a wingspan of almost eight feet.

Like the Song Says

I wish I could take credit for this, but I got it in an email from our daughter Cheryl.

Hint – If you don’t get it right away, there’s a clue in the title of today’s blog.

Unsolicited Advice

Today’s post is a sort of open letter to my grandsons about the choice of a mate.  They haven’t asked me for any advice, but, if they did, here’s what I would have to say:

The first thing that is going to attract you to a member of the opposite sex is her looks.  That’s just a fact. But in the long run, it is far from being the most important thing about her.

Oddly enough, what you think is beautiful is going to be different from what your brother thinks is attractive.  There have been studies that say that the most important attribute determining beauty is symmetry – that means that one side of her face is nearly a mirror image of the other - but standards for what is pretty vary all over the world. Your brother, or your best friend, may be attracted to a girl that you think is downright ugly. 

That’s OK – if ugly people never found mates, the species would have died out years ago.  And, that girl with that perfect face and body may be totally lacking in the personality department.

I’m tempted to tell you that sex isn’t all that important, but you’d probably just think I’m an old geezer who has forgotten how important it really is - so I’ll just say this – the most virile couple on earth probably couldn’t average more than one hour of sexual activity per day.  That leaves 23 hours out of 24.  If you sleep 7 hours per night, and work 8 hours per day, that still leaves 8 hours to fill, so you’d better have something else in common, something you both enjoy.

Find a girl that you can enjoy talking to – preferably one who is smarter than you – and you will be much happier in the long run.  It’s worked for me for the last 50 years.

He’s Our MVP

Want to play Where’s Waldo?  Look very carefully, and you will find one Houston fan whose jersey carries a number other than 99.

Houston loves J. J. Watt. 

They love him for his conduct off the field – last week he sent pizzas to every fire house and police substation – and of course, we are in awe of what he has accomplished on the field in what has only been a so-so season for the Texans. 

Yesterday, on a day when Quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick had a career-high six touchdown passes, the media just wanted to talk to Watt about his day.  It was a day that included

* A touchdown reception  after he had lined up at fullback

* A forced fumble, followed by a fumble recovery and a subsequent 11-yard return that, for a moment, looked like it might also go all … the … way – but did set up a quick Texans touchdown

* Two sacks for 24 lost yards, giving him 11½ on the season

* Six quarterback hits, five of them in the first half alone and a sixth in the third quarter that sent Titans QB Zach Mettenberger to the sideline to stay with a shoulder injury

* A salute to the fans who were chanting “MVP! MVP! MVP!” in his honor

Watching the game yesterday, my wife pointed out that perhaps the most impressive thing about Watt is that none of his teammates seem to resent all the attention he gets – they seem to be his biggest fans.

Stats

As I have mentioned in the past, I am glad you follow my blog, but I write it mostly for myself.  The challenge of finding something worth posting every day is one way to try to keep my mind active.

It is good to know you are out there, so once in a while I check the stats on my website to reassure myself that I’m not just mumbling to myself in the dark.

I was amazed when I checked this morning to learn that my blog has been seen in Germany – what Google calls page views – more than it has in the US.  I don’t know when, why or how that happened – German page views last month were way down the list – but over the life of the blog, Google claims that German readers are on top by a huge margin.

I really don’t put much faith in Google’s stats. Last January, they said I had a big fan base in Malaysia, and they don’t even show up on the list today.

Thought Piece

A year or so ago, I reconnected on Facebook with an old high school classmate that I hadn’t heard from since the early ‘60s.  After high school, he went to college, and joined the Air Force as a fighter pilot.  He retired from the Air Force and stayed in the Pacific Northwest where he is a regular contributor to his home town paper, providing opinion pieces that are well thought out and exceptionally articulate.  Typically, his views are conservative,  somewhere to the right of my own.

That is why I was amazed when he recently wrote that, in view of the incident(s) in Ferguson, Missouri, it was time to think about disarming police on street patrol.

I laughed when I first read that, thinking it was a joke,  Later, as he continued to defend the position, I thought he was just playing Devil’s advocate.  Now I’m wondering if he is suffering from dementia.

He points out that if Officer Wilson had been unarmed, the worst that could have happened in Ferguson was one dead cop and a miscreant on the loose – something that probably wouldn’t have made the news outside of the greater St Louis area.  There would have been none of the looting, vandalism, etc. that has wracked the country.  Nobody would have shut down malls on the biggest shopping day of the year.

All of that is probably true, and it is a seductive argument – as seductive as the song of those Aegean Sirens that led sailors to their death on the rocks. 

Nobody would have been forced to reexamine their views on prejudice or race relations or the viability of the American justice system.  But no good would have come from it, either.

Personal trainers are fond of saying “No pain, no gain” and I think that is just as true for civilizations as for individuals.

Home Again

Back home again after a pleasant Thanksgiving.

We drove up to Bertram, TX yesterday morning.  Had Thanksgiving meals there and in Liberty Hill, then headed for home after sleeping late this morning.

There was an interesting (but not enjoyable) episode in Giddings on the way home.  An 18-wheel tanker truck apparently stopped at a red light on US 290 with its tail end still on the railroad tracks.   A south-bound freight clipped it, sending it into an auto parts store.  As far as I know, nobody was hurt and damage was minimal, but it did have the highway totally shut down.  Volunteer firemen directed us onto a detour which eventually led us to a street where we could cross the tracks, but the back-up was remarkable, and added almost an hour to our trip home.

Thanks – I Think

It’s going to be a typical Thanksgiving for us – a couple of stops ending up at my son-in-law’s house to eat again and watch the Dallas Cowboys play football.  Even more painful this year because the Cowboys are actually winning.

False Alarm

The guy with the lamb is Patrick Rothfuss. 

I still can’t decide if he is my favorite author, or if I hate his guts for making us continue to wait for the third volume of the Kingkiller Chronicles Trilogy.  The truth is probably a little of both.

So when I opened Google news  this morning to see his name in a headline,  I got very excited – only to be disappointed again.  The book is not on its way – the Article is about Heifer International, his favorite charity.

Ferguson

The grand jury report on the death of Michael Brown was released last night and, as promised, it led to a night of violence in Ferguson, Missouri.  There has been widespread arson and looting and at least 29 arrests.

I’m sure that there must be a few demonstrators who are sincerely protesting what they view as a miscarriage of justice, but I can’t help but wonder how many are the same sort of people who run amok after their hometown wins an NBA championship, for example.

How many actually give a damn about Brown vs. the number who see this as an opportunity to grab  a new flat screen TV?

Nuthin

Writing a daily blog can sometimes be a challenge.  That’s okay - it’s actually part of why I do it – but sometimes I can’t come up with anything new, or exciting, or even mildly interesting to post.

Today is one of those days, so I’m just posting a picture emailed to me last week….

Jellicle

Better late than never, I suppose. 

We finally got around to watching CATS, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical about a late-night gathering of felines.  When the video version was shown on PBS last week, we recorded it, and we watched it yesterday evening.  It was the first time Honey and I had seen the show.

It’s not like there haven’t been other opportunities – CATS premiered in London in 1981, and on Broadway a year later.  At one time the longest-running show on Broadway, it was surpassed in 2006 by  Phantom of the Opera, another Webber show. 

Like Grizabella the Glamour Cat, the play refuses to die – or at least continues to be reincarnated.  According to the UK rag, the Mirror, Nicole Sherzinger has been spotted at the Battersea Dogs and Cats Home studying strays for her role as Grizabella.  She’ll be starring in a London revival scheduled to open next month.

And by the way, yes, we enjoyed it.  In fact, we thought it was fabulous.

Busy Morning

Today’s the day we finally get rid of our huge collection of outdoor Christmas stuff. 

The purchaser is on the way, and we need to get everything loaded up this morning because the weather forecast is calling for some really bad weather this afternoon.

Punny You Should Ask

Thanksgiving is less than a week away.  Seems like a good time for a little math humor….

Okay, I thought it was funny, but I realize that it’s only funny if you can read it or figure it out for yourself.

Just so you’ll seem cool (or sufficiently geeky) the next time you see it:

• the square root of minus one is i
• two cubed equals eight
• Sigma is the symbol that designates the sum
• pi should be self-explanatory

 

 

Hooped

George Bernard Shaw is credited with saying England and America are “two countries separated by a common language” but you don’t have to cross the Atlantic to run into problems.

I came across an on-line article yesterday about “Canadianisms” – words and phrases commonly used in Canada but unfamiliar to people below the 49th Parallel.

It features words like Tuque, which is a knit cap similar to what we might call a watch cap, and Hooped, more or less synonymous with FUBAR, an adjective which describes a situation so screwed up as to be unfixable.

The article reminded me of a true story about the difference in Mexican and Puerto Rican Spanish. 

An old friend of mine has bright red hair (now going gray) and looks as Irish as a Leprechaun, but he is of pure Spanish descent and was born and raised in Puerto Rico.  He is married to a Mexican woman.

On their first trip to California to meet her parents, Felix saw his mother-in-law drop a clothespin as she was hanging out the wash.  He rushed toward her saying “Let me get your pinza.” It was all perfectly innocent – pinza is Spanish for clamp or pincer and in Puerto Rico it is the word commonly used for a clothespin.  Unfortunately, it is also crude Mexican slang for a certain female body part.  

He says they can laugh about it now, but it was several months before she would stay in the same room with him, even when his wife was around.

Marley

 

Of course, being filthy rich ain’t too bad, either.

Bob Marley, already listed by Forbes Magazine as the fifth-highest paid dead celebrity, is about to get even richer.  His heirs, and an investment group called Privateer Holdings, have announced the formation of a company called Marley Natural which will market “heirloom Jamaican cannabis” wherever it is legal, and other hemp-based products where it is not.

Last year, Marley made over $20 million, and that doesn’t count the sale of all the unlicensed products which Billboard Magazine estimated  brought in upwards of $100 million.

Weather and Baseball

 

Like the weatherman promised, we did record our first freeze of the season last night, but just barely.  It was 32° at dawn, and the “official” low temperature (at the WeatherBug station at Copeland Elementary in Huffman) was 31.4°.  We didn’t come close to the upper 20s local forecasters were promising.

The weatherman is never right.  Well, almost never.  Close, but no cigar.  Still we watch them religiously and plan our lives accordingly.

I once had a manager who told me with a straight face “I was a terrible technician, couldn’t fix anything, but I was such a nice guy that nobody wanted to fire me.  They finally promoted me just to get me out of the field.”  Even if that were true, outside of entertainment, politics and sports, I doubt that very many people in the real world fail their way to success.

Honey spent her career in hospitals; a medical technologist whose lab tests and cross-matches had to be right, every time, or somebody’s life could literally be in jeopardy.  Even in the copy machine business, if I had been wrong as often as the local weather guy, I would have soon been out of a job, and/or the company I represented would have failed.

Still, weathermen aren’t the only people who get rich by failing.

Giancarlo (Mike) Stanton has a career batting average of .288 – that means that he fails to get on base over seven out of ten times that he comes to bat.  Still, yesterday he signed a contract with the Marlins that will pay him an average of $25 million a year for the next 13 years.

I do not begrudge him the fantastic salary - a baseball player, like a work of art or a pair of shoes, is worth whatever someone is willing to pay.

Wind Chill

 

It’s the middle of November, and we are already flirting with freezing here at the Boggy Thicket for the third time this fall.  We woke up to 35 degrees this morning, with a wind chill of 28, and tomorrow morning’s forecast calls for temps in the upper 20s.

The actual formula used to calculate wind chill (for people using Fahrenheit thermometers) looks like this:

but it’s a lot simpler to just refer to a chart.

Either way, I can tell you that wind chill calculations don’t tell the whole story.  They fail to take psychology into account.

In the early 70s, I spent three weeks in St. Paul, Minnesota.  Daily highs were in the single digits and the lows each night ranged from 30 to 35 below zero.  I have tried to explain to my wife how cold that was, but finally realized that it was impossible.  She has no frame of reference – it was like trying to explain purple to a blind man.

The coldest I ever felt was not in Minnesota, but in Mexico.

In 1962, a disc jockey at KBIL in Beeville, Texas, had a heart attack, and I was hired out of radio school to cover for him until he was back on his feet.  One Saturday, I drove down to Villa Acuña for the weekend.  It was in the 70s when I left Beeville, and almost 80 when I crossed the border, but then, about two p.m., a blue norther blew in dropping the temperature over 40 degrees in less than an hour.

I spent almost all of my money on a really ugly coat – the warmest garment I could find in the mercado – and still thought I was going to freeze to death before I could get back home.

Anti-Snow Birds

Search the internet, and you will find dozens of pictures like this - photographs and paintings – of Cardinals in the snow. 

That’s something you will never see here at the Boggy Thicket. 

First, because it only snows here once every ten years or so, and second, because our Cardinals are good ol’ redneck birds that bail at the first hint of cold weather.

Bird-watching websites, the Audubon Society and National Geographic will all tell you that Cardinals do not migrate, but tell that to the Cardinals around here.  As late as the end of September, we had well over a dozen in our yard, but they started disappearing with the first cold front.  We haven’t had a freeze yet – it came close around Halloween and again last week – but our Cardinals are long gone. 
We’ve only seen one in the past two weeks.

Bad Decisions

I read an article this morning that said that back in the 70s, when Kodak controlled 85% of the market - of everything having to do with photography – their researchers actually invented digital photography. Company execs shied away from the new technology, thinking of the potential loss of income from sales of film, processing, etc.

It didn’t kill the company – they are still around – but the film that used to be available everywhere, and the labs that used to be in every drug store have almost disappeared, and Kodak is a very minor player in the digital market.

If you’re asking yourself how anyone running a major corporation could be so short-sighted, so stupid, they were not alone.  In the late 60s and early 70s, 3M Company was the world’s largest  manufacturer of copy machines.  Back then, all of their copiers used chemically treated papers to produce an image, and the paper was patented. You had to buy your copy paper from 3M, or an authorized distributor. According to the official company history, the guys that invented Xerox pitched their idea to 3M several times, but were turned down.  The 3M decision makers just couldn’t see any profit in plain paper.

Lightning

 

The Global Warming crowd has never been shy about predicting gloom and doom – polar icecaps will melt and Austin, Texas will become ocean-front property, etc.  Today, the threat is Lightning.

According to an article published today in Science, lightning strikes in the US will increase by 50% by the end of this century – three strikes then for every two strikes now. That means your chance of being struck by lightning go up, too. The  current chance of a person being struck by lightning in the USA is 1 in 700,000 over a year, or about 0.0000014%. A 50% increase brings it up over 0.000002%.

Out Of Service

No post yesterday because we lost phone and DSL service.  I didn’t have anything earth shaking to say, but not being able to say it is really annoying.

Speaking of annoying – when I called for service, the automated screening service’s first question was if I was calling about the number I called in on. 

What? 

If the number I called in on was working, why the Hell would I be calling for service?

After about five minutes of talking to a machine that didn’t understand what I was saying, and/or typing in responses on my cell phone keypad, I finally got transferred to an actual person.  It was at that point that I learned that my local phone company had outsourced customer service to someplace in Asia.  Communicating with the machine was a breeze compared to talking to the little guy who insisted on calling me Mr. Robert.

Calling their internet support line still gets you someone in the US.  It may not get things fixed any faster, but it is a much more pleasant experience.

Nuts!

We are having a banner year for acorns here at the Boggy Thicket.  The ground is covered with them, and they are dropping so often that it’s almost dangerous to step outside.

As I’ve mentioned before, we have several different species of oak trees on the property.  The acorns from the Live Oaks and Red Oaks are small – about 1/2 inch in diameter – but the acorns from the White Oaks are huge, and seem bigger than ever this year.  It is only a slight exaggeration to say that they are nearly the size and weight of a golf ball.

I was minding my own business, leaning on the gas grill the other evening when one of those big nuts bounced off of it, and it sure got my attention.  It wasn’t even a direct hit, more of a ricochet.  The acorn caromed off the roof of the house and hit the grill hard enough to make it ring like the Liberty Bell!

That got me thinking about the story of Chicken Little.  If he had been hit by one of those big White Oak acorns, he never would have run around telling anybody that the sky was falling.  That big old acorn would have taken him right out.

It Wasn’t Xerox

Saw a story on the news last week about a marvelous new washing machine from Xeros Corporation.  I probably wouldn’t have paid as much attention, except that I thought they said Xerox, and as an old copier tech that made my ears perk up. But no, the announcer said Xeros with an S.

The Xeros system uses thousands of tiny plastic beads – over a million in their commercial washers – to rub, beat, and agitate the clothes, which means they need much less soap and less (and cooler) water to get clothes clean.  Xeros has proven this “new” technology for several years in commercial washers in the UK , and is now moving into the home appliance market.

It strikes me that this new and wonderful technological breakthrough they are touting really isn’t all that new.  Never mind the rub boards our grandmothers used, almost since clothes were invented, women were carrying them down to the river and beating them on rocks.

Ebola Beach

Normally, about the worst thing you might expect at a nude beach would be the sight of some really ugly bodies, or maybe a painful sunburn in areas of your body that would be hard to explain. 

European tourists at Maspalomas beach on Gran Canaria Island, were ready to trade their birthday suits for Hazmat suits this past  week when a boat load of illegal immigrants from West Africa came ashore. 

Some of the 19 migrants on board were from Sierra Leone and Guinea, two of the West African countries ravaged by Ebola, and four were sick enough to be hospitalized.  The rest were hauled away to a makeshift quarantine in a garbage truck.

A number of the Africans showed symptoms of fever, and local Red Cross workers made the decision to employ emergency Ebola procedures, leaving face masks, food and water 50 yards away from the boats and the immigrants, who were kept isolated on the beach for 7 hours.  Those not taken to the hospital were hauled away in a garbage truck, and all face deportation back to their countries of origin.

The boat the immigrants arrived in was burned.

Illegal immigration is becoming a growing problem in the Canary Islands as Africans come hoping for a better life in Spain.

Another Reason to Camp More Often

Robert McDougal of Moncks Corner, South Carolina, had no idea there was a yellow jacket nest in the pop-up camper in his storage yard until he lifted it with a forklift Tuesday. Lifting the camper got the wasps moving, but amazingly, McDougal was never stung.

He called a professional, Eric McCool of McCool Wildlife Services, who estimated the nest be 10 feet long by 7 feet wide and 2 feet tall and containing about 350,000 wasps!

Talk about a reason to use your camper more often. 

Promising Start

 I suppose I should admit that I’m not a huge basketball fan. I haven’t really followed our hometown Houston Rockets since the days when Olajuwon and Drexler played.  I’m definitely a fair-weather fan.

That being said, it is very early in a very long season, but Houston is off to a very good start.

The Rockets are 6-0 for the first time since 1996-97 & join the 1985-86 Denver Nuggets as the only teams in NBA history to start 6-0 with  10+ point margins in each of those wins.  Last night’s 98-81 win over the defending NBA champion San Antonio Spurs was the first game this season in which the Rockets failed to score 100 points.

This year’s Astros were a disaster, and the only good thing about the Texans season so far is that they’ve already won more games than last year.  A fair-weather fan might be forced to cheer for the Rockets.

Danse Romantique

This video is several years old, but I just saw it for the first time.  Honey and I have become big fans of So You Think You Can Dance, but this is as remarkable as anything ever aired on that show, and certainly much longer.  Aside from the grace displayed, the amount of conditioning and stamina required is mind boggling.

Nicolas Besnard and Ludivine Furnon, AKA “Duo MainTenanT,”  performed on the Swiss TV show “Benissimo.” Both of them  dance for  Cirque du Soleil and they are absolutely amazing!

 

Political Ads

Candidates can and do say pretty much anything they want in political ads.  They are not completely immune from libel laws – an Iowa state senator won $231,000 in 2012 after his opponent claimed he “put profit over children’s health” – but such consequences are so rare, that rules of law (and decency) are usually ignored.

In the run-up to yesterday’s elections, TV ads declared that almost all of the candidates from either party were terrible - describing them as deadbeats and felons, treasonous bastards that hated women, children, fair play and puppies.  If the ads were to be believed, there was nobody running for office that you would want living in your state, much less running it!

Many of the claims were outright lies, and many took statements out of context in attempts to prove the candidate held opinions that had nothing at all to do with the statement quoted.

In spite of this, democracy seems to have worked.  People went to the polls and voted.

Special Person – Special Day

Sure, You can Tow That

Salesmen at RV lots are notorious for assuring potential customers that whatever vehicle they own can tow whatever trailer they are considering.  Somehow, I don't think even they would suggest this.

You like the size and layout of a 5th wheel trailer, but you only own an SUV?

No problem!

Just exercise some ingenuity.

Bentley Is Back

 

People around the world have been worrying about Bentley, the King Charles Spaniel owned by Nina Pham, one of the Dallas nurses who came down with Ebola.  He got a lot more publicity than some of the people who had come in contact with the nurses – partly because he was so cute, and partly because Spanish authorities had put down a dog that belonged to a nurse infected there.

His 21-day quarantine is over and he is back with Pham.

Nobody seems willing to say how much Bentley’s three week kennel bill might be.  A spokesperson for the City of Dallas said the cost of Bentley’s care has been a collaborative effort through the City of Dallas, Texas Animal Health Commission, Texas A&M, TDSHS, Dallas County and community support.” We likely won’t know how much it cost until mid-November.”

Surf and Turf

Our daughter Cheryl called yesterday and asked if we had received a delivery.  I told her no and she said I needed to stay home because FedEx would be showing up with a delivery that needed to be refrigerated.  We hadn’t been off the phone for long when the package arrived. 

It was an early birthday present for Honey – her birthday is Tuesday – a package containing two live Maine lobsters and a couple of beautiful steaks!

There was no way we were waiting until her birthday next week.  We cooked them and ate them last night.

I seasoned the steaks with H-E-B Texas Tradition fajita rub and cooked them outside on the charcoal grill while Honey boiled the lobsters.  The addition of a simple salad of romaine, cherry tomatoes and cucumber (with a little Olive Garden Italian dressing) made it a perfect meal.

Honey says it may have been the best birthday present ever.

Candy Man

Earlier this week on national TV, I heard a man unequivocally state “There has never been a documented case of anyone in the US giving poisoned candy to children on Halloween.”

Really?

How about Ronald Clark O’Bryan?

Isn’t Pasadena, Texas part of the USA?

Forty years ago this evening,  the Pasadena father-of-two  laced candy with cyanide and handed it to five children including his own 5-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son.

The optician had taken out a life insurance policy on the children; prosecutors later argued he was trying to kill them simply to claim the $40,000 payout.

Only his son, Timothy, ate the candy, hidden in old style Pixy Stix which O'Bryan had opened and then re-sealed with staples. Timothy was killed in a crime that shocked and stunned the nation, changing Halloween forever. One other child was found holding the candy while he slept. He had been unable to remove the staples.

In his subsequent trial and ultimate death sentence, O'Bryan became known as the Candy Man. He was executed in 1984 after a judge refused his pleas for a final stay of execution.

Bare Bones Humor

With Halloween less than 24 hours away, I thought it was a good time to share this ----